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DVDFILE: What was your involvement in the special edition of Gandhi?
Richard Attenborough: Well, the sad thing is that I'm not
involved at all. I work for an organization called Unicef and if you are
actively involved in Unicef you tend to go off the face of the earth for
X number of days when you go to very remote areas and so on. I was in
Mozambique when it was being done and consequently I wasn't able
to be involved in the recording.
So, other than making the movie, I don't appear on the DVD unless
they've - - I haven't seen it yet, so unless they discovered
interviews or discussions about the movie that I did 20 years ago, I haven't
done anything recently at all.
DF: No, there's no interviews with you, just Ben Kingsley.
RA: You've just got it, have you? It's just recently
been released. It hasn't appeared here yet. I think it's just
about appearing...
DF: That's right, you're in Region 2...
RA: We're (the industry is) crazy. We should conform because
it's an additional cost. It's inconvenient. It's a problem
that you've got to work on if you get a U.S. DVD title rather than
the European one. It's stupid and shortsighted. We will regret it.
The sooner we (all) conform, the better, I think.
DF: Had you been able to do an audio commentary, what would you have
liked to say?
RA: Well, I would like to have talked briefly about the difficulty
of making certain movies with certain subject matter which are very difficult
to finance, partly because they are quite expensive, but secondly because
certainly these days they're even more difficult to find backing for.
If they don't contain some form of pornography or violence or sex or whatever,
then biography and literacy and so on are not the easiest of subject matters
to find huge audiences.
Gandhi itself, I mean the film itself, took virtually 19 or 20 years
to get make. And not to get the permissions in India - which I got straight
away from Pandit Nehru and so on - nor to get the major writers to write
for the screenplay. But to actually persuade the financiers that there
was in fact, if one marketed it correctly, a major audience. And so at
the end of a frustrating 17 or 18 years, I set about raising the money
privately and from private individuals, from pension funds, from insurance
companies from unions. We also raised money from India and the Lateral
Film Development Corporation. We made the film without any industry money
whatsoever, and it was only after the picture was completed that we showed
it to all the majors in the United States, and Columbia came through with
a colossal offer. We were then able to pay back every backer that had
supported the movie, which was tremendous.
So, if I wanted to say anything it is if you feel deeply enough and passionately
enough and sufficiently committed, don't give up. Don't dumb it down,
don't compromise beyond the point where you believe it's acceptable. And
eventually, I swear you'll make it.
DF: Do you intentionally pick projects about historical figures, or
is it just coincidence that you've made so many interesting biographies?
RA: That's a very good question and I'm not sure that there's
a totally clear answer. I don't derive enormous satisfaction from the
pyrotechnics of the cinema. That isn't what fascinates me. What fascinates
me is the ability in biography of the extraordinary opportunity of examining
and magnifying the elements which make up these huge figures who, in one
way or another, are very different figures.
Chaplin and Gandhi were somewhat different. Steve Biko was very different
to Winston Churchill. But they are the people who've changed our attitudes
and questioned our principles and in a way resulted in solutions being
put up. Cry Freedom, with Denzel (Washington) and Kevin (Kline) changed
opinions in South Africa. I want to say certain things, I want to convey
certain passions and convictions, and movies can do what no other medium
has done – television is beginning to do it. Television is beginning
to give its time and its blessing and so on to subject matter which is
of lasting importance.
It's really those aspects that I love in the movies. I love actors. I
love working with actors. I love creating characters or recreating characters
who have had a massive impact on our attitudes and convictions and that's
what fascinates me. It is the principle of biography which I love. Biography
is what I read, what I know a bit about. I don't tend to read fiction
as much as I read fact, and it is those elements which the lord God has
smiled and said, “Oh, that's what's you want to do. You get on with
that.” Because I'm in seventh heaven. I just adore doing it.
DF: What future projects would you like to tackle?
RA: I have another subject now which I desperately want to make,
which is a film on the life of Thomas Paine, and I'm encountering exactly
the same difficulties that I encountered 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40
years ago. I'm not going to give in. I may drop dead in the interim because
I'm getting quite old now, but most important of all is to stick to your
principles and stick to what you want to do. Don't be persuaded to do
things for the wrong reasons.
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