Business Times - 25 Jul 2009
Make your mark, and pay it forward. Those are the words that David Puttnam lives by. The film maker, educationist, and active citizen tells why he so fervently believes in making the world a better place. By Jaime Ee
DAVID Puttnam: The Movie is not likely to be playing at a cinema near you anytime soon. Which is a pity, given the illustrious - or perhaps he might prefer 'useful' - life of the Oscar-winning film producer who built his career making movies about men, well, just like him.
That's not an egoistic statement. Ego isn't something you associate with Sir or Lord Puttnam - take your pick, he's both - who has more titles than a boy scout has badges but still shows up at The China Club for yet another press interview with as much grace and enthusiasm as if it were his first.
Whether he planned it or not, his life would make a perfect screenplay - a man who wants to make a difference in the world and isn't afraid to fight for what he thinks is right even if his detractors think he's an overzealous idealist and try not to sit beside him at dinner parties.
His is the kind of character you see in most of his movies - the one who believes in the power of the human spirit, dogged in his pursuit of justice, unwavering (or blindly stubborn) in the face of insurmountable hurdles. Cue Chariots of Fire - men in baggy shorts in a race for integrity and honour; The Killing Fields - the triumph of friendship between two men despite the atrocities of war; Memphis Belle - a group of fighter pilots who need each other to carry out a life-or-death mission ... it goes on.
That's why he does what he does - since he left the film industry in 1997, he's been a major player in the environmental movement, worked as an adviser to the Department of Education to overhaul the UK's teaching system, champions children's rights as president of Unicef UK, advises the Labour government as a peer in the British House of Lords, and even acts as a consultant to Singapore's Media Development Authority while lending his name to the LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts' Puttnam School of Film.
Why? Because of something his father told him when he was seven years old during a walk in the park.
'My father was very special because he had been away fighting in the war and I didn't meet him until I was five years old,' he explains. 'It's quite strange, meeting your father for the first time. But I became besotted with him. We were in the park and we came to this tree which had someone's initials carved in it. I asked my father what it was and he said, 'For people, it's very important to make their mark to prove that they've been in the world, to just literally say, I was here.' '
And so he did, whether it was winning Best Picture Oscar for Chariots or working tirelessly since 1982 to make the term 'corporate social responsibility' a buzz word.
But a good part of making your mark on the world is also about protecting it, and it's something Lord Puttnam is seriously worried about. He tosses up an old Greek nugget - he is, after all, a natural storyteller - about the glory days of Athens when every 12-year-old boy had to swear an oath to leave his city 'better, more beautiful and more prosperous' than he found it.
'I'm very involved in the issues of global warming and climate change because I'm very fearful of what my grandchildren are going to encounter. I think it is hugely incumbent on my generation to set things up as best we can to make sure that their lives, which may not be as full as ours - my grandchildren will not live lives like I've lived, they will lead much more constrained lives - are as okay as possible for them.
'I'm a member of a generation with massive responsibilities because I'm the generation that's caused most of these problems.'
You say 'idealist', he says 'you're too busy making money and you can't be bothered about such things'. From experience, 'most people who say 'oh you're slightly idealistic' are actually saying, 'I am not prepared to get as involved in the issues of the world as you are'.'
Idealism, though, has a habit of going out of style.
He already had an inkling of it in the '90s as he saw the film industry moving away from the strong narratives he was used to making to 'product-oriented' blockbusters or exploitation films. A strong advocate against violence in movies, he says: 'My idea of making a movie is very simple: human beings are capable of remarkable things, and the more you remind them of it, the more likely they will be so. On the other hand, human beings are also capable of being sadistic and unpleasant and doing dreadful things. The more you desensitise them to the dreadful things they do, the more those things seem to be acceptable.
'I've had a very rewarding career because I've sat in cinemas watching people watching Chariots of Fire and I know they feel better about themselves. Watching them watch The Killing Fields, I know they know more about the world. Why wouldn't you want to do that? Why would you be so stupid as to want to exploit people's fears and hatreds?'
For a few hundred million bucks more at the box office, that's why. Which was why he knew that it was time to go.
'I'm 68 years old, filmmaking is a young person's game,' he says. But more so, 'I made a decision that I was not going to grow old in the film industry. I saw what it did to people, I saw it wasn't an industry that respected old age very well, I didn't want to be shuffling up and down Wardour Street with an old script under my arm, hoping someone would want it. I decided I would be out of there in my 50s.'
It was almost prescient, the way he made his exit. It took just one phone call. It was 1997, just after the elections when the Labour Party veteran received a call from an aide of then Prime Minister Tony Blair to ask him to be a peer in the House of Lords. 'I said you're too late, I've just joined the Department of Education, and he said, 'Don't worry, we'll work around that'. So in one day, I left the film industry, joined the education department and became a peer.'
Given his vast experience in politics, he says the recent parliamentary expenses scandal involving MPs was an accident waiting to happen. 'I chaired a committee doing a report for parliament in 2005 and I predicted exactly what was going to happen, and ironically the very person who killed the report has now had to step down (Michael Martin, speaker of the House of Commons).'
It's this reason why he's full of praise for the Singapore government's policy of paying MPs and ministers well from the very beginning. 'It's the same reason UK judges are paid well so that they will not be corrupt. It's a well paid job, you have no excuse to take money. But, they didn't make the same decision about MPs. What they did was pay MPs badly but gave them ridiculous opportunities to fill their coffers in other ways. If they were paid properly this would never have happened. It's the system that created the problem.
'Say you're an MP and you have lifestyle requirements like private school for your kids. How do you pay for it? You hire your wife to be your secretary - it's wrong but it's a way of drawing more money into the family so maybe it's the wife's salary that pays the school fees. So you're immediately on a cycle of not massive corruption but ways of compensating for the fact that you are paid badly.'
Expounding further on the topic of pay for politicians, he says: 'The question of political courage requires that you tell the public, you may not like this but we're going to have fewer, but better paid MPs. They've known for years that there are too many MPs - what they should have done years ago is to (limit to) 500 MPs and give them proper support. As I said in my report, good democracies are expensive - a cut-price democracy is a charge on the electorate, whereas a well-paid executive is an investment, not a cost.'
But no, he rules out any possibility of him becoming a minister and trying to change the system. 'Interestingly enough, when I got into the House of Lords, the assumption was that over a period of time I would become a minister. But I realised quite quickly that that was a really shitty job. I had a great job at the education department, I was a special adviser to the Labour government and I had a lot more freedom than a minister could ever have.'
Reaching out
And, with his closetful of titles, he has the kind of clout that he needs to push his own make-the-world-a-better-place agenda. 'Titles don't interest me very much - but they're like brands that can help. For example, as president of Unicef, I can talk to our Secretary of State for Overseas Development. In a sense he has to see me - if I was David Puttnam he would say, 'I'll see you next year.'
' As Chancellor of the Open University, the Secretary of State of Education has to see me. As for being a peer, if I write a letter to the minister he has to answer within seven days, that's the law. If I was Sir David Puttnam, I could have written and he doesn't have to reply at all.'
His concerns for today's youth are what drive him to constantly reach out to them, to turn them into responsible citizens. Despite being 'cynical enough to know you can't change people,' he was heartened by a letter he received recently from a York University student who was inspired to start a non-partisan political association after Lord Puttnam gave a talk four years ago about active citizenry at a school where he was a sixth form student.
'He invited me to speak to his association so since I happened to be speaking at York, I said OK. I expected to be speaking to 12 students but 300 showed up. We had a great time talking about climate change, responsibility of young people and so on. But the point was that, as a result of talking to a sixth form class in Bristol - four years later I'm talking to 300 kids at York who in turn are the core of a student movement involved in citizenship programmes.
'So if each time I speak, keep pushing out the message, maybe two or three people will listen and then they talk to other people. Then you wake up one day and there are 1,000 people out there who think, say, 'I don't want to be an exploitation filmmaker - I know I can make a living that way but I want my films to mean something'.' And in turn, want their lives to mean something. That, says Lord Puttnam, 'is the only role I've got left'.
He isn't too bothered about growing old, although he does concede that travelling does get harder these days. 'My friend Lord (David) Attenborough who's not well at the moment, we had dinner just before Christmas and he arrived, quite tired and he said to me, 'Putters' - he calls me Putters - 'don't grow old, dear, it's shit'. I said 'well, hang on, the alternative doesn't sound very attractive'.'
These days, he tries to spend more time at his seaside home in Baltimore, Ireland, where he and his wife Patricia and their children have lived for the past 20 years. On what was originally a farm, the avid gardener planted 8,000 trees which have since grown into a complete wood. He's looking to spend more time there and is checking out the latest video conferencing equipment that will let him give lectures interactively while 'reducing my carbon footprint'.
He says the most important lesson he's learned about life comes from his father. 'Towards the end of his life he said, 'If I drop dead tomorrow, I've no regrets - I've had a really great life. And don't you or your sister ever have any sadness, have a great life.'
'I feel the same way. In the last years or months or even minutes of my life, I want to feel OK about myself and my relationship to the world. And I do.'
Make your mark, and pay it forward. Those are the words that David Puttnam lives by. The film maker, educationist, and active citizen tells why he so fervently believes in making the world a better place. By Jaime Ee
DAVID Puttnam: The Movie is not likely to be playing at a cinema near you anytime soon. Which is a pity, given the illustrious - or perhaps he might prefer 'useful' - life of the Oscar-winning film producer who built his career making movies about men, well, just like him.
That's not an egoistic statement. Ego isn't something you associate with Sir or Lord Puttnam - take your pick, he's both - who has more titles than a boy scout has badges but still shows up at The China Club for yet another press interview with as much grace and enthusiasm as if it were his first.
Whether he planned it or not, his life would make a perfect screenplay - a man who wants to make a difference in the world and isn't afraid to fight for what he thinks is right even if his detractors think he's an overzealous idealist and try not to sit beside him at dinner parties.
His is the kind of character you see in most of his movies - the one who believes in the power of the human spirit, dogged in his pursuit of justice, unwavering (or blindly stubborn) in the face of insurmountable hurdles. Cue Chariots of Fire - men in baggy shorts in a race for integrity and honour; The Killing Fields - the triumph of friendship between two men despite the atrocities of war; Memphis Belle - a group of fighter pilots who need each other to carry out a life-or-death mission ... it goes on.
That's why he does what he does - since he left the film industry in 1997, he's been a major player in the environmental movement, worked as an adviser to the Department of Education to overhaul the UK's teaching system, champions children's rights as president of Unicef UK, advises the Labour government as a peer in the British House of Lords, and even acts as a consultant to Singapore's Media Development Authority while lending his name to the LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts' Puttnam School of Film.
Why? Because of something his father told him when he was seven years old during a walk in the park.
'My father was very special because he had been away fighting in the war and I didn't meet him until I was five years old,' he explains. 'It's quite strange, meeting your father for the first time. But I became besotted with him. We were in the park and we came to this tree which had someone's initials carved in it. I asked my father what it was and he said, 'For people, it's very important to make their mark to prove that they've been in the world, to just literally say, I was here.' '
And so he did, whether it was winning Best Picture Oscar for Chariots or working tirelessly since 1982 to make the term 'corporate social responsibility' a buzz word.
But a good part of making your mark on the world is also about protecting it, and it's something Lord Puttnam is seriously worried about. He tosses up an old Greek nugget - he is, after all, a natural storyteller - about the glory days of Athens when every 12-year-old boy had to swear an oath to leave his city 'better, more beautiful and more prosperous' than he found it.
'I'm very involved in the issues of global warming and climate change because I'm very fearful of what my grandchildren are going to encounter. I think it is hugely incumbent on my generation to set things up as best we can to make sure that their lives, which may not be as full as ours - my grandchildren will not live lives like I've lived, they will lead much more constrained lives - are as okay as possible for them.
'I'm a member of a generation with massive responsibilities because I'm the generation that's caused most of these problems.'
You say 'idealist', he says 'you're too busy making money and you can't be bothered about such things'. From experience, 'most people who say 'oh you're slightly idealistic' are actually saying, 'I am not prepared to get as involved in the issues of the world as you are'.'
Idealism, though, has a habit of going out of style.
He already had an inkling of it in the '90s as he saw the film industry moving away from the strong narratives he was used to making to 'product-oriented' blockbusters or exploitation films. A strong advocate against violence in movies, he says: 'My idea of making a movie is very simple: human beings are capable of remarkable things, and the more you remind them of it, the more likely they will be so. On the other hand, human beings are also capable of being sadistic and unpleasant and doing dreadful things. The more you desensitise them to the dreadful things they do, the more those things seem to be acceptable.
'I've had a very rewarding career because I've sat in cinemas watching people watching Chariots of Fire and I know they feel better about themselves. Watching them watch The Killing Fields, I know they know more about the world. Why wouldn't you want to do that? Why would you be so stupid as to want to exploit people's fears and hatreds?'
For a few hundred million bucks more at the box office, that's why. Which was why he knew that it was time to go.
'I'm 68 years old, filmmaking is a young person's game,' he says. But more so, 'I made a decision that I was not going to grow old in the film industry. I saw what it did to people, I saw it wasn't an industry that respected old age very well, I didn't want to be shuffling up and down Wardour Street with an old script under my arm, hoping someone would want it. I decided I would be out of there in my 50s.'
It was almost prescient, the way he made his exit. It took just one phone call. It was 1997, just after the elections when the Labour Party veteran received a call from an aide of then Prime Minister Tony Blair to ask him to be a peer in the House of Lords. 'I said you're too late, I've just joined the Department of Education, and he said, 'Don't worry, we'll work around that'. So in one day, I left the film industry, joined the education department and became a peer.'
Given his vast experience in politics, he says the recent parliamentary expenses scandal involving MPs was an accident waiting to happen. 'I chaired a committee doing a report for parliament in 2005 and I predicted exactly what was going to happen, and ironically the very person who killed the report has now had to step down (Michael Martin, speaker of the House of Commons).'
It's this reason why he's full of praise for the Singapore government's policy of paying MPs and ministers well from the very beginning. 'It's the same reason UK judges are paid well so that they will not be corrupt. It's a well paid job, you have no excuse to take money. But, they didn't make the same decision about MPs. What they did was pay MPs badly but gave them ridiculous opportunities to fill their coffers in other ways. If they were paid properly this would never have happened. It's the system that created the problem.
'Say you're an MP and you have lifestyle requirements like private school for your kids. How do you pay for it? You hire your wife to be your secretary - it's wrong but it's a way of drawing more money into the family so maybe it's the wife's salary that pays the school fees. So you're immediately on a cycle of not massive corruption but ways of compensating for the fact that you are paid badly.'
Expounding further on the topic of pay for politicians, he says: 'The question of political courage requires that you tell the public, you may not like this but we're going to have fewer, but better paid MPs. They've known for years that there are too many MPs - what they should have done years ago is to (limit to) 500 MPs and give them proper support. As I said in my report, good democracies are expensive - a cut-price democracy is a charge on the electorate, whereas a well-paid executive is an investment, not a cost.'
But no, he rules out any possibility of him becoming a minister and trying to change the system. 'Interestingly enough, when I got into the House of Lords, the assumption was that over a period of time I would become a minister. But I realised quite quickly that that was a really shitty job. I had a great job at the education department, I was a special adviser to the Labour government and I had a lot more freedom than a minister could ever have.'
Reaching out
And, with his closetful of titles, he has the kind of clout that he needs to push his own make-the-world-a-better-place agenda. 'Titles don't interest me very much - but they're like brands that can help. For example, as president of Unicef, I can talk to our Secretary of State for Overseas Development. In a sense he has to see me - if I was David Puttnam he would say, 'I'll see you next year.'
' As Chancellor of the Open University, the Secretary of State of Education has to see me. As for being a peer, if I write a letter to the minister he has to answer within seven days, that's the law. If I was Sir David Puttnam, I could have written and he doesn't have to reply at all.'
His concerns for today's youth are what drive him to constantly reach out to them, to turn them into responsible citizens. Despite being 'cynical enough to know you can't change people,' he was heartened by a letter he received recently from a York University student who was inspired to start a non-partisan political association after Lord Puttnam gave a talk four years ago about active citizenry at a school where he was a sixth form student.
'He invited me to speak to his association so since I happened to be speaking at York, I said OK. I expected to be speaking to 12 students but 300 showed up. We had a great time talking about climate change, responsibility of young people and so on. But the point was that, as a result of talking to a sixth form class in Bristol - four years later I'm talking to 300 kids at York who in turn are the core of a student movement involved in citizenship programmes.
'So if each time I speak, keep pushing out the message, maybe two or three people will listen and then they talk to other people. Then you wake up one day and there are 1,000 people out there who think, say, 'I don't want to be an exploitation filmmaker - I know I can make a living that way but I want my films to mean something'.' And in turn, want their lives to mean something. That, says Lord Puttnam, 'is the only role I've got left'.
He isn't too bothered about growing old, although he does concede that travelling does get harder these days. 'My friend Lord (David) Attenborough who's not well at the moment, we had dinner just before Christmas and he arrived, quite tired and he said to me, 'Putters' - he calls me Putters - 'don't grow old, dear, it's shit'. I said 'well, hang on, the alternative doesn't sound very attractive'.'
These days, he tries to spend more time at his seaside home in Baltimore, Ireland, where he and his wife Patricia and their children have lived for the past 20 years. On what was originally a farm, the avid gardener planted 8,000 trees which have since grown into a complete wood. He's looking to spend more time there and is checking out the latest video conferencing equipment that will let him give lectures interactively while 'reducing my carbon footprint'.
He says the most important lesson he's learned about life comes from his father. 'Towards the end of his life he said, 'If I drop dead tomorrow, I've no regrets - I've had a really great life. And don't you or your sister ever have any sadness, have a great life.'
'I feel the same way. In the last years or months or even minutes of my life, I want to feel OK about myself and my relationship to the world. And I do.'
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