'It became apparent that I would have to direct because I was so passionate about the material.'
'I went to see a US executive to finance The Crying Game. He looked at me and said, 'do you think that audiences want to see a movie in which the protagonist is a terrorist?' I said, 'It's about someone trying to escape from terrorism.' Then he said, 'do you think that audiences want to see a film in which the protagonist is white and the female interest is black? People in America don't want to see multi-racial relationships. They don't have them.' Finally he said, 'do you think that audiences want to see a film where the woman turns out to be a man? You've got to be kidding.' He threw the script across the room. I walked out and thought, 'I really want to make this film.'
Stephen Woolley is the producer of over twenty-three feature films, a number of them - such as The Crying Game , Michael Collins and Interview with the Vampire - in collaboration with renowned director Neil Jordan, and he has executive-produced twenty more in a remarkably diverse career. Prior to producing he was the manager of the Scala cinema, film journalist for publications such as Time Out and launched Palace Video, which marketed and distributed over 250 independent and European movies. Now after a career spanning thirty years he has directed his first film but says, 'I feel just as proud of managing the Scala as I do about directing my first feature because film is one big collaboration. You can't belittle any part of the process.'
Stoned seeks to unravel the enigma of Brian Jones, the founder of The Rolling Stones, and his premature death at the age of twenty-seven in 1969. Jones was found floating in his swimming pool at the house where A. A. Milne wrote Winnie the Pooh: appropriate for a musician who insisted on wading into the deep end in life as in art and whose youthful insolence made him a kind of Peter Pan figure flying with the aid of drugs that didn't help his notoriously petulant mood swings. The film follows his relationships with the Stones and his lovers, looking for the key to the mystery, and settles upon his tense repartee with working class builder Frank Thorogood who was present at his death.
'What I wanted for Stoned ' says Woolley, 'was not just the traditional biopic of a successful rock star but also to mirror the state of Britain in terms of the class system and the culture in the sixties and how it was changing.' In person Woolley is an engaging speaker and it's easy to see how he has managed to shepherd sometimes controversial subject matter from script to screen in the face of scepticism from financiers. The Crying Game dealt with terrorism and transvestism, Michael Collins dealt with the renowned leader of the IRA and Scandal dealt with the 1962 Profumo scandal when Minister of War John Profumo was exposed in an affair with showgirl Christine Keeler.
Having produced Scandal and Backbeat about the fifth member of the Beatles, which was also set in the sixties, Woolley is returning to a British decade that in some ways he has cinematically made his own. Just as in Scandal , in Stoned there is a detective story - a truth to uncover to make the film - and as in Backbeat the story deals with one of the two most famous bands of the era, with all the challenges of portraying well-known figures, yet focuses upon a fifth band member who would fall by the wayside. It's clear that Woolley is fascinated by the tensions of the era he was born into. From a young age he was a fan of the Stones, all the more so growing up in working-class Islington.
'Although we didn't think we were poor as kids, five of us slept in one room and we had a little kitchen; we didn't have a fridge or a telephone or a car. So the film for me was about wanting to be in the world of Brian Jones as a child but in reality living in the world of Frank, the builder. My uncles were very angry because they'd all fought in the Second World War with incredible discipline and that was all being thrown away by these effeminate young boys with their long hair, their girls, their drugs and their way of being. The incredible anger that the Establishment showed towards people like Brian Jones was a reflection of what the general public thought.'
'For me Stoned is actually a reflection on the times and the characters of Brian and Frank are metaphors for Britain at that time.' One of the key concerns for Woolley was therefore remaining faithful to the people and the period. As with Scandal , Stoned doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the decadent lifestyle of its central characters, which is essential to exemplify what so enraged mainstream society. 'I said to the cast very clearly that the film wasn't going to be namby-pamby: it was going to be everything or nothing. In films all people do is linger on women and never on men. I wanted to keep changing that so that the eroticism of the film works for both men and women.'
Another aspect of that fidelity is the extraordinary production design, which is all the more impressive given the film's tight budget. One of the reasons that the film took over ten years to make was because of the difficulties in finding funding. 'Few of the films I've produced have been easy to fund and The Crying Game was the toughest' says Woolley, 'It was difficult to raise money for Stoned because we had great actors but no stars. Apparently kids don't want to see period films - they just appeal to old people - and there's not enough in the film about The Rolling Stones. I think if I was making the Keith Richards and Mick Jagger story then it would have been slightly different.'
Nevertheless Woolley was determined that the film should be about Jones rather than The Rolling Stones. 'When I made Backbeat I realised that while Mick Jagger was at the London School of Economics the Beatles were playing in strip clubs in Hamburg taking speed to stay up all night and hanging out with existentialists. That myth that I grew up with that the Beatles were soft and lovely and the Rolling Stones were the leaders of the revolution was just that: a myth. When I read the books on Brian Jones in the early nineties I discovered who that spirit of anarchy was in The Rolling Stones in the sixties. Here was the one who was really living the life.'
'That led me not only to build that character as best I could but also to make sure that the story was accurate. That's why I went to such lengths to track down Anna Rohlins [Brian's girlfriend] who hadn't spoken to anyone since 1969. Then I spoke to the police officer that was considering re-opening the inquiry into Brian's death. He said that I would never find Janet Lawson [also present on the night of Brian's death] but I hired a very good private detective and he managed to get an address for her. She was my final piece of the puzzle. Without Anna and Janet's testimony I couldn't have made the film because looking at what they both had to say I realised the truth of what happened.'
'Janet gave me the story of that night from Frank's point of view and Anna gave it to me from Brian's point of view. It then became apparent that I would have to direct the film because I was becoming so passionate about the material.' So what of the Rolling Stones, peripheral figures in the film but nevertheless inextricable from Brian's story? 'I think that they're an incredible band of entertainers. I didn't realise how long and how hard they worked to get what they've achieved. That was really the difference between Brian and them in many respects. I've sent them a copy of the film but I'm not going to hold my breath. They're more likely not to respond. It's too big a machine. It's a monolith.'
And Brian? 'I love the party games about what Brian might have been if he hadn't died. He would have been so at home with glam rock because he was glam rock personified. World music: he coined that term before it was invented. He scored Volker Schlondorff's film A Degree of Murder that no one's ever seen but Schlondorff then made Tin Drum , which won an Oscar, and Brian might have scored that. Would Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer have loved Brian? Yes they would: Brian was the ultimate punk. However the reality for me is that if it hadn't happened that night then it would have happened some other night because Brian was so close to the edge. I think that Brian probably had much bigger problems than anyone ever knew.' Peter Fraser
|
