For British, The Trick is Distribution

Sarah Lyall

Tuesday, Dec. 2, 1997 | 2:59 a.m.

LONDON - Lynda Myles, a producer whose credits include "The Snapper" and "The Commitments," describes her new film, "The Life of Stuff," as a "psychotic comedy" about a group of ineffectual gangsters in Scotland. It was shown for the first time at the London Film Festival last month, and Ms. Myles, while hopeful, is unsure about its future. Like many newly minted British films, "The Life of Stuff" does not yet have a distributor.

In fact, more than half the films made in Britain each year never make it to a movie theater. And although the British film industry seems to be undergoing something of a renaissance, fueled by a noticeable upturn in production and a huge gift of more than $156 million from the National Lottery last spring, people in the industry warn that the dawn will turn out to be a false one if the country's film distribution system doesn't improve quickly.

"There are going to have to be changes, or else we'll have a butter mountain of movies that nobody will be able to see," said Adrian Wootton, the film festival's director, referring to dairy quotas that leave uneaten food piled up in warehouses. "It's great that they've given so much money to film, but they really need to get the distribution sorted out."

For a film like "The Life of Stuff," a low-budget movie without big stars, getting the distribution sorted out means finding someone willing to take enough of a chance to usher the film into a theater. "On the whole, I tend to think a good film will find its way," Ms. Myles said, "but I don't think there's an even playing field."

By any number of standards, things are looking up for film in Britain. Home-grown British actors like Ralph Fiennes and Ewan McGregor are hot box-office stars. Films like "Mr. Bean" and "The Full Monty" have become international hits. Miramax, a division of Walt Disney, has just opened a British arm, led by David Aukin, who as the head of film at Channel Four helped develop movies like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Trainspotting." The lottery money, which went to three newly formed film consortia, is expected to help generate some 60 new British films over the next six years. "The U.K. is going through a production boom," said Tim Adler, deputy editor of Screen Finance, an industry newsletter here. "There's clearly plenty of money out there for making films."

But that means more competition to get the films into the theaters. And the industry's dirty secret is that most British films fail to achieve any sort of release. Of the 76 made by British companies or as British co-productions in 1995, half had not been released as of May 1997, according to statistics compiled by Screen Finance. While some of the unreleased films were scheduled for distribution at some point, or had been released directly to television or video, 28 films - accounting for more than $120 million of the $526 million invested in British-produced films that year - had no release plans whatsoever.

British distributors argue that the percentages aren't any worse than they are in the United States, where hundreds of films are made each year, never to see the light of day. "There's no point in making films that nobody wants to see," said Colin Birch, theatrical and video sales director at Film Four Distributors. "The trouble with having all this money coming in is that there may be a lot of films that aren't researched or developed properly, and they come onto the market without a hope in hell of anyone ever wanting to pay money to go see them."

But filmmakers say the odds are unfairly stacked against them here, unless they are known quantities like Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, able to sell movies on the strength of their own names.