HandMade Films: 1978–1994
HandMade Films was a British film production and distribution company that Harrison formed in 1978 with business partner Denis O'Brien. It was created to help the Monty Python troupe by raising £2 million to finish their film Life of Brian after EMI Films, the original financiers, withdrew their funding due to the film's controversial, satirical content. Though the company was formed with the intention of funding only the one film (a scenario which was described by Idle as "the most anybody's ever paid for a cinema ticket in history"), Harrison and O'Brien bought the rights to The Long Good Friday, which had been faced with various cuts, and released it in its original form.
The first film produced under the company was 1981'S Time Bandits, equipped with a soundtrack by Harrison, a solo project by Python Terry Gilliam for whom HandMade originally also was to finance The Adventures of Baron Munchausen before several funding parties including HandMade dropped out of the project. Harrison produced twenty three films with HandMade, including Mona Lisa, Shanghai Surprise, and Withnail and I. He made several cameo appearances in these movies, including a role as a nightclub singer in Shanghai Surprise and as Mr Papadopolous in Life of Brian. Handmade Films became a rarity in the British film industry, a production company that was both consistently successful and internationally known. The company was well regarded both for nurturing British talent and for most of its films having British settings or inspirations.
Harrison was involved in some creative decisions, approving projects such as Withnail and I and visiting sets as executive producer to sort out creative problems. On the whole, though, he preferred to stay out of the way: " I've been the person who's said of the people with the money, 'What do they know?' and now I'm that person. But I know that unless you give an artist as much freedom as possible, there's no point in using that artist."
The bulk of the financial and business decisions were left to O'Brien, who was tasked with making sure that films got made on time and on budget. This eventually resulted in disagreements and lawsuits between the pair as HandMade Films encountered reversals, and Harrison sold the company in 1994.
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Famous quotes containing the word handmade:
“And those handmade presents that children often bring home from school: They have so much value! The value is that the child put whatever he or she could into making them. The way we parents respond to the giving of such gifts is very important. To the child the gift is really self, and they want so much for their selves to be acceptable, to be loved.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)