On 18 - 20 June
1999, the Film Institute of Ireland and MEDIA Desk Ireland gave
host to the Board of the European Film Academy. The IFC paid tribute
by showcasing some works produced by EFA Chairman Nik Powell which
included
Absolute Beginners, Little Voice, and recent Irish
production, Deborah Warner's
The Last September.
Powell's career spans
from the early 70's when he set up Virgin Records with Richard Branson.
After leaving Virgin, he went into partnership with Stephen Woolley,
proprietor of the Scala Cinema, forming Palace Video, followed by
Palace Pictures and then Palace Productions. Their works included
acclaimed films such as The Company of Wolves, Mona Lisa, Letter
to Brezhnev, Scandal,and Waterland.
Palace Productions fell,
and in 1992, Powell and Woolly created Scala Productions whose works
include Backbeat, Hollow Reed, and Fever Pitch. Nik
is also a member of the British Screen Advisory Council.
Over the weekend, IFTN's
Damon Silvester interviewed Nik Powell.
Damon Silvester: What
has Scala Productions been up to lately?
Nik Powell: The Last
September is finished and did Director's Fortnight and launches
in September in the U.S. We're just delivering a picture called
History Is Made At Night with Bill Pullman. We've finished
a picture which is being released here November 18th called Fanny
and Elvis with Ray Winston. And we have a picture being released
in New York called The Last Yellow. We're just about to start
a picture in Belfast called Thanks for the Memories with
Brendon Gleason.
DS: Did I also see somewhere
that you're trying to adapt a Carl Hiaason novel?
NP: That's right: Skintight.
We're trying and failing. Well, we have it adapted to screenplay,
but we're having trouble getting it financed. But we are, as they
say in the business, that close.
DS: With box office
hits such as The Crying Game under your belt, do you find
getting financing for your future films easier than your early days?
NP: Obviously, I think
people try my movies because the scripts are great and the action
is brilliant. It's easier if you've had successful pictures, without
a doubt, than if you hadn't. There's more money out in the marketplace
in the 90s than there was in the 80s. On the other hand, in the
80s we had a distribution company that was a big help.
DS: What's your objective
for the European Film Academy?
NP: The European Film
Academy is set up to promote the interest of their members so there's
a voice for the creative community that that Academy serves. The
American Academy is probably most famous because they give out the
Oscars. The European Film Academy is having their ceremony in Berlin
on the fourth of December this year. The other work they do, in
terms of doing a talking shop, they connect older film makers with
younger ones through seminars, weekends in the country with a major
film makers, it goes on alongside that. But at the end of the day,
we're there to bring European films to the attention of as many
people around the world as we can.
DS: Do you ever find
the EFA vying with American films?
NP: Well, we're broadcasting
America on the Sundance Channel so, it's obviously limited, but
that's our core audience for the films we're promoting. I think
a lot of the American voters look seriously at the winners of the
European Film Awards. We as an academy honour not just the American,
but just normal European cinema by having various awards for non-European
films, which is usually the big American one. We also have awards
for Europeans working elsewhere in the world. So we like to have
that as part of our awards ceremony because we give the awards the
maximum broadest appeal to television watchers throughout the world.
DS: When you set up
Scala Productions, how did it differ from Palace Productions?
NP: Both myself and
Stephen [Woolley] made a decision not to attempt to build another
empire, a sort of all-embracing company that distributed and owned
video shops and cinemas and so on, and that we would concentrate
solely on the business of making feature films and find out if we
could make a living on it.
DS: There was an interesting
anecdote in a book about Palace Pictures called The Egos Have
Landed where you saw 9 1/2 Weeks and loved it, but nobody
else in the company did. How do you personally go about putting
worth on a film?
NP: I think all film
buyers look for several things. They look for something that appeals
to them or to people of a particular part of the marketing place.
They look at the actual craftsmanship of the film and how well it's
delivered. You are looking for elements of the film that will enable
you to bring it to the notice of the public, and you have to remember
that as an independent film distributor you have less resources
advertising-wise to compete with bringing your film to the notice
of the public, and therefore, you look for pictures that are either
so excellent that they will get noticed, or that have other things
about them that people are going to write about, talk about, and
so on. In 9 1/2 Weeks, it was the ice cube scene.
DS: I understand that
you recently were successful in getting a lottery franchise.
NP: Well, I put together
a group of producers and financier Virgin to apply for a lottery
franchise which in short terms is set up to try to create some other
long running film companies in the U.K. by using lottery money as
seed money. So they awarded three franchises and our group was awarded
one of them. Everybody says "win" but you don't win lottery franchises,
you're awarded them. You win lottery tickets.
DS: Just one final question,
how do you view the image of European Cinema and do you think it's
changing?
NP: Well Americans think
of the pictures that are coming out of Europe as arty because at
the end of the day, they're low-budget compared to the American
ones. That is the market for European films. It's a market for a
more educated audience. But that audience is vastly more expanded
because so many more people in the Western world get to have the
chance for a secondary education and higher education, so that market
has expanded to two or three hundred million world-wide. But, it
will always have that label as "arty". But in art, as in all other
areas of entertainment, you have to be entertaining. You have to
give people at the end of the day, something they can take away
from cinema, so they haven't wasted their five pounds.
DS 22.6.99