Many years ago, during a press conference for Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Keitel was asked about supporting independent films and what would he do to help.
This was 33 years ago, and it is still true.
Keitel worked with a lot of first time directors back in the 90s, recognising the value he brought to a project and and how it could make all the difference between a project getting made or not.
We need more people like this. More champions. Those with some clout that haven’t pulled the ladder up behind them; that actually want to help those without industry connections or money.
I can name two moments in my life where I have been championed by someone higher up.
Two.
One was Terry Gilliam. When I was twenty years old, armed only with my greatest asset — my naïveté (so I’d been told) — I wrote a script, gathered some am-dram actors and created a shooting schedule - with no idea HOW I was going to fund any of it.
Now, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this, because being “older and wiser”, it does sound naive. It was. Back then, I was working night shifts and saving money to hire a camera and a mic. The weeks were ticking by, and I was writing to anyone remotely famous, hoping someone might help with post-production costs.
Only one person answered: Gilliam. And he came up with the money.
Even when I was struggling with post-production, trying to find an edit suite (it was the 90s, and an AVID, let alone basic video editing, was hard to blag), I wrote to Terry again asking for help. He phoned his assistant from the set of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and passed on a message, telling me to contact Terry Jones’s son who could get me an edit suite at Panico (where Gilliam was a patron), a London film organisation. I phoned Bill, explained the situation, and how Terry Gilliam had told me to call him… and Bill flatly denied me. No discussion. No alternatives suggested. Just “No.” It was an awkward silence-filled conversation, to say the least.
Thanks, Bill.
Notice the difference in responses: An under-pressure film director taking time to help me from another country versus a guy who couldn’t be bothered.
The second champion came in the form of Quentin Tarantino (who had previously been championed/mentored by… Terry Gilliam!). Quentin became the patron of The Broadway Cinema in Nottingham, and was presenting a season of Harvey Keitel films. My Dad drove me hundreds of miles on the off-chance of meeting Quentin at the cinema. We sat around for ages… lots of looking at the time… and my Dad said we had to leave because he had work that night.
Then I saw Quentin leaving the cinema. Armed with a short script and a letter in an envelope, I ran after him, catching up with him outside the cinema as he was getting into a car. His assistant bluntly told me to go away, but Quentin was saying something inside the car.
“He’ll be back in an hour”.
But I didn’t have an hour. I had to go.
And off they drove.
I headed back into the cinema, determined to do… something. I spoke to a guy at the ticket counter, proffering my brown envelope.
“Can you see that Quentin gets this?”
“Is he expecting it?”
“YES.”
Fast forward six months — October. I had the week off work.
The phone rings. “Hi, it’s Quentin Tarantino.”
He had just moved home, and was emptying boxes of belongings, when he found my envelope with the letter and script. We chatted for thirty minutes, everything from what I’d recently seen at the cinema to the upcoming Pulp Fiction.
This one conversation helped me get a job on my first film set, because people sit up when you put this sort of thing on your C.V.
Two champions, both American.
A couple of years later, I was trying to get an agent. Someone nameless from a prominent UK agency phoned me to ask about “The Tarantino Story”, because “We don’t have liars on our books.” I explained the story in more detail - seemingly enough for them to believe me - and they said “Great, send me some stuff!” Naturally, I didn’t, because screw them.
In an industry built on collaboration, every one of us has a choice: to be the hand that lifts, or the voice that shuts down. Which are you going to be?