Absolute Beginners (1986)

豆知識

Absolute Beginners is a 1986 British musical film adapted from Colin MacInnes' book about life in late 1950s London, directed by Julien Temple. The film stars Eddie O' Connell, Patsy Kensit, James Fox, Edward Tudor-Pole, Anita Morris, and David Bowie, with featured appearances by Sade Adu, Ray Davies, and Steven Berkoff. It was screened out of competition at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. It received coverage in the British media but was panned by critics and became a box office failure, although modern reviews have been more favourable. Bowie's theme song was very popular in the UK, spending nine weeks on the charts and peaking at number two.

Production

The novel was admired by Don MacPherson, a magazine editor who was friends with Julien Temple, then best known for directing music videos. MacPherson, Temple and Temple's business partner Michael Hamlyn agreed to try to turn Absolute Beginners into a film. MacPherson wrote the first draft, but this was not well received. Richard Burridge wrote a draft which was more positively received. The movie was going to be made at Virgin Films.

According to a history of Palace Pictures "The main reason for Palace's commitment to Temple's film... was the tremendous depth of Powell's and Woolley's shared ambition. Here was a film that was clearly going to be a huge event, and Palace's partners were equally determined to be at the forefront of such a national spectacle. To say 'No' to Absolute Beginners was unthinkable."

Temple later admitted "MacInnes's book has a very flawed narrative to my mind, and is very hard to adapt. It lacks drive in terms of plot, and largely concerns the central characters views on the world, about jazz, pop stars, television, advertising and so on."

Palace covered development costs. Under the arrangement between Palace and Goldcrest, the latter would provide 60% of the budget if Palace could find the other 40%. Palace raised this from Orion Pictures in the US. Eventually $2.5 million of the film's budget came from Orion and £2.5 million from Goldcrest. Goldcrest guaranteed any cost overruns

Christopher Wicking was hired to do a version of the script which he said "had some sort of propulsion from one scene to the next". He says the script helped raise American finance but then Julien Temple disregarded a lot of Wicking's ideas. Wicking also says the filmmakers could never decide if the musical numbers should advance the story or illustrate something about the characters at the time.

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