Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Most successful British filmmaker of past 20 years; known for Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, The Commitments; heads new Film Council.
On the island
Eight records
Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)
Danny Kaye and The Andrews Sisters
I remember it as bonga bonga bonga. And uh it's the usual nostalgic trip for me, but it really does conjure up the window open and the sun shining and playing uh football in the street outside.
This I remember when Buddy Holly died, I used to have a little crystal set and listen to Radio Luxembourg, the only place you could hear the top twenty records in those days. And we were always listening in every Sunday night, I think it was, just to see whether It Doesn't Matter Anymore actually went to number one.
A Day in the LifeFavourite
This song is particularly important to me because when my wife had her first baby, my wife Annie, she was asked to do these breathing exercises to help you when she got the contractions. And they asked her to sing some terrible song. I think it was Puppet on the String. She said, well, I'm not singing that. I'm going to sing Day in the Life.
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61: II. Larghetto
Itzhak Perlman with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini
I went to an old part of the building, and there in the stairwell I heard this most beautiful sound. And uh it was a young a Russian kid called Gennady who was fourteen years of age and he was playing uh this particular piece of music. And I sat on the step and looked at him and took a photo and in fact I pinned that photo up on my wall all the time I was writing the final shooting script.
I have always thought that within this very simple piece of music there is the most beautiful love story that I would one day write, and I've never ever got round to it. So I just thought, well, if I'm going to be sitting on the desert island with all that time on my hands, maybe I'll finally get round to writing the love story I always wanted to write.
Requiem, Op. 48: VII. In Paradisum
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Willcocks
My very good friend David Putnam and I were in Los Angeles preparing I think it was Midnight Express and we used to play this piece of music. It was in fact it's a piece of music that David had and we used to play on his car driving down Sunset Strip and we used to wind the windows up and we were very lonely in those days away from home, away from England.
In my house, I have four children and at any one point in time there's always at least three record players playing three different pieces of music. And their music dominates in our house. And this is a song that they all played a lot of. It's a reggae piece. And if I'm on that desert island, it would certainly remind me of them.
I filmed a great deal uh on the boardwalk uh seaside terms of of New Jersey, an area that Bruce Springsteen writes about a great deal. And uh I think the lyrics of this song sum up a lot of my feelings for that area.
When I did the commitments I used every single uh Otis Redding song I think ever done, but uh this one wasn't in it actually, and it's my favorite, and the reason that it wasn't in there is I don't think we could ever ever sing it as well as Otis Redding and it's very, very beautiful.
It's a very beautiful, very odd, very painful piece of music, but I always play it every time I'm writing for some reason. Whatever the script, I always listen to this.
A typical Leonard Cohen apocalyptic nihilistic song. ... I think if you're on a desert island you'd probably want to hear about how horrible the outside world is and it's probably okay to be there on your own.
It just reminds me of uh the really nice and happy times that I I spent when I lived in California
It's just a song that I play a lot, I think, that uh because it's uh it's a song story and I like song stories.
That's Right (You're Not from Texas)
I've been all over the United States. First thing they say is that you're not from here. This is uh what that song is also probably it reminds me uh of my uh present partner, the beautiful Lisa Moran, and uh so this song's for her too.
Nimrod (from Enigma Variations)Favourite
My middle son, Jake, attended uh the Conservatory for Music in Boston, and on the week that he was about to graduate, a close friend of his actually was murdered. ... the orchestra played this particular piece of music in memory of their friend who had died. And watching all those kids play this piece of music and tears running down their faces was the most moving experience I've ever had
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:46Was the cinema much of an influence on you as a child?
I think so, yeah. There's very little else that we could do there. I grew up in Islington, and there wasn't a lot of things that we could go to anyway. The thing I loved most of all was Saturday morning pictures, which became sort of institution with us. And I think that was probably when I first got the bug.
Presenter asks
3:59What kind of a job did you reckon you were heading for [when growing up in Islington]?
I came from working class background, so I I don't know that uh I had uh grand ambitions to be honest with you. I was lucky enough to get to the local grammar school, so in a way my life's I suppose slightly changed the moment that occurred. I always wanted to write more than anything else. I used to uh you know write poems and do a little bit of drawing and things, never quite knowing how that would end up as a job and you certainly wouldn't own up to the fact that you were writing poems.
Presenter asks
7:13How valuable a training was [advertising] for being a feature film director?
Well, film is a very expensive commodity and you only learn about being a director by saying action and putting very expensive film stock through a camera. And it allowed me that. I learned the craft, the technique. I don't think that one could pretend that you learned much more. But I was, you know, I was filming every single week. I made literally hundreds, maybe five hundred different commercials over in a very sort of concentrated time span. So it meant that I would understand the mechanics of film.
The keepsakes
The book
A gigantic photo album of my kids and grandchildren
Alan Parker
I've for years I've been compiling this gigantic photo album of uh my kids and now my grandchildren, so I think I'd probably take that.
Presenter asks
9:51What led you to that idea [of casting children in Bugsy Malone]?
Well, it started out as a story that I used to tell my kids. We had a house up in Derbyshire in those days and we used to drive up there at weekends and it was such a long journey, I used to keep them occupied with this story… It was also a pragmatic exercise from the point of view of trying to get a start because most of the things that I'd written at that time were about my background, you know, from Islington, London. And it was a very bad time in the British film industry… my eldest son Alexander said why can't the kids be the heroes of it? So I thought oh that sounds like a good idea.
Presenter asks
11:34Why should [film journalism] be the worst in the world in this country?
I think it's how badly film is thought of actually by television companies, the managements of television companies, the editors in in newspapers give so little space to film because film is not an important part of our culture. Our culture is totally dominated in this country by television and film gets a couple of column inches at the end.
Presenter asks
23:48Why is it important that we have a film industry?
Well, to sit forever and watch some box in the corner of your living room is not the same as being with other people, but a common experience. And watching that very large screen, which is larger than life, is a magic which you could never ever uh achieve sitting in your living room. And I think that is worth protecting and fighting for.
Presenter asks
0:30Who are the people walking around Wardour Street in T-shirts saying they want to direct, and who is entrusting them with millions of pounds?
It's a very sexy business making films, you know. Everybody wants to say action and cut. And I think that that the balance is to obviously to to encourage new talents and make sure that the the best talents come through, but it's not a job for everyone and that's that's really what I was saying.
Presenter asks
5:58How do you define an Alan Parker film?
I don't know, but I've tried to do different things because I think that that's one way that I've I've been able to stay uh creatively fresh. The hardest film to make is a film that one hopes has creative integrity, that actually says something, but also can entertain and find a wide audience.
Presenter asks
9:13How did you end up in advertising?
When I was at school I I did pure and applied mathematics and physics. I wasn't really uh doing the things probably that I was a good at or enjoyed. Journalism was probably something that I would like to do, so I actually answered an advertisement for a place called the London Press Exchange, thinking that was a whole lot of journalists. It turned out to be an advertising agency. And I didn't actually get the job, but I quite liked uh the look of the offices and uh so I ended up in advertising.
Presenter asks
11:36How did you cross the divide from writing to directing?
I worked in a very creative agency. And it was the beginnings of commercials and most commercials were really awful. So I asked for some money to experiment in the basement and um the art director was doing the lights and someone else was working the tape recorder and everything. I was the only one who actually couldn't do anything. And so they said, Well, you've written it, so you better say action and cut. So I remember saying action and cut, then being rather bossy about w how I wanted it done and then everybody looked at me like suddenly, Oh, you know. And I suddenly realized I quite enjoyed doing it.
Presenter asks
18:38What is the knack of working with children in films?
At the time when I was doing evacuees and Bugs in Malone, I had four very young children of my own. So in a way, it was part of my life. ... I made it for my own children. So when working with children, I suppose you get the best out of them if you make it fun. Although I am at times I'm kind of a strict school teacher, but most of the time they're only going to be of their best if you make it an enjoyable experience.
Presenter asks
24:23Were you intimidated by Madonna in the beginning?
I think that uh most people were. ... she's very, very intelligent woman and very sh strong in that uh she's always controlled what what she's done with regards to her career. So making a film was going to be r quite difficult because she would have to give up a lot of the controls that she normally has uh to me.
“Coming from Islington, if you told someone that you wanted to be a film director, they'd fall about laughing.”
“I think that what is important is that you make good films. I think that what is dangerous and obsessive in this country is nationalism. And I think it's either British this, British that. All that matters is that I do my job well and it doesn't matter where I do it.”
“What irritates me is that the word art has been hijacked by the pretentious end of filmmaking. And you know, certainly a great deal of the work that's done for instance by the BFI is so colossally pretentious and shallow and obscure and it is actually described as art, the art movie. I object to that. There's more art in my films.”
“I'll get uh fed up with my own company very quickly. In fact I'm terrified of being on my own. I don't know what that says about me. So I think almost certainly I tried to escape.”
“I always remember I was really so pleased because I remember it was the first film that I had shown in Paris. And I was walking down the Champs-Élysées and I looked up and it said Un filmed de Alan Paker. They spelt my name wrongly and I thought, oh that you know, that's a good start. Maybe I should change my name to Alan Paker. And then a bit further on I saw another film and it said Family Plot by Alfred Hitchkick. So I thought, oh well I'm in good company.”
“I hate chippy because chippy is a very middle class concept actually of how middle class people think of working class people actually speak their mind.”
“I've always said that sometimes it's not about being right in what you're doing all the time as a director, but you must be seen to be right.”
“If you make films uh you know I can only you know, I can say action and cut for three months j every every other year. And therefore uh you you you miss it because ... I've always enjoyed the the camaraderie of the film set. I love the madness of a film set.”