This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Rebecca O’Brien & Dominic Buchanan


Ken Loach’s longtime producer Rebecca O’Brien talks to budding producer Dominic Buchanan about being sociable, learning on the job and having organisational genes


Q Dominic Buchanan What tips would you give a young


producer? Rebecca O’Brien A producer has to go into the real world, I don’t think you can train a producer. You can only really produce when you’re producing. I was lucky to learn on the job. I started in production and location managing and line producing. But I’d never raised money. The first film I produced was 100% funded by the BFI. The second thing I produced was Hid- den Agenda with Ken [Loach] and I didn’t have to raise the money for that. As a producer, you seek out people — the bits you can’t do, you find someone who can. I found an executive producer who would raise money for us and that just happened to be [Working Title’s] Eric Fellner. I also had executive producers on Land And Freedom. I can do it now but it takes a long time to get fully qualified. But generalising about producing


is just hot air, really. It’s a really sup- portive network once you’re in it, the film network. People are very helpful to each other even though they’re rivals. It’s about knowing people and the advice you seek is always about specific problems — who would you go to in Jordan to help set up a shoot? You don’t go around asking, ‘How do I be a good producer?’ Though maybe I should try — I’m still waiting for that blockbuster hit. There are always ambitions, even at this stage. I’d love for Ken to have a hit in his own country. What brought you into producing?


DB I was doing acquisitions and I started to realise I wasn’t going to end up there. I was asked to produce Gimme The Loot [which screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes this year] because I knew the director-writer, Adam [Leon]. There was no reason for me to


n 44 Screen International June-July 2012


say no! And once I got into it, I realised I wouldn’t go back. R O’B I always think I’m not as good as other people are at any one thing, but I’m quite good at joining them together and smoothing things over. I’m very sociable and I love putting people together and making things happen. Because I’m a jack of all trades, film is a perfect thing for me. And because it changes all the time on every film you do, even if you’re making films with the same people. You’ve got a different job every time, almost.


DB It’s interesting to know you’re sociable — I am, and I always end up connecting people in some way. I did fashion week parties in New York and, when you think about it, that’s producing too. R O’B My mum and granny were organisers. There’s an organisa- tional gene in me. We lived in quite a big house in Scotland and when we moved there my mum wanted to make the best of it, so she threw this huge carnival fete for the Freedom From Hunger campaign in 1963. She wasn’t content to have a pipe band. She organised the house to be set on fire and the fire engine to come. She set up a dog-racing track in the garden. And I was brought up with her being a role model. She had a mental illness, sadly, and she wasn’t always like that, but when she was well, there’d always be a major event happening. So I got used to having these life-changing experiences and that’s why I became a producer — you get a life-chang- ing experience every year. I worked at a film festival, Edin-


burgh, I did three summers there back in the ’70s. And that’s how I got to know a lot of people. Then I saw a small ad — back in 1981 — in The Observer newspaper for a one-week film-production course, and that was it, that was me.


‘The film network is a supportive network, once you’re in it. People are very helpful to each other, even though


they’re rivals’ Rebecca O’Brien, producer


DB It can’t always have been smooth sailing? R O’B I had lucky breaks. I ended up working on My Beautiful Laundrette. Everybody who worked on it was new — and brilliant. But I wasn’t expecting to be a producer, you evolve into it. And it’s your enthusiasm for getting things to happen which makes you a natural producer. Then I hooked up with Ken and that was another piece of serendipity. I ended up being Working Title’s expert on Ireland as I’d done a Maeve Binchy TV series with them there [Echoes] and they were planning a film with Ken, which actually didn’t happen. So he and I were suddenly stuck without a film to do and he asked me if I’d be interested in trying to get what became Hidden Agenda together. It took two or three years to get off the ground. We had three or four false starts, it was terribly controversial. But the fact we’d pulled it off made us feel we could do more things. That’s what bonds you, going through the experience of making a difficult film together — and still speaking at the other side of it. We went on to Land And Freedom. We’ve done 12 films since then, not counting the docu- mentary or TV bits and pieces.


DB Is there any type of film you’d like to do that you haven’t done? R O’B Not really, because I discovered when I made Mr Bean in Los Angeles — which wasn’t a big film but it was a studio film — that I don’t like the


industrial scale of a studio film. I like to know everyone who is working for us. The low to medium budget, the £3m-£5m ($4.6m-$7.7m) mark, is where I like to be. I’d love to have made Star Wars — honestly! — but I’m very happy where I am. I felt after we made Land And Freedom, which was such an all-encompassing film, we really felt we’d been to war and we’d somehow had a parallel experi- ence. We came home exhausted and after that I was so proud of making that film, artistically, that I felt I didn’t even need to make another film in my life. In a way if you’ve achieved something you’re really proud of early on it makes things easier — you’re not striving ambi- tiously. You have ambitions but it doesn’t get in the way of the project.


DB What has been your biggest obstacle? R O’B It’s always the disaster you don’t anticipate. That’s something you can never work out. Persuading people to part with their money. And they’re so stupid that they don’t love your film the way you do! But I’m an optimist so obstacles are hurdles to get over. Ken had a nasty accident last year and that was very hard. He was taking his plate back to the cater- ers [on the set of The Angels’ Share] and he fell and hit his head on the sharp corner of a step. Twelve stitches in his head — I’m not very good at blood. I was sitting on the ambulance steps trying not to pass out myself. That’s not Ken the film- maker, that’s Ken my friend. And then the crisis was what the hell do we do; it was day one of the shoot. We didn’t know — he’s 75 — how he was going to be after this. Was he going to be able to recover? We had to suspend The Angels’ Share for three weeks. And we weren’t ever sure how we were going to go back. Anyway, we got there, but I wouldn’t like to go through that again. n


s www.screendaily.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68