And, of course, it’s not just Denis and George we’re saying thank you to tonight, we’re also acknowledging the countless thousands who have toiled away over the years at Cadogan Towers or in remote parts of the world trying to sell the Costa Rican rights of Bullshot. They have all contributed to HandMade’s extraordinary record. It’s a record of generous encouragement for first-time talent. It’s a record of investing not in press conferences and glittering lunches but in a steady succession of interesting, unusual, individual and memorable movies. It’s a record of taking appalling risks. It’s a record of persisting with innovation rather than resting on laurels. It’s a record of valuing independence at a time when so many companies are looking to eat up or be eaten up by someone else. And it’s a record of trusting rather than fearing the filmmaker. Never was a name for a company better chosen. As a beneficiary, more than once, of their policies and their judgement, and being fully aware that without them very few of the films that have brought us here tonight would ever have been made, I ask you to raise your glasses, or contact lenses if you prefer, to HandMade films.
Regardless of the party atmosphere, George Harrison was unusually grouchy and low for much of the evening. Even jamming with Carl Perkins failed to lift the gloom for long. Many of his friends and acquaintances were in attendance, but also a disagreeably large quotient of bankers, lawyers and accountants, to whom Harrison purportedly blew his stack, abusing them with profane language. The word ‘freeloaders’ was certainly used. ‘I hate fucking films anyway,’ he declared, and later announced, ‘He’s the only one who knows where all the fucking money’s gone,’ while pointing in the direction of an accountant. Palmer remembers, ‘George got up and just gave an absolutely scathing speech, something like, “What are you fuckers doing here? Here I am spending more money on you.” So things were pretty rocky at that point. He was angry. He didn’t like anyone in the film business at that point. Great party, though.’
What Harrison did next took everyone by surprise — he sacked the staff at Cadogan Square. The bombshell arrived in the form of a fax, impersonal in the extreme, and dated 21 October 1988. Palmer recalls, ‘The list of who was fired is fascinating — it was only those who he could remember. The people that weren’t fired were the people that he didn’t know. That really indicated what he knew about the company. He just fired the people he knew, which kind of made it worse, really. But it’s a major claim to fame, being fired by George Harrison.’
Something like this had been expected. The directors at HandMade were all aware that trouble was brewing, as were key employees like Ray Cooper and Wendy Palmer. Some staff members were even secretly looking for other jobs. Wendy Palmer was already in conversation with Working Title to set up a sales operation for them. But for the majority of workers, Harrison’s fax was a bolt out of the blue and it sent everyone reeling. ‘I think that fax was a very instinctive move on George’s part,’ Palmer believes. ‘It was temper. Something had gone on between George and Denis and George’s attitude was, “This film company’s giving me headaches, I’m sick of it, I don’t want it any more, I’m just going to close it down.” He woke up one day — he was in the States when he fired us — and he phoned up his PA and dictated this thing. She faxed it to him, he faxed it back, and then she put them on each of our desks.’
Denis O’Brien was in America, too, when he heard the news and was as shocked as anyone. He had to be sent the fax personally before he could believe it. Immediately, he returned to England, but Harrison at first refused to meet with him. Meanwhile, it was mild panic over at Cadogan Square. ‘We were just told to come into work as normal,’ Shingles says, ‘business as usual, and we weren’t to breathe a word of this to anybody outside. It was a very sad and traumatic time for everybody. I don’t know if the writing was on the wall, because you always hoped against hope that things will improve and it appeared that the bridge had been healed between George and Denis, but obviously not. The seeds had been sown and, whatever happened after that, obviously HandMade was never going to survive in its original form... how could it? Things were never quite the same. I used to say to Kate Smith, Denis’s secretary, “You know, life will never be as good as it is here, if we all leave.” And it’s true, because everyone refers to it as the good old days. We were a small company making movies... what more could you ask for? And you were involved, you might not be a producer, but you were involved.’
After a while, a series of negotiations took place between Harrison and O’Brien with the result that a compromise was reached. Instead of sacking everyone, there would be a substantial reduction in staff numbers. Everyone was called together for a meeting in the conference room where O’Brien told them straight out that there were going to be radical changes but that the company would continue to operate and no one should be unduly alarmed. But behind the scenes, things were happening. A list was drawn up of those who were to get the chop. ‘And I was on it,’ Palmer says. ‘Someone had told me. There was 10 of us that had to go. Denis phoned me up, it was six o’clock. “Oh, Wendy, could you remind me tomorrow morning that I have to see you.” And I knew what he wanted to see me about and I’m like, “Well, do you need me to prepare any papers for this meeting?” He said, “No, I just want to see you.” And I said, “You can see me now if you want.” And he’s like, “Well, I’m going to the opera, but I’ve got 10 minutes.” I went up to his office and he said, “All I really wanted to say was, Wendy, if you get offered another job, you should take it.” I said, “Denis, it sounds to me like you’re making me redundant.” He said, “No, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.” I said, “Let’s just try to make this more clear cut. If you’re going to make me redundant, then just make me redundant.” And we had a bit of a barney for a few days and then I got my redundancy. That was just a very Denis thing. I remember going up there and he’s all dressed up, black tie, to go out to the opera and “Bye!” But you know, it adds to the story, doesn’t it?’
Wendy’s dismissal was a surprise to many. ‘Wendy was Head of Sales and excellent at her job,’ says Cooper. ‘Everyone liked her. And when Wendy left, she was very, very hurt. She was bitterly hurt by Denis’s action. And Denis made the wrong decision getting rid of Wendy, and has admitted as much since, because there were other people who should have gone instead. And I thought, Why did they choose Wendy and not so and so? I don’t know how they made those choices.’
Wendy Palmer had the last laugh, though, going on to carve out a highly successful career in movies, becoming one of the most influential female figures in the UK film business, so there are no regrets. ‘I certainly don’t feel bitter and twisted about it. I know lots of people do. But it was also wonderful. I had this incredible education there. I’d learnt a tremendous amount — from nothing. They gave you all these opportunities and it was sink or swim.’
Besides the staff reductions, HandMade also radically scaled down its production output and, in perhaps an acknowledgement of the fact that their American odyssey had been more or less a failure, closed down its New York office. The one in Los Angeles remained active, however. O’Brien put a brave public face on matters when the press got hold of the company’s misfortunes, claiming that the unstable situation in America for all independent companies necessitated such cutbacks. In an interview for Variety, he tried to be optimistic. ‘The hallmark of our company is low budgets and low overheads so we’re in the best situation to make it through any period. We’re staying with our strength, which is comedy.’ True to his word, HandMade’s next two films were comedies. They were also to prove the last films HandMade were ever to make.
First up was probably the owner of the least edifying title in cinema history. It also sadly turned out to be one of the least edifying movies in cinema history, too — Cold Dog Soup. The project belonged to Alan Metter and was a black comedy about two guys racing around Los Angeles trying to get rid of the corpse of a dead dog. O’Brien was a fan of Metter’s 1986 comedy Back to School and, when the script o
f Cold Dog Soup landed on his desk, he hailed it as ‘a quintessential HandMade film’. Others weren’t too sure. Dick Clement recalls, ‘Myself and Ian La Frenais were around at this time and read a lot of scripts and I remember looking at Cold Dog Soup, which was dreadful. HandMade did make some very, very odd choices towards the end, having started off so well. I think there was talk of us doing a rewrite but we just didn’t get it at all. And then, lo and behold, it got made!’
For Metter, the very involvement of HandMade gave his project a certain cachet, even though he recognised the company was no longer the force it had once been. ‘I always thought that HandMade was what Apple Records was when it first started up, when they signed James Taylor. It was an artist-oriented endeavour, so it deserved the utmost respect. Denis may have turned it into something slightly different. I don’t feel like I made a film the way Life of Brian was made. I was aware that this was a Denis project more than a George project. I was never aware that George even read the script. At the beginning, they were making films for the reason they started the company, but by the time we arrived it was filling a pipeline a little bit, I got the feeling.’
Metter, in fact, had met George Harrison back in the mid-Seventies when the musician was in Los Angeles and needed someone to shoot a music video for him to take on Saturday Night Live. ‘I was brought up to his house in LA on Hallowe’en. We knocked on the door and George answered. I said, “Trick or treat,” and he laughed. I told him my idea for the video, he liked it and we sat down and wrote this video at his kitchen table in about two or three hours.’
During the shooting of Cold Dog Soup, however, Metter scarcely had any dealings with him. ‘George dropped by one day. He happened to be in LA. It was great to see him again. He looked at 15 minutes of rushes and left and that was the only contact I had with him on the entire project.’
Metter’s relationship with O’Brien was equally non-existent, though mutually pleasant. ‘I didn’t see Denis a lot, he was building a house and he was on a sail boat. But I can’t say a bad thing about him. He honoured everything he said he would. I’m sure there are a lot of guys that can knock Denis; I’m not one of them. He was very enthusiastic about making this film and anybody that comes to me with that kind of attitude I automatically like. He was a very positive guy.’
The biggest creative disagreement Metter had with O’Brien was over casting. ‘I thought Little Richard might be good for it. Originally, the lead role, eventually played by Randy Quaid, was written for a black man from the Caribbean. We met with Little Richard but Denis didn’t approve of casting him. Randy’s wonderful in the part, but I always wonder what it would have been like off the wall with Little Richard.’
The lowest point of the production came when Metter was in the editing room and heard that Warner Brothers, who were handling US distribution for HandMade, didn’t want to touch his film with the proverbial barge pole. The result was that Cold Dog Soup went virtually unseen in America and, for that matter, Britain. Just as well for the public if the critical reaction was anything to go by. ‘Quite possibly the worst film ever made,’ slammed Sight and Sound. ‘Even the hungriest film hound is likely to conclude that this is a dog’s breakfast,’ barked the Daily Telegraph.
But Metter is philosophical about the rough ride his film received. ‘We made the picture on a shoestring. Did it come out as good as we hoped? Maybe not, but we gave it a go. I’ve seen worse. From a film-maker’s perspective, it was a totally positive experience.’
For many, Cold Dog Soup represented how much O’Brien had lost his way. ‘Denis just had the most appalling taste,’ says Palmer. ‘While I was still at HandMade, I tried selling Cold Dog Soup but I couldn’t find a distributor. You’d start telling people what it was about and they’d just go, “Why are you making this movie?” And I’d be going, “Mmm, that’s a good point.” It was just terrible.’
Cold Dog Soup seemed to sum up perfectly the point financially and creatively the company had reached — rock bottom. ‘It was a disastrous movie,’ confirms Shingles, ‘an awful movie that had no redeeming points. I haven’t seen it for years and I’ve no desire ever to see it again. And that bloody stuffed dog they used in the movie turned up at the London office and we always felt that was an omen. It looked so realistic and we moved it from office to office because nobody wanted to keep it, they felt it was jinxed, but no one had the nerve to throw it out. It was like what happened with The Missionary. All these witch doctor things had come back from Kenya and they said, “You can’t throw it out.” And that went from office to office for years and years because no one had the nerve to throw them out. But Cold Dog Soup was really the end of the road.’
Not quite. HandMade’s last film under the auspices of Harrison and O’Brien was partly to redeem the company, proving to be their biggest hit in America and the UK for years. Too late, of course. The film was Nuns on the Run and had ridden a curious path to Cadogan Square. Jonathan Lynn, writer of TV’s Yes, Minister, was in an LA hotel room fearing the box office failure of his Hollywood directorial début Clue, and guessing that he’d better come up with an idea for another film pretty quickly. Suddenly, this notion of two soft-hearted crooks who disguise themselves as nuns to escape marauding gangsters danced into his head. Lynn pitched the idea to Peter Guber at Warner Brothers and settled down to write the script, setting it in Boston. ‘But Warners had a problem with the script. I wrote another draft and they had problems with that. Then I went to a meeting at which, as is the way of the movie business, a 27-year-old executive gave me a lecture on comedy. This executive never having produced, directed, written or acted in a comedy. Basically, the tone of the meeting was I had to cut out all of the religious jokes which he said were going to cause offence. I said, “You can’t have a film in which two guys hide out in a convent without touching on religion.” And I was told I was wrong and they knew better, because they were Warner Brothers. And I just walked out of the meeting.’
For the next five years, Lynn pitched Nuns on the Run around the other Hollywood studios but no one wanted to know. Then he had a brainwave — why not rewrite it as a British movie? For the two leads Lynn sought out his old Cambridge Footlights cohort Eric Idle, together with Michael Palin. Idle loved the script, but Palin declined due to other work commitments. Idle then suggested Robbie Coltrane, which Lynn thought was inspired, and was also instrumental in passing the script over to HandMade. ‘I was at the Cannes Film Festival and walking down the Croisette,’ recalls Idle, ‘when I bumped into Denis and he said, “You want to do this film?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Great. We’ll do it.”’
Shot on location in London in April 1989, the film was made on a tight schedule and budget. Lynn had actually re-set his story to take place in Glasgow, but O’Brien ruled out shooting in Scotland because of the cost involved — air fares, hotel bills and so on. Lynn adds, ‘Also, the week before we started shooting, Denis said, “The script’s too long,” and I said, “No it isn’t.” He said, “Yes it is.” I said, “What don’t you like about it?” He said, “I like it all, it’s just too long. Too many pages.” So I said, “What are you saying?” He said, “You can’t shoot this number of pages in 43 days.” And I said, “Yes I can.” He said, “Directors always say they can, but they don’t. Now, I will make it really clear... there is no more money. This is not an American studio. There is no contingency. There is not a penny extra. So anything you’ve not shot at the end of 43 days does not get shot. That’s it.” I said, “OK.” I understood the rules. In fact, we did mange to shoot it all in 43 days but there was a tremendous amount of pressure.’
Much of that pressure was relieved by the congenial and fun atmosphere that was infectious on the set. Lynn remembers, ‘It was tremendous fun. Eric and Robbie were hilarious. They were a wonderful double act. They were as funny off camera as on camera. Between takes, the crew was laughing continuously because of the non-stop cabaret that was going on with Eric and Robbie.’
Both co
mics, though hailing from different points in the comedy universe, hit it off from the word go. Coltrane confirms, ‘Nuns is the only film I have done that was as much fun to do as it looks! Eric and I had an ongoing competitive gag about alternative lefty comedy (Thatch is a bitch) and smarty-pants Oxbridge comedy (Kierkegaard is hilarious), which we enjoyed enormously, as did the crew.’
The two actors also found much to enjoy in playing, what was essentially, two characters at once, choosing close relatives to be their female alter egos. ‘It was a great shoot,’ Idle says. ‘Johnny Lynn is fantastic and working with Robbie was just hilarious. We’d sit around dressed as nuns having a good laugh. I remember once we were sitting outside the church and we were both dressed as nuns and Robbie had his gear hoisted up and was smoking a cigarette and this little old lady came up and said, “Good morning, sister.” It was like, “How could you think that was possibly a nun?”’
It soon became a source of amazement just how anonymous the actors were in costume. ‘It was such a drag getting out of the gear,’ Coltrane observes, ‘that Eric and I sometimes nipped to the shops in costume and people would go, “Good morning, sisters.” We gave up explaining after a few times and would just “Good morning” back to save the hassle. It was interesting, though, because you realised that nuns have an anonymity which made a lot of the plot easier to play; we knew that in real life the boys could have got away with it.’
Not since Powwow Highway did George Harrison take as much of an active interest in a HandMade film as he did with Nuns on the Run, no doubt due to the involvement of Eric Idle. ‘George was on the set a lot, I’m glad to say,’ Coltrane adds. ‘Rock ’n’ roll and comedy are close compadres. He sent me a letter after the film came out saying I was fab. I showed it to my sister and she nearly fainted. It’s a generational thing. It must be said, George knew what he was doing, there was nothing dilettante about his involvement. As for Denis, he was always very cool and liked to play the producer in the camel coat.’
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