European Film Awards

A matter of responsability, This was the theme of Lord David Puttnam's Keynote adress and discussion at The General Assembly of the Academy, in Berlin Concorde Hotel.

David was my boss when I was running Columbia TriStar distribution in France.

His words still resonate in my mind from the last time we met in Cannes, some 15 years ago or so, about the new Catch Line designed for the Columbia Studio branding (which he was running for a year).

"Movies That Matter".

In a private conversation walking la Croisette after a film presentation (Times of the Gypsies perhaps?) he was stressing the big responsibilty as film and studio executive sending millions of people to see our films in the theatres (I am proud of the 180 M tickets I sold in France for the films I marketed).

We do have a responsibility to all these kids who watch our films, films where death is only a special effect... Some people care some others do not provided the Box Office is good.

The words David delivered today were totally in line with this and still those of a visionary.

Puttnam was chairman of the National Film and Television School for 10 years  and taught people such as Nick Park. He founded Skillset, which trains young people to become members of the film and television industries. In 2002 he was elected UK president of UNICEF.[15]

Lord Puttnam was the first chancellor of the University of Sunderland from 1997 until 13 July 2007. He was appointed an Honorary Doctor of Education at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning's Academic Awards Ceremonies in his final week as Chancellor and was granted the Freedom of the City of Sunderland upon his retirement.[16] In 1998, he founded the National Teaching Awards and became its first chairman. He was the founding chairman of the General Teaching Council 2000-2002. He was appointed as chancellor of the Open University in 2007.[17] He was also the Chairman of NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) from 1998 until 2003. He is also chairman of Futurelab and on the board of directors of learning technologies company Promethean.

His closing words were enligthened with a very moving clip from East of Eden.

David was so brave introducing the "matter", responsabilty element to the Studio, even braver when he told Agents that Actors were paid too much... The Studio could NOT understand NOR accept this vision. He left to implement his vision somewhere else where it was needed.

In fact David has devoted the last 15 years to implementing it in his various capacities putting him in direct contact with teachers and young people...

And now something totally...different in a different studio:

This echoes a strange note with this second memory of my Studio days at Fox - the Studio Chief tells me after he made me an offer I could not refuse :" This is truly remarkable, we understand each other so well, so fast and share same views on the Market...we will...  ( what?????? that's teasing)

Well, I was naively expecting something around "fun", "passion", "shared working pleasure" ...no!

His words were. "We will make a lot of money together". 

Sounded so American, so Hollywood, (money comes first, no shame) but also not what MATTERED most to me, I believe in sucess more than money.

Of course he is still running that Studio andvery sucessfull making a lot of money with his films...

Which leaves us in Europe with a mission of making "Movies that Matter" which Hollywood cannot make (unless by accident).