David Puttnam on ‘Discovering’ Alan Parker, Being Ready for Luck and James Dean’s Famous Line in ‘East of Eden’ 

For a brief period, over 1982-86, the U.K. enjoyed a remarkable film renaissance. Four films – “Chariots of Fire,” (1982) “Gandhi,” (1983) “The Killing Fields” (1985) and “The Mission” (1986) – won a total 19 Academy Awards, including Best Picture two years running. All of those films, save “Gandhi,” were produced by David Puttnam.

To this day, few figures are more associated with a national film revival. “The British are coming,” “The Chariots of Fire” screenwriter Colin Welland famously said in his Oscar speech. The main Brit Hollywood had on their radar was Puttnam. He was appointed CEO of Columbia Pictures in 1986, becoming the first and only foreigner ever, he notes, to serve on the board of the MPA. 

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Knighted in 1995, Puttman ended his film career in 1997, at 56, when he was appointed a life peer. “When I finished ‘Memphis Belle,’ I kind of knew that I was never going to make better films than the ones I’d already produced,” he has explained to Variety. Appointed to the U.K.’s House of Lords in 1997, he has dedicated his life to activism, both education and environmental concerns. 

27 years after leaving the film industry, David Puttnam attended Spain’s Seville European Film Festival where he delivered a Masterclass on the Art of Producing to a packed audience of producers, directors and students, some of which stood to give him a standing applause at the end. 

Moderated by Variety, the Masterclass was based on a lecture, delivered with a characteristic mix of energy, anecdote, a seriousness of purpose, self deprecation and a cheery grin. 10 Takes on what he said, and on David Puttnam’s life and films.  

He’s Not Done Yet

At 83, Puttnam served at Seville as president of the main competition jury, delivered a second Masterclass on Using Music in Film and a talk with fellow Jury member Jeremy Irons on The Art 0f Crafting an Iconic Film, “The Mission,” in which Irons starred. Many people half Puttnam’s age would have struggled with a third of that work load. Few people, however, have worked for hard for so long since leaving school at the age of 16. We have come to the world to make it a better place, he insists. His website C.V. lists 2 directorships and 11 positions, almost all in education. The Seville Festival was certainly a better place because of his spearheading a vibrant Industry forum, Frame, which also attracted high-level speakers from Spain, proving one of the main highlights of the Festival.

And the Passion and Belief Remains

“If we get our stories correct, if we continue to get our values correctly, that drip, drip, drip, drip, drip of good movies does have the opportunity to make people feel stronger, more connected, more relevant to the generation that they are part of,” Puttman said in old interview he played on screen at Seville.”I do believe passionately in cinema,” he said in Seville. His Seville Masterclass ended with the climax of “The Killing Fields,” maybe his greatest production. As John Lennon’s “Imagine” broke out on the soundtrack, Puttnam sat on the Seville stage, bowed his head, visibly moved, his right foot keeping time with the music.

David Puttnam: The Origins 

“I didn’t start off as a film producer, I started as an audience,” Puttnam said flipping up on the screen behind him a slide of himself, 12 years old or so  in school uniform, watching a film, with a gob-smacked Alan Parker, the same age and sporting a crew cut, beside him. As a kid, “I loved American movies,” he confessed in Seville. When he moved to the U.S. to become CEO of Columbia Pictures in 1986, he said he felt like he was returning home. 

But His Influences Multiply

At 15, he said, he was dumbstruck by what James Dean’s Cal Trask says near the end of “East of Eden,” a milestone in Hollywood ‘50s liberal cinema: “Man has a choice and it’s the choice makes him a man.” Yet, talking to Variety, Puttnam confessed that as a young film buff, he said his road to Damascus moment was catching Italian neorealist movies of a night at the London’s National Film Theatre. “I still think neorealism was the most important movement that ever happened,” he told Variety. Some of his movies, “Local Hero” for example, drink deeply from that well. 

A Master of Crossover Movies

A mid-‘60s ad industry career also taught him marketing, he tells Variety. These highly disparate influences help to explain Puttnam’s great movies, as a mixture of Hollywood audience ambition,  moral conscience, ideas – often a lot of them – and a sense of social or cultural point, more prevalent – at least at first glance – in European cinema. Not coincidently, many are also real stories or at least inspired by historical fact, lending an originality to plot, especially in “The Killing Fields,” and relevance of subject. “Try to capture the Zeitgeist!” Puttnam urged in Seville.

Modern Fables

It’s the moral conscience that sets them apart. Looked at one way, “Chariots of Fire,” “The Killing Fields” and “The Mission” (1986) are all fables about exemplary moral heroes who do not pursue self-interest, nor bend to circumstance nor the powers that be, whether in Eric Liddell’s refusing to run on a Sunday or in Father Gabriel’s not abandoning his Mission or in Dith Pran’s not abandoning Cambodia, remaining to report at huge personal risk on Cambodia’s fall to the Khmer Rouge. That conscience is brought home by lapidary lines, echoing the impact of James Dean’s in “East of Eden.” 

A Post-WWII Producer

One is delivered by Jeremy Iron’s Father Gabriel as he tries to persuade Robert de Niro’s Mendoza not to take up arms against invading Spanish and Portuguese forces: “If might is right, love has no place in the world. I don’t have the strength to live in a place like that.” Puttnam quoted it in his speech at Seville’s opening ceremony. “It’s a really incredible line, written by Robert Bolt and beautifully, beautifully delivered by Jeremy,” Puttnam told Variety. A doc-feature, “The Long Way Home” casts him as a “Blitz baby.” It made it clear that it has to have an effect on people,” he says. Puttnam’s films lament violence, promulgate love: “The Killing Fields” is “really a love story,” he suggests. He has fought for a united Europe, battling a Jack Valenti-led MPA to except the E.U.’s national film incentives from GATT freer trade talks in the early ‘90s. 

Amaze Me!

Yet these films are also made with a sense of audience. “Amaze me!” Puttnam recalls his boss at the ad agency urging him. Puttnam’s Oscar-winning ‘80s trio all have scenes which establish their films as productions of grandeur: the scene.setting shot of Cambridge, 1919; Father Gabriel climbing towering water falls and Pol Pot’s evacuation of Phnom Penh’s entire population.   

Connecting With New Generation

Puttnam’s Masterclass was aimed to serve as a springboard in which he would use an audience Q&A to reach out to a new generation of young filmmakers and students making up most of his audience in Seville to discover their take on what he’s said. Puttnam has always had a huge interest in and sure sense of new talent, It’s sometimes forgotten that “Chariots of Fire” and “The Killing Fields” were first features. Puttnam produced Ridley Scott’s debut “The Duellists” and also “discovered” Alan Parker, encouraging him to write his first screenplay (“Melody”) and to become a director while it filmed. As Puttnam recalls: “We were shooting on a school field and we had a spare camera, and I encouraged him to go off with the second camera and a focus puller. And literally he came back four hours later and said, “That’s it. Fuck it. This is what I’m going to do.”

‘Are You Ready for Luck?’   

The way Puttnam has it, his life’s turning points have often been matters of luck. He was “very lucky” to work in the same ad agency as Parker, Scott and Charles Saatchi. Equally, his appointment to the House of Lords was “a piece of luck.” And if Puttnam, alongside the French government, beat Valenti, it’s wasn’t of their own doing but rather President Clinton’s withdrawal of support for the MPA’s pretensions. “Yes, I’ve had a lot of luck. Every single one of you will have a moment of luck, I promise you. It comes,” Puttnam said in is Masterclass. “Here’s the difference. Are you ready for it when it happens? Are you really, really ready for it? When that break comes, that moment comes, that meeting comes, that script comes.” Few people as a filmmaker and activist politician have been readier for their breaks, seizing them with huge energy, capability and conscience, than David Puttnam.