By combining internal documents seen by the Guardian – alongside information disclosed in financial filings by the films’ holding companies – it is tempting to guess how the producer has shrugged off commercial and artistic disappointments to continue operating in the business on such a prolific scale.
Latham’s movies, it seems, have been funded almost entirely by the UK taxpayer.
Loads of films that are really pretty crap.
So, why? One answer is Sturgeon’s Law. Another is that the system is set up to do this.
Make a film in Britain, get not tax relief but actyually tax grants. Make the movie, report an inflated budget (film financing is famously creative), get the tax grant. By inflating the grant is actually more than the cost of making the film.
Profit!
And that, really, is it.
The answer, of course, is to stop the tax grants to films.
Bugger the luvvies….
Ooooh, let’s do Ken Loach next…
Since I never bother to watch films, I naturally see no reason to waste money on them.
Of course I might have a slightly different attitude to a sci-fi book.
Good for him. He can make a living out of it and satisfy his creative notions, he provides work to hairdressers, chippies, lighting crews and out of work actors. One can hire a British ‘name’ relatively cheaply, pay them for a couple of days work, instant star appeal.
The rules are there, so exploit them.
The Guardian is probably just annoyed because they aren’t about some black pregnant teenage girl being pimped out by her white stepfather and the brave Asian shopkeeper who saves her.
A guardian article that is well researched, objective and something I wholly agree with.
Blind squirrels and all that.
“Bugger the luvvies” Join the queue? No thanks…
My thought was: Aren’t the luvvies already buggering each other?
That’s why you have to join the queue
“The creative industries are a crucial part of our economy … By supporting growth in this vibrant sector, we can create jobs and continue to show Britain at its best around the world.”
Then spunk the cash out of the FCDO then.
Must agree. As a lifelong creative I think society would be far better served by stopping all state arts funding. Let charities, crowdfunding and Medicis take the strain. Most “artists” are idiot lefty propagandists producing landfill.
I went to Covent Garden the other night. I had booked this opera well in advance, I had already seen it a couple of times and was really looking forward to it. Cost £100.
It was crap.
The singing and music were fine, but the staging was bollox, it made no sense at all. There was some booing early on, but if this was at Vienna it would have been booed off with great venom. I only stayed to get my money’s worth.
I discovered this afternoon that the same female director did a piece of Handel at the ENO 20 years ago. I hated that version so much, that I vowed never to return to the Coliseum.
My own fault for not doing my homework beforehand. But this is a perfect example of subsidised arts and the mediocrity it produces. She has been living off of the public teat for 30 odd years.
Of course she has. “Re-imagined”, was it? “Daring” and “innovative”, for which read progressive orthodox?
Spot on, alas.
It was so depressing and a huge opportunity wasted to tell a great story.
The tragedy is that it may well have put someone off for life if it was their first experience of the opera.
Wife’s family live in Stratford upon Avon and the first time I went there she took me to see 12th Night. I enjoyed going to the theatre but really didn’t think I was cut out for Shakespeare so it was with some trepidation and the expectation of boredom that I’d agreed to go.
It was brilliant, John Thaw played Sir Toby and there was plenty of other stars. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much.
On my next visit we went to see As You Like It done “in the modern” as they liked to say at the time and it was so bad that we left at the interval. If I’d gone to that one first I don’t think I’d have gone to another Shakespeare production, but it wasn’t and I’ve been to quite a few since, including at the Globe and not just the comedies.
I saw Julius Caesar at the Globe a few years ago. It was all gender-blind-casting bollocks, so we had a bint playing Brutus (terribly).
So far, so shit.
But then they had the gall to faff around with Shakespeare’s, culminating with – I kid you not – “Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And she is an honourable man”.
That kind of shit infuriates me. Even more so when they throw in random black actors (and only black, never random Chinese), whose characters are often related to white characters, so it ruins the suspension of disbelief and makes it difficult to tell who is who, especially in an unfamiliar play.
The BBC’s Hollow Crown Henry V about ten years ago, one of the dukes at Agincourt was black. When it came to the big “band of brothers” speech I could imagine the script meeting.
director: “hold on, he’s mentioned a bunch of guys but not the one played by a black actor, can we change the speech to cram him in?Just take out one of those other Dukes, and put York in instead.”
Shakespeare expert: “It’s not so simple. York is only one syllable, and since the speech is written in iambic penta-”
director: “SHUT UP, NERD!”
I’m generally against shifts in time and place, because it’s weird having people in 1990s LA having guns and speaking the dialogue of Romeo and Juliet.
I prefer it when someone just retells a story, like Clueless is a really good take on Jane Austen’s Emma. Or West Side Story. There’s a gangster version of Macbeth which supposedly isn’t that good, but it feels like it’s one with potential.
Ran, a Japanese Macbeth is worth watching
Throne of Blood is another. Brilliant ending.
I’ve never seen it, but Ran is King Lear, isn’t it? Throne of Blood (which I like) is Macbeth.
I’ve seen that sort of thing before WB.
The problem is that in a world of mobile phones, there is also no excuse for the mix ups that cause R and J’s deaths.
Change certain elements, then one has to explain these changes.
English Touring Opera do great straight up productions. Basic sets and costumes, but great singing ( occasional weak counter tenors ) and acting and playing. Thoroughly good night out.
Of course. Maybe you can’t make it work.
Thanks for the tip on ETO. I know them because a friend of mine plays with them, but the last time they were in Bath I was away. I’ve had a good time with the Welsh National Opera and at Covent Garden, generally managed to avoid the silly productions.
My next thing is probably Sabine Devillhe doing a recital in London in January, who really is the bees knees.
“Feminist twist.” Is how it was reviewed.
They turned the lead role into a victim, when in the text she is most definitely in charge.
It’s typical left entryism, they can’t do it themselves so have to take over someone else’s work and reputation for their own ends. If it was so far from the original but still claimed to be the original work perhaps you should be allowed to claim misrepresentation and at least get your money back?
I went to their Sicilian Vespers last month; that was good (although I’m a musical ignoramus). A few odd aspects to the staging, but mostly proper old-fashioned melodramatic opera.
Weellll, the thought occurs that by funding a bit more of the Ken Loach type stuff, perhaps out of the HO budget, say, then the apparent assumed “pull factors” surrounding “the gangs” wot need smashing, would be worth doing.
But wot do I know, amirite? Ain’t going to be a lot of cash going into my pension straight outta Millbank with that type of trash talk.
to show Britain at its best around the world.”
As mentioned by Jonathan – Ken Loach.
Well, tax grants, no, always crap. Back in the day though Oz had a tax relief scheme to encourage the local film industry, and my father stuck some money into some local production called Crocodile Dundee. He was never the best investor but that one went OK for him. Checks in the mail years later.
I suppose the difference is the investors got a tax deduction but the production company still had to make a profit, so they had some skin in the game.
It must have helped that Crocodile Dundee was actually funny, too. I met the bloke in a lift in Sydney. Totally authentic.
Paul Hogan had been a well established comedian for years, but his movie credentials were a bit ‘who knows’. There was some risk involved, but it worked.
You met him? That’s very cool 🙂
The thing with movies is that it’s something like 75% script, 10% direction, 10% production design/locations/costumes/VFX and about 5% cast.
Crocodile Dundee has a great script. Like, one of the best oddly-matched romantic comedy scripts of all time. And Paul Hogan fitted the part really well. Everything else about it is just OK, but that’s how you get a 9/10 movie.
We’ve just enjoyed a season of Jacques Tati films. They’re a genuine amalgam of entertainment and high art – Tati himself is hilarious, and many of the shots, especially in Play Time, are ground-breaking. All were commercially financed, with that film bankrupting Tati.
A very great pity but rightly so because although critically well-reviewed it bombed at the box office, no doubt because the plot was too vague, too leisurely, and it’s too visually dense. Lots of shots have multiple competing centres of interest and are demanding to watch.
That’s what you risk for being brilliant and innovative, and Tati was a bona-fide genius. We’re all the better that those films exist, unlike almost all taxpayer-funded grifting shit.
Yes, it was funny!
I sometimes quote when claiming ownership of something that it is called “belongaJohnny” in honour of MIck Dundee telling the woman that the gold rich country they are in is called “BelongaMick”.
Paul Hogan was the right man at the right time.
Cue “The Producers”
Yup. Just what I was going to say.
”Make the movie, report an inflated budget … so the grant is actually more than the cost of making the film.”
That’s basically the plot of The Producers, except the funding was lots of old ladies rather than a government.
Still a bunch of old ladies.
I thought that too.
Now my head is occupied composing a musical about Saddam Hussein.
Uwe Boll’s crap movies were funded by a bit of German tax law:-
Boll was criticized in 2005 regarding his funding method, attributed to a loophole in the German tax laws that was finally closed in 2006.[40] In the DVD commentary of Alone in the Dark, Boll explains how he used to fund his films: “[…] the reason I am able to do these kind of movies is I have a tax shelter fund in Germany, and if you invest in a movie in Germany you get basically fifty percent back from the government.”
One of the project leaders on the government mobile infrastructure project I was involved in was a high flyer who was leading the project to get infrastructure experience. After a few months she was moved on to lead the [team that does the funding for the British film industry*]. When I registered my surprise the conversation went something like:
Her: Without it we wouldn’t have a BFI
Me: So nobody wants to watch their films but we’re being forced to pay for them anyway!
Her: *attempt at withering look*
*I forget the name they used
The problem with film funding is that it just ends up with people funding their mates. Who figure out what boxes to tick but never mind if it’s good art.
The only film that stands out for me from the 98 BFI movies is Under the Skin. It’s not an easy, fun film, but it is art. And the sort of film you’d struggle to get the market to pay for. One film out of 98 is a very poor performance.
But the USA shows us the way with art, which is patronage. You care about some art, join, donate money or your time. Anyone who says we need to have public funding for opera should see what the Metropolitan deliver, which is arguably the best productions in the world:-
https://www.metopera.org/discover/video/?videoName=aida-triumphal-march&videoId=806864145001
Patronage has always been the way for art, and rightly so. Commission something; get what you pay for. Or as the artist take a punt and make stuff you hope someone will like enough to buy from you. Don’t be surprised if you’re an impecunious garret-dweller, though.
So what you’re saying is that society must choose between poor art and poor artists
Yup. Art is a voluntary activity, and there has never been a lack of good art, ever. Gimme poor artists every time. They might learn to allocate their time and energy more productively.
Many years ago I worked for a company that was building a Film Accounting system, partly because they could get a tax payer funded grant to do that (Film Industry being flavour of the time) and rather surprisingly (to me anyway) they built a pretty good one that actually seemed to work as described. And it kept very good account of funds both in and out – it hand a funding ledger as well as all the usual expenditure stuff. They showed to a number of production companies, and had basically a universal reaction: Very nice, does a great job and accurately tracks all income and expenditure, and that is exactly what we DO NOT want under any circumstances.
Their ideal film accounting system relied on cryptic notes written on disposable pieces of paper that could exist in several versions and were easily lost or “mislaid” when really needed. Under no circumstances did they want anyone external to know anything at all about the financing and how the money was disbursed.
Also learned that “name” in the industry with any nous at all never took a fee based on “profits” because those were always (and I mean always) fictions of the highest order. One always takes a %, even the finest %, of the gross, if you can. Or a fixed fee.