KIZ DURRANI: So, it's the 10th of April 2024. We're here with Shira Macleod who was formerly the director of the cinema between 2003 and 2014. And we're here at Hammersmith Studios. Shira, if I can just start by asking you a general question about how you first became involved with Riverside Studios?
SHIRA MACLEOD: I was at school in Glasgow. I was an usher at the Tron Theatre and I found a bit of paper in the Tron Theatre about Riverside Studios and I came to London to be a dancer. And I was at Froebel College and one day I walked along the river and found Riverside and walked in and met these two quite foreboding women, Rose Dow and Joyce Walsh, who were kind of Front of House managers and sort of asked them if I could get a job as an usher. And then that was it. And I think I was 17, embarrassingly enough. I was 17. Yeah. And so, I became an usher in a variety of very extravagant outfits because at that point there, there wasn't a standard T shirt. So, I would turn up to work in a velvet dress or something. As you do. (Laugh) Yeah.
[01:39] KD: Just thinking back to that time period, your recollections of arriving at Riverside Studios: what did it smell like, what did it sound like? Obviously, the space has changed now, but just thinking back to when you were working here, what was it like then?
SM: It was terribly, terribly arty. It was quite industrial. It was quite hard to find. I mean, you know, these two women were interesting in themselves in that Ros was an, an older lady who used to carry a small velvet bag and ring bells and talk about “audience collide” (mimics frail high voice), you know, when two shows would go in and out at the same time. Joyce was quite austere, so you had those, you, you tended to have quite dramatic characters fronting the building. And then within the spaces themselves, there was all manner of extremely arty things. A lot of performance art. So you'd see someone naked on a seesaw or something. Then you'd have a lot of, a lot of very good dance; Michael Clark, for example. And you'd have, I mean, when I first started work here, Renaissance Theatre had just begun. So, you'd have all this Renaissance theatre thing. And it was high art, extremely well curated. And there was a gallery which was off-the-hook incredible with people like Louise Bourgeois and Anselm Kiefer. I mean, I can't really compare it to anything really. It just was – the curation was top notch really. And that's all I can say. So, it felt like we were in a place of extreme creativity. And we were all quite proud of it, I think then, even as ushers, you know. (laughs). Yeah.
[03:56] KD: What would you say is distinctive or unique about Riverside Studios then or now?
SD: I think positioning is unique in that it had a very great position on the river. But it had a lot of space around it. And it wasn't like the South Bank, which is obviously quite touristy and quite restricted. It felt like a location we had a lot of space, you know, but we could do kind of what we wanted. I mean, the most distinctive thing has always been Riverside's artistic policy.
And it's from then, from when I worked in the Eighties right through to now, it just always had... the curation was key. And I think that's the thing that's kept it in the audience's hearts really. And I think the most important thing is it became something that people would travel to from not only all over the UK and all over London, but from all over the world and felt comfortable, you could be here by yourself and enjoy something and meet fellow audience members who could also enjoy it, which is quite rare. So, so those are the things, I think.
[05:14 ] KD: From a personal perspective, what would you say Riverside has offered you that you may not have been offered elsewhere. Just thinking in terms of the sort of impact Riverside Studios has had on your life and career.
SM: Well, it's massive and I spent far too many years here. You know, a huge, I mean, I think it gave me it, well, I mean, essentially it gave me good taste, I think. I can actually probably say that I have good taste as a result of working here, which has helped me choose, you know, artistically as I've changed and gone on to other things.
But mainly it massively changed my life in that I was a dancer and then I was an usher. I was a cinema assistant, which effectively meant going around putting up posters all around the building. There were loads of poster cupboards. And then doing these things called ‘Exhibitors’ Returns’ which were telling each distributor how many tickets we'd sold and working out how much money they got, how much money we got. But it was essentially all done in pencil, you know. And then choosing film stills for these programs that we made, which were kind of lavish and beautiful and, you know. So, we had a filing cabinet with all these millions of pictures which we had to choose. There was a lot of, of detail and, you know, and essentially looking after people anyway, you know, admin. And then as by default, my boss at the time, Ed, Edward Lewis – who really was the voice of the cinema, which I just carried on – he died suddenly, and I was his assistant. And because I was interested in the money-making part of the business, I'd listened to that bit, so I kind of inadvertently inherited Ed's life, and struggled with that idea for quite a while. But then I kind of took it on and it changed my life because I became the cinema director. And my life is now about film, whereas it was about dance. So, it's a big, big change. Yeah, big change. Yeah.
[07:45] KD: You mentioned your colleague, Ed. Would you tell us a bit more about some of your memorable colleagues at Riverside Studios?
SM: It was a lot. Ok. Ed was very elegant, smoked incessantly. We used to smoke in the office. I used to smoke as well – there was a lot of smoking went on. He spent a lot of time in Italy. He had trained as a projectionist and was very rigorous and really knew his film business. He spent a lot of time on the phone doing these deals with other incredible characters who were in the film business. He was very warm, was a very big hit with women across the board: old, young. Very charming, a very dry sense of humour. And spent a lot of time looking at the river smoking, going back into the office, smoking. And somehow or other, we got the job done. And was responsible really for the artistic policy of the building, of the cinema building, which was kind of famous for double bills, which came out of the Depression in America where they used to put a B list film next to an A list film to make tickets cheaper to, you know, just to allow it as a way of getting audiences into cinema. And we took that idea on where we'd, you know, have a double bill ticket price and sell, you know. There'd be, for example, two films about unrequited love, you know, two films by the same director, two films by the same actor, something like that. And it became a bit of a stalwart of Riverside which other people copied, but essentially it was a Riverside thing. That silent film with a very, very badly tuned piano – a bad piano, not it was badly tuned. On the way here, I was remembering there's a gentleman called Tony who was a blind piano tuner who we used to work with, who was a fabulous man who we used to wait on, take up to the cinema. We didn't have a lift, we used to take him up the stairs. He used to do, we did, a lot of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin you know, this kind of thing. So that, the double bills, and finding an audience for the local communities of London.
You know, essentially, for example, the Polish Film Festival began here 2002. It's now the biggest festival, one of the biggest European festivals in London. You know, Bulgarian, Italian, and not just... you know. We did Tongues on Fire, which is an Indian Film Festival. We did African Cinema. We did, I mean, we did everything, but it was Ed's initial thing to create this idea of a film festival. And we used to- I'm going on a bit here but it's quite interesting stuff, I think- we used to bring films in with embassies. They used to bring the films in diplomatic bags so that we wouldn't have to pay the huge rates to get the films into the country and they were all on 35 mm at this time. So, you can imagine, you know, big cost. Kind of hilarious, you know, 35 mm prints in the driver-from-the-embassy's car, from the airport, all this kind of thing. So, yeah, that was Ed's thing, the festivals, the double bills and the silent films. So that Ed was quite extraordinary.
Another very extraordinary character who's still alive as far as I know was a gentleman called Jack who said, still says to this day it was the best job he ever had, and he called himself FTO which was Film Transport Officer. And he literally used to receive the 35 mm prints and 16 mm prints from the various distributors in- there was a cupboard outside on the street and he used to wheel them round in this little trolley and physically carry them up the stairs on Fridays with a lot of chat on the stairs with all the various artists and office people. And he's an older gentleman and he used to collect newspaper cuttings about actors and directors who died. And every day he used to put them on my desk, of people that he... and yeah: Film Transport Officer. And he was a much-loved character. And my friend, a girl called Chloe Lambourne made a film about him and ended up getting into National Film School off the basis of this film about Jack. And she became an editor and she edited For Sama, which won an Oscar a few years ago. And it all began with this film about Jack. It's quite interesting. So, Jack was interesting. I mean, everyone was interesting basically. I mean, all the ushers were sort of in each other's projects, you know, everybody was, I mean, there's, there's various people, you know, there's various people who became famous. I'm trying to think of people and I'm blanking out- this is the age thing, of people who became... but I mean, there's people who, you know, were ushers with me who went on to do various things. Other characters who were interesting? Oh God, I mean, there, there's just so many really. I mean, it's just everyone who came in the building really, but I think probably Jack and Ed are kind of take away characters, I think. Really, yeah.
[14:10] KD: So again, from your perspective, just thinking back to some of the performances and exhibitions and films that you would have seen yourself over that period. Are there any that particularly stand out?
SM: Yoko Ono's art exhibition was quite extraordinary. There was a wall which people wrote on in the cafe. Her presence was extraordinary. She was very low key; it was very beautiful. That was extraordinary. And Anselm Kiefer's massive bookcase made of slate, which took up the entire Studio One wall, which was devastating. And you felt like he'd been hit by history. And I don't think I'll ever forget that.
The Wooster Group with Willem Dafoe, and his wife at that time. Extraordinary actors who just took you to a whole other level of performance. And Willem Dafoe, very low-key, hanging out in a cafe all the time. I mean, I can go on: David Bowie launching his album; a first across all the cinemas all around Europe. I sneaked into that with the camera crew and was in that, and it was incredible. And he used to love the terrace, loved Riverside, used to sit on the terrace a lot.
Robert Lepage. Theatre de Complicite, Mnemonic. Really, there's so many things. Watching My Life as a Dog, Lasse Hallstrom's film here. I mean, there's theatre, there's cinema, there's TV. It was just massive. Every single day was an event here. Bruce McLean, performance art. He had a whole load of dead fish upstairs in a studio which was called Studio Three, which became the bar on TFI Friday. And I just remember there was this studio full of dead fish that you could visit kind of every, it kind of went on for a week, it went on and on and on and it was just extraordinary but it was, I think, you know, incredible performance art stuff. Yeah, I don't know if I'm being boring. It was just, you know, it, it really was, quite, quite incredible really, what went on here, you know, and even queues for things and meeting people in queues.
[17:25] And you know, TFI Friday, I appreciated because the live, you know, when it was live, it was extremely exciting. The sound quality of all the bands was really incredible. You know, I saw Debbie Harry singing Hanging on the Telephone in a studio in a rehearsal – there was no one else in here. I saw Iggy Pop, you know. I, I saw Prince live, I was told to get – I was standing on a fire escape kind of dancing, told to get off the fire escape, so I was kind of going mad at this Prince thing, you know.
What can I say? It was, it was quite something, but it was full of – Riverside was a place where you could be very famous and very low key. You know, there'd be like, I once had tea with Lenny Kravitz, you know, and it was a kind of, you know – I smoked a cigarette with Tim Robbins. It was just the kind of place where you could just be that. And, you know, the whole celeb, idea of celebrity was a very different thing at that time. Much too, you know, it's much changed now. So, I think it was a refuge where people felt they could do, be at home to do art, before, you know, and it, and they'd, they'd earned their craft over the years. It wasn't like now where you can become a celebrity overnight kind of thing. You know, it was very much a place where people kind of studied. Yeah, I've gone on and on... (laughs).
[19:15] KD: Not at all. The setting for Riverside Studios is Hammersmith. How do you feel Hammersmith as an area has changed in the time that you first became associated with Riverside Studios?
SM: Oh, it's massive, massively changed, with all the new businesses. Just, you know, I mean, you know, Disney was here. I mean, as an example, I think, I can say an example. So when I was running the cinema, I used to do the marketing meeting for Innocent. And Innocent were a couple of guys who had an office in Hammersmith used to come and do their little meetings, and they, they developed these smoothies, it was all very exciting.
And then if you think about the Innocent story, that as a metaphor for Hammersmith, and think about how massive Innocent became and then they were bought out by Coca Cola or whatever it was they were bought out by. You know, that is kind of a metaphor if you see, if, you know, you know, Hammersmith was very, very low key. I mean, you know, always had the pubs in the kind of, but it's the influx of business – the fact that there's now an IKEA in Hammersmith, I think it kind of sums it up really. But it still has those kind of key little destinations that we used to use as a company, you know, places like the Ship and the Dove and the Blue Anchor, and all those pubs and all those kind of integral things which, you know, we would all go to we, you know. But the kind of Fulham Reach, this whole journey of the river back towards Putney obviously is, you know, amazing. But, and I think there's a younger population, there's a younger, you know, there's much younger population now in Hammersmith, where it didn't seem to be the kind of destination for younger people when I was here.
[21:26] KD: Staying on the theme of younger people and the local community. What sort of engagement did Riverside Studios have with both the local community and younger people in the time that you were here? Do you think of any projects or initiatives that you were involved in?
SM: We did, I employed a guy called Rex, who was really not anyone who'd worked with kids. Rex Opordue – I can't remember exactly how to pronounce his second name. But he loved cinema, and we did a Saturday morning Kids Club, and I kind of got him to do it as a separate project and it was really, really successful. So, you know, we chose the film: could be animation, could be a release. We did, experimented with all kinds of things and we, you know, we did little parties, we did little things with them we kind of just built up a following. He put in a lot of work where he went out to the local schools, and he talked about the cinema, you know, we used to bring in kids for little chats about what we're doing. So he, you know, he really dedicated himself to it and it was, it was really, really successful. And we used to run special versions of it in school holidays – Easter holidays, summer holidays. We kind of, it was early days kids cinema clubs where people were not really doing them. Now it's essential as part of most cinemas’ thing and we didn't get special funding for it. So we just did, you know, but he really put the work in, and it was a great project.
And, you know, I used to do one-off projects with local charities and various things. But there was always a kind of element of kids, you know, visiting, there was always an element of kids cinema going on. Lots of people used to hire the cinema for parties because there was this massive area at the bottom of the screen. So, where the kids used to just dance, because they'd sort of be in the film. So, you know, we kind of had Spirited Away or something, and they'd all just kind of... So it was very, you know, very popular with kids doing their parties and things. So, you know, the more savvy we became about all this, the better it got really, you know.
[23:50] KD: So Riverside Studios has changed over time, in terms of its, both its space but also its programming and so on. What, if any, elements of the old Riverside Studios do you feel are currently missing?
SM: Well, it's not the same building. So I, I'm glad of that, because then I wouldn't be able to come, I would make a comparison. It's not the same. What's good about it is the respect for the history, which I'm very glad that they have, you know, there's been, that’s continuing. And it's a bit anarchic still, which I'm glad about! The staff who work here are as relaxed as they were before. One of my first experiences of coming here – it was a kind of very relaxed reception. Another experience of coming here is I dropped my sunglasses. I came to see Killers of the Flower Moon with my friend and dropped my sunglasses down the side of the seats and, you know, knew somehow they'd still be here. Came back and found them down the side of the seat. You know, that's a Riverside experience (laughs).
It’s a bit corporate now and the space is a little bit clinical, even though it's big, it's a bit clinical. We had a very special terrace, which was a private terrace really that people didn't obviously know about, when you could get access to it, you know, but that was very, very special. Yeah, I mean, I think everyone's trying. The programme is not in any way on the level of artistic programming that it was, absolutely no way at all. It doesn't have that direction, I don't feel, it's just not in the same class, but it does have the spirit of, you know, the spirit of trying things out, which we had. And I think obviously the TV part is as successful and doing well. But the cinema part seems to be doing, it's quite, you know, it's doing quite well: I like what they're doing. I like, you know, there's been a lot of things I would go, I would come and see so, yeah, I mean, it's, I think it seems to be doing... and what I love, it seems that the community really like it and that's really important. You know, I see a lot of kids in here. I see a lot of families in here and I think that's really essential.
[26:42] KD: Just staying on the topic of cinema. I had a chance to look through the archives here at Riverside Studios and some of the programs that were around at that time. You mentioned the double bills, which were fascinating to see some of the pairings that were made at that time. And they were, they appear to have been by a number of different sort of ways, be it either by actor, by theme, by country, by director, by genre and so on. Could you tell us a bit more, a bit more about the creative process involved in making those pairings?
SM: Not really because it was, it's purely, it, I mean, it, it's kind of instinct. I mean, my, Ed's whole life was film, my whole life was film. So literally going, you were invited to, the newer films you were invited to by distributors, and there are many of them. So you go and see films in the West End with other exhibitors who have cinemas, and you'll see the latest new film and then you decide whether it's suitable for your audience or not,
I mean, I made quite a lot of mistakes. I mean, one very funny mistake I think was, I would be, I would watch, I watched Football Factory, which I actually loved, with my boyfriend at the time. I loved it, loved Danny Dyer, loved it. And programmed that at Riverside, which was a totally, totally wrong choice: that is not the right audience. So, you know, you had to really work out who your audience was as opposed to, “oh, I like this”, you know.
Anyway, so there's the new films and then there's the whole history of cinema which is like, I was constantly playing catch up because I hadn't studied cinema, I studied dance. So I'd be watching films all the time. I mean, it was on VHS a lot of the time because, you know, I, that's where we were at. So, and I would rent a lot of cinema at the weekends and buy DVDs or buy, sorry, buy VHS. And then, so I was kind of educating myself about it all the time. So, in order to pair something, I would tend to, I would hope, because we had the chance to show older films, I’d try to always show the older film. So I'd hope to have seen it and, you know, it would either be, be the kind of, I don't know, just whatever the story was, or how somehow it resonated, or I felt that the director was on the same kind of issue or wavelength or whatever and it would be purely instinctive – and that was what Ed's thing really was as well. There's not really a calculated way of doing a double bill. It just was, you know, and if it worked, it was, you know. I mean, an example of something which worked, which is actually quite silly, is going back to the 90s and two films which became iconic, but at the time, weren't really iconic. We used to do a double bill of Big Blue and Betty Blue. That is not a kind of terribly artistic, fabulously curated. But those films now, you know, kind of, you know, took on a different but, but they were – I mean, that's very silly, you know, but, so yeah. We, I just submerged myself in the kind of whole cinema thing and, you know, because I was coming into contact with all those different cultures. For example, we did an Egyptian festival or whatever, and then suddenly be like, I'd meet somebody like, oh this director, and then you kind of go off and look at those films and then you kind of, you know, constantly. I was very lucky in that Riverside was very lucky in that we always had business coming to us. I never once had to go and look for business here, which was incredible really, you know,
[31:00] KD: You mentioned there, the Egyptian Film Festival, you also previously mentioned the Polish Film Festival. And again, looking through the archives, there was a number of other quite interesting festivals that took place and there was, for example, the International Dance Film Festival, Irish Film Season and a number of others as well. Just thinking about what's, I suppose, what's happening in the world now, or what's topical now, if you were able to choose or design a festival of films now, what sort of topics would you be looking to focus on?
SM: I like stuff like, I mean, one of the most exciting seasons we did and I've always wanted to recreate it, I worked with the German Embassy, and we did a season about spies. I'm, I've become, I'm very interested in documentary. So, yeah, things like that, I think I'd, I'd be on kind of something about the Cold War or something about – I think I'm kind of becoming more and more political about my kind of things. I think I'd be kind of, I'd try and do something that would be in some way, sort of somewhere where there's a chance to kind of search for things, you know, so something like that. Or, you know, I'm, I mean, one thing I would like to do and I've not done it yet, and I've always, I'd like to do a program about Scotland but not just about an obvious, but something about the myth of the Highlands in Hollywood, something like that.
I mean, I've got loads of ideas but yes, it would either be – But if I was to do something quite sort of, you know, kind of about maybe old, but older movies, but looking at kind of spying or the idea of war or something like that.
[32:55] KD: Sort of wrapping up. And what sort of difference do you feel if any Riverside has made, what difference has it made?
SM: I think it shaped a lot of people in the arts, it shaped their lives. I think it had a massive impact on people whether they be, I mean, I meet directors and actors who, you know, their lives were changed by coming here. Pawel Pawlikowski, Oscar winner, he told me he used to come here. I used to see him when I was in the box office here and he used to get tickets for me, and he says that this place shaped his whole film career – and look where he is now. You know, I met the actor from Big Blue. He was the main actor in The Big Blue. I met him and he said the same thing. I said to him, oh, we used to show double bill of your film. And he said to me, I used to come here all the time and he was living in France, he was living in Paris. I can't believe I've forgotten his name, he is massively famous. Anyway... this is the joys... (laughs). Yeah, it basically changed a lot of people's lives and it kind of, you know, it really, really did: it was massive.
[34:29] KD: Is there anything that we haven't covered that you'd like to talk about?
SM: And for some reason, the word Dr Who's come in my head. I think that was, that was one of the other kind of things. I used to work with the Dr Who Society. That was another extremely funny and great thing that I used to do, because of the very particular episode with the Daleks coming out the Thames and filmed down here. And that, so that was another thing, yeah, quite extraordinary. And you know, great, great bunch of people, yeah.
[35:12] KD: That's been, thank you Shira, that's been hugely enjoyable. Hope, is there anything? [Hope Fulton]. You mentioned your audience. How did you know who they were and who were they?
SM: The audience were very demonstrative. If they liked something or didn't like something, they would be, they would say it in the audience. They used to write to me on a regular basis complaining about films not being shown on the right ratio, about which version they wanted. Trial and error. And essentially a lot of the people who came to the cinema were this theatre people as well, and were the gallery people and were the dance people, it was a tribe. So I was influenced by what was going on in the theatre. For example, I did a Tim Robbins season because Tim Robbins’ play, he did a play called Embedded here with his, the actors group that he worked with and they... So we did, we all kind of worked together.
I used to do a lot of music films here and Top of the Pops was here and, you know, it was, so you kind of learnt. But they were, the audience back then, were kind of hungry for that kind of new cinema, because there weren't that many, apart from the Scala. There weren't that many kind of repertory cinema places, you know, they just weren't, there was nowhere really like Riverside. So people came, you know,
[36:56] HF: What was the cinema itself like? I've seen a couple of pictures.
SM: It was, I mean, they've taken the design of the main cinema there, exactly from Riverside; had the very steep break. Our cinema had the big massive screen which I always thought was very important, I'm glad it still carried on. It was, we didn't have a bar upstairs, we didn't have, you know, so there was just a lot of people going up and down the stairs. You know, a lot of, just it was quite a kind of secret, it was kind of more about the experience of being in the cinema space.
Um And, you know, people would always come downstairs and do the drink in between for the double bill. A lot of people would hang out talking about films afterwards. You know, it was just a very nice, very pleasurable. A lot of great Q&As, you know, over the years, which were really, you know. Pete Postlethwaite, for some reasons comes into my head. You know, all kind of, just some great, some great things. I had a huge amount of support from, from Time Out magazine. A huge amount of press support because we didn't have a press department, I had to do my own press. So I'd literally go off and meet the journalists and talk about what was going on. But we had it, we had a lot of, yeah, we had a lot of press support which helped. They used to regularly give us film of the week in The Independent, which had a, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.
[38:34] HF: Brilliant – thank you.
DT: Shira, will you talk a little bit about Riverside’s or your relationship with Dochouse?
SM: Oh, right. So Dochouse which now have a cinema Bertha Dochouse, at Curzon in Russell Square, Curzon. Liz ,used to was a documentary filmmaker, taught at National Film School, had this idea of showing documentaries, which had not really been done on a regular basis in cinemas. And my boss at the time, William Burdett-Coutts allowed Liz to have free office space in Riverside.
And we used to do this thing called Dochouse Thursdays, which we regularly showed a documentary with a Q&A, and it began kind of slowly and then, you know, really, really took off to the extent where, you know, Kevin MacDonald came, you know, he brought his Bob Marley film. It’s kind of, you know, it was, it, it just grew and grew and grew and grew to the extent that Liz felt confident enough to literally set up this cinema, which is now really working. But it was, it was kind of feeding in, feeding in the idea of documentary into cinemas and it really grew, people were really, really enjoyed it. And you know, and it was very well curated by them, but we used to work together on it, and so I would maybe be influenced by that what they were screening or, you know, we'd, I'd have, you know, find, find something that would be connected and all that kind of thing. Yeah.
[40:29] DT: I want you to talk a little bit more, because you, you talked about things going on in the TV studio, but what about the special events in the cinema? I can remember attending a screening with Nic Roeg – we had some really big names. And also because of the fact that you would, you had quite intimate relationships with these people.
SM: Yes. So, yes, we did. We had, so Nic Roeg: I used to do London Film Academy's Degree show. So, Nic Roeg was the patron of London Film Academy and we did a season of all of his films. He came. I mean, it would be the kind of thing where you would stop someone. I remember meeting Julie Christie. Julie Christie used to come to the cinema and Julie Christie would just be in the, you know, just kind of in the cafe. And I, you know, you would, I would literally be able to speak to these people and end up doing an event with them. That was the kind of level. Juliette Binoche was here one night watching Mnemonic. She came to see Complicite, and I met her doing that, you know, in the air. It, I mean, the kind of level was kind of really kind of off the hook, kind of really, kind of. God, Daniel, there's so many people that were so famous, and it's all like a blur because there was so many people.
DT: Sylvia Syms was just someone who you grabbed...
Yes, we did. Yes, Sylvia Syms. God, I'm kind of blanking out of all the majorly famous people that we've kind of.
DT: Were you here when Tarkovsky did his... no?
No, I wasn't here. That was before me. Oh God
DT: The Who?
Yes, I did an event with The Who. That was really incredible. I did an event with The Who – I did their documentary and I always remember Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend coming up to me and going thank you for having us – and that was them. They were absolutely charming.
I did an event with, oh my God, the famous drug smuggling, the guy who wrote the book about, the drugs, he wrote a book about, he's a very, very famous.
DT: Mr Nice
SM: Yes, Mr Nice
DT: Howard...
SM: Howard Marks, Howard Marks. I did a documentary, I did an event with Howard Marks, that was amazing. He came here. One of the funniest events I did was something called the 12 Dogs of Christmas, which I'll never ever forget, because it was a launch of a movie and we literally had 12 dogs and we brought the dogs in up a side door and had 12 dogs walking along the cinema area. That was insane. I did an event with Kevin Keegan where he did a motivational speech. I mean, I literally, it was a bit like who didn't we do an event with?
DT: Disney used to do some top-secret stuff didn’t they?
SM: Disney, yes, we did all the top secret launches for, for Disney of all the kind of Star Wars things, of all the kind of, you know, yeah, it, it was quite phenomenal. God, who else? I mean, I have a, I have at home, I have a fax which Polanski sent, saying, OK-ing me to screen Knife in the Water on 35mm because of our relationship with Polish Embassy.
I had, oh God. Various people used to get changed in my office - Shirley Anne Field who sadly passed away recently. She, I remember her changing into a very elegant dress in my office. We did a Q&A with her with a gentleman called Paul Ryan who also sadly passed away. He used to do all the Q&As at Cine Lumiere. So we did an event with Shirley Anne Field, which was amazing.
[45:34] DT: Did you work with Hanif?
Yes, I did Q&As with Hanif, Hanif Kureishi. So, Hanif Kureishi used to work in in the press office in Riverside before I got here. But when I got the job, Hanif used to do all his interviews with the press and all his kind of things in the cinema, and he used to just phone me up – can I please do this and that in the cinema? So, he used to do all his stuff. And then I used to do, I did various Q&A with him here, on a lot of his films and he shot, was it some of The Buddha of Suburbia, or shot various things here. Yeah, shot various things here.
Talking of filming, they shot Adulthood here. In fact, I'm on the, we're on the credits of Adulthood. They shot some of Adulthood here. Oh my God, I mean, it's epic. I can't really even...
DT: I’ve got one more question...
KD: Please, please. Of course.
DT: I’d, well, you will know as well as I do what an upheaval the closure of the original building was. Can you talk a little bit about the sort of shadow falling across the old Riverside as we came to realise that it was going to be no more?
Yeah. I mean, Riverside is, was always under threat as long as I remember. And there was all these plans up river, down river, small building and there was all these people who were going to take it over, you know, including actor, Alan Rickman at one point, and all these various theatrical characters and there was always these kind of threats, but when we kind of got the, the actual final thing, it was quite devastating. And I, I mean, I had, you know, I mean, personally I had a very, very difficult time with that because actually I don't think I can even talk about it because it's a bit too difficult. But, yeah, I mean, we all hoped there was another way. And, because the building was actually, the cinema was in profit at the time. So, you know, we really didn't understand why we would have to close because we were in profit and the TV section was absolutely flying. So, it was, it was really, really, quite, quite devastating and you know, I personally tried all kind of things, involving attempts at other buildings and getting various members of the film industry and various other people to try to sort of see if there was a way through it all. But, you know, there was, there was kind of board meetings and staff meetings and it was a very, very gloomy period. But then, we did an extraordinary and very moving final night at Riverside where I screened The Third Man, which was pretty selfish in that it was my favorite, apart from The Red Shoes, which everyone kind of knows, but The Third Man, was my favorite kind of British film.
So, we showed The Third Man and David Gotthard, who was one of the former programmers, artistic program, of Riverside, when I was an usher, Peter Gill was the director, but David Gothard, was kind of the programmer. So, when I was here at age 17, he was there. So, he came and talked about Riverside. And we showed The Third Man and we kind of had a big party and, you know, huge numbers of people came to that: journalists, actors, directors, huge numbers of audience people. It was really incredibly sad. But it was quite beautiful. It was very, very... the whole thing was really quite devastating for quite a long time. I couldn't actually come down this road. It took me quite a number of years, personally, to come down the road. Just because it was just so sad. Because it was, you know, the building had so many good memories, really. And yeah, that was it really.
KD: That's been hugely enjoyable. Thank you so much.
SM: Pleasure. Nice to speak to you.
KD: Likewise
SM: Thank you.
[2nd Audio file] KD: Can you tell us a bit more about the memorable colleagues you had here at Riverside Studios?
OK. Well just, I’m kind of referencing theatre things because I think they kind of had a lot of impact on me but they have cinematic kind of references. So there’s a company called Cirque Invisible, which is a gentleman called Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée who is married to Victoria Chaplin, who is Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter. And they were single-handedly the most incredible, memorable and bonkers company that I’ve sort of known in that they, at one point, had animals at the back of Riverside: a horse, dogs, I mean there was all kinds of things going on at the back there.
Their performances were just mesmerising – that kind of silent, you know, cinema. Victoria made all the costumes. I mean circus effectively but circus on a whole other level. And they kind of adopted me, and I got to know their son, James, quite well. And they just had a massive impact on me because they were so good, I mean the kind of thing you remember in your dreams. And one of the most... and they tended to have very kind of genuine friendships with quite, other quite well-known people. And one of my best memories of the time was that this guy in leathers and a hat, motorbike guy came to see if he could come and see them and it was Daniel Day-Lewis, and he was absolutely charming, very low key. And I remember taking Daniel Day-Lewis out to meet them and hung out with them and hung out with Daniel Day-Lewis, and he was lovely. And he loved them and he used to go and stay with them in France. And it was kind of at the height of his career, when I’d just... One of the classic Riverside films was The Unbearable Lightness of Being, it was an absolute top Riverside, so it was around that period. So it was very, very nice, a very nice time, yeah. Very charming man, yeah.
