By Chris Langlois (Chrisdfw) on Tuesday, August 21, 2001 - 10:34 pm:| By Chris Langlois (Chrisdfw) on Tuesday, August 21, 2001 - 10:34 pm: |
Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are shooting a 10-part, $100 million wartime drama entirely in Britain, a decision that could mark a turnaround for our film industry. David Gritten asks Hanks what drew them here
'HERE we are again," says Tom Hanks, grinning bashfully from beneath his baseball cap. "Back in Hatfield - the place that has everything."
Soldiering on: a scene from Band of Brothers, produced by Hanks and Spielberg. Most of the action is filmed at Hatfield aerodrome, Herts, which was also used for the recreation of the beleaguered French village in Saving Private Ryan.
Hanks's tongue is firmly in his cheek as he tells me this, of course. Few people rhapsodise about Hatfield, a humdrum Hertfordshire town. But it has a huge, disused aerodrome that for film-makers constitutes a dream back lot: on its 1,100 acres there's room to create several distinctly different sets. It was here that the beleaguered French village in the Oscar-winning Saving Private Ryan was created.
Hanks starred in that film and Steven Spielberg directed it. And now, as Hanks says, they're back - as executive producers of a project loosely linked to Saving Private Ryan, but even bigger in scope. Band of Brothers is a 10-part drama series for the American cable television channel HBO, based on Stephen Ambrose's non-fiction bestseller about the Second World War. Starting in 1942, it follows the soldiers of Easy Company from the US Army's 101st Airborne Division through training in America and parachuting into France early on D-Day morning, and climaxes with their daring capture of Hitler's fortified mountain chalet, Eagle's Nest, at Berchtesgaden.
Band of Brothers is an enormous undertaking, with a budget of $100 million (£65 million), a nine-month shooting schedule, a speaking cast of 500, and 10,000 extras. (The caterers serve up to 800 meals a day.)
Most of the action takes place at the Hatfield aerodrome. Its geography has been drastically rearranged to create man-made rivers, dikes (for scenes depicting Holland) and forests, as well as villages in Belgium and France and the American training camp. For Saving Private Ryan, only a small portion of the aerodrome was employed.
Although producers Hanks (who does not appear in Band of Brothers but directs one of its episodes) and Spielberg are star names, the cast are largely unknown; only David Schwimmer (Ross from Friends), who plays a tough training officer, counts as a high-profile actor. In a story exclusively about American soldiers, English actor Damien Lewis plays the lead role - heroic Captain Richard Winters. Lewis is hardly a household name, which may be why filming in Hatfield has attracted scant British press attention.
Yet Band of Brothers is a hugely significant production for Britain's film industry. Though made for TV (the BBC will almost certainly broadcast it here next year), it is one of the largest projects ever to employ the services of British film crews and craftsmen. For such a production to be shot here is the equivalent of a British company winning a huge export order. The Government felt it was so crucial to land Band of Brothers that negotiations were monitored by Downing Street.
"Tony Blair spoke to Spielberg personally about the project," says Steve Norris, the British Film Commissioner. "They already knew each other. They first met when Blair was leader of the opposition and Spielberg was in Britain making Saving Private Ryan. It makes a lot of difference when people are made to understand they are welcome here."
Such high-level persuasion was necessary, because the competition was fierce. Ireland and the Czech Republic were also bidding to be the location. Hanks discloses that last year he and Spielberg also mulled over shooting the series in North America.
'But England has the matériel," Hanks adds. "You can't find Sherman tanks in the USA. The American military brought this stuff over in the Forties and didn't bother taking it back. So you have the vehicles, and that's no small thing. You have great craft services here. We've re-created Holland, Georgia, the Ardennes forest in Hatfield. And compared with the US or Canada, it's convenient: everyone lives within half an hour's drive."
Along with the British Film Commission, Culture Minister Chris Smith personally helped broker the deal to land Band of Brothers, and has alluded to "a very great deal of effort" on the part of his department and Downing Street to bring "this vital production" to the UK.
The Ministry of Defence played its part, too. At Hatfield, I find retired US Marine captain Dale Dye. He now runs Warriors Inc., a company that has helped actors in 44 films (including Saving Private Ryan and Platoon) to look and behave like authentic military men. For Band of Brothers, Dye had 60 actors to lick into shape, the most he has been assigned for one film.
"The co-operation has been wonderful," says Dye. "The Ministry of Defence was kind enough to give us two solid weeks to train these guys. They turned over a camp at Longmoor, which is an active duty training base, with six acres of woods, hills and barracks. I got everything I wanted. And we had a week at RAF Brize Norton, where there's a parachute school. We did a massive amount of training there - para landing falls, the works. It's really paid dividends for us."
One might imagine that such co-operation is no more than the norm. Unhappily, this is not the case: over the years, Britain has lost out as a potential location for several high-profile Hollywood films. In the 1990s, many ended up being shot in Ireland, with its system of awarding visiting films tax concessions.
Spielberg, who admires British film technicians and likes shooting here, wanted to make Saving Private Ryan wholly in the UK, but the Irish government persuaded him to shoot the film's gruelling D-Day landing scenes on beaches in Co Wexford, and provided reserve soldiers as extras. For Braveheart, which was shot partly in Scotland, the Irish provided incentives for Mel Gibson and his cast and crew to shoot their big showpiece battle scenes in the Emerald Isle. Both times, John Major's government seemed to be caught on the hop.
"We were disappointed that it happened," says Norris, who himself was once a film producer. "But back then you just couldn't galvanise the government. I have to say, this government is much more interested and sensitive. There's been a sea-change in the thinking.
"For Band of Brothers, the Irish offered a set close to Dublin. We felt we had to compete. The Hatfield site was ready to be redeveloped, so the developers were asked to hold off until filming was done."
In addition to this new competitive attitude, the Blair government has done something that eluded its predecessors - it recently managed to arrive at a new "British Film Definition" to establish whether a film production is "British" enough to qualify for tax concessions.
"There's a simple rule," says Norris. "You have to spend 70 per cent of your production budget here. And 70 per cent of your labour has to be from Britain or the EC. If you want access to British taxpayers' money, that's what you do."
However, the legislation acknowledges that stars in Hollywood studio films receive astronomical fees. Those fees severely skew budgets, so the British Film Definition allows one name to be discounted from the budget; if 70 per cent of what remains is spent in Britain, it still qualifies as British . If two star names are subtracted, the figure rises to 75 per cent.
Band of Brothers may look all-American, but will qualify under the British Film Definition. It has several American actors in speaking roles, but as they are unknown, they are also cheap. Hanks and Spielberg receive producers' fees, with a profit share from international broadcast sales.
"The nice thing about the Definition is it encourages producers to stick around after their film is shot, and do editing and post-production in Britain," says Norris. "If a film qualifies as British, the tax breaks probably cut seven or eight per cent off its budget."
But will Britain benefit more than it pays under the system? "In multiples more," says Norris. "If a film has a £65 million budget, so 70 per cent of that, or £46 million, goes into the pockets of British film employees. And the Exchequer takes 40 per cent of that sum."
The key for Britain in attracting international film investment is luring big Hollywood movies, which have almost absurdly bigger production budgets than our own. For example, in 1997, 108 films were made in Britain with an aggregate budget of £464 million. Six of those films contributed half the total; all six were Hollywood-financed.
The British Film Commission also takes the view that the money from big Hollywood movies not only keeps our film workers in business, but enables the industry to bring on younger people and enhance their skills.
Then there is the tourism factor: it is widely believed that in 1996, the year after Braveheart and Rob Roy opened worldwide, the number of foreign visitors to Scotland increased by 20 per cent. "There's nothing like being able to present visions of your country on a big screen," says Norris.
Britain's major film studios are currently busy, busy, busy with large-scale Hollywood productions. Disney's 102 Dalmatians has just wrapped at Shepperton; Tomb Raider, with Angelina Jolie as computer-game heroine Lara Croft, has started shooting on the famous 007 soundstage at Pinewood; The Mummy Returns, set in Victorian London, has begun at Shepperton. And the long-awaited Harry Potter film from Warner Bros should start rolling at Leavesden, near Watford, in October.
Any or all of these films might qualify as British under the new definition; at the very least their producers will have targets and quotas to aim for if they want tax breaks. That would mean a substantial boost to the British economy, after years of seeing film opportunities go abroad.
When New Labour came to power it was quickly and understandably derided for its slavish emphasis on "Cool Britannia" and a starry-eyed adulation of showbiz values. Yet it has arrived at a pragmatic approach to making foreign film production in Britain work for everyone's benefit.
We have an intangible advantage, of course. Back on set in Hatfield, Hanks is grinning his boyish grin: "You know what I love about it here? You can shoot all day and be back in London for dinner." He shakes his head: "Britain really is the coolest place to make movies."