This seems like such a weird movie. It’s a hagiography of a film producer? Who was the son of the person who did the Carry On movies?!
And he has really British cars!? What is this!
This is really well done, but I don’t know nothing about this producer and what movies he’s gotten made. And the more I watch clips from them I’m going “oh, he’s basically doing what his father and uncle were doing — only more artier”. That is, there’s a lot of Totes Serious And Not Funny Movies But With Boobs.
All those movies by directors where you’re going… “well, that was kinda embarrassing”. You know, Bertolucci movies. It seems like that’s his specialty.
OK, I’m a guy who detests documentaries. If you want to tell people something, can’t you just write a blog post? (Yes yes I know.)
But this is like the ideal documentary for me. You don’t get any talking heads (except Tilda Swinton) talking about the subject, and then it’s just this guy filming this other guy and asking him awkward questions.
And he doesn’t ask him “did you think having Art Garfunkel as the lead in a movie was a good idea?” No, instead he asks him to word associate on “mother”.
It’s great!
After watching this movie, I have a vague idea that Jeremy Thomas produced pretty much all the most dire “serious” movies of the 80s and the 90s — think Roeg and Bertolucci — and then did other really dire movies.
Let’s check whether that’s correct, because this documentary doesn’t really get into the details…
Yes! All those movies! I even like some of them, but they’re certainly… a thing…
So, I really enjoyed this documentary, and for every single clip they showed of a Thomas-produced movie, I disliked him a bit more. Fantastic! How on Earth did this get made!?
The Storms of Jeremy Thomas. Mark Cousins. 2021.
This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.