Let us now praise bold producers
Jeremy Thomas to receive annual Coolidge Award
Jeremy Thomas doesn't want you to mistake him for a mere "man with a cigar." The 59-year-old British producer, who'll be in Boston this week to accept the fifth annual Coolidge Award at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, defies the caricature of producer prized primarily for the ability to sign checks and push projects through. Reached by phone in London, he laments that full-service, hands-on producers like himself are "fairly rare animals these days," but after 40-plus films - including 1987's DeMillean-scale "The Last Emperor," which won the Best Picture Oscar and eight other statues - he has no intention of changing his modus operandi, which is to follow his "personal taste," wherever it happens to lead.
"Emperor" - the first film allowed access to Beijing's Forbidden City - scared him, he admits. "When I look at it on the screen again, I think, 'Wow, how did we possibly do that?' I was absolutely terrified a lot of the time. But you forget - it's like having a baby."
Thomas grew up in the equivalent of Hollywood, England - on the "cocktail route" close to Pinewood Studios, where his father was a contract director responsible for the popular "Doctor" comedy series and his uncle had the "Carry On" franchise. He recalls crouching at the top of the stairs as glamorous visitors such as Bob Hope, Katharine Hepburn, and Brigitte Bardot drifted through, and doing a bit of amateur filmmaking as a 10-year-old hanging out at Dirk Bogarde's house.
Early editing jobs led to his first feature as a producer, "Mad Dog Morgan" (1976), shot in Australia with Dennis Hopper - who'll be reappearing in "The Palermo Shooting," just wrapped in Sicily.
Thomas has a knack for sustaining relationships (decades later, he's still collaborating steadily with Bernardo Bertolucci, who directed "Emperor"). Debra Winger, who in 1990 starred in the Thomas/Bertolucci/Paul Bowles adaptation "The Sheltering Sky," says she connects Thomas with "a time when producers truly understood the meaning of creating a safe and inspiring climate for everyone to go a little crazy within - himself included."
Winger will be among the luminaries on hand for the awards ceremony. Other co-worker celebrants include actor Tim Roth ("Don't Come Knocking," "The Hit"), plus directors Julien Temple ("The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle," a 1981 documentary about the Sex Pistols) and Nicholas Roeg, who first worked with Thomas on 1980's "Bad Timing." At that time, Thomas was a relative neophyte filming in Vienna, Morocco, and London, but he recalls the experience as "something of a nervous challenge - but that worked out, and you sort of gain confidence."
Shooting 1983's "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" with a Japanese crew on a desert island was another memorable nail-biter, but that hit's financial success is what enabled Thomas "to become an independent filmmaker with resources of my own. Rather than buying a new car, I started developing new films."
A quarter-century later, cinema is a great many quirky, edgy, provocative films the richer. "Stealing Beauty," "Crash," "Sexy Beast," "Fast Food Nation" . . . the list goes on and on, and shows no sign of slowing or turning tame.
"I haven't been a great one for following the market, as you can see," says Thomas with a laugh.
"Cinema is my life - what can I say? I still believe in the power of cinema as an incredible way of moving people," Thomas says. "It's still not 'product' for me; it's something far more precious."
