The Storms of Jeremy Thomas
Mark Cousins focuses in on the career of the remarkable independent film producer Jeremy Thomas.
Mark and Jeremy
When working for television between 1996 and 2003, Mark Cousins interviewed a substantial number of actors and film directors discussing with them in detail extracts from their work. That model – the series was called ‘Scene by Scene’ – is evoked by this new work which again features Cousins talking to a man of cinema, but this time to a producer. Studies of filmmaking rarely focus on producers but it is entirely understandable that Cousins should have wanted to look at the career of Jeremy Thomas. That’s because, in addition to being one of Britain's most notable producers, Thomas is singled out by the fact that his chosen role is that of an independent individual backing artistic work appealing to him. He can be readily drawn to controversial subject matter and that has resulted in collaborations with the likes of Nicolas Roeg, Takashi Miike and David Cronenberg (1996’s Crash being one of the most famous films produced by Thomas).
This new documentary may carry echoes of those TV programmes but for a variety of reasons it proves to be less effective. For one thing, while Thomas claims to enjoy talking to Cousins, he is not somebody whose comments are readily forthcoming so as to provide a naturally revealing flow. Consequently, much of what we hear comes from Cousins who has to work hard. For another thing, the many extracts shown are relatively brief and, because Thomas did not write or direct the films (save for his one attempt at directing, 1998’s All the Little Animals), trying to get at Thomas’s personality and character by referencing these clips can easily seem forced. Furthermore, Cousins chooses to avoid both the personal (there is a minimum about Thomas’s private life) and any discussion of the problems inherent in the work of a producer setting up a movie.
When it comes to assessing the filmmaking qualities in this documentary, one can certainly cite it as a further example of how good Mark Cousins has become as a photographer. Structurally, though, the film is all at sea. It sets out as a piece which will show Thomas driving from his Oxfordshire home to attend the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, a journey taking five days as he travels with Cousins as his passenger and including certain stops along the way. However, the road movie aspect which seems a settled set-up is ditched after 50 minutes. That’s because at that point we find that Cannes has been reached and the film then switches to recording five days spent there. Nevertheless, regardless of the location, it is in this segment that Thomas is encouraged to talk about his favourite films and about film stars and he agrees also to take part in a game of word association. It is here too that Ken Loach's colleague Rebecca O'Brien describes Thomas as a producer’s producer. Her contribution is the briefest of clips, but elsewhere we get longer comments about Jeremy Thomas from both Debra Winger and Tilda Swinton.
Even if some of this is self-indulgent, none of it is boring, but there is no sense of the piece being properly shaped as a finished film: it feels haphazard, not genuinely structured. And, even if one does get an impression of Jeremy Thomas as an Englishman who admires outsider artists and is himself possessed of unbridled passions within, it remains the case that ultimately an early comment made by Cousins about him comes to feel indicative of the film’s limitations: "His face doesn't give much away". But, if we learn less than we might have hoped, the film extracts will encourage viewers to seek out many of the works touched on, be it to see them again or for the first time?
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Jeremy Thomas, Mark Cousins, Debra Winger, Tilda Swinton, Rebecca O’Brien.
Dir Mark Cousins, Pro Dermot P. Kelly, Screenplay Mark Cousins, Ph Mark Cousins, Ed Timo Langer.
David P.Kelly Films/Cyprus Avenue Films/Creative Scotland-Curzon Film World.
94 mins. USA. 2021. UK Rel: 10 December 2021. Cert. 15 .