RICHARD CRAVEN - PRODUCER
I directed my first film at the age of eleven. My enthusiasm for making movies came from seeing Antonioni’s “L’Avventura” at a local cinema. My early professional training began working for film production companies, starting at Fundamental Films on a weekly salary of $4.50. Later I worked as 2nd and 1st assistant editor in the cutting rooms of Shepperton, MGM, and with the Oscar winning editor Max Benedict at Pinewood Studios on The Magus where I became Acting Film Editor after Max’s early departure.
When in 1976, the British government announced they were shutting down the National Film Corporation which funded script development, I argued that Britain should no longer depend on being a service industry to the Americans, but instead should produce our own indigenous movies for release to the world, disseminating our culture, retaining profits in the UK, with the winning argument that ‘Trade follows Film’. At this time I founded the Association of Independent Producers (AIP) with its Council of Forty comprised of prominent film makers (David Puttnam, Jack Gold, Simon Perry, Mark Shivas, Michael Radford, etc). Later I became a member of the National Film Development Advisory Panel, Chairman of the London Script Workshops, and Secretary to the All Industry Committee chaired by Sir Robert Bolt. As a consequence, I worked with Harold Wilson and his minister, Michael Meacher, to draw up legislation for the creation of a British Film Authority, which was later thrown out by Margaret Thatcher. However in 1982, Channel Four was set up, and in 1990, BBC Film. Between them they currently finance 20 to 30 movies annually.
After leaving AIP, I was involved in a production capacity on fourteen feature films including: Monty Python’s Meaning of Life (Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones), Honky Tonk Freeway (John Schlesinger) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (Michael Radford). I also founded Eureka The Location Company in London and Toronto which managed over thirty features, TV movies and series including: Gothic (Ken Russell), Highlander (Russell Mulcahy), Brazil (Terry Gilliam), Losing Chase (Kevin Bacon), JFK – Reckless Youth (Harry Winer), The Adjuster (Atom Egoyan), and Robocop-the TV Series. I was a producer of the award winning My Way Home (Bill Douglas), and associate producer on the Oscar winning short film, A Shocking Accident (James Scott) based on the Graham Greene story, and a producer of The Overcoat (Morris Panych), a musical for television audiences. My most recent activity, apart from my work at Casablanca, has been Script Consultant on Andy Kaknevicius’s wonderful screenplay “The Legend of Giizhik Island”.