Why Does It Take so Many of Us to Make a Film?
Summary
In an inversion of the usual procedure, the driver of a white van screams, 'Ackshuuuuuun!', and the director cries, 'Tosser!' I am that director and I am standing on the knuckle of the roundabout at the bottom of Archway Road, waiting for the woman recently voted by Channel 4 viewers as the Best British Actress of All Time to appear at the wheel of an ageing VW Golf below the Victorian iron bridge, which has been christened - for good reasons - 'Suicide Bridge'.
I am shooting a film of Zo Heller's novel Notes on a Scandal and, over the weeks of the shoot - mainly in streets, houses and schools in north London - I am made vividly aware (not for the first time) of the scorn in which the public hold the activity of filming. Not the actors, of course, and certainly not Dame Judi Dench. Alan Bennett once observed to me that the worst-taste T-shirt, worse even than 'Hitler: the European tour', would be one that read, 'I hate Judi Dench'. On the streets of north London, she is either unrecognised (disguised in a short wig as a frumpy schoolteacher), or approached with the deference and affection reserved for a deity.See the full content of this document
Extract
Why Does It Take so Many of Us to Make a Film?
But while Judi Dench is revered, members of the crew are occasionally reviled. Their intrusive presence and privileged occupation is all too conspicuous, as is their perceived arrogance in forcing rea...
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