Philip Bonham-Carter

Behp Interview No 728: Philip Bonham-Carter. Recorded 5th October 2018

Transcribed by David Sharp 2024.

DB = Darrol Blake

PB-C = Philip Bonham-Carter

Philip Bonham-Carter: My name is Philip Bonham-Carter. The date today is the 5th October2018. I was born in – at the end of the war, in 1945.

Darrol Blake: Where?

PB-C:  I was actually born in Gerards Cross in Buckinghamshire. My parents at that stage, right at the end of the war, had rented a small cottage in Fulmer, pretty close to Gerards Cross, and the reason they were there was my father, during the war was in The War Office, and my mother had started work at an engineering factory, which was in Stoke Poges which was very close, and within a year she had been made a director of the company, and so it was the obvious place for them to live, so-

DB: Why was she made a director of the firm?

PB-C: Because my grandfather had actually started the company during the war – in fact I’m not actually sure when the company was started, but they made munitions and stuff like that for the war, and then after the war continued; it was a small light engineering company. It had thirty people, something like that, and she continued as director of the company for something like 40 years.

DB: And then we move on to your education.

PB-C: Yeah, well what I think is important to say, because it affects the whole of my life in a funny sort of way, is that my grandmother was French and I spoke French before English because there was a whole household because my mother was working pretty much full time, we had a girl from France looking after my brother and myself, and so the whole atmosphere was very French if you like. And that, certainly in the early part of my life, affected the way I thought about things and it was really good, having two cultures, particularly in terms of film. I always, always, loved French films more than English films, or British films. Much later on I was very fortunate in working with Truffaut, on Omnibus, about his life.

But, to go back, we then moved to Gerards Cross from Fulmer, and I got into St Paul’s School in London, so it meant going up and down on the train. Which was quite a trek.

DB: What ambitions formed in your young head at that time?

PB-C: Well it was interesting, because my father was very keen, because after he left the War Office, he joined the Foreign Office, and his job was to arrange conferences and a pretty important job at the time because of course Churchill and Roosevelt and all that… Because of that and the hotels he’d gone to and stayed in and fixed for people, he thought ‘well that’s a good job for my son.’ So his plan was that I should go into the hotel business, go to a very excellent school in Lausanne in Switzerland, and spend three years doing that.

DB: What about your brother? Was he younger or older?

PB-C: He’s older, more or less five years older and he’s an accountant and businessman.

DB: So that was for Hotel Management was it?

PB-C: That’s right yes. And I remember going round the Savoy, and being shown round the Savoy – my dad had fixed it all, and I was absolutely in awe. But I think something inside me said “this isn’t totally me” but obviously my dad was very keen and all that, so he arranged for me to go and work in a very smart restaurant in Mayfair, as a commis waiter, where you are serving the waiters. Arnold Wesker wrote a thing called The Kitchen, and at that stage, I guess I was about 18, 17, 18, and I thought what he’s written is exactly what I was experiencing in this restaurant.

5 mins.

PB-C: i.e. knife fights in the kitchen. They were totally Italian. Knife fights in the kitchen, I mean I just couldn’t believe. Away from my middle-class background. I thought this is amazing stuff! To cut a long story short, it wasn’t me. I stayed doing that job for about five months and thought this is definitely not me, and just as luck would have it, my mother, with her engineering background had been contacted by a guy called Les Berry, [actually Les Bowie. DS] who ran a studio – it was basically a big unit – on the Slough Trading Estate, and as it happened it was right next door to Gerry Anderson, who was doing Thunderbirds at the time. The reason she knew him was obviously she’d wanted odd bits of engineering stuff because he ran this special effects company, and he did film, mainly Hammer films at that stage, that sort of stuff and I got a holiday job in his studio, which was, putting it mildly, fascinating. They were doing two films. Ray Harryhausen was actually floating around the place and was working in the studio, because he was working on a film called First Men in the Moon. As was Les Bowie and all the people who were in the studio. And it was also the film that I worked on when I was in the studio.

Well I knew absolutely nothing. I was a complete spectator to start off with, but then I noticed that the guys behind the camera seemed to be doing the most interesting stuff.

7 mins

PB-C: And so I was taught to load 1000 foot magazines and all that sort of thing and it was fascinating, just fascinating seeing the guys working on glass matte paintings. Incredible details, I mean incredibly skilful. Just one tiny thing that I will never forget, I was put in charge of sticking together the tiles of the roof. The roof was like that [demonstrates shape] and of a farmhouse, and the Mitchell camera was turned upside down and the idea was that a rocket was going to go through the roof in the movie. So my job was to stick all these tiles but make sure there was an area where the rocket could go through with no problem. Well I spent two or three weeks doing this very carefully, with Evostik, time comes to shoot, it goes through, roof goes like that [demonstrates] all upside down of course, one bit of Evostik stuck and there’s a rafter, in the final film going like this because of course I’d stuck it just a bit too much. Highly embarrassing. Anyway, that was that. So I spent I suppose about six months there, five, six months, quite a long time, and eventually, I can’t remember what I was earning but it was about five or six pounds a week, I thought I need to move on and actually discover a bit more about this.

So by then I think the hotel industry had taken a very back seat.

DB: How did you break this to the family?

PB-C: I don’t quite remember. [Darrol laughs] I think my mother was secretly rather pleased, because I’m not academic, I have to say and life at St Paul’s was quite tricky – it’s full of pretty bright kids. And the Arts was my thing, even at that early stage, I knew I loved anything to do with the arts, painting, all that, and at that stage it was a very ‘classic’ run school. I think my mother in particular thought ‘he might have to find something he’s going to be happy in’, so I eventually ended up at the London School of Film Technique, [now the London Film School. DS] which was extraordinary, I have to say. I hadn’t been to university and it sort of took the place of university in a funny sort of way. I loved the atmosphere because it was such a mixture of people. A lot of Americans, a lot of Lebanese, absolutely wonderful mixture and-

DB: -and you spoke French.

PB-C: Absolutely. And what they all discussed was nouvelle vague and, you know, and Fellini or Antonioni or whatever. Not a lot of chat about Anthony Asquith!. And also, we’d only just gone through that period of war films. The John Mills and all that sort of thing. So I absolutely loved the atmosphere.

The actual teaching – it was very difficult for the School and I sense it’s still the same. It was highly independent, I’m not sure when it started, ‘50s I think, but it had a shortage of money; and equipment.

11 mins

PB-C: Which in theory shouldn’t make too much difference. During each course you had to make a short 10 minute film or whatever, and it was restricted, it was restricted but I loved the atmosphere, and they had occasionally just terrific people: I remember Polansky, Roman Polansky came and chatted to us and in that sense it was great.

DB: And from there, where did you go? What happened?

PB-C: Well, I freelanced for a time after that as a camera assistant, and I remember working for the National Coal Board, which was interesting stuff…

DB: So this was via contacts or an agency? Or the union?

PB-C: You mentioned the union; that was crucial at the time. The ACTT was running a closed shop, and I remember even at the very early stage at Bowie Films that you had to get an ACT ticket, you must join the union, but doing that is not so easy as the age-old thing, you need the experience, but you can’t get in to get the experience because you haven’t got the ticket. And the only way into the union at that stage was either via the labs, the film laboratories or the BBC. So that was clearly a very important thing to do. In fact, a lady who turned out to be my mother-in-law, saw in a newspaper, a tiny little thing saying ‘Holiday Relief assistants needed at the BBC’: camera assistants. So I applied.

DB: My memory is that the BBC didn’t recognise the ACTT, but the ACTT was frantic to recruit within the BBC.

PB-C: I think that’s true. I think the BBC at that stage had their own union, the ABS.

DB: The Association of Broadcasting Staffs, yes.

PB-C: That’s right, yeah. But although that was important from my point of view, my recollection is that I thought ‘well I’ll stay at the BBC possibly for three months’ as a holiday relief, but I didn’t take it too seriously because having worked for a tiny bit in the film industry proper, there was that distinct feeling that television was well down the list – it was not regarded as a serious thing. And it was very much ‘them and us’, and I have to say the atmosphere at the BBC was fascinating. I remember so clearly going in there the first few days and it was a bit like a cross between a boarding school and the army a bit.

DB: We are talking about Ealing, are we? Ealing studios?

PB-C: Yes, sorry. I was based as a holiday relief as Assistant Cameraman, at the Television Film Studio, yes at Ealing, which the BBC had got. Originally the Ealing Film Studios. The atmosphere was quite different too outside the BBC. I mean we all, I seem to remember wore sports jackets and ties. Completely extraordinary when you think about it now. So it was all quite proper. All quite stiff. By comparison.

DB: I thought of them as the sheepskin coat brigade.

PB-C: [laughs] yes, that’s fair. But having said that –

15 mins

PB-C: - incredibly lucky, I mean within two weeks, I was working – granted only one day – on a film called Cathy Come Home. With Ken Loach. And I couldn’t believe my luck – it was just extraordinary. I was well out of my depth when I joined them, despite having learned a lot of theory from the film school. My experience was very limited, frankly. I, again, remember within the first two weeks being on a crane, focus pulling. Well I barely knew what focus pulling was, and I was doing it for real, and I thought ‘this is serious’. [laughs] Quite worrying.

But, as time went by I think I trained, trying to think how long, I think that was May 1966, and by December, I’m pleased to say, I’d been taken on full time, which was very lucky; it was incredible. I’ve always thought about the BBC, at that stage, they were – it was absolutely golden years in terms of film making and the people who worked for it. It was just terrific. The variety of work it was fabulous. Documentaries, drama, schools, the whole package it was brilliant. And you were expected to work on all that variety of work, which at times was very frustrating, because the better you got at your job, the more you expected better work and it was always a bit of a surprise to established cameramen who in terms of drama had made it to suddenly finding themselves on Playschool or something. It was quite a leveller in that sense, possibly slightly over-stressing it but that was, that definitely happened. Occasionally.

DB: I mentioned about wanting you to talk about the way the BBC has developed over the years. Shall we do that as we go through, or do you want to expand on that now?

PB-C: Probably as we go through.

DB: Yeah, okay. So you worked as an assistant for – well, we first met at the end of the sixties, sixty-nine I guess it was, when you were already a cameraman.

PB-C No, I wasn’t –

DB: Aah. Let’s do the bit in between. When you were an assistant to a series of people.

PB-C: Yes that’s right. The regime was that you worked with a given cameraman, assuming you got on, you stayed with that guy for a block, normally for a period of six or nine months. Again, I was astonishingly lucky in one sense, because out of the blue I was asked to go to Television Centre and have an interview with the Head of Documentaries, Richard Cawston, so needless to say I went along in my sports jacket and my tie, and I had no idea at that stage what this was about.  What it came down to was I was being interviewed to see if I was suitable to do a film about the Royal Family, which turned out to be quite an epic. I remember Dick was there, Dick Cawston and Peter Bartlett, who was cameraman throughout the whole thing.

DB: Did you know Peter before that?

PB-C: I didn’t. It was a most extraordinary meeting, because poor old Peter – anyway I turned up, I did my bit. I mean my experience was still pretty limited at that stage and they clearly wanted someone who could operate a camera as well as shoot alongside with Peter on certain occasions. Anyway, I seemed to get through that, and I seemed to be suitable for whatever they wanted.

DB: Had they revealed at that point what it was?

PB-C: No. I can’t quite remember to be honest. It must have been a couple of months before, maybe less. I do remember that the very first thing we shot and almost I shot seriously for the BBC on that programme.

20 mins

PB-C: Talk about at the deep end, I think it was a day at Lord’s. To cut a long story short we followed The Queen throughout her year. It was the most extraordinary project and we were given absolute carte blanche from the BBC’s point of view because it was clearly very important from their point of view to get it right. It was amazing. It is interesting the way that the film itself happened. The Royal Family had gone through a sort of period of quietness, put it that way. The feeling around that time, ’67, ’68 was that the Royal Family was rather dull; certainly the perception was that. Clearly they weren’t. I mean that was the view if monarchy, and I think that the Private Secretary of the Queen, and previous ones prior to that, regarded their job as basically keeping the media away from the Royal Family. Bill Heseltine – Sir William Heseltine as he is now – Bill Heseltine came in as Press Secretary in ’67, ’68 I would imagine, and had a completely different attitude. Lord Brabourne, who was the son-in-law of Mountbatten had the bright idea that film could be made if you like to open the shutters on Royal life. And he and Bill Heseltine approached Prince Philip who I think thought it was a good idea, and I think Philip, as I understand it, thought that the Royal Family should be seen more as individuals rather than ‘the Monarchy’.

So, a consortium of ITV and BBC got together, so the idea of making the film was born and Dick Cawston was approached to be the director. And so we spent a year following The Queen, to South America, wherever she went, and that was that. Extraordinary times.

[Laughter]

DB: You weren’t full time on that project?

PB-C: Yes. Solid.

DB: Oh, right.

PB-C: There would possibly be a few days in between, where we would do different stuff-

DB: Yes.

PB-C: I found it a difficult project to be quite honest – physically difficult, because Peter would shoot the main camera but I, very often, would shoot another camera beside him, getting the other person in the conversation. And the idea was, on very wide shots, for example I remember clearly at the Maracana Stadium in Brazil, in Rio, because it was a magnificent spectacle of all these people, the ides was to shoot it on 35mm, so we had three cameras essentially and Dick Cawston thought it would be clearly a good idea that the crew be kept to an absolute minimum, and so, I have to say from an Assistant’s point of view, loading all these magazines of different sorts plus shooting, plus all the rest of it was a steep learning curve: good, but tricky. No question about that. It was made hugely simpler by the fact that we were made part of the Royal Household throughout the shoot, so it meant we could go absolutely anywhere. It really worked. There were never any questions about whether we should be in a certain place at a certain time. It made all that much easier, it was terrific. It was terrific.

DB: You had Johnny Austin, I seem to remember?

PB-C: Johhny Austin was the Grip.

DB: The Grip, yes. I knew him as a scene shifter prior to that!

PB-C: Really. And we had two electricians.

DB: Ah.

25 mins

PB-C: A sound recordist, Peter Evans, and an assistant sound recordist. And Peter and myself. Oh, and Dick had his assistant.

DB: Barbara Saxon.

PB-C: [laughs] That’s right. Formidable lady, formidable lady.

DB: Yes, I had a whisper that she wasn’t popular in HM’s area.

PB-C: She wasn’t. [laughter] Dear lady.

DB: So you weren’t doing other things then in that whole year.

PB-C: No.

DB: I don’t quite understand where you fitted me in then!

PB-C: I don’t know, can you remember in what month – we started shooting I think in June.

DB: Er, with Royal Family? Oh, I see.

PB-C: With the Royal Family, if I looked at my diary it might be-

DB: well, it might even have been in ’70, early ’70 but I thought it was ’69. But by then of course the film was transmitted, wasn’t it so you were doing other things.

PB-C: Oh, yes that’s right. I think what happened is, on the free days we had, I know from my point of view it was very good because the BBC had this system of when you were getting more established as an Assistant, they would allow you to act as a cameraman.

DB: ‘Act up’.

PB-C: Act up. That’s the word.

DB: Exactly the same in the Design Department you will not be surprised to hear.

PB-C: Is that right?

DB: Yes.

PB-C: It was brilliant to start off with, you know you learned a lot. It got a bit difficult once you’d been doing it for five years. I was particularly lucky, I was made up as a cameraman. But certainly one felt very sorry for the guys who, you know after five, six, seven, eight, nine years, you know. In a sense it was quite difficult from their point of view.

DB: So, into the seventies. I’m because it’s the top of the list, Mike Hold????

PB-C: Actually Darrol I could just finish that Royal Family-

DB: Oh, please, please.

PB-C: Because the interesting thing is, or was, after Royal Family, after the film was shown, The Queen decided that she didn’t want the public to have an overdose of Royalty. Or of herself. And so the film was shown in ’69 and that year, December ’69, there was no Christmas broadcast, but in 1970 it was decided that instead of doing what had in the past been done which was largely to do the broadcast as a studio production, as an outside broadcast, it was decided that because of the success of Royal Family, the way it had been shot, which was essentially ‘fly on the wall’, it was a very good way to operate. Fewer people. In fact, Dick Cawston was insistent all the way through that the numbers be kept to a minimum, from The Queen’s point of view, and logically enough, and that without question helped a lot, and so from then on all the Christmas broadcasts were shot on film, until much, much later when it reverted to being an outside broadcast again. And so the number of people involved were kept to a minimum for all those Christmas broadcasts. As things turned out I was employed from 1976 when I was made a cameraman, I carried on doing those Christmas broadcasts.

DB: So you were made up in ’76?

PB-C: I think it was ‘76, …yeah. No it was ’75, sorry. I was made up in 1975. Late on.

DB: Yeah, yeah. After Vietnam!.

PB-C: Yes.

DB: Anyway, we haven’t got there yet. Did the- ’73, Francois Truffaut comes back into your life.

29 mins.

PB-C: Yes, absolutely. I’d always been interested in the arts and I loved the BBC for its arts programmes. It was just brilliant. Omnibus, as I remember it – obviously there was Monitor originally, but Omnibus was the, well one of the arts programmes at the time and Michael Darlow wanted to do a film about Francois Truffaut. He’d just done a film called Day for Night, which was about the making of a feature film, and I worked on that which I naturally absolutely loved; it couldn’t have been better, quite extraordinary, going down to Cannes. There was one particular scene I’ll never forget, arriving at – filming him arriving at Nice airport with Jacqueline Bisset, and we were filming him arriving at the airport, and in the feature film that he was opening in Cannes, was precisely what I was seeing through my viewfinder! It was quite – it was like dejas vu, having seen Day for Night and seeing this through my viewfinder, I thought it was very bizarre. We stayed with him all through that little bit of him being at Cannes.

Yes and filming people like Jean Melville, and all that. It was brilliant.

DB: And you were able to converse with him there. You speak the language of course.

[Laughter]

PB-C: Oh yes, great!

DB: Coming onto the supposedly first fly on the wall documentary series, The Family, can you tell us how that was set up? And how you came on to it. The interesting people involved.

PB-C: I think Paul Watson had heard or seen a series, about a family in the States, which was essentially a film crew being with the family, in the States, filming whatever happened in their day-to-day life. That series went slightly

wrong because I think it was the cameraman who ran off with the lady of the house, the sound recordist went off with the chap of the house, so it all went a bit sideways, something like that. Anyway, Paul thought this was great idea to try and he advertised for a family that would be willing to have a film crew with them all hours of the day or night.

I didn’t actually start the shooting, another cameraman had started it and Paul had been very insistent on no lights being used, everything would be shot exactly as it happened, no waiting for lights to be fiddled with and all that, and this previous cameraman had put filters on the windows, so that one could shoot without any difficult colour business, and no film lights. Just the light, literally the light that would be in the kitchen or the bedroom, or wherever it happened to be. And we didn’t bump them up with photo-floods or anything. Anyway, the other cameraman couldn’t get on with that way of shooting, and I, being a new guy on the block, I just loved it, I absolutely loved it. Ever since, throughout my whole career, I have loved that sort of shooting. There is a physical pleasure in being behind a camera and shooting something which is never going to happen again, and being able to – because essentially with that sort of shooting, you, in a way become the director, because you shoot whatever happens – its unrepeatable, and there is a terrific thrill if it goes well. It's unbeatable, I love it.

DB: And there only was ever one camera on it?

PB-C: Oh, one camera, absolutely, only one camera. Franc Roddam was there to ease things, if ever it [was] needed but luckily the family were just great. They accepted us, and we would just turn up at whatever time of day, normally early in the morning. We were staying very close by, so always on call effectively.

35 mins.

PB-C: And we would literally film whatever happened.

DB: How long was the shoot, can you remember?

PB-C: I think we were there about three months. A long time, a long time. And the sort of day-to-day shoot would be we would turn up, just myself, the recordist, my assistant, and Franc, and it became pretty clear to me that certain patterns would happen. Most of it happened in the kitchen, and Margaret, who was the mother of the family, would be peeling the spuds in the kitchen or whatever and if I could see, or Franc could see people, you know, one of the family coming up the path, you knew that there would be some reaction or other and it was a terrific way of making film. Ina funny sort of way, the way Mike Leigh does his improvisations.

DB: Except there is a great deal of preparation of the improvisation before it gets in front of the camera.

PB-C: Yes, I was just going to say. Except they were real people, if you like. But it was terrific, and I loved the idea of being able to shoot whatever happened. Under any circumstances, so that the light didn’t matter. In fact I was very keen on shooting certain scenes in pitch black, so it was just the sound.

DB: Yes. How was this received back at base? The gorgons who watch the daily rushes. Were they accepting your material?

PB-C: Mixed reactions. I think. Certainly certain of the possibly more old-fashioned people in the film department did find it a bit hard to take. They felt I was sort of letting the side down, by not producing – in inverted commas – perfect pictures. The rougher the pictures from my point of view, the better. Ina funny sort of way it made it feel real. It was real. It was terrific, I loved it. We’ve got much more used to that sort if thing nowadays, but then – it may not have been the first – but it was pretty close to it.

DB: It was very successful, wasn’t it. It was received very well, went very well in BBC terms.

PB-C: It was extremely [successful] yes. It was difficult because the family used to watch what we shot go out that week.

DB: Ah.

PB-C: They would sit there watching themselves and there would be a lot of discussion as to whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing. Rightly or wrongly, seeing themselves portrayed. The worry was of course that they would change their way of doing things, and they would effectively become actors. That didn’t seem to happen at all.

38 mins

PB-C: Certainly not from my perspective. It was a difficult thing to do, not in terms of shooting, but I do remember the three of us basically on the crew, who discussed it constantly.

DB: What aspect?

PB-C: Well we would think ethically it was actually quite tricky, because the family were so open, and it was our concern – this was terrific television, which is why the audience went from I don’t know how many, two million, three million, shot up to ten million, in a very few weeks – but we were honestly concerned that they were laying themselves open, and they were because there was a lot of stick from the local press, in fact the national press as well, how awful this family was and all that, and it was terrible because they were a perfectly nice family. People said, well this is not a typical family, well to be fair I don’t think anybody suggested they were typical, but we did spend a long time, whether what we were doing, shooting, was correct or not, and in fact on a couple of occasions we didn’t film things which we felt might be slightly, well over the top, in terms of sort of protecting them.

DB: So how did Paul Watson manifest himself? Was he there all the time?

PB-C: No he didn’t, he wasn’t. Paul would just turn up, on very few occasions. He would be in the cutting room – there were two cutting rooms.

DB: Oh, of course it was going out weekly.

40 Mins.

PB-C: yes, there were two cutting rooms going the whole time, and he would pay slightly regal visits to see how it was all going. And it was slightly ‘us and them’ in the sense that we were very close to the family, and Paul was sort of, not the bad guy at all, but he represented the other side. I loved doing it, it was just a fabulous thing.

DB: Okay. Okay. On into ’75. There’s some notes here: ‘last weeks in Vietnam war.’

PB-C: Oh that was me.

DB: Tell us about the last weeks…

PB-C: Well the system was that after a time of doing a normal programme, you would be seconded, if that’s the right word to Current Affairs. Normally speaking for a couple of years, so again, your experience was terrific, and I was taken out to lunch, it was very bizarre, by the editor of Panorama at that stage, who was called Frank Smith, and I thought this was a bit odd. So, he took me to a very nice restaurant, Bayswater and, to cut a long story short, it was more or less “would you mind going to Vietnam?” I thought about it very seriously, well, naturally, but it seemed to me that the two years before had been particularly quiet. The Americans had pulled out, and I thought ‘well it will certainly be an interesting experience’, and I think he said as a sort of sweetener to that, “there’s the Coronation of the King of Nepal, so you go out to do that first, and then pop on to Saigon”.

So we did that, we did the Coronation in Nepal, with all … [gestures] which was a fascinating thing to film, but then we carried on to Saigon. Little known to us or the BBC, the Viet-Cong had started pretty much at that time, their final offensive. So it wasn’t – well in one sense it was a good time to be there, but in one sense it was the worst possible time to be there. I’m a born coward, I don’t go for all that stuff, you know, some people relish it and clearly are very, very good, but I have to say that it became quite important in retrospect in one’s life, because it gave you a completely different perspective. I – up until then my life had gone through very smoothly, no real thoughts about anything like that.

DB: Can I insert a quick question here?

PB-C: Mm.

DB: What about a wife and children?

PB-C: Well, I got married in ’69, and it’s interesting because actually when I was in Vietnam, I thought to myself, within days ‘what on earth am I doing here?’ I’ve got a young daughter, she was one and a half by then, ‘this is insane.’ All I wanted to do was get out, frankly, and it was getting serious. I mean it was within days we had gone up – again, a learning curve – we were supposed to go up to the front line, well of course there isn’t such a thing as a front line: you get the message, you go up to where the action is, and, boy, did we find it! Our car was – we had a local taxi driver – pottering along, we got to a bridge, we’d gone through any front line by kilometres and we found ourselves deep in Viet-Cong territory, and the sods were monitoring our taxi, and [gestures] one there, one there. It was serious. I became extremely religious at that [laughter] for the next ten minutes I can assure you! So it was an extraordinary experience. In one sense I’m very pleased I went through it, but it’s not my sort of thing at all, and I totally admire people who do it.

DB: Right. Oh [refers to notes] there seems to be quite a large gap.

45 mins

 

DB: Anyway, [in] ’76, you did one in a series of stories from around the world for a children’s programme. I did one in Australia, you did one in Jamaica.

PB-C: West Indies, yes.

DB: With Paul Stone. Do you remember anything about that?

PB-C: Paul Stone, yes.

DB: [prompting] It was co-produced with Unesco or Unicef, something like that.

PB-C: Oh really?

DB: No, no Time-Life, sorry.

PB-C: Really. What year was that? ’75?

DB: ’76. Ah, possibly what we’ve missed out is your being made up. So tell us about the point where you were made up from being an Assistant Cameraman to a full cameraman and presumably a change in your income.

PB-C: Sure. Well I joined the BBC in 1966 and it wasn’t until 1975 that I was actually made a cameraman, so what is that, let’s say nine years before being made a cameraman but having said that, I’d been shooting stuff as a cameraman since certainly 1969. Sixty-eight, sixty-nine. So in a way, once you’ve got over the initial, you know “isn’t this great” I’m actually a cameraman, you kind of felt you were being used by the BBC, but they weren’t paying you effectively the grade, which was pretty handy from their point of view because quite a few of us were acting as cameraman, and it did get to the stage where in earlier ’75 I thought ‘well it’s time for me to move on’ because I thought, well you know, and by then I’d be getting on, I’d be thirty.

DB: Can you tell us a bit about the general ethos at Ealing at that time. You said it was like a boarding school when you went in. Did it change at all? Did you have mates or anything?

PB-C: Well certainly when I joined, there was a terrific hierarchy. Certain cameramen were regarded as gods. I mean very nearly. Production people were scared of them, it was bad. It was not a good atmosphere, I thought, and it did feel a little bit like ranks in the army. It did change, it was a gradual change but nevertheless you still felt that the people in the front office were very separate to the guys on the ground and that wasn’t a good atmosphere, actually, and there was a constant feeling of management and – worker is too – you know what I mean. In that sense it wasn’t the best atmosphere.

I do remember a question being asked on the very first occasion when I joined the BBC and they had a good question, which was “How do you feel about working in such a large organisation. Do you think you’d fit in? And, I do remember on the board for the cameraman’s job saying what was good about the BBC and about filming is that you normally did it in small groups; certainly in documentary, four or five of you, top whack. Drama, obviously their would be more but basically you would be dealing in small groups, although with 25,000 people or whatever it was, you were always in that small group, and that is absolutely true. It made all the difference to me and I thoroughly enjoyed most of my time at the BBC because of that, because of those small groups. But there was always that feeling of ‘us and them’, which was very unfortunate, I think. I don’t know what it’s like now, it’s many years since I worked there. But it could definitely have been better.

DB: So you were made up to full cameraman, and your pay [went up] 5p. [laughter]

50 mins

PB-C: The pay was never great, but the pay was the last thing, frankly. You know, as long as you got enough, the mere fact the jobs were so fascinating, really, really, good. One week doing documentary, one week on drama. Before I was made a cameraman I shot a drama with a very good Director, Mike Tuchner and I still wasn’t a cameraman. It was brilliant just having that experience.

DB: But did you get the impression that those above you, the Head of the Film Department, those guys, that they were actually putting you through some sort of training scheme, to find out what your strengths were? I found that in the Design Department, certainly. We were actually watched and coached as it were, on various things. Was there that sort of paternalism, do you feel, that was about?

PB-C: I’d love to say “yes”, but I can’t honestly say that was the case.

DB: No.

PB-C: I think they much more went on the fact that if you were asked for, you were doing something right. It was as simple as that. If Directors or Producers were asking for you, as far as they were concerned that was great. They didn’t have to do anything. That’s good. I think the problems were where people weren’t being asked for and that was tricky, yes, but being the BBC, they didn’t get rid of people. If you were freelance, you just wouldn’t be employed again.

DB: Sure, sure.

PB-C: But occasionally there were people who weren’t one hundred percent suited let’s say and they were on the staff, it was rather difficult to get rid of them. So that was odd.

DB: Okay. So, Anthony de Lotbiniere, Richard West. West in Africa.  About how former colonies are run. Does that ring any bells?

PB-C: Only – I remember them, all of them clearly but there’s nothing specifically to say about it.

DB: But you might say something – well you have a bit already – about going into a completely foreign situation and country, and having to establish yourself and turn out a film in x days.

PB-C: Yes.

DB: You seem to have taken to it like a duck to water, to filming in foreign locations. Is that true or not?

PB-C: I think it is true. I mean – [seems to struggle with response].

DB: I mean you’ve already said about the dangers in Vietnam –

PB-C: Interestingly, actually, as a slight sideline, apart from the obvious thing about Vietnam being a dodgy area to be in at that time, was the effect it had within the people working on the crew. And I think that shocked me as much as anything: that you found out about yourself, and about the other people very close to you working on that. You learned things which you would never have guessed. Not necessarily great things, I have to say. I won’t go into detail but – that was an eye opener. They are as anybody who is working in Syria at the moment, extreme circumstances and you do discover stuff about yourself and the most extraordinary situations. I mean deeply moving, deeply troubling.

DB: But you keep filming. You know what I mean.

PB-C: Yes, that’s right. There’s that old thing, do you help a chap who is trying to cross a river in a cart, whose having terrible trouble, his life, belongings all going in the river, do you help him or do you film him? You know it’s that sort of dilemma. You’re there to do a job, but you are also a human being. And of course each case varies: you make up your mind on [ the day?]. And there have been occasions where I have absolutely refused to shoot something, despite the Director wanting that, because at the end of the day you have your own level of what is right and wrong.

55 mins

 

PB-C: That’s very tricky actually, and it only happened once, and it was relatively trivial, but it was very important in a funny sort of way. It was in a third world country and I just thought this was making fun of people as opposed to really recording what was going on.

DB: Yes, yes.

PB-C: Difficult, difficult.

DB: Okay. So, Double Dare. [Play for Today series. DS]

PB-C: Yes, I was Assistant on that, actually second camera, so, that was Dennis Potter.

DB: John MacKenzie. Oh I see, written by Dennis Potter.

PB-C: Actually Darrol, one thing I was going to say, quite early on, is that the BBC at that time, over the sixties, seventies, eighties even, was full of amazing directors. Ridley Scott for a start: I remember working on Adam Adamant I think it was, with Ridley Scott, just for a few days. [Adam Adamant Lives! DS]

DB: I got him the job [laughs]

PB-C: Of course I had no idea he would go on to – [breaks off laughing]

DB: I had been the designer on the first series.

PB-C: Oh really.

DB: And then they went round again, and I recommended him, because he’d just done the training course at Director’s school, to Verity [Lambert], who was the producer, so he got a couple of those to do.

PB-C: Brian Gibson was another one. I shot a play with him, early on. And he went on to do absolutely amazing stuff. Stephen Frears, another one. All these guys who had gone through the BBC, during those years.

DB: But you didn’t ever work with Ken Russell?

PB-C: No, sadly not though I would have liked to have done. He was one of the reasons I loved film very early on. His films, I mean the Monitor film on Elgar was so beautifully shot, so beautifully made, although he was a tricky guy from what I’ve gathered, in recent years. So talented. So refreshing. He really brought, I mean your heart absolutely soared when you saw his films. You thought this is something else.

DB: Yes, and again down to Huw Wheldon, really, in Monitor. Ken Russell and various other people. Give ‘em a chance, you know. Anyway, we digress.

An Omnibus, called Give Me Liberty or Give me Death. Which Julia Cave-

PB-C: Oh yeah.

DB: Who we interviewed fairly recently.

PB-C: Right, right. With Kenneth Griffith.

DB: Was it?

PB-C: Yes. Kenneth Griffith, I don’t know if you know of Kenneth Griffith, Welsh actor.

DB: I do, I do.

PB-C: Quite extraordinary bloke – I mean fascinating, where he would take – was it ’76, it was the 200th anniversary of the States, we shot in Boston and all round there, and Ken would take the part of Adams or whichever American historical figure and he would pronounce from behind bushes or wherever – a fascinating character.

Upsetting, that particular film in one sense only, is he was very keen on the IRA, and we found it difficult because I seem to remember Selfridges [department store] had just had a bomb just put outside it and I particularly remember my Assistant getting terribly upset because Ken would go out in the evening and fly the flag for the IRA.

DB: In America.

PB-C: In America. In Boston, and we found this a bit upsetting to be honest. It was difficult to take next morning.

DB: [Did] Julia have any problems coping with that sort of thing with him?

PB-C: Not that I particularly remember. I’m sure she would have had a quiet word with him because he was certainly upsetting his crew, that’s for sure.

DB: Whose Doctor Who?

PB-C: My god [laughs]

DB: What on earth was that?

PB-C: That was a Tony Cash – was it Tony Cash?

DB: Part of The Lively Arts

1 hour

PB-C: Yes. Yes it was a film about Dr Who and the people who love Dr Who. I have never been very good behind the camera when it gets to stuff which is really, really funny. Particularly if its not meant to be funny, and corpsing is one of the things I do very badly…

DB: Yes I know, I’ve had a few like that.

PB-C: And we interviewed a chap – a family in fact – gosh, I forget the names, where this family dressed up as Dr Who, completely, you know the frilly [gestures at sleeve] sleeves the lot. Myself and my Assistant couldn’t take it any longer, it was hysterical, so I just locked off the camera and I put my hand in front of the eyepiece because the light would get through, and just pretend, and just try and control myself but it was hysterical. Melvin Bragg was the-

DB: Presenter.

PB-C: Yes, Presenter.

DB: Right… The Long Search? Thirteen-part series. Ron Eyre.

PB-C: Yeah. Again I was incredibly lucky to get all these wonderful programmes; I mean thirteen programmes discovering the religions of the world. It is one thing which think is interesting today is that our documentaries tend to be very presenter-led, and to say ‘not in depth’, I mean that isn’t quite true-

DB: I know what you mean.

PB-C: I’m putting this very badly. There were people back in the day who just – oh God, I’ve lost names: James Cameron.

DB: Yes.

PB-C: James Cameron was wonderful at putting over his own particular view of things, which you get less, nowadays. I’m trying to think of the chap that’s on the whole time. Simon Reeve.

DB: Oh him.

PB-C: He’s great but for Simon to be able to go all round the world and make proper assessments, I think, as he does, must be a hell of a job because –

DB: But he must be supported with researchers-

PB-C: Exactly. For example, with The Long Search, Ron Eyre, Ronald Eyre who is a theatre director-

DB: Worked in television.

PB-C: -and television, yes, trying to discover for himself what religion was about, and so he looked at all the different religions, Buddhism, all of that and would literally go into his room that night, not mix with the crew which would be a normal thing to do and really think about things. And you knew that was what he was doing.

DB: Come out the next day.

PB-C: It would come out the next day. To use that word privilege is maybe not right but it was, actually you did feel this is very special, and he was a terrific man.

DB: Yes, he was. I worked with him a little bit, way back when he was directing television, and I was in the Design Department. He had been a teacher.

PB-C: Yes.

DB: He then came into BBC Schools and he did schools drama, and then came into adult drama and then escaped into the theatre and did some wonderful, wonderful stuff in the West End, you know. He was a great guy.

PB-C: In I think it was ’72 we made a film with David [Attenborough BEHP Interview No 190] – it was the first time he’d left the BBC. He’d been Controller of BBC2 for years and as he put it he was frankly fed up with sitting behind a desk: he thought if he didn’t escape now he never would and all that, and so the film was about Inca and Aztec gold and went all over Central and South America, filming in wonderful locations, and what was fascinating was David Attenborough’s real concern about being freelance and whether he’d be employed again, effectively. But obviously we all thought he would, but it was an insight and he wasn’t the wonderfully nice guy that you see on television, like Michael Palin.

1 hour 5 mins.

 

PB-C: Not always absolutely full of charm, he’s a man who has strong opinions and I remember thinking ‘oh that’s good’ and he was actually quite vociferous about how he felt and thank God that he was.

DB: Knows how to get what he wants.

PB-C: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Or would question certain things as opposed to just going along with them, and I felt very fortunate at that stage, and in later life worked a lot with David Attenborough, on the Queen’s Christmas Message.

DB: Now, something looming up in ’78 is Crest of a Wave.

PB-C: Ooh yeah.

 

DB: Director, Peter Bartlett.

PB-C: Yes. So, the BBC ran a series for first-time Directors called Première. I think there were four series, and Peter Bartlett who was the cameraman for The Royal Family was offered a film to direct in this particular series, and he chose me as the guy because he’d got to know me, as cameraman. And that was seventy-

DB: -eight.

PB-C: Seventy-eight, okay. It was a terrific series which in the end led onto me directing this thing which I directed, which was also in that series.

DB: Oh, I see. Oh, right.

PB-C: A drama called, a film called The Silence of the Sea, which I did in 1980 and which I loved doing. I’ll let you catch up! [they laugh]

DB: I don’t want to miss out ’79…. Now you are still on the BBC staff at this point.

PB-C: I was.

DB: Yeah.

PB-C: I stayed on the staff until 1989.

DB: Right, okay.

PB-C: So yes, Crest of a Wave was Peter’s first proper directing – he went on to direct other things, a lot of music, but that was – I think I’m right in saying – that was the only drama that he did – I may not be right there.

DB: Yes, I worked with him on sequences for drama series, stuff like that. And Peter Edwards.

PB-C: Yes.

DB: We went up a mountain in Wales and he was looking down the hill because all the extras were coming up towards me, and he said “Oh there’s Peter Edwards, he’s the sound guy” and I said “Yes that’s true” and he said “You’ll have to speak up, he’s deaf.” And I fell for it, absolutely. It was typical Peter Bartlett, yes!

PB-C: You know sadly he died just recently.

DB: Yes. So, from working with dear Peter. The Record Machine? Omnibus, Several Omnibuses. They were coming thick and fast, the ‘buses. Fear and Loathing. She Must be Joking.

PB-C: Oh, Fear and Loathing [on the Road to Hollywood]. That was amazing.  Nigel Finch. A very interesting film to work on. Arena [Probably means Omnibus, though Wall is associated with Arena. DS] had two producers: Anthony Wall and Nigel Finch, and I don’t know whose idea it was, presumably Nigel to make a film about Hunter S. Thompson who was very well known at that time-

DB: American writer.

PB-C: American writer, who used to write for Rolling Stone, who had relatively recently written a book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and basically he was very, very, against the American system. I mean that’s putting it very simply. We went to Colorado where he lived, with Ralph Steadman, who had appeared in his book. They were very, very good friends, and started to make a film re-creating Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

1 hour 10 minutes

PB-C: And Nigel Finch, a terrific director, done wonderful work, quite different in his approach. It was a difficult film to make, simply because Hunter was completely off the wall. I think I’m allowed to say that. His whole, well to give you and idea of what he was like, within the first few days he’d got us all shooting a Magnum, a huge revolver around the house of a local policeman. That gives you the feeling of what Hunter was like. I do remember the first evening, I thought, ‘well I’d better get on with this chap if I’m going to be with him for three weeks and he’s pretty different, and he insisted on rolling me I think the biggest joint I’ve ever seen, so I thought – well I wasn’t used to this I have to tell you, not having been to university [chuckles], so I’m puffing away there, thinking ‘this is alright’ and put on the music, and Hunter said “Let’s all go down to a restaurant, have something to eat.” Well, by this stage I was absolutely killing myself, I couldn’t stop laughing, I think a typical reaction. So that was bad. But basically I think Nigel took over from me because he sort of fell in with the way Hunter’s life was, which was extreme. And he was difficult. You would be sitting with Hunter in a perfectly normal downtown restaurant, wherever it was and he’d suddenly take out a personal alarm and fire it off, you know amongst families. And this was very, very, ‘Hunter’.

We recreated his journey from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and I remember sitting in the car with him: he’d got a bottle of scotch on ice – he was driving – right next to him and he was snorting cocaine. And I remember the clapper board going on [indicates sniffing] and all this business and he was driving! You know, call me old-fashioned, but I got a bit worried. [Laughter]

DB: Yes! This is worse than Vietnam.

PB-C: So, I thought this guy is well off the wall. When we got there, we eventually got there, the first thing I seem to remember we managed to do was hire a huge brute spotlight, and Hunter wanted to play this [waves arms] on the Chateau Marmont Hotel, in the hotel rooms. Well rather naturally the police turned up and summonsed [?] which was always his plan and we could never quite tell whether he was actually high on heroin or whatever it was or whether this was all an act and pretty difficult to tell.

DB: A mixture of both?

PB-C: A mixture of both yes. He ended up by wrecking the hotel room that he was in. Difficult, interesting, film to make. [Laughter]

DB: Yes.

PB-C: Anyway, I think he ended up with his ashes in a rocket.

DB: That’s what he wanted , yeah.

Several Arenas. Quite a lot of Arenas at this time. ’78, ’79.

PB-C: Again, so much of those, I loved doing the Arts.

DB: Yes.

PB-C: My first love – that and documentary.

DB: Well you were making documentaries on Arts subjects weren’t you?

PB-C: Yes, exactly.

DB: Natalia Makarova?

PB-C: Yes – I don’t remember a great deal about that.

DB: Oh, okay. Victoria & Albert Museum at Work? Treasure Keepers it was called.

PB-C: Around that time, I remember going to Moscow with Dame Margot Fonteyn-

DB: Ah!

PB-C: And that was extraordinary. With Paddy Foy. [BEHP Interview 214] It was a series called Magic of the Dance.

DB: Yes.

PB-C: And Margot Fonteyn, Dame Margot Fonteyn had suggested a series to basically put ballet on the map in that period. Paddy Foy was the Producer, who she knew well, and it was a long series, all over the world I think, but particularly in Russia. My small part in that was to go to Moscow and, with Paddy and Dame Margot, and film whatever.

1 hour 15 mins

 

PB-C: The interesting part – as an aside – was the way the Russians treated Margot, which was very, very, rudely. I mean it was extraordinary and she rather naturally being lauded throughout the West, and it didn’t take long to realise why this was. She had tried to help [Rudolph] Nureyev’s widow to get out of Russia, and so she was decidedly a persona non grata, and that didn’t go down well. And so throughout the period we were there, Dame Margot was rather depressed about the whole thing, rather naturally.

DB: How did Paddy cope with all that – do you remember?

PB-C: Very well, I think. I remember her – we went to Tchaikovsky’s house and all those wonderful scenes. To film. But it was a very difficult atmosphere – it was in the depths of communism then, and it felt it. You didn’t feel easy. And so when we got out, the first day we got out and we arrive, myself and my assistant, Dame Margot and Paddy, arrived in Brussels and Dame Margot took us to the best hotel, the best restaurant you can imagine and she was wonderful. She was wonderfully indiscreet about everyone: it was just terrific. Really great. But it goes to show the absolute breadth of programmes that you were involved in as a cameraman at that time.

DB: Yes, yes. My memory is making films with the BBC into the late sixties and into the seventies there were fifty units, fifty film units in the BBC, circling the globe at any one time.

PB-C: Or even higher. When I was there in the late eighties, I think it got to sixty-one.

DB: Really!

PB-C: Yes, yes, quite extraordinary.

DB: Indeed, that was bigger than Warner Brothers. [Consults notes]

Tell us the Truth.

The Front Garden. A series, endlessly repeated. Director: Edward Mirzoeff

PB-C: Yes. I think – I’m pretty certain it was the first time I worked with Eddie Mirzoeff. Eddie – I’m not sure if at that stage he was – I don’t think he was Head of Documentaries, but he was the Producer who was head of a strand later on.

DB: Yes, [inaudible].

PB-C: It was well before that. Anyway Eddie Mirzoeff was Producer of this delightful film, a film I absolutely love called Front Garden, or Front Gardens. And it was about literally peoples’ front gardens. Candida Lycett Green, who was the daughter of John Betjeman I think had written a book with lovely pictures about peoples’ front gardens and it was such a nice subject and Eddie is brilliant at just capturing the English/British way of doing things, seeing things and a subtle approach and it is just the most delightful film, all the characters: it was just a way of showing all the different English characters.

DB: ‘Cos, Eddie’s first success was the Betjeman Metropolitan thing.

PB-C: Metro-land was absolutely Eddie’s greatest thing at that stage, and, again John Betjeman and his wonderful light touch. About us all, just fascinating.

DB: Ah, now here comes a tricky one: Ireland – a television History. Remember much about that?

PB-C: Yes.

DB: That would be tricky at any time.

PB-C: That’s right. It was very specifically called ‘a’ history, as opposed to ‘the’ history, for obvious reasons. Robert Key was the presenter; Jenny Barraclough was the Producer-

1 Hour 20 mins

PB-C: - and we went all over Ireland. Quite difficult with all those sort of historical subjects to make them live. But yes it was just that.

DB: Extraordinary. I was just talking to Eddie about that – no, he brought it up a couple of days ago and he was saying it was extremely difficult to get Robert Key to do anything other than what he wanted to do and in fact he was fired, Jenny was fired, you know it was difficult to actually get it onto the screen.

PB-C: That’s right, yeah.

DB: I don’t suppose you have any memories of that?

PB-C: I just remember Robert finding it rather difficult to shed the tie and the rather stiff jackets. I do remember Jenny saying “we were in the middle of a field surrounded by mud, maybe you could just loosen up a bit you know, but it was fine, it was fine.

DB: Okay oh…[some inaudible chatter whilst papers rustle]

PB-C: I must say Rex Harrison, that was a film. Cor.

DB: Where was that?

PB-C: Well it was part of the Lime Grove sort of set-up.

DB: Yes.

PB-C: Sean Hardie, suggested to Rex Harrison, no I know what it was – I’m waffling – Richard Kershaw, who worked at Lime Grove doing Panorama and things like that, suggested to a chap called Sean Hardie who later did Not the Nine O’Clock News and things like that, suggested to Sean that a film about Rex Harrison would be a very interesting film to make, and at that time Rex was moving from his house in Portofino to a house in Cap Ferrat, more like the British Embassy than any normal – I mean it was wonderful, huge Doric columns and all that, and it was a complete insight to Rex Harrison.

I mean Rex was renowned to be quite tricky, and I can concur. He was absolutely fine from the film crew’s point of view, but he was particularly difficult to his then wife –

DB: Which one was that, can you remember?

PB-C: It was Elizabeth – she’d been married to Richard Harris.

 

DB: Oh yes, oh yes. After Rachel Roberts.

PB-C: That’s right, and she was very keen on his glass of champagne, or two, before lunch. It was quite funny because – I do seem to remember the day that we were actually moving, we filmed him getting all his odd bits, paintings all rolled up and stuff like that, from this wonderful house overlooking Portofino, all going into his Rolls-Royce, and him driving off [indicates drinking] and he stops at the border and we do all that business and she was quite, quite extraordinary, pretty rude to everybody. I shouldn’t be saying that.

DB: Why not? That’s the reality.

PB-C: And he directed us to a wonderful party at the other end, in this ‘British Embassy’ house, with Dirk Bogarde and all his chums.

DB: All the locals.

PB-C: All the locals.

There was one wonderful moment just before we left Portofino. We had lunch before we left and [laughs] …Rex Harrison was sitting at the end of the table and we were all round him, in the harbour at Portofino, and this American lady starts to film him, quite quietly in the background, but gets bolder and bolder as the lunch goes on and quite suddenly gets out a microphone and puts it on the table in front of Rex, and says “Rex, would you mind saying a few words into the camera?”

1 hour 25 mins

PB-C: He turns round to her: “Madam, why don’t you fuck off?” Absolute classic.

DB: Yes, yes.

PB-C: He was completely [justified].

DB: Can’t blame him, no, in that situation. Erm, Goodbye Days, directed by John Hooper.

 

PB-C: No, nothing.

DB: No memories, okay. Oh, that’s later. Something directed by Piers Haggard.

PB-C: Again just odd days. [on a production]

DB: Odd days, okay. Travelling Hopefully, 40 Minutes [series].

PB-C: I dunno, don’t remember that.

DB: Okay.

PB-C: I do remember Sam Beckett. That was pretty extraordinary, in the studio.

DB: Which studio: Paris?

PB-C: No we were filming in the studio at Ealing, one of the stages at Ealing, and Samuel Beckett had been asked to write I think three plays for the BBC. Ronald McWhinnie was the Director-

DB: -Donald McWhinnie.

PB-C: Donald McWhinnie, that’s right, and Tristram Powell was the Producer, and the one that I shot was called But the Clouds [Part of Shades: Three Plays by Samuel Beckett, in the Lively Arts strand. DS] and what I particularly remember was, Samuel Beckett was in the studio, and the set-up was very straightforward. It was a man slumped over a chair like this [demonstrates], Ronald Pickup, and what was extraordinary was Sam Beckett and McWhinnie, took I would say without exaggeration, two hours to arrange the coat as it should be. On the one hand you thought ‘I don’t believe this’ but on the other, with Sam Beckett and the others, I have to say it was extraordinary.

DB: Donald was famous for not speaking to his cast. Directing whether it was RSC or BBC. One actress told me that in the play, a big classic play at RSC, they were determined to get him to actually say something about their performances at the dress rehearsal; so, normally people would ask questions from the cast – you’d be called on the stage after the dress rehearsal – and he would come up onto the stage and people would start saying things to him, and they organised for nobody to speak after the dress rehearsal so he was forced to speak [laughter], so he came up and dead silence and he looked around and he said “Well, what did you think?” [More laughter] He was an extraordinary man, directed loads of things on the screen and the stage. Bizarre.

Ah: I’m leaping on a bit.

PB-C: Yeah, yeah.

DB: Home Front. Director Don McCullin and Philip Bonham-Carter.

PB-C: Yes, co-Director on that. What year was that?

DB: Eighty-six.

PB-C: Well before that if I can go back –

DB: Sure, we can leap about. I guess.

PB-C: - was the Première, that I directed, which was a big leap for me, because what I haven’t said is that right from stage one, at film school, I’d always wanted to direct rather than shoot and I can’t remember what happened but for some reason I found myself shooting at the film school more than directing and so it continued. Throughout, I thought joining the BBC would be a good route to becoming a Director. How wrong I was. Although the BBC did have this wonderful system that you could get an attachment to a particular department, and so that clearly was what I wanted to do at that stage. And in the end in 1980 I got my big break and – a Producer called Terry Coles gave me my big break and I did one of those Premières for first-time Directors.

1 hour 30 mins

PB-C: And it was film called Silence of the Sea, which had already been made into a feature film, but essentially it was a piece which lent itself to being in one room. Essentially it would have been a very, very, good piece for live cameras, but I’m so pleased to say that the piece was written as a film and we took a farmhouse in Gloucestershire, transformed it into a house in the French countryside and the film is set in 1940.

I was terrified because I’d never worked with actors as a director, always behind the camera, and rehearsals were tough. I had a very good actor called Michael Byrne, who was the main character and he really put me through my paces, since I realised that I had taken on something that was to be taken seriously. He was well-established.

DB: Yeah.

PB-C: But anyway, being all in one room I really had to work out how the piece was going to go together, not simply hoping it would all ‘cut’ together, and I had to work out shots very carefully, and I loved doing it. I loved it because it was French, and I felt a real closeness with the subject. I loved the designer who produced absolutely what I remember from being in France with my French family…

DB: Can you remember who that was?

PB-C: The designer? Gary Pritchard.  Because budgets being so tight in the BBC in comparison to feature films, the designers were so inventive. I mean he virtually did a lino-cut or something and did it for the tiles in the French kitchen. It was brilliant, just brilliant. And anyway, the film went out and I’m pleased to say it was a relative success, which led on to me doing more drama as a director, which was great. In 1983 I did a Play for Today or Screen on Two, [actually Screen Two. DS] or something like that. Again, set during the War. So it looked as if it was going that way. Which pleased me a lot, but co-incidentally, I seemed to be getting more drama as a cameraman, and as I was being employed by the BBC as a cameraman rather than a director, that’s the way it sort of steered. But I also wanted to direct documentaries, and so I approached Will Wyatt, who at that stage was Head of Documentaries, I think, and he said “Well that’s fine, you come and see me, and give us a list of possible subjects.”

Well I scratched my head… and right at the end I put ‘children’s parties’, and that caught his eye and the reason I put children’s parties was at that stage I’d got two children, and they were having children’s parties, and I thought the whole business was fascinating, with all the pretty good[ie] bags and all the rest of it, and so I put this on the list and Will thought this was a good idea, and to get – essentially what I wanted to make was a film about the class system and this seemed to be the perfect way to do it. And so I picked a family who were very smart, in Gloucestershire and wonderful house and all that, and the other extreme, you know, rather a poor family in the East End of London or wherever and everything in between. And the film went down quite well and the BBC –

DB: Forty Minutes.

PB-C: It was a Forty Minutes, that’s right. I was very pleased that it went out seven times. I counted it [laughs] so they got their money’s worth there!

DB: But you didn’t!

PB-C: Absolutely. And it was wonderful, that at the BBC you could do both.

1 hour 35 mins

PB-C: Outside the BBC that is clearly much more difficult.

DB: Indeed.

PB-C: You’d have to be pretty lucky to do that.

DB: Yeah. Mr Attenborough and Mr Gandhi. Jenny Barraclough.

PB-C: Yes I totted up and I think I did nine films for Jenny Barraclough. Over the period.

DB: Mm. How would you describe your relationship?

PB-C: It was good. I mean Jenny is terrific, because if she has faith in you, it goes perfectly. Never a cross word, I can truthfully say that. I loved the films that she made, and this particular film was fascinating. We flew out to India to make a film about Gandhi’s life, and Jenny used the life of Gandhi mixed in with the feature film Richard Attenborough made.

DB: So it wasn’t a film about the film being made it was-

PB-C: It was Gandhi’s life mixed in with the feature film and it was full of the most extraordinary incidents. On one particular day when Gandhi’s body was taken up the Raj path in Delhi, in a cortege, there were something like two hundred and fifty-thousand people who were shipped in by all the Assistant Producers Attenborough had got-

DB: Oh, yes.

PB-C: And it was the most extraordinary thing. We started early in the morning, half-past four in the morning. They all got breakfast – food was the thing that brought people in. All the crews, there were nine crews I think I’m right in saying or at least there were nine cameras. They all dressed up in Indian clothing, turbans and all the rest of it, so they wouldn’t be noticeable, and Attenborough himself was by the coffin, directing from there but he was all dressed in [Indian clothes] but the main difficulty was that actually from their point of view everybody thought it was a day out, and it was very difficult to convey to 250,000 people that actually t was very sad.

DB: It was a funeral!

PB-C: Yes. It was a funeral. But that’s just one small incident. It was the most interesting film to make. Clearly going to all the places…

DB: Did you speak to all the daughters and grandchildren and things?

PB-C: As I remember it, people who knew him, yes..

Also, I made another film, fascinating in an entirely different way, about Mr [Robert] Mugabe. Jenny had made a film when he was in Mozambique, which was called Portrait of a Terrorist or something like that [Portrait of ‘Terrorist’. DS], and because of that I think Mugabe was perfectly happy for a film to be made when he was installed as President of Zimbabwe, and we spent quite a long time with him and even went round the prison that he was incarcerated in, and with the chap who had actually put him there, the prison Governor. Extraordinary access. Jenny has a way of talking people into certain things. And we filmed a Scot’s guy who ran a tobacco farm, but he was mistreating his people – he had 300 workers – and the day we went along to his place there had been a specific complaint about him mistreating his dog biting some of the workers and hitting some people, so we turned up in a sort of cortege of black limousines with Mugabe’s people, ministers and police. Huge Great Danes come bounding out, very big gates outside, barbed wire everywhere, the gates open and there’s this poor old chap, he’s got a great big bandage across his head, blood here, and Mugabe’s people say “You’ve been accused of [this]”.

1 hour 40 mins

PB-C: Bit like a lynch crowd, frankly. We went into the tobacco sheds and he was confronted by the workers who, under normal circumstances, would have been terribly scared of him, but with all this situation, they spoke out, and it was the most extraordinary thing, but where Jenny’s talent was that given those circumstances, we left there, but she managed to chat to the Scottish farmer into giving us an interview and he opened up completely. Very interesting, that side of making documentaries; so many different [inaudible]

DB: And you only had one camera of course. If you walk into a situation with a mass of people it must be difficult to capture that.

PB-C: That’s right. That is actually what the ‘buzz’ is: that’s what you love. I speak as a cameraman, that is absolutely what you love. Walking into a situation which is a) unrepeatable, and really, really, trying to capture the atmosphere and not just going with the obvious shots, going with shots that – I can give you a very good example of that: we went on a film about the Notting Hill Carnival [Carnival. 1976. DS] and there was a wonderful cameraman called Charles Stewart, who was also working on the same film, and in the street in Notting Hill Gate there was police-car which was well alight and the atmosphere was terrible, and instead of concentrating on the obvious, he noticed an old lady with her shopping, and he just went from all this chaos, very slowly down to her. And it said so much, it was such an important-

DB: She was going on regardless of what was going on.

PB-C: Exactly, and it is that sort of insight that I think really special cameramen get, and Charles was clearly one of them. I mean fabulous, terrific stuff.

DB: Right. And the Queen Passed By. The other side of your Royal life.

PB-C: Yes, yes. I don’t actually remember a huge amount about that. But it was The Queen on tour as I remember, and a look at the ‘other side’ of it, as it were. How people [reacted]. Pointing the other way.

DB: The preparations and stuff.

PB-C: Absolutely.

DB: Bette Davis, Betty Davis.

PB-C: [Laughs]

DB: Did she appear or was it a sort of compilation with interviews.

PB-C: No, well my part in it was simply an interview with her, but I say ‘simply’, she was fascinating, because we turned up at her house in Los Angeles, and I started to light it and she was basically telling me where to put the lights, which I thought was great, I mean from my point of view was perfect, but she was such a lovely character.

DB: Oh really.

PB-C: Yes, the fierceness didn’t come through at all. She was absolutely brilliant. And I’m very pleased she lit it. [laughter]

DB: Now, The Last Term, transmitted on the 5th April 1983: Director, Philip Bonham-Carter. Play for Today.

PB-C: So, after Silence of the Sea, which was essentially a love story, a love story gone wrong, I did my rounds of the fifth floor at TV Centre, hoping to get another job. I didn’t really concentrate enough, I didn’t network enough, and I confess I was shooting stuff as a cameraman as normal, but I was keen to carry on drama directing if I could, and I walked into the office of Rosie Hill who was a Producer at that time, and she was very sweet. She said “I’ve been waiting a year and a half for you to come and knock on the door.”

 

1 hour 45 mins

DB: Aah.

PB-C: Which was a sweet thing to say. Anyway, to cut a long story short, she gave me a film to direct, which, again, was set during the war about a group of public-school boys who were in the Cadet Corps, and so on.

DB: Second World War, was it, or-?

PB-C: The Second World War, that’s right.

DB: Because there are many plays about the First World War about young men going off and not coming back.

PB-C: Yes. No this was the Second World War, but about a chap who had been shell-shocked in the First World War.

DB: Ah.

PB-C: It proved to me how difficult in some ways directing must be, for Directors because, I will be absolutely honest, I didn’t love the script. I thought it was okay, but it was another break from my point of view, another drama to shoot, and I thought ‘well, there’s only so much I can say about the script’, and it taught me that directors don’t have it all their own way; unless you happen to be Truffaut, who has his group around him and as an example and it completed authored, the film, by him; and this happens even more nowadays I suspect, when there is more money involved, more Producers. Being a Director is not just directing the actors.

DB: Well assuming that the script was acceptable at least –

PB-C: Yes, which it was of course.

DB: How do you set about casting, as a cameraman, not used to casting necessarily. Did you take it on totally or did Rosie help?

PB-C: Rosie helped throughout, and I think what was – certainly for the first film, I was very clear because of the script, and because the script meant so much to me, I was absolutely clear on the way I thought it should look. And also that the ‘end thing’ should be. I really was clear, it made life much, much, easier with second thing where I was less certain about the script, I was less certain about the whole thing. I mean it was perfectly acceptable but I felt that the first project was considerably better. But I relied on the experience particularly of Pas [Production Assistants] who go through Spotlight [a casting directory] every day of their life, and they know the actors far better than I ever did.

DB: By your PA, do you mean the girl sitting beside you or the Floor Manager.

PB-C: No, very specifically the lady who in this case sat next to me and said “Well have you thought about so-and-so?” or whatever, and then of course you go and see the Producer, who says “That’s a good idea.” So that worked very well actually.

DB: Yeah, that was my experience of it for many years in the BBC. If you were uncertain about something or you had a problem which you’d never met before, you’d go to the person involved or the assistant or whatever it was, and you explained what the problem was, and how you saw it being resolved – but if the person said “Leave it with me.” that was wonderful. They always had the result, always, always they had the answer. You know, never let you down. Best phrase in the BBC “leave it with me.” [They laugh] Or getting rid of somebody, or persuading somebody to actually do it.

PB-C: Yeah, yeah. Well it taught me, it sort of taught me a lesson about this script business because I wanted to change certain things it felt very ‘written’.

DB: Were you in direct contact with the writer?

PB-C: Yes, I was, I went down to see him and had lots of chats. But you sort of sense there is only so far you can go, but you see the thing was the Producer particularly liked the way it was written.

DB: Ah.

 

1 hour 50 mins

 

PB-C: I – what I love about French films is, I love the use of, for example, voice-over. Truffaut used voice-over the whole time. You could run a whole film with voice-over basically telling you how he felt.  When pieces become rather ‘written’ as I felt this was, it becomes rather stagey, to me, and to me it became rather stagey and all the rest of it.

So when the next thing came up, because I was again very fortunate and after that Play for Today went out I was offered a thing which was outside broadcast, which was a thing that really was outside my scope – with four cameras, I remember and I thought I’m not up to that. Anyway, I carried on, very flattered to be offered, so I went down to see the writer who was called Brian Phelan, and there again, I didn’t go for the script terribly much, for the same reason. And so I counted myself out of that one, which was possibly a bad thing to do, ‘cos I didn’t have another offer after that.

DB: Ah.

PB-C: Didn’t really worry me, because I thought I’d sort of done the right thing.

DB: So what was the subject of that, then?

PB-C: It was about –

DB: Brian Phelan to me is an Irish actor. Could it be somebody else?

PB-C: It was about people who don’t – it was about arrested growth; I think the other side of it I was not keen on doing, as it were, live TV. Four cameras. I thought ‘that is definitely not my style. No experience of doing that at all, at that stage, so I…

DB: Who was the Producer?

PB-C: Alan Shallcross.

DB: Ah. Oh, oh. [inaudible]

PB-C: Delightful guy. And I was extremely flattered to be asked.

DB: But you were mis-cast. Very simple.

PB-C: [laughs] That’s right. So that never happened.

DB: What else?

PB-C: At the same time I was getting I think quite a lot of drama which was coming my way as a cameraman, which was not to be sniffed at, put it that way.

DB: Okay, we are now into the mid-eighties aren’t we? You worked on something called Contact, in ’85. [Screen Two series DS]

PB-C: Yes.

DB: Alan Clarke.

PB-C: Brilliant

DB: Dear Sir Terry Coles [?]

PB-C: I didn’t do very many ‘big’ dramas for the BBC, and this one sort of fell in between the two. Alan Clarke had by then I think done Scum – not quite sure [of] the exact chronology –

DB: And been banned!

PB-C: Had he been banned?

DB: No, it had.

PB-C: Alan was an absolutely straight Liverpudlian: what you see is what you get. With so much heart I can’t tell you. He was a really genuinely good guy. What I particularly remember is the way he described shots to his actors. His actors were I think largely from borstal, right, from fairly straightforward backgrounds; and his language – I won’t go into it, but if you could think of the most extreme expletives – that is how he would describe a shot. But it got through to his actors, just like that. It was wonderful to watch.

DB: Yes. Somebody told me that working with actors, if you have 24 actors you have to have 24 different systems of flirting! [laughter] Each actor has different understandings of simple words, you know. And it takes time to actually get the trick.

PB-C: Well what I particularly liked about this production was that Alan wanted it to be real.

1 hour 55 mins

 

PB-C: All his films were real. I mean real hard-core ‘real’, and so it was all very much hand-held camera sort of thing. It was about a platoon in the British army in Crossmaglen in Northern Ireland. It was a tough subject, and he was a tough guy. In his mind. That’s how he worked. He didn’t pull punches, so when the gun goes in his mouth it really goes inside if you know what I mean, and I loved shooting that sort of work. Just really exciting. Again it’s the buzz of something real. It was extraordinary.

DB: And he didn’t have to wait while you spent four hours lighting it?

PB-C: He didn’t. [laughter] He had this bright idea that we shoot at night, with – what do you call those things – night-sights.

DB: Oh, right.

PB-C: Which we got from the British army, and I remember putting it on the camera for the first time, and you looked through it and it was all green, and you couldn’t see very much except hundreds and thousands of little dots. Anyway he wanted to shoot all his scenes at night like that, which was pretty tricky really because physically the rest of the crew couldn’t see a damn thing. Make-up? I’d no idea!

So I remember putting up one light, ND filters, neutral density filters so thick itt was like that [demonstrates], and still it looked like daylight.

DB: But your eyes adjust, too, to the dark.

PB-C: Yeah, yeah, very difficult too for the actors. It was for real, so we’d be going down a mountain slope, and they would actually have to see as it was, with no light.

DB: Yeah.

PB-C: But it was terrific, as were all his films, very hard-hitting and moving.

DB: Mm.

PB-C: And really made you think. It was a very sad loss when he died.

DB: Indeed.

Tower of London; Canterbury Tale; Lenny Henry [reading on] Oh then we come to Home Front. Don McCullin and Philip Bonham-Carter.

PB-C: Yeah, yeah.

DB: What do you remember of that? Don McCullin I always thought was a  fantastic photographer.

PB-C: Fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. God, it’s difficult talking about these things in some ways. I was approached by Alan Yentob, who – I don’t know where the idea originally came from, but Don McCullin had just stopped shooting, after 25 years, I think with The Sunday Times, and I think, I assume it was Alan Yentob’s idea, that we show Britain through Don McCullin’s eyes, after what has happened over those 25 years. How did he see the change? And because Don had never directed a film before, Alan thought it would be agood idea, partly, possibly, because of my styles of shooting, a bit similar in some ways to Don’s, that we’d get together and make a film about his view of life in Britain.

It was an Arena, and Arena, being Arena always had a different approach to arts subjects. I loved it, I thought it was just brilliant. It was interesting because Don didn’t want the old Don as it were, to be seen in front of camera, shooting down-and-outs in the East End – his style of doing things.

DB: He was known, mostly well-known as a war cameraman: conflict and horror.

PB-C:  He just knew to make – I paraphrase  his words- but he came from Tottenham, a fairly straightforward background, he knew that to make it as a photographer, he had to do something different, and war photography was it. People sat up and looked at his photographs straight away, and he was fearless; quite literally fearless.

2 hours

 

PB-C: But it affected him. It was interesting because at that stage he’d stopped doing The Sunday Times, and I think that possibly we should have taken it in a different direction. I rather naturally thought of Don as having seen all his books as that sort of person, but certainly at that stage he had got a real conscience about the way he made money out of his photographs. And I think it has always bugged him: going to very smart restaurants and spending a lot of money, and then thinking back about the people who he’d filmed who were the opposite. You know, going to Biafra, going to Vietnam, going to all these terrible war zones, and I think he put it he bleeds blackness: blood is black. Certainly at that stage I think all he wanted to do was to basically film robins in his garden, and I have a feeling that’s what we should have concentrated on, in retrospect. It’s always easy in retrospect.

Anyway, so what we did was we went round some of the worst areas we could find in Britain, which were bad. Not great at that period, and filmed how Don felt about it all.

DB: Yeah, good. Frontiers of New Music, Mike Macintyre.

PB-C: Yes, I did a lot of work with Mike.

DB: West Coast. He was a music specialist, wasn’t he, Mike Macintyre?

PB-C: Particularly yes. He did a lot of films in the far East.

DB: Oh! Really!.

PB-C: A lot. And in America.

DB: Because in the time that we worked together on a little film in Watford, he was with me on that show. He was making films for release in review.

PB-C: Well, I worked with Mike Macintyre a lot: in particular they were either films about music – Steve Reich, new music. It was either computer music or minimalist music – but also films about the arts. Spirits of Asia I think was about the arts of Asia, all round and a series of films about the Pacific, all about the arts whether it be about music or whatever.

DB: I seem to remember him leaving London and going to be part of BBC Bristol or something or other. He worked in a Region.

PB-C: Did he? I’m not aware of that.

DB: Perhaps that was later. Or even before, I don’t know.

PB-C: Tell me if I’m not giving you enough detail.

DB: No, no. Fine, fine. I’m just being very careful that I’m not missing things out, you know. I’ve marked it up and then for the first part of the interview I had your copy on top of mine and there were no markings on it! So anyway I’m now back on course as it were. Don McCullin.

An English Woman’s Wardrobe. Is that of any interest?

PB-C: Only in the sense that we filmed Margaret Thatcher going through her wardrobe which was fascinating.

DB: Oh yes, I seem to have seen that footage.

PB-C: Yes, I don’t remember a great deal but I remember that. Going to No 10 [Downing Street], going to the top floor where all Margaret Thatcher’s clothes were laid out.

DB: Mostly blue.

PB-C: Yes and she specifically pointed out the dress which she wore when the Belgrano was sunk, which I thought was pretty interesting; and it was dark blue, yeah you are right.

DB: Well she had that Nationwide or that extraordinary television programme where she came on, and a woman rang in and took her to task, argued with her that The Belgrano was in safe waters or something, and they shouldn’t have attacked it.

PB-C: That’s right, yes.

DB: And she was very adamant that she was in the right, and the woman was not convinced – but that was a brilliant live television snippet.

2 hours 5 mins       [Fade]

 

PB-C: Well [that was after] the BBC had gone through several phases: which were very broadly speaking art/documentary, and then that directing period; and then drama. In short hand. And doing drama was in itself – again I felt very flattered to be doing big dramas, but what I wasn’t in love with was leaving my first love which was the Arts.

DB: Yes.

PB-C: And doing other documentaries.

DB: Well, I think we are coming up to you going freelance, aren’t we?

PB-C: Yeah, must be.

DB: You said ’89. Several things to do before that.

PB-C: I think so. I did do a film called Dancin’ thru the Dark, which was with Willy Russell. Interesting because it was when the BBC and BBC Films were doing feature films basically, that’s what it came down to. They were co-productions with whoever, and I do remember on Dancin’ thru the Dark the producers, there seemed to be hundreds of ‘em. I think the reality was there were five or six.

DB: When we pick up again that’s something we can re-introduce which is how the BBC changed over the years.

PB-C: Yes.

DB: I experienced it because I went freelance in 1970, still did stuff for the BBC, but I was going all round the country working for other people as well, you know. And of course with the advent of Thatcher all these independent companies were set up, including Phil Redmond in Liverpool, and you were talking about Alan Clarke being Liverpudlian, talking to the guys, using borstal boys or whatever; and I sat in on a number of casting sessions with Phil Redmond, and if the guy we were talking to had any trouble with the police, he was in! [laughter] It was quite extraordinary. If I was in Phil’s head, it was somebody who had a bit of fight in them. That rather knocked me back to begin with, but I just got used to it. [Quick Fade]

Tell us a bit about how the BBC has changed over the years because I think we are running up now to the point where you left and went freelance, so go back a bit.

PB-C: So, yeah, in the – I joined the BBC in ’66 when it was – it felt a bit ‘stuffed shirt’. As time went on it definitely changed. The atmosphere got looser and looser, thank goodness, but I have to say it slightly went off course in some ways I think because the BBC couldn’t quite make up its mind – I speak in the film area – about whether it should go in for very big movies, compete with the cinema, or whether it should do more Dennis Potter-like things. Clearly Dennis Potter was such a success. There were brilliant writers working at the BBC in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but when I got to do bigger dramas the feeling was clearly to try and compete. The side effect as one of the technicians at that time, as a cameraman was exemplified on Dancin’ thru the Dark, where there were several, there was Palace Pictures, there was BBC, alright there were several co-producers. There was a Line Producer on location, there were a lot of people who were if you like, money people, around. And you definitely felt a shift from pure drama, in a funny sort of way, which [was] Dennis Potter with Blue Remembered Hills, all that sort of thing, to more commercial things, and the atmosphere changed – the atmosphere clearly changed.

2 hours 10 mins

 

PB-C: it was very good experience working on these things but you definitely felt slightly that the BBC wasn’t supporting you as it might have done had it been an outside production. So you were effectively making a feature film but without that support, and quite often thought by [those] outside the BBC that the reverse is true where you work on projects outside the BBC you don’t get that support in the background. But, in my experience I felt it was a bit the opposite at one stage, there were so many Producers and there certainly wasn’t enough crew to – well it was all [gestures at watch] “We’ve only shot four minutes today we must do four and a half or five.” And the thinking was much more about money than actually the product, which was a bit disturbing. Wasn’t great.

DB: It was about that time the BBC couldn’t go outside the door without co-production, and co-production money, which Cedric Messina, a BBC Producer that I knew very well, said that what he wanted was co-production money, not co-production. [laughs]

PB-C: Exactly.

DB: And then I can get on with it!

PB-C: Yes, even in the arts and documentaries, co-production had become absolutely the norm: I did a film with Humphrey Burton about the Santa Fe Opera and it was all basically American money. It was extraordinary. And we had endless American producers on set, you know. So, yeah, the atmosphere had changed, quite a lot.

DB: Right…. [checks list] Sound on Film. Was that a series?

With Mark-Anthony Turnage

PB-C: Oh yes! I was very fortunate in carrying on directing documentaries. I did a Forty Minutes for Eddie Mirzoeff and that particular film was Release for Dennis Marks and was about a young composer called Mark-Anthony Turnage. Four films commissioned on young composers, and I was asked to do one, with Mark-Anthony. And they were pieces that were commissioned – specifically commissioned - for that particular film. I loved it, it was fascinating and Mark-Anthony Turnage seemed to me pretty extreme…it wasn’t exactly, to me immediately acceptable, not, what’s the word [accessible DS] quite different. Quite modern.

DB: Modern. Oh well there you are!

PB-C: [Laughing] Exactly!

DB: Okay.

PB-C: The piece he produced was terrific, actually.

DB: I’m not actually sure when the moment came that you finished at the BBC and became freelance.

PB-C: Well, what happened, in 1969, erm, 1989, a series of things coincided. By then, by 1989 I’d worked with the chap who eventually became my business partner on many Royal Broadcasts, Christmas Broadcasts, quite apart from Royal Family way back in 1968. He was keen to leave the BBC and work with Buckingham Palace, in association with Buckingham Palace, and he put it to me “now might be the time.” Because the BBC had changed the way that it employed people. Basically I’d been on staff, we’d all been on staff for years and years and years, but the BBC had started with designers and then with cameramen to employ freelancers, and so our noses were definitely put out of joint, we thought listen we’d given all these years to the BBC, and you thank us by getting some other bloke to come in and do the choice work.

2 hours 15 mins

 

PB-C: So I went up with a chap called John Hooper, another cameraman, and had a talk to Paul Fox. [BEHP Interview No 277] and Will Wyatt, who was Assistant Managing Director at that stage I think, and Paul was very straightforward, he said “Times are changing. I hate to say it, we’d be very happy to take you on as a freelance, but not continuing on the staff.” Not that he was getting rid of me but he said “the choice is yours.” And so we left there thinking that’s a pretty straightforward message.

DB: Yeah.

PB-C: And so I thought, weighing things up, it would be a good time to leave, and as it happened, I think it probably was, because in 1989 from what I can tell, from people who stayed on, the BBC went through this very difficult phase of making a lot of people redundant, and a lot of unhappiness in the television film area, and throughout the BBC I suspect. John Birt and all that, it was very disturbing.

So I grasped the nettle, and the way it happened was really quite odd: Peter Edwards, who was the sound recordist I’d worked with said “the Palace would like to have a chat with us.” So I thought ‘great’, we’d go along – this was before I’d left the BBC, and we went and had a chat with The Queen’s Private Secretary who by that stage was Bill Heseltine, who we obviously knew well, and several other people, three or four other people, and we were shown into this huge room, with a table that was – endless. We sat one end and they sat the other, and I thought ‘this is straight out of a movie’, and at that stage I hadn’t actually made up my mind to leave the BBC, but they were talking more or less as if we had. I think Peter had sort of said “we are definitely leaving.” Anyway, to cut a long story short, we did leave. What they’d asked us at that meeting was what ideas we’d had, in association with them, how could they help to facilitate films? Well, we came up with old chestnuts like the Britannia and one of the suggestions was something that had been put to the Palace before, but they’d I think probably turned down, which was to film peoples’ investitures. Basically, Sir Whoever [gestures the ceremonial sword…] could by a videotape of his investiture.

DB: Oh, right.

PB-C: So we put that forward, and it went to The Queen, and I think The Queen’s reaction was “fine but who frankly wants to see themselves for thirty seconds to a minute, talking to me frankly?”

DB: His mother!

 

PB-C: Exactly! I think The Queen was very modest about it, and so that was accepted, so, I can’t quite exactly work out the chronology but at the end of ’89 I left the BBC and started a company called Bonham-Carter Associates. My brother was part of that company, my wife was part of that company, the dog was- [laughter] and Peter Edwards was the driving force really, behind it.

DB: Ah. So he was the man you have been mysteriously referring to as your business partner.

PB-C: Yes. And Peter was very keen on this idea, and good for him, he did a lot of research into all areas of it. It was difficult for both of us but I think a little bit more difficult for me because I was, I had been approached by ICM who are very good agents, to do film work and I’d started to do commercials and, I can’t remember again the chronology but I did American Friends which was a feature film, so the balance of these things was difficult: I directed the film which was used as the vehicle for all these recipients of their medals to be slotted into.

2 hours 20 mins

 

PB-C: So all of this was going on at the same time which was [a] tricky period. But Peter was terrific I the sense that he was very dedicated to the project, and so I was with it for two or three years, three years, but I felt I’d done my bit, and was keen to get back to in [gestures] inverted commas ‘proper film making’ and I never really regarded myself as a ‘royal-type’ person, in that sense. The idea of just doing a diet which was just Royal films just wasn’t appealing at all.

DB: Yes, Helena Bonham-Carter has kept up the connection! Well she’s playing the Queen now!

PB-C: Oh of course she has. [laughing]

DB: She’s presumably a distant cousin or something.

PB-C: She’s a cousin. Yes. Yes, that’s true.

So it was a case of amicability and Peter carried on with the company which is now British Ceremonial Arts. Well we just changed the initials.

DB: Right. [shuffles papers]

PB-C: Oh yeah, we have left out – oh, no, no, coming up.

DB: I’ve got The True Adventures of Christopher Columbus. Bracketed together – I wonder why I’ve bracketed all that together-

PB-C: No, that’s probably me.

DB: No. it’s me in fact – oh, I see why it is, it’s Co-Director. On the whole series: Palace of Destiny, Land of the Indians, Heaven or Hell, Admiral of Mosquitos. What do you remember about that series?

PB-C: Well, I’d worked on a film with Jonathan Stedall about, well it was with the National Theatre of Brent. So it was Patrick Barlow and Jim Broadbent, who were the National Theatre of Brent and –

DB: Could you just do a quick cameo of the National Theatre of Brent? I know what it is, but-

PB-C: Sure. In 1988, I think, I did a film with Jim Broadbent and Patrick Barlow, who called themselves The National Theatre of Brent, and they had done several projects where the two of them play different characters in history, and this particular one was the French –

DB: [interrupting] All the characters?

PB-C: All the characters. And what was wonderful, hysterical, was they would play say King Louis XV or XVI in a grey suit, wearing a wig, and being the characters that they were, they did it brilliantly. I mean it was really, really, terrific. At that stage I think Jim Broadbent was just getting wonderful offers to do even more work. So he left, and the Patrick Barlow later on decided that he would do a similar thing to what they’d done before by himself, but he didn’t feel a hundred percent confident in directing the whole thing and acting himself throughout, so I co-directed it with Patrick, and we made a series of six I think, I can’t quite remember.

DB: Well it seems to be four here.

PB-C: Four.

DB: So was a that a mini-thing, or was it international?

PB-C: No, no it was, I think it came under Screen on Two.

DB: Ah, but did you go abroad for it?

PB-C: No, no. It was mostly shot either at Elstree or on the stage at Ealing.

DB: Aha, right. There’s a question against something called The Red Bomb, which is a mini-series.

PB-C: No.

DB: Nothing, okay. Kitaj: In the Picture.

PB-C: Yeah, again that was only one interview.

DB: Oh, was it.

Then we are into the mid-nineties now. All in the Genes.

2 hours 25 mins

 

DB: For Central Television.

PB-C: Actually, just before that, I specifically was approached to do a film about The Prince of Wales, a year in the life of, basically, and that’s exactly what it was. [Charles: the Private Man, the Public Role. DS] We went to, both Peter Edwards and myself, joined the entourage of His household, and went all over with Jonathan Dimbleby, filming the Prince doing his work, and it was, in the end, quite difficult because Jonathan Dimbleby knew at the end of it, the most difficult question had to come up, which was about the marriage between him, The Prince of Wales and Princess Diana, and Prince Charles was extremely direct with his answer. I mean he admitted adultery-

 

DB: Yeah.

PB-C: And that, in a way, took over the film, and the reaction to it.

DB: Hit the headlines.

PB-C: A bit of a pity in a way, because it slightly denigrated, the Prince’s Trust and all the rest of it got overtaken by that. As a result of our film, Princess Diana thought ‘well, I’ll get my own back’, and did the Panorama [Martin] Bashir interview.

DB: So, by that point you’d been working with Prince Charles at least for many, many years.

PB-C: Absolutely right.

DB: So you were part of the gang. [laughter]

Now, looming up, which I mentioned before, All in the Genes, for Central Television seems to me, from the list I’ve got, to be your first ‘out of the BBC’ and your own company:  an ITV company for the first time.

PB-C: Yes.

DB: Was it?

PB-C: It was in a way, although I had ITN, as a result partly because of this debacle between The Prince of Wales and Princess Diana, I have a feeling, let me get this right, I think the Palace felt they should give the Christmas Broadcast not solely to the BBC but to ITV as well. I think it sort of coincided with that period and so I the started to work with ITN as the commercial arm

Doing The Queen’s Broadcast.

DB: Right. So that was still on film then, at that point. Sometimes, because they did several versions didn’t they? A Commonwealth version and –

PB-C: I have a feeling that The Prince of Wales was done on tape. It was.

DB: Ah, right.

PB-C: I think that’s right. Golly, it’s actually difficult to pinpoint. I think I’m right, yes that was done on tape. Where were we? Sorry.

DB: It was taking you to Central Television and wondering whether you found any difference between the BBC or your own company and/or an ITV company.

PB-C: Yes. There was a big difference in ITN, doing The Queen’s Broadcast, and I suppose in Central TV later on doing the All in the Genes film then, it’s the reverse of what I was saying about the BBC going in different directions. Certainly with ITN, because The Queen’s Broadcast is such a big deal from the broadcasters’ point of view: the BBC would throw absolutely everything into it whatever you wanted as a camera crew technically it was there. I definitely felt that it was considerably less so with ITN. I mean they were terrific but you didn’t feel that big back up.

2 hours 30 mins

 

DB: No. 2.30.01 And certainly the same with ATV I should think.

PB-C: Sure.

DB: Yes, I’d agree with that. When I first went outside the BBC, where I’d been born and brought up, to Thames, the difference there was just extraordinary, I mean every inch of carpet was checked and measured and costed, you know.

PB-C: Yeah, yeah.

DB: Sorry! Delia? [Delia’s How to Cook. DS]

PB-C: Yes.

DB: That was a series – a whole series – directed by Philip Bonham-Carter.

PB-C: Well what happened –

DB: [clarifying] Now, which company was that for? Hers?

PB-C: No, I had a phone call, from a chap called David Willcock who’d just started his own company called Spire Films, and it was a very small independent company, and he just phoned up, and said “I live down the road from you and would you be interested in shooting a series on Delia Smith? One of her series.” So I thought ‘yeah, god I love Delia Smith.’ Her programmes were brilliant. I loved cookery programmes, so I thought ‘yeah, why not?’

And so we did the first series and all seemed to go very well. I loved shooting it.

DB: In her place? Her kitchen/

PB-C: Yes, in Suffolk. In fact the Director was called John Silver. I loved shooting it because to me it was like shooting a documentary in a funny sort of way: seeing the yolk of an egg coming slowly down – it was brilliant.

DB: The Tuck shop!

PB-C: Yeah. You’ve only got one chance of getting it absolutely just so. It was great. Anyway, the second series happened and I was asked to direct that, which was very nice, shoot it and direct it. I loved it, I loved every second of it. And it was a complete departure from what I’d normally don.

DB: Yes, yes.

PB-C: And it was very un-Royal! [laughs]

DB: Except she was queen of the kitchen.

PB-C: That’s true.

DB: [consulting paperwork] Where are we? [inaudible] The Real MacBeth.

PB-C: Yes, so I continued – after shooting those series with Delia Smith – I continued with Spire Films, with Tony Robinson, who seemed to go on forever doing his endless different sorts of film, and that was pretty much the end of my shooting career, apart from odd commercials.

DB: John Betjeman: the Last Laugh.

PB-C: Oh John Betjeman was great, again The Last Laugh with Eddie directing, Eddie Mirzoeff, was a joy to make. It was such good fun, with really interesting people talking about Betjeman.

DB: The late…

PB-C: Yes, absolutely. And, again, Eddie’s light touch, which he definitely had. What we have missed out is Eddie’s film on Elizabeth R.

DB: Oh yes! I thought that seemed to be – I missed the fact that he was on it – I thought it was an insert for the drama series Elizabeth R. I beg your pardon – let’s go back then. So, ’93: Elizabeth R.

PB-C: As part of the arrangement we had with Buckingham Palace, the thing that we’d been discussing, all these different projects, they mentioned to us “we are thinking of doing a year in the life of The Queen.” And they said “Is there anybody in particular you think would be good as a Director?” So we went through names, rather naturally people we’d worked with, and I do remember, one name in particular came up, and they said “Oh we were a bit keen on this bloke.” And I looked at Peter and we said “To be truthful, not quite his sort of thing,” a number of reasons for that. Anyway, in the end Eddie’s name came up, and having worked with Eddie and having thoroughly enjoyed the sort of films he made –

2 hours 35 mins.

PB-C: -he seemed the perfect choice and Eddie made the film. And it was a year in the life, and it was noticeable the difference, The Queen’s way of doing it. Way back in 1968 it was new to The Queen, that sort of thing.

DB: Yes.

PB-C: She’d never ever done a walkabout as such. One difference that Peter and I as a group, the two of us shooting The Queen, was we used synch sound, we were always shooting synch sound when we were filming The Queen.

DB: Yeah, yeah

PB-C: And it really hasn’t happened properly since in the same way, and it was brilliant that The Queen got completely used to us doing that. So much so I remember in South Africa on one occasion The Queen was acting as if she was a presenter behind the camera, and asking all the – I remember the prime minister of Australia and all the rest of it, she was asking all the questions as if she were a presenter and it was absolutely wonderful. And that continued on. But that was a big shift throughout.

DB: In what way? Her way, your way or -

PB-C: In the way that The Palace regarded the filming: much more free and easy. Obviously there were tensions of all sorts, [it was] a difficult period in many ways, I can’t remember what was going on, probably the war in Kuwait, it was that sort of period so it was, there were, tricky times, but The Queen was completely relaxed with I hope, because she obviously knew us very well, and was relaxed generally in the making of it.

DB: It was at that point when that was going on that Eddie and I became bus mates, we were going in from Barnes on the bus together, and I would say “I bet your having no trouble at all with your star, but the people around her--“ [laughs]

PB-C: Yes. Eddie has a particular view and is quite firm about those views at times.

DB: Yes, okay. We’ve got down now to this century. [laughter] We’ve got the Spire Films and The Real Macbeth.

Braveheart? The true story.

PB-C: Yeah. All Spire films.

DB: Betjeman we talked about.  Delia’s How to Cook. Government. Kosminsky?

PB-C: No, that wasn’t me that was Crispin Bonham-Carter. He was an actor.

DB: Oh, right.

PB-C: Gota bit mixed up there.

David Sharp [DS]: Sorry guys.

DB: Sister Wendy at the Norton Simon Museum?

PB-C: Oh, wonderful Sister Wendy. Spire Films run by David Willcock. David knew Sister Wendy from years ago, got on terribly well with her. David is quite a strong Catholic, needless to say Sister Wendy is the same and they got on incredibly well. She spends all her life as I’m sure you know, basically in a caravan, surrounded by art books so when we went to Pasadena and made a film, which the Norton Simon Museum wanted made of their private collection, Sister Wendy loved it, putting it mildly, and it was an absolute joy to work with her and I have never –

DB: So, so you put her in a motel or in an hotel or what?

PB-C: [Laughing] We stayed in yes a very smart hotel, she had her lovely glass of white wine or two and felt very relaxed about the whole thing. She tells a wonderful story against herself, she said “You know, my dear, when I go down the corridor in these hotels, I see all these trays with the buns and all these leftovers from the night before and I can’t resist.”

2 hours 40 mins

 

PB-C: I do have a wonderful vision of her being pushed by David down these corridors, in a push-chair because her walking is not so hot, her veil flowing like this [gestures] and screaming at the top of her voice how wonderful it all is. Lovely, lovely. [laughter]

DB: Oh dear! [consults notes] Status Anxiety. What the hell’s that? Camera Op. it says.

PB-C: Oh yeah. I had done a number of films with James Runcie.

DB: Still in the church!

PB-C: [laughs] Yes James did several films, which - I did lots of arts films with him, and that particular one I don’t remember a great deal about, but Alain de Botton the psychiatrist, no, philosopher, I think it was his view of life but I can’t honestly go into that a great deal because I don’t remember all that much about it. But certainly, working with James was very interesting, and we did an interview which was very moving, with his father. James knew and his father knew his father was dying and James just asked him about this life. It was a terrific insight.

DB: Better say who the father was.

PB-C: The Archbishop of Canterbury. [Robert Runcie. DS] James Runcie. Yeah. And James did several films which were about James’ discovering about religion, and his unease possibly that he didn’t follow his father’s path in some way. We did a film called Heaven, but basically, I think its James discovering his views.

DB: Mm. Right.

PB-C: That’s about it isn’t it?

DB: We are getting close. That’s it! Er, 2005, The Walk. From There to Here.

PB-C: I don’t know that.

DB: Director Mark Brozil. Production Company Granada.

PB-C: Not me. It’s Crispin again!

DS: I’ll explain that after.

DB: Right, so that’s the end of my notes.

PB-C: The Broadcast was such a big extraordinary experience, yeah I mean one thing that – [Richard] Cawston was very keen on this small unit business, shooting it, anything Royal, and the important thing is it progressed to The Queen’s Broadcast. When the first broadcasts after Royal Family were made, they were much more mini-documentaries rather than The Queen sitting behind a desk. He was very keen on that and that it would be much more The Queen’s life. And it worked really well. And I think The Queen’s Broadcast changed rather lot, particularly I think when ITN took it over. Because instead of us being completely separate to the press, we were much more lumped in with the press, and of course, as life changed, I mean I’ve now seen something like seven or eight Private Secretaries, things change, and the atmosphere changes, and all these things and of course things like Princess Diana affected the way things went on. The Queen’s Broadcast became much more difficult to make in one sense because we were lumped in much more for example tours, and it was very difficult if you are in with the press to get these private things.

DB: Yeah, sure.

PB-C: I mean we would go into a room with The Queen and whoever, just four of us, five of us and film whatever happened, but as soon as you get in with the press crowd, nothing against the press, but once you are there, there’s nothing you can do you’re essentially-

DB: -Behind a barrier.

PB-C: That’s right, so that was a decidedly big shift. Of course there were occasions-

2 hours 45 mins.

 

PB-C: I mean for example when The Queen is round the Christmas Tree and all the family, no press, and that works very well. But that was a big shift and that would have been around ’94, ’95, that sort of period.

DB: Yeah, yeah.

So, tell me about the act of retirement.

PB-C: It’s great! [laughter]

DB: No, I mean how did it arrive.? I know exactly how mine arrived…

PB-C: I think I actively stopped searching for work. I think I was more than happy to stop, because as life went on … as a technician, shooting stuff, it got tougher and tougher, in the physical sense. Not only would your car be full of the camera – it would be full of mini-dollies, it would be full of lights, it would be full of all these different things, and because I’m not a born drama cameraman – I mean cameramen who stuck to drama, and did feature films, they had a very heavy light-meter in their pocket and that would be it.

 

DB: Because there would be somebody else to do the portering.

 

PB-C: Plenty of people to do all that work, but because I’d been down that road and taken a different course by going to Buckingham Palace and all those things, life definitely took a different turn and I then found myself in inverted commas as a ‘normal guy’, shooting stuff, so your car was full of lights and you get there, and you set it all up and after fourteen hours you’re pretty tired [ironic laugh], which past 60 or 65 or whatever it was I thought this was getting  a bit too much really. But I carried on shooting as second camera with a colleague, doing commercials.

DB: I see; that’s not on my list.

PB-C: No, no.

DS: Which commercials?

PB-C: They were delightful commercials, they were [for] Which? Magazine. It was terrific from my point of view. It was just a question of turning up, wobbling the camera around and-

DB:  Not for Ridley Scott then?

PB-C: [laughs] Not for Ridley Scott, I’m pleased to say!

DB: [suggesting how Ridley might work] Put the camera on [?] Do it!

PB-C: Have you done one of these, either of you? Being the other side: interviewed?

DB: Oh, I have yeah.

PB-C: It’s quite difficult isn’t it, to get it all-

DB: Well it is because no sooner have you finished a sentence or just finished an answer and you think ‘God, I’ve missed out David Sharp‘

PB-C: Yes, exactly.

DB: And you keep smiling and you hope that next question you can fit it in.

PB-C: Thank you

DB: Anyway, thank you for goodness sake.

 

DS: And we’ll wrap there.

DB: Cut.

End of Interview