The effects that interest me are not the guy flying through the sky, but creating reality - reality that you otherwise can't go and shoot.
Tim Bevan
Really bad reviews can hurt pretty much any movie. They say that some films are review-proof, but I think that's probably big high-concept movies, comedies, and so on. But, on the whole, if a film gets dreadful reviews, it will affect its business.
Premium, non-network television is occupying a space that art cinema used to enjoy. 'Homeland,' 'Breaking Bad' - 15 to 20 years ago, they would have been independent cinema stories.
The frustration of a movie is that you are creating a new business every time you go off to make one, and in a funny way, that's what's exciting.
I always think British films work best when they're very honest to a particular part of England. 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' was true to middle-class people, 'Bend it Like Beckham' was faithful to the Indian community, and 'Billy Elliot' was faithful to the miners.
All too often on film sets, what happens is everybody gets worried about an actor being sick, a car not turning up, or the weather not being right rather than what we're ending up with onscreen.
From the first time I read John Krakauer's book 'Into Thin Air' in the early 2000s, I always thought this great adventure story would make a really good film. It has all the ingredients - a great location, disaster, interesting characters, and all forms of human emotion.
I believe you make a movie three times: once in the development process - putting the ingredients like the script, cast and crew together - once in the shooting process, and once in the editing process.
The producer needs to be a fool - a determined fool! You have to be incredibly tenacious because there are a lot of 'nos' out there; the whole thing is a bit like herding cats. You have to keep at it and keep at it, and one day you get there, to the movie.
I'm never going to go and test myself on Everest, but I sort of understand the psychology of people who might want to.
