James Graham Interview
From a low budget Documentary maker to a senior role at Steven Speilberg's Amblin, then into the world of film finance, James Graham speaks exclusively to thecallsheet.co.uk about his life and career in film.
You’re not listed on IMDb and you seem to keep a low profile, can you tell us some of the films you have worked on and in what capacity?
It’s interesting about keeping a low profile. If you work in-house at a large production company, you don’t usually get a credit, or you didn’t when I first started working. Increasingly the ranks of producers have been enlarged by sales agents, lawyers and financiers, all jockeying for position with each other in being producers, or executive producers, but normally if you are staff member you still don’t get a credit. I’ve mostly been a staff person, head of production or in-house producer, starting out as just in-house production staff, but as such, not earning a credit. That sits fine with me: I’m a supporter of the current movement for truthful credits that’s been heightened by the fact that when there is an Academy nomination for best film, there’s often 10-15 people with the word ‘producer’ in their title, which is clearly ridiculous, and the Academy has to winnow this down to who actually did the job. There are only one, two or three people at most that you could realistically call the producer of a project.
How did you start out?
My background was in documentary and a stint at film school, so from going to $80,000 documentary (back in the 1980s) to a $50m feature film was quite a jump. But what I learnt very quickly was that if you kept your common sense, most things were the same in principle. The people I found myself working with were so used to handling large budgets that their sense of calmness rubbed off on me. Also, of course, I was very junior which fortunately limited my ability to make major mistakes! In terms of how did I get this opportunity, one comment I remember from that time was that the people who hired me were so used to hearing from film school graduates who expected to swan in at the top, as producers, but so few who were interested in learning the nuts and bolts from those who had basically evolved the business. I wasn’t without ambition, but I figured that if the average cost of a British film at the time was £2 million, not so different to that of today which is a little worrying maybe, in America it was ten to twenty times that amount, and there had to be more to learn over there than over here. Just in terms of sheer logistics.
How did you arrive at Amblin?
Quite fortuitously. I had begun in documentaries and in those days you had an idea of what you were going to film and you didn’t know how it was going to work out. You filmed a bit, edited it and worked out what you had got. After a while, I found that instead of filming what was in front of me, I began to join the dots in advance, thinking in terms of what I wanted to find and constructing what I wanted in terms of narrative before filming. If you are going to do that, you might as well be honest and say this is fiction, or at least part construction; certainly not pure ‘recording’ or ‘documenting’. So after a while I thought I better learn how to make feature films and not call them documentaries.
As I left film school I was fortunate to come across someone who was one of the great line producers and producers of his era, a British producer called Robert Watts, who was well known in Hollywood. He was central to the team which made not only the first Star Wars films but also the Indiana Jones movies for George Lucas. I approached him – I’m not sure with what in mind - and he in turn put me in contact with Frank Marshall, his contemporary at Amblin, though I had not heard of Frank Marshall nor Amblin - they were well beyond my radar - much to my shame. My hope at that time was just to get any work anywhere. This was probably in about 1985. I owe a great deal to Robert Watts, not only a fine producer but a thoughtful and kind man.
Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, who were Steven Spielberg’s producing partners, came over to the UK and based themselves at Elstree for making of ‘Empire of the Sun’, so I started working with Kathleen Kennedy and the rest of the production team. Also on this film were people like Norman Reynolds the production designer and Allen Daviau the cinematographer- magical people to observe at work. All the heads of departments were legends already, with multiple Academy Award nominations behind them, and now I found myself working with them. I can’t put over adequately how exciting that was. We filmed in England and in Shanghai and then a lengthy stint in Spain, near Jerez; and then at the end of the film, much to my surprise, I was asked to go back with them to Los Angeles. A bit like winning the lottery.
That must have been an overwhelming feeling.
It was astonishing. And I was overwhelmed. But I took stock of what I could do, or where my strengths were, and was determined not to blow it. It had been hard enough to get accepted into the UK film union that existed back then (the ACTT), which should have given me membership by right from having attended one of the approved film schools on their list, but the challenge of getting the appropriate work visa to allow me to work at Amblin was a challenge of a different order. Which they took care of - which made me feel that if they were prepared to go to that length to get me working for them, I must have been doing something right. I knew that I was a hard working individual and happy to work 20 hours a day using whatever intelligence or learning I had. I was first and foremost a good listener, I must have had ears like Dumbo the elephant, in not only listening to what they asked me to do, but also trying to listen through the task and anticipate what they really wanted a day or a week from now. That was probably the thing that helped me a lot, thinking around the problem.
What was your role at Amblin and what was it like working with the world’s biggest director?
On Empire of the Sun, I was lower than low, I was Production Associate, which is not production assistant and not associate producer, but somewhere in between, a nebulous role. There were the three partners, a head of development, a head of merchandising and head of post-production if I remember correctly, and about 6 or 7 executives in total - I was working somewhere between development and production - and about 30 production assistants. It was a life within a life. I did suffer from a fair jolt of culture shock in Los Angeles – nothing can prepare you for it.
I remember sitting in meetings with Steven Spielberg and watching him go through the scripts in minute detail. It was fascinating to sit through those meetings with such talented people, a bit like a fly on the wall – I thought very hard about opening my mouth – and hearing them construct or break down the constituent parts of a film.
It was certainly an exciting place to be: Spielberg’s career since then is well known, but Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall have also gone on to be probably the most successful producing partnership of the modern era.
What was it like moving from England to LA?
It was a bit like joining the circus, a surreal dream, especially when you came to LA from parochial England. And when you go to a phenomenally successful place like Amblin, it’s especially hard to compare it to anything you’ve ever done before. The place had a relaxed atmosphere, people were open and friendly but they also worked hard, and were very focused, which is not something you always see in the UK film business. Surface appearance and the way business was conducted in LA were very different. From the outside, LA can seem flamboyant but don’t let it fool you.
Do you miss it?
I was in my twenties and it was the 1980’s; I don’t remember the UK being much fun during that decade. It was an interesting experience, not only being in LA but also at one of the highest profile production companies of the time. But no, I don’t miss it. I prefer what I do today in many ways. They have a saying over there that the trick is to be as successful at 40 as you were at 30: I think LA would be a tough town to live in without being visibly successful – that may sound shallow but it’s a competitive place. I think that long-term I was a little too quiet to have pushed my way to the top over there. Los Angeles definitely rewards some temperaments more than others. By contrast, I know exactly where I fit in anywhere from London to Beijing.
Were Amblin, and in later years, Lumière, competitive places and were you swamped with scripts?
Each company and actually all that I’ve worked at, had very strict policies about accepting scripts: all the big companies do. You just can’t take the risk of someone claiming you stole their idea from a script you don’t remember but were supposed to have read ten years ago. The only scripts that were allowed in the door were from accredited sources. Though I do remember one notable director trying to get around this by faxing his hundred and fifty page script through in the dead of the night. Come morning – paper everywhere, like a snow storm. Thank heavens fax has died a death! I also remember another writer, an accomplished stand-up comedian, waiting in reception until someone had read his script. I can’t remember whether this ploy worked or not but the film was eventually made elsewhere.
There are, and were, so many scripts written and so few places to take them; so the high profile companies get an enormous amount of attention. Amblin was one thing; at Lumière (an Anglo-French company), though a minnow by comparison, we did have our own funds - a rarity in the UK - to put into films and that made us a target for everyone trying to develop their script or finance their film. We received somewhere between 20 to 30 scripts per week (and turned down many more unseen), so you would just be bricked in if you tried to read them all. If you figure it takes three hours to read a script, think about it, make a few notes – that’s a ninety hour week by itself. And it’s not as if you can sit in the office during the working day reading – it’s strictly an evening and weekend task. Script readers became a bit of a necessity; I don’t think any exec feels completely comfortable about using them; after all, a writer submits a script hoping the head of the department is going to read it, not an unknown script reader.
Agents can perform a worthwhile job as a filter service in terms of lessening the number of scripts you need to read. Usually you have to pay them the courtesy of considering a few projects that aren’t obvious priorities for you before you get to look at or talk about projects you have targeted. But that’s fair enough – sometimes they are right to push something you are reluctant to consider or have overlooked.
In general I found the script development part of production too labour intensive and not a particularly enjoyable part of the job. If there is one thing I am definitely happy about it’s that I don’t have to read so many scripts nowadays. My rule of thumb was that I ‘found’, call it what you will, maybe ‘recognised’ is a better word, one great script in every two hundred I looked at - not an encouraging statistic if you happen to be a writer, and not particularly encouraging if you happen to be working your way through all those scripts. That judgment also involved other factors, and whether the script – if not perfect – could be developed further with the team that owned it. Some producers and writers were more amenable to collaborating than others. There are quite a few competent writers out there but – forgive me for seeming harsh – fewer actually talented writers. If you liked a project, admired the writer, but didn’t see eye to eye with them and couldn’t work out how to communicate mutually, the development process could be very tricky.
On the whole, I think it’s better for a production company not to get too waylaid by the scripts that are offered to them, but to concentrate on what films they want to make and who they want to make them with. Otherwise you risk becoming a passive script reading service for anybody who wants to send in a script. And once you’ve read someone’s script, there is an implicit sense of obligation to report back to them your impressions and thoughts, if constructive. Rather than start with a script, I found it more efficient to concentrate on a handful of directors and find out what they wanted to do next.
So after Amblin and Lumière, in what capacity did you work?
Looking back, both of these were reasonable sized companies, and both achieved – in differing degrees – artistic and commercial success. Even Lumière, the lesser known of the two, had its share of success: for instance, “Leaving Las Vegas”, a project I found for the company, went on to win Oscars and earn significant financial rewards for Lumière, amply commensurate to its cost. Moving on from these, I really felt that I had had my fill of working in an overly corporate environment – a comment more apt of Lumière than Amblin – and was determined to move in a different direction. I was head of production in England but we had another of those in France and one in Los Angeles too, and occasionally I think our likes and dislikes cancelled each other out!
For a while – I used to call it my weekend job because it always seemed to crop up on Fridays – I worked independently, behind the scenes, with various productions that had got quagmired. At any time, in any year, there are productions that have good teams who mostly, through no fault of their own, have been hit with a series of problems, anything from hurricanes, earthquakes, death of an actor or a military coup: situations where they could benefit from someone objective fresh from the outside, who could come in and help bolster their activities. Each time I got involved in a production – however peripherally – I came back thinking that I’d met people I’d like to work with again. I guess that’s one of the main attractions of working in the film business; you’re always learning, or you should have that feeling.
At the same time as this, I worked with a few leading European banks on their media banking. It was like trying to protect yourself in a hail storm; projects hitting you from all angles and the impetus – at the banks – was to do business at any cost. Myself and my partner at the time spent most of our day trying to talk the banks out of one scheme after another.
In the last few years, I’ve been working with a group of former bankers and fund managers – individuals who got out long before the events of 2008 - at Galileo. On my side of things we’ve been looking at ways in which the film industry can meet investors’ requirements, without weaving through loopholes, tax structures and the like, and also about how to make investing in films a sensible, long-term, medium risk investment. Something that’s repeatable, something that breaks the ‘use and burn’ model that has marked the film business’ way of treating its financial partners over the past few years. There’s also strong institutional interest in the areas we’re focusing on: indeed, it’s the usual story, there’s more money available than appropriate projects for investment. Galileo does much more besides this, but my area is media in general. As a group we’re growing exponentially: we have some exciting years ahead.