Playwright, screenwriter, film director, musician rolled into one
Anthony Minghella
"That was a really important part of my life. There was a rich music scene on the Island at the time and for me writing songs developed later into writing plays. Music was a very vibrant ingredient in my life, and I originally saw my early plays as being a format for music." - Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella played keyboards in a couple of bands Earthlight and Dancer fronted by Mike Jolliffe. In 1972 Dancer recorded the unreleased Tales of the Riverbank at Olympic Studios, Barnes with Tony McPhee of the Groundhogs as producer. Dancer folded soon after with Anthony Minghella going to Hull University.
On 20th July, 1974 the teenage Islander recorded a batch of songs at Tom Taylor's Peacock Sound Studios in Medina Avenue, Newport. They included: Tell Me That I'm Wrong, Every Child, Dancer, House Song 4, Ballad of Macnulty's Wife, 10 Past Sometime, Yesterday (It was only!) Dream of Fair Women, Telegram. Cost of the session £13.00 + VAT. (Total £14.30).
Literary prizes followed from his studies at Hull for a series of plays. Anthony Minghella also wrote scripts for TV programmes, Grange Hill and Inspector Morse. His first role as a film director heralded the acclaimed Truly, Madly, Deeply. A second film, Mr. Wonderful, took him to Hollywood.
The English Patient, his third film, contains small roles for his parents Eddie and Gloria Minghella, plus wartime footage of the Isle of Wight. The film scooped nine Oscars in 1997 including Best Film and Best Director for Anthony Minghella. In his Oscar speech Anthony Minghella said "This has been a triumph for the Isle of Wight . . ."
The English Patient
A masterpiece in the making
The Oscars, win, lose or flop, however, are a necessary oiling of the wheels of a multi million pound industry. Deals are sealed, lost or disappear on a whim. A marketplace where the Isle of Wight born film director has carved a niche with his highly respected films Mr. Wonderful and Truly, Madly, Deeply.
Anthony Minghella has all right attributes for the film market. He is a musician, writer and film director rolled into one. These talents have combined over the last four years on a project that has consumed much of his time. From the short preview the director gave me I sense that The English Patient has all the hallmarks of a cinema classic. Story, location, fine actors/actresses and superb music pieced together by this cinematic craftsman.
As the lone writer Anthony Minghella sequestered himself away writing the screenplay for Michael Ondaatje's 1992 Booker Prize scooping novel The English Patient. It would take him eighteen lonely months.
"When that year and a half was finished writing I was able to go out and play with 150 people making the film. Then I get back into a small room again and now there's only six of us left working. So there's a rhythm of public and private life which is great for me. It's healthy."'So you're full on one minute then . . .'
"Yes then I'm very private, I can be introspective. You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that. But I still get the chance to go back and be private again."
After completing the screenplay the director spent two years filming in Tunisia and Italy. A broken ankle, taking command from a wheelchair, all part and parcel of his army on the march lifestyle.
Now he is back from the front. Home from hauling actors and baggage across North African caravan routes and the splendour of his own parents homeland Italy. Anthony Minghella's own birthplace lies some 5,000 miles east of his temporary Berkeley residence. A tiny, rugged diamond isle, long the haunt of poets, painters and mystics. The Isle of Wight will get a couple of brief nods in this current film. "I've got in a couple of Island references," he notes with pride. "I had to argue but . . .'' Even Picasso got to sign his own paintings.
"If I wasn't working in film, I would be a musician. Music is a very, very important part of my life. I went to the Freight and Salvage last night to see Marta Sebestyen, this fabulous Hungarian folk singer. You'll hear her in the film."
Later in a short preview of the film Sebestyen's high mountain stream clear vocal hangs another dimension to the cinematic splendour of the film.
Anthony Minghella described the English Patient as he flipped through scenes being edited on this sophisticated Apple Mac system:
"Its about betrayals really. Betrayals in war. Betrayals in peace. Betrayals of internationalism. It's about internationalism really and about why the war which insisted on nationality of German and English and was such a divisive and horrible thing and the damage that is caused by people being Brits or Irish and its a sort of plea for internationalism but it takes the form of a story about a guy who apparently who betrays the English and then you discover that he feels in his own way that the English betrayed him. And this patient whose called the English Patient because when he's first washed up they don't know where he's come from you discover he isn't actually English at all. So there are many gags, many plays on nationality."
The English Patient begins in pre-Second World War North Africa where mysterious Hungarian Al Masy, played by Ralph Fiennes of Schindler's List, is mapping out the desert. A plane crash leaves him horribly burned. Aided by Bedouins he finds his way to Italy where Hannah, played by French actress Juliette Binoche, tends to his wounds.
"They end up in a monastery she finds and she stops being a nurse. The wars nearly over. She ends up looking after him in this old house, this old monastery and then what happens is he starts to remember how he got to be burned. So you go back now to the desert prior the war with these explorers mapping out the desert and he meets and falls in love with this women here," points Anthony Minghella to a scene from the film which shows actor Ralph Fiennes as the English Patient with Kristian Scott Thomas playing Catherine his British lover.Anthony Minghella continues through various scenes pointing out the cast as they flip by on the preview screen:
"You know, Colin Firth because he's had all this fuss with Mr Darcy, well he's in it. Ray Fiennes whose in Schindler's List, he's playing the leading role, Willem Defoe is in the film, he was in Platoon. And what we're doing here is the first half of the film and we're just putting it together with its various locations."
'So what's your deadline for the film?'
"We have to deliver it on September 1st"
'Is that a tough deadline?'
"Yes impossible."
'So what are you going to do? Stay up all night?'
"Well just work as hard as we can. We've got three rooms here with people all working trying to complete it."
'So are you making the major decisions and somebody else is implementing it?'
"No its more of a collaboration. We've got an editor and he's in charge of post producing and I'm just working alongside him really. Otherwise it becomes too much of a monomania thing, thinking you can do everything. It's quite powerful, there's a lot of interesting stuff in it. We've got a huge amount of film in here. The entire films in here."
'You keep it backed up obviously?'
"Yes we've got backups of the material but also we've got all the material on film as well so we can just digitise it and put it back in again. It's a very powerful editing tool."
For the technically minded the system is Apple Macintosh based. No different to your average desktop system at work or home but a tad souped up to the hilt in memory and go faster chips.
'Have you only just started to work with the system?'After my chat with the director. A sneak preview of the film. My knowledge of Anthony Minghella's track record. I do not believe he is capable of delivering a bad film. For the past hour he has been too relaxed to suggest otherwise. For the hard part is over. The script written, the film all shot and 'in the can' as filmspeak goes. I do not think it can fail to be anything but a cracker."On this sort of system? Yes, I'd never been involved in anything that's cut on this scale, I'd done a few commercials."
'As a system it must be cheaper than a traditional film studio?'
"It isn't a cheaper actually but its faster, so you save money that way. its also much, more flexible for a film like this where you've got a huge number of locations and scenes and you need to move quickly between them so we can move fairly quickly with this."
'How do you pull all this together it sounds like such a monumental task to actually to get people in one place and organised?'
"That's exactly what it is. Like organising some sort of war. It's been four years work. It's been a huge labour of love."
'You are obviously pleased with it?'
"I'm pleased to have gotten this far. Whether the film will be a success, who knows? It's a gamble and you hope the gamble will pay off. Its something that I care about a lot."
'That's what I meant you've cared about it and you've enjoyed doing it'
"A huge amount, so do all the other people involved in it. You hope that the net result of that will be a film that you're proud of."
'So do you worry about the critics at all?'
"Yes of course, they can stop you working. They can stop people going to see the film. Yes I do worry. You want everybody to support you. Also there is a huge amount of money involved in this film and I feel responsible for spending it."
'Can I ask how much?'
"More than 35 million dollars. It's a lot of money. You feel responsible. To try to give the people who invested in it their money back and encourage them to do it again."
At the moment we have a problem with length because it is running so long. It will be two and half hours long, I think, but at the moment its about four an half hours. At the moment we're cutting, lots of sorting out to do but that's all right."
'When is it due on release?'
"At the end of the year."
Although Anthony Minghella is caught on a tight deadline in Berkeley there is still time to invest in another of his great passions Portsmouth Football Club or to their supporters `Pompey'.
"I spent 18 days in England last year, but I did get to see Pompey play. I took my wife, all she did was complain about their tactics. The great thing I have discovered is the Pompey page on the Net. That's the reason I joined up," he laughs.
If those computer salesmen only knew. The way to a international film director's heart is to guide him to the Pompey page on the Internet. So aside from the serious business of film making and script writing Anthony Minghella's Apple Mac powerbook is keeping in touch with the fortunes of Portsmouth Football Club.
I finally asked him 'What's next?'"I'm going to be doing a 1930's operetta, something totally different for me. What I am also very interested in doing is film about Art Pepper the jazz saxophone player."
'Straight Life?'
"Yes. There have been jazz films done before but they have not been very successful at the box office, like Bird. What interests me about Pepper is that he's a white jazz player from Italian parentage who played like he was black."
Art Pepper's book Straight Life stands with Charles Mingus's Beneath the Underdog as the starkest testimony on record to the jazz life. A great saxophone player who falls foul of drugs, to crime, ends up in prison and finally finds redemption in his fourth love Laurie. It is the kind of bitter sweet tale that a craftsman like Anthony Minghella deserves a shot at. Anybody out there got a few million quid to spare?
(Mike Plumbley interviewed Anthony Minghella in Berkeley, California on Wednesday March 20th, 1996)