The 1970s Project

MW: Well, you know I have been in the British film industry since 1953, and it has always had a funding crisis and the reason that it has a funding crisis is that on the whole it makes films that no-one wants to see. And it's quite simple, if you can't sell the product and show a profit, people are not keen to fund you. When I started, there was a thing called the Eady fund, where they nicked some money from cinema tickets and distributed it amongst English films, but that didn't force anyone to see these English films of course, so that had to be stopped. Then there was the NFFC which helped a bit and even came into one of my films, but not a lot... in the 1970s, I don't think it was any worse than any other time. Occasionally there were tax breaks.... And there are supposed tax breaks, which are often later challenged by the revenue and the people who thought they were getting a tax break don't get it. There was a whole series of tax breaks which people thought were available, and in my view, dishonest accountants were selling them as they took commissions or money on time spent in getting people these tax breaks. The revenue later broke them all open. And said, 'Thank you very much.... We don't agree with this.' What actually happened at the beginning of the 1970s was more serious than that, around 1970/ 1971, every major American studio was close to bankruptcy. They were not owned by multinational organisations as many of them are now, so they could only draw on their own income from their own products. They used to say if a film grossed 2 and a half times its negative costs, then you would see profit. Well, around 1972/ 1973/ 1974 - 1973 probably - they changed all the bookkeeping, and said 'Why do we give money to these people, just cos it says so in the contract?' So that was the worst thing. I had a contract with United Artists and they said, 'You have got to take half the money or we are not going to give you any films anyway'. This was going on all over the place. As they got bought up by conglomerates, this all loosened, but the beginning of the 1970s, people were quite tight, which didn't worry me really, because I always made films rather economically. You know, most people took a script and you only need 100 pages of script, but they would film 153 pages, and the of course, the film was much too long and they would throw a great deal of it away. Well, we never threw more than 3 or three minutes away from any of my films, because it is ridiculous to throw things away when you have shot them and paid for them when it is much easier to do it on a piece of paper.

MW: In the 1960s there was, particularly for English films, a moment of success, because what happened was, around 1961/62 a country which the Americans had written off as totally useless other than quaint, produced 3 or 4 films which made enormous money, Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Tom Jones, the Beatles films and there were a couple more. The Americans suddenly thought in the mid-60s, 'We'll all open our offices in London and we'll finance films'. And they did. They financed dozens of films, all of which, except for 2 or 3, lost money. So by 1968, they closed the offices and called the people back to Hollywood in disgrace – because they blamed the people, since they made the decision that there was money to be made in England and if these people didn't make it, it must be their fault, you see. So that had dried up as far as English films were concerned and it so happened that around that time, more by luck than judgement, I became an American director in the sense that I got a film which was a big success critically and to a degree financially, The Jokers, and I got great praise with I'll never forget what's 'is name and The System - great praise. You can cash in really good review. With all that money in the bank, I then made Lawman which was a western you see, I think around 1968 and.... I never had been further West than Fulham, but it was a big success, an All American picture. Suddenly the Americans were saying 'This fellow he can't just do English comedy and observational films, he can do good meat and potatoes pictures'. So the 1970s I worked almost entirely in America. I had become a Hollywood director and this went into the 1980s. The 1970s started badly, with people cutting back because they had lost money, but they all came out with these wonderful phrases 'We are not going to pay actors this sort of money any more'. You know, David Puttnam went to Columbia and said 'I am not paying actors this money anymore' but they fired him a few weeks later. He had a breakdown (laughs). Because, you know, at the end of the day, if you want an actor and they say, 'You wont get him unless you pay X million dollars' then you either have an unknown in the film - which means it is unlikely to sell, not totally unlikely but very unlikely - or else you have to pay the money. They also said, 'We are going to put a cap on advertising.' They had an agreement to cut down - all the studios had an agreement to cut down... 'We are going to cut advertising.' Well, of course one company broke it after a few months and then the whole thing fell apart. Because advertising is very expensive for motion pictures and so I think the funding had always been shaky, particularly for British films and still is shaky. You know, we have Channel 4 making a few films, but it is shaky because nobody goes to see them. They had a thing on... with Home Box Office and said... 'You are putting on these tacky films'. So the head of home box office gave a press conference and said, 'The fact of the matter is... that Chariots of Fire attracted 80% less audience than Death Wish 2.' (laughs) So thank you very much, we have got to get people watching the channel, we are not an educational organisation.

MW: Well, The Big Sleep, the rights had been bought by an American producer who lived here, called Elliot Kastner and he offered it to me. I had never read Raymond Chandler, but I had of course seen the original film. The original film deviated quite considerably from the Chandler book. When I read the Chandler book I was gob-smacked because I though he was a street American writer, but he wrote with the poetry of Oscar Wilde. It is an incredibly written book and perhaps I was too knocked out by it. Then I learned he was born in England and went to Dulwich College and was intending to come back to England when had this rather macabre death in the shower. And I though that 'This book is so great, I am not going to change it, I am going to follow it slavishly.' We sent the script to Jimmy Stewart, the actor, to play Colonel Sternwood, and I will never forget, I had a phone call and he said 'I cant play this part, because he is so English' I said, 'Jimmy it is word for word, the same as Chandler wrote, there is not one word that has been changed'. Because Chandler did write English, he was known as a great American street writer, but he wrote English. And I said, 'Jimmy not a word had been changed dear, get the book and compare it word for word.' So he came over and did the part. But it was a good thriller, it was poetically written and we made the story clear and I think - the reviews are in my book anyway - and some people said that it was the best ever. I don't think it was better than the original but, you know it had a different look on it. And I set it here, because if you set it in America then it ... would be a copy of the original, let's at least try and do something different. And it did well, it wasn't that enormous in the theatres, but played very well on television and certainly made a profit, because it wasn't that expensive. And actually it was... of all my films, it was the one that went over budget more than anything else ...

MW: Did you? That and Hannibal Brooks went over ... Hannibal Brooks went over budget because the elephant was impossible and The Big Sleep went over because, it was a very rainy summer, pouring with rain everywhere. We had locations by the Thames that were flooded. We weren't able to shoot with everything 2 feet underwater.

MW: I will tell you the history of censorship. In my view the whole Swinging 60s were brought in by a film censor called John Trevelyan who was a very gaunt scholarly type of person. In the late 50s, you were not allowed to show nudes on the screen at all, and if they showed them on the stage they had to have knickers on and stand stock still. A little Jewish distributor had made a twenty minute film called nudes in the snow, where these naked girls threw snowballs - they were only wearing snow boots - they threw snowballs at each other. And for some reason he gave it to the censor – 'what was the point of that, it wasn't allowed. We all knew that.' But John Trevelyan passed it with a U certificate and revolutionised the industry. I think John Trevelyan with that one stroke brought in the swinging 60s, never mind the Beatles and the Rolling stones, who I loved. So censorship in this country was quite reasonable under Trevelyan ...

MW: Murphy was the biggest idiot in the history of the world. Murphy was a moron and a very unpleasant man. Murphy on my film Scorpio... It had three certificates in the course of four weeks...

MW: It had 3 certificates because he was an idiot. And I remember on The Nightcomers, there were some vaguely sex scenes with the children, but not really. And he said 'We can't let children see this' But I said, 'It's an 18 certificate Stephen children can't come into the cinema' I mean, he was a disaster. After he left, job things improved....

MW: No, I'm sorry it did not improve. Ferman was an even bigger disaster. Ferman was with me at Cambridge and he was an idiot at Cambridge and an idiot as a film censors. Ferman was a failed film director and all he wanted to do was attack everyone... I had lots of skirmishes with Ferman. He was worse actually than Murphy, because he was educated. The minute he left, things got a bit better, but they used to take pride, - the Government... if they are not doing well, they attack movies. They are doing it now. Jack Straw says, 'We are the most heavily censored county in Europe and I am proud of it' that is the sort of remarks that are made. Throughout the history of censorship, this country has not been allowed to see films that are uncut that can be seen in France, Switzerland, Germany, all over the world. Are we some sort of cretins here in England? Ridiculous, and then they produce these Government reports and all the reports say is 'nothing wrong with it.' So they buried them. Absolutely ridiculous, I am not sure where censorship is today, it is much better than it was and getting heavily criticised....

MW: I'm sure... well, my film The System is historic in the history of the BBFC because Lord Morrison dropped in to see it and said, 'This cannot be shown' and I got this ridiculous letter from ... Trevelyan, who was wonderful and he rang me and said 'Michael I have sent you a really stupid letter ...I had to do it, but you have to come in and talk about it.' And he said 'This idiot [Morrison] dropped in'. So I went along to see Trevelyan with Sir Michael Balcon, who is one of the most significant men in the history of British cinema and we made a few dressing cuts, they didn't mean anything, you know... we took 3 frames off Julia Foster's breasts. And three frames at 24 frames a second doesn't mean much, and it was passed. But there have always been problems... and with The Wicked Lady, The Wicked Lady was classic. We had a whipping scene and the girl is whipped and the bleeding... and there is no appeal... In America you can got through an appeal board, because the distributors, producers and exhibitors ... I did that with Death Wish 2 and I won the appeal over the American censors. Here there is no appeal, so I created one. I wrote to 60 of the most prominent people in the country; the head of the BFI, the head of the distributors, to Stanley Kubrick... and to women who had won Booker prizes, and they all wrote supporting me... the only one who wouldn't write was Harold Pinter, who is meant to be a friend. Others wrote: 'This scene is absolutely innocuous, I wouldn't mind my children seeing it.' And we presented him with this list of 60 incredibly powerful names. And then Ferman said, 'I didn't see it... I never saw it. My people saw it', and then he saw it and he said, 'It is perfectly alright, leave it how it is'. This is the sort of human being he was. Ridiculous!

MW: I think it is fully quoted in that book... there was an American critic, very significant, who said' I see in Mr Winner's style, something quite unusual. He shoots a scene and he never repeats the angle...' Most people do what is called a master shot, but I have never done... and then they cover it. I chose a different angle for each shot - I never go back to the same angle, because I want to keep people's attention, not getting bored by seeing the same angle. (Orson Welles anecdote)... Why my films have lasted so well, and still shown on television at peak time all over the world is that they were very fast moving, very fast cutting, very short cuts ... they zipped along and I edited them myself, many of them in this house. I stuck the piece of film together with sellotape. When we made Parting Shots, Kubrick and I and one other person, were the only people still using a movieola, everyone else was doing it on computer. I still have the movieola. The people we rented it from, said, 'We don't even want to collect it, nobody uses these anymore, you can have it.' My films were very fast moving, they were sharp, they were not pretentious, they were not made for friends in Hampstead, they were made to entertain and that is why they are continually shown.

MW: Well my favourite collaboration in the 1970s was undoubtedly with Marlon Brando. Marlon was the actor who is acknowledged ...with changing the whole style of acting from stage to film, to behavioural. He was my hero, he was everybody's hero. And everyone said how difficulty he was, but he said in his autobiography that mine was the only film he ever enjoyed making. We stayed friends until he died; he would phone me 11 O Clock at night which was 3 in the afternoon his time and we would speak for sometimes an hour and a half on the phone, 2 old washerwomen gossiping. That to me was wonderful, Burt Lancaster edged into the 1970s, yes he did... wonderful man, as you will see in my biography (Lancaster anecdote) Wonderful man, terrible temper... who cares, you know! Bronson of course, I had great success with and I was fond of Charlie, but Charlie very much stayed within his family. Luckily I had known his wife, his wife was my girlfriend in England... so we got on very well, and he was a very good actor Charlie, better than he was given credit for. I see now that Sylvester Stallone has bought the rights to do Death Wish, but I can't think of anybody less suited to it, you know. Sad really but doesn't matter.

MW: Well, you know the reason is that... and in it is the biography... I made a film called West 11 in 1963... (lengthy anecdote which is in the book about West 11 and casting and Julie Christie)

MW: Well I had a company. I used to make short films ... so I had a company. .. but I then commissioned a script with a man called Kenneth Shipman who owned Twickenham studios, I am not sure if he didn't find the script to be honest, but we went in together and it was called The System and we made it later the same year. And now Julie had made Billy Liar, but it wasn't out. And I said 'Julie darling, we are starting in July, you have to be the lead with Oliver Reed' and she said 'My agent wont let me do another film, they think I am so bad in Billy Liar, that they are making me go to Birmingham Rep to learn how to act' And I said, 'But you don't want to go to Birmingham' and she said 'No I don't'. I threw out all the postcards she sent me from Birmingham saying how fucking awful it was. Then the film came out and she was the best thing ever. But ever her own people thought she was no bloody good, Extraordinary. Now they go around... Schlesinger is adorable, he goes round saying 'I discovered Julie Christie'. He didn't discover her, he rejected her! He chose a girl called Topsy Jane who became ill so, reluctantly, he took Julie who he'd previously rejected.

MW: Well not in Hollywood I don't think...

MW: In England I think, they began to accept that pretty girls could act, it was alright if you were Vivien Leigh and looked classy, but they began to accept that pretty girls could act. They have always been frightened of them in England, frightened of pretty girls. 'She is pretty, therefore she can't act. She only got there because she is pretty.' You know, they say that now about the newsreaders... (not relevant) It is an incredible male arrogance really, they want these pretty girls and they put them down. They put them down because of psychological problems, quite honestly.

MW: Well in the 60s, you had Glenda Jackson showing her tits everywhere and then you had Vanessa Redgrave showing hers... She was meant to be in The Nightcomers, showing her tits, but at the last minute she has going over schedule on a film in Italy which she made with her boyfriend, who she married briefly...

MW: Franco Nero and I remembers she rang me; 'Michael I am terribly sorry, we are going way over schedule, I wont be ready' So with two weeks to spare and we chose Stephanie Beecham who was very good in it... she could have been a big star but she wouldn't go to America and tour and promote the film, she was frightened...

MW: Well I interviewed her in 1963 for West 11 for the part of a waitress in a hamburger bar... but I don't think she was the ideal girl to play the part... I mean she could have played it, of course, but physically - you were looking mainly physically at that point... a hamburger bar ...it was a bit more.... She was a great, great actress.

MW: Well I though Ken Russell was very good (then long anecdote about Oliver Reed, Ken Russell - straight out of the biography) No, he was very, very good Ken Russell. Over the top and un-commercial on the whole, and got more and more over the top, but that doesn't matter, he did some terrific stuff. I was very cross with him though, because he was very close to Oliver Reed and he never bothered to go to his funeral. I was the only person from showbiz who went to Oliver's funeral, nobody else went at all. Why couldn't Ken Russell go – he did about 6 or 8 films with him? And he used to go drinking with him every night, I didn't!

MW: Oh he will come...

MW: He was alright, nice fellow.

MW: Well... Puttnam and I had some big run-ins, I forget what it was over. He was very anti-Semitic, although he is a Jew, about Golan and Globars when they took over Cannon and wanted to buy Elstree. He was absolutely offensive and ridiculous... and also about censorship. But we have since become very good friends and indeed he did an event at the NFT and I was the person who interviewed him on the stage. We are good friends now. You have these little tiffs in the industry, but it's not serious, you know. Where is your event?

MW: Why haven't you got me (not relevant)!!

MW: No, I think Joan was a wonderful meat and potatoes actress. She wasn't bad. But you can't compare her to Glenda Jackson or Vanessa Redgrave, they are not in the same league. I love Joan, she is a friend, but she is a not a great actress in the sense of great acting. She is a good actress, she is commercial. Vanessa is unbeatable; Glenda was as good as you'll get really... who else was there around in the 1970s?

MW: No nothing!

MW: Sarah is a very good actress, but she is her own worst enemy. We wanted her for West 11... but she is still a very good friend ... Sarah is so difficult, that she has destroyed her own career and she is a very good actress indeed Sarah but she never blossomed. People wouldn't give her a chance because she was always interfering, telling them what to do and if some member... she thought was being badly treated, she started being like the trade union leader, you know. And I adore her, but you know, it is ridiculous that... she never broke through really. She was a good actress though....

MW: Very good, completely miscast but very good and so was he miscast... they were both miscast. Ridiculous casting, but she is good.

MW: Well, when you make a film on location – all my films were made on location – 90% of it is already there. You chose a house because you say 'This is the sort of house that someone would live in' so what do you want to change in it? The person has done it for you! We made very few changes... in the places we went to. I worked a lot of time with a man called John Blezard who was adorable. If you do a period like The Wicked Lady then you have to do some building or some changing a bit, but on the whole, we just got on very well, as I didn't intrude... there was a great deal for them to do, but it wasn't totally creative. But then, this is Sarah Miles, it was at Knebworth House we shot in [for The Big Sleep] and she came up to her bedroom in the house and said 'But its not white' and I said 'Why should it be white, Sarah?' and she said 'But it was white in the original film', and I said 'The original film is completely different, dear, it was made in America...' And she said 'I wanted it to be white... I absolutely insist' and I thought 'Oh Christ' So I phoned John Blezard the art director and said 'John, Saturday morning I want three trucks and Sarah Miles is going to come out with you and she is going to chose all the dressings for this fucking bedroom. And whatever she says, just take it. Don't argue with her, just do it.' So they totally redressed this room white, completely wrong... so she comes in Sarah before she was due to play in this bedroom and I said 'Sarah dear, I am going to blindfold you and then I am going to take you up to your bedroom' So I put a blindfold on her and led her up to the bedroom and I said 'Now look' and I took the blindfold off and she said 'Oh... there is a red cushion there!' Absolutely impossible. You couldn't dislike her. She was very naughty because she would deliberately put Mitchum off by giving him the wrong line. She was a naughty girl Sarah but I am very fond of her. A great talent that has gone wrong. Who else was there in the 70s of the girls?

MW: Well Mirren is always a great actress, though of course we had that famous spat me and Helen Mirren, did you read it in the papers? No? Well this was hysterical... she suddenly says in her autobiography that something about 'Michael Winner is a pig, he treated me like a lump of meat ...' Now Helen Mirren in around 1963, when no-one had heard of her at all, was with an agent called Al Parker - Al and Maggie Parker who were wonderful agents who I used to work for. The only time I met Helen Mirren! Maggie Parker rang me one day, she said 'Michael I have got this girl here, she has got enormous bosoms and she won't wear a bra and she has had these photos taken' - and this was 1963 - 'and the bosoms are sagging even though she is young. Would you see her and ask her to wear a bra?' And this was the only time I met Helen Mirren. So she comes to my office and I said, 'Just turn around dear, so I can see you' and I thought 'See the bosom situation' and then she showed me her photos... They were 2 and a half inch square photographs- prints- and she had a gypsy dress on and a gypsy blouse. She sad on the floor and the tits was hanging down and then blouse was, there was no bra. And I said 'Helen dear, you know, your agent Maggie, is right. For employment, these pictures in this day and age will not help and I strongly recommend that you do as she suggests and get a bra.' This was the only time I ever met her. So she said she was treated like a lump of meat when she came for an interview with me. She didn't come for an interview with me, I wasn't interviewing her for a movie, I was seeing her for an old friend. It shows that no good turn goes unpunished. In the meantime, she has flashed her tits around non-stop all her life, had them pumped up with whatever they are pumped up with these days... still a great actress, don't get me wrong. But I don't think in the 1970s, she did anything to compare with Glenda...

MW: Yes, you are right, but her work in the 1970s did not compare with Vanessa or Glenda Jackson.

MW: Why?

MW: He's a very nice man, he will see you... I personally think he is the most terrible actor; he can't act at all, but terribly nice man.

MW: He is a very nice human being which is much more important! Who else was big in the seventies in England?

MW: So does this go in your thesis or something?

MW: I did a foreword to a book about the 1970s. Have you got that book?
(Not relevant discussion about Souness book)

MW: Blimey! You will be unbelievably knowledgeable, more so than anybody else.

MW: And it is mainly England you are talking about? I didn't do much in England in the 1970s. I did The Nightcomers with Brando and The Big Sleep.

MW: No, I went to America... Darling, we are all gypsies for hire! If suddenly the Americans wanted me massively, and the British were still making films for their friends in Hampstead. So I went where the offers were, simple as that. Someone says 'come here and do a film', then you say 'yes thank you.' I turned down The French connection, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, James Bond... I mean the things I turned down, I could have shot myself! I mean, James Bond. I was doing thrillers anyway – when I think of that and me, what arrogance, ridiculous. You know, The French connection they gave the book and as a book it was very ordinary to be honest.

MW: The great project I wanted to do in the late 1960s was William the Conqueror. One of the great love/hate relationships – the relationship between William and Harold. There was a very good script and I was doing it for Universal and they had a good success with Kubrick and Spartacus (autobiography anecdote)
(not relevant – discussion of Alfred the Great etc)

MW: I really would have liked to have done musicals... I wish I had done The Boyfriend. I remember saying to the Producer of The Boyfriend 'I wish I had done that' and he said, 'Why didn't you tell us, we would have had you over Ken Russell any day'. That film was never going to be a big success anyway. But in my view Ken Russell's Boyfriend was a complete fuck-up...

MW: Well, yes dear but I am not sure that was the reason. (laughter) No, Ken was good at historical period, bit of sex, bit of violence you know, that sort of thing. And he was good at musicals of classics, but The Boyfriend was ridiculous. I looked at it and said, 'Oh dear, oh dear'

MW: It's exactly the same as it ever was. You get Richard Curtis who is the only one who has ever made a series of successful films in this country – ever! And then you get the occasional breakthrough films, I mean the British make some very good films. Very good films. But nobody goes to see them.
(not relevant discussion of special effects in films)