If you have a winning formula, why change it? Or, to resort to the vernacular, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Either way, that seems to be the message from Adrian Wootton, director of the Regus London Film Festival, which kicks off its 2001 edition on November 7 with the world premiere of Robert Altman’s Gosford Park. It will be the event’s 45th outing - putting it not far behind market leaders Berlin (which was 51 this year), Cannes (54) and Venice (59, but with lots of breaks). This Festival will be Wootton’s fifth, and the second of three for top sponsor Regus.
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Opening with a legendary American director making his first UK
film and closing with a rising young British director making
an American one, the 45th Regus London Film Festival has the usual mix of the mainstream and the marginal. As RLFF director Adrian Wootton (BELOW LEFT) tells PREVIEW, it’s a tried and tested formula which he sees no real reason to change.
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“To be honest,” says Wootton as he puts the finishing touches to the arrangements, “we haven’t really changed the structure of the programme that dramatically. We’ve increased the number of events and we’ve increased the educational programme – in fact, we’ve doubled the size of the educational programme - but in terms of the overall structure, they are the same sections that we’ve continued with for the last few years. We’ve decided we didn’t want to make any radical changes. We were perfectly happy with the way things were running.”
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When Wootton took over in early 1996, ‘perfectly happy’ was not a phrase frequently associated with the London Film Festival. True, Wootton inherited many of the elements that have proved most successful in the programme - notably the high-profile ‘Festival on the Square’, using screens in the heart of London’s West End and run in association with the Evening Standard newspaper. But one of his major achievements has undoubtedly been the fact that, when the Festival hits the press these days, it’s for the quality and breadth of its films, rather than for internal disputes and ego clashes.
It would, on the other hand, be wrong to see Wootton as a behind-the-scenes man: from the flamboyant Elvis tie he wore last year through to his year-long festival-hopping, this is clearly a man who loves cinema and experiences a genuine pleasure at bringing it to audiences who do not, shall we say, benefit from the same travel privileges. He also clearly enjoys talking films.
“In every section there are things that I’m very excited about,” he enthuses. “I’m obviously genuinely pleased about Gosford Park because it’s a terrific film. And to secure that as the world premiere opening night is something that’s quite special from my point of view. And of course [the same for Iain Softley’s] K-PAX, the closing film.
“Generally speaking, I’m very pleased with the line-up of galas [see box]. But there are things in every section. I can pull out personal favourites. For instance, I’m really delighted about what I regard as a comeback for Peter Bogdanovich with The Cat’s Meow, which I think is a really lovely film. I am delighted to have that in the programme. And then there are things guaranteed to cause a stir, like Bully, the Larry Clark film, which isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. I’m very pleased we’re presenting that in the Festival on the Square.”
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The stars come out at the RLFF 2000: Kate Hudson (right); Kate Winslet and Michael Caine (above); and Jane Horrocks (below).
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That, indeed, is part of what Wootton sees as his mission: to use the West End showcase, which inevitably attracts a more diverse demographic (and more media attention) than the Festival’s main home, the National Film Theatre in the rather fine arts-oriented South Bank complex. By so doing, the RLFF is able to put films in front of audiences who might not otherwise bother with them.
“We don’t want the Festival on the Square programme to be bland,” he says. “Sure, we want it to be high profile; but it’s not like every film in there is English-language, because it’s not. And it’s not like we’re not prepared to put more difficult or challenging work in there, because we are.”
There are, of course, certain restrictions on what can be shown, even if the goalposts have moved as far as sexual explicitness is concerned. Indeed, as one watched the competition films in Berlin and Cannes earlier in the year, it seemed as though erect penises were virtually de rigueur.
