Soho Is The Place For Me

It’s hard to describe the frisson that was the London production scene in the late 90s. Every generation has its you-had-to-be-there-mate bores, who believe their experience of being young was more vital than that of the following generations. Being young is wicked so some nostalgia is inevitable as you get older. However, I have no wistful desire to return to this time — the best album is always the latest album — I just want to acknowledge it.

There was an axis in Soho that ran from Brewer Street, down Great Pulteney Street, along Beak Street to Kingly Court — a sort of creative lay line that had its locus in Smith’s Court where the Academy Films office was located. It thrummed with an originality that for a period defined culture.

I was a runner at Academy: a 20-year-old college drop out, earning 12 grand a year, and on top of the fucking world. Academy had — and still has — a magical roster of directors, led by at the time by Jonathan Glazer and Walter Stern, and bolstered by new recruits Floria Sigismondi, who had just moved to London, and Nick Gordon. Our shit was the best in the West End, and everyone knew it.

Despite my academic failings I could string a sentence together and had watched a lot of films, so I got to proof read treatments and do visual research, as well as all the other shit like shotting U-Matics around town. My favourite was going to Legas Delaney to drop off a reel. If you walked slowly it took an hour to get there and back. Always had at least a ton of petty cash in my pocket. I would bop to Zwemmer’s to pick up a copy of ‘Ray’s A Laugh’ for research, and then go and see whatever was on at the Photographer’s Gallery. Always trying to find time to loaf — to doss. I didn’t have a a mobile phone so no one could nause me up. I would swing by Dreamy Lips to see Wulfboy. One time Mr Ricky, a former Eurovision Song contestant, Malta’s number one Lothario, and proprietor of said grot shop, unquestionably Peter Street’s worst, tried to persuade me to store 2000 porno videos at my flat.

Always pints at the Glasshouse for lunch. On Thursdays the dealer would pull up in afternoon. Then it was off to the Sun and Thirteen Cantons for continental lager and rails of pokey chisel in the bogs, until bitter liquified snot started trickling into the back of your throat and numbing your tonsils. From there we went to Two Floors for beaucoup vodka, lime and sodas, and then the Atlantic Bar. By that time of night it was a rogue’s gallery — Jonathan, Walter, Chris Cunnigham, Paul Kaye, Jim Wilson the exec at Film 4, Walter Campbell, sometimes Lynne Ramsey, the writers David Schinto and Louis Mellis, Richard Brown et al. We drunk yammered about cinema, books, and records. One night Louis pitched me an idea about a deranged medieval seer called Duncan Pearl, who travelled Britain with a lunatic morality play aimed at corrupting the populace.

The afters was sometimes at Jonathan’s house in Camden, home of a large Aga which was dubbed the most expensive cigarette lighter in London. Sometimes we went to Stroud Green with Walter Stern and Dan Landin. I just listened and played with the cat as they talked about Svankmajer and Hungarian history long into the night. Walter is a true cineaste. He’s seen everything. Sometimes I went to Cambridge Circus to buy dirt weed and then got a mini cab home from Moses’s Cab office on Romilly Street, financed by discarded pound coins nicked from Lizie Gower’s desk. Sometimes I slept in the office. Floria’s producer, with that enviable North American work ethic, arrived at the office one Saturday morning to find me and Oliver asleep on the sofa.

I got to do a lot of research for Jonathan. I’ve seen every Tarkovsky film on fast forward. I remember pulling Alan Clarke clips for the U.N.K.L.E ‘Rabbit In Your Headlights’ video. He always made the time to take me through his storyboards and ask my opinion. I made tea for David and Louis as they worked on the script for ‘Sexy Beast’. They let me read an early draft. People were generous with their time and ideas. I saw the process. I saw how magic was conjured. Later I met Jean-Claude Carrière — Luis Bunuel’s scenarist — as he worked with Jonathan on the screenplay for ‘Birth’. We had a brief conversation about Herman Hesse — I had just read the ‘Glass Bead Game’.

I remember pulling the script for Guinness ‘Surfer’ out of the fax machine, photocopying it, and putting it on Nick Morris’s desk. One paragraph of extraordinary writing, and a picture of Walter Crane’s painting ‘The Horses of Neptune’. That is unthinkable now as agencies assail us with 80 page keynote monstrosities.

Walter Stern would arrive at the office at 11pm. I would sit with him at a computer all night and try and translate the sui generis explosions of his mind into something coherent, while he smoked a 1000 Silk Cut. Perhaps these hours would now be seen as exploitative, but I truly treasured every second in his company.

My first encounter with the late Steve Golin was at Academy as they negotiated a pioneering deal with Propaganda. I got him an almond croissant from Patisserie Valerie. Spike Jonze also visited. We talked about ‘Video Days’ and he gave me a copy of the first draft of ‘Being John Malkovich’ to read.

All these collisions happened in a small first floor office overlooking Smith’s Court. In the spring the stable doors hung open and you could hear the shouts of Berwick Street market traders who still stored their carts in Farrier’s Passage.

On Fridays we played football and ‘Duke Nuke ‘em’ on top ten hangovers, and ate fried egg sandwiches.

There isn’t a film school in the world that could provide these experiences. They were so formative for me, and I will always be grateful for them.