11/07/2021 - CANNES 2021: Mark Cousins makes a disappointing doc about the producer of The Last Emperor, Naked Lunch and High-Rise

What is Mark Cousins thinking? Surely he appreciates the art of producing and the work of the great Jeremy Thomas enough to do something more than navel-gazing when given this opportunity to make a movie about the life of one of Britain's great producers, whose credits include international classics such as The Last Emperor, Naked Lunch, High-Rise [+see also:
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trailer
film profile] and Pinocchio [+see also:
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interview: Matteo Garrone
film profile]? It feels like Cannes has put Cousins’ The Storms of Jeremy Thomas [+see also:
interview: Jeremy Thomas
interview: Mark Cousins
film profile] into Cannes Classics because of the reputation of the producer, because of Cousins’ previously excellent track record as a director, and because the central element of the film is a car journey that Thomas (or, as Cousins calls him, "Petrolhead") makes to Cannes each year.

It's easy to feel sorry for Thomas while watching. Robert Evans is immortalised in The Kid Stays in the Picture. There is a great book on Michael Deeley, Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: My Life in Cult Movies. But Thomas gets to spend five days in a car with Cousins for a home video. Luckily for the former, he has a good sound system in the vehicle, ready to be turned on when he didn't want to hear Cousins' questions, which seem better suited for a director or writer to answer, rather than a producer.

It isn't that the conceit is bad. Cousins managed to make the road trip into a meaningful device to tie together the various strands, voice-overs and film footage in his magnificent documentary on the history of cinema, Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema [+see also:
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film profile]. With The Eyes of Orson Welles [+see also:
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interview: Mark Cousins
film profile], which played at the festival in 2018, the director showed that he can masterfully give an askance view of a cinema great. But because there is not the same weight of work on Thomas as there is on Welles, the film would benefit from more factual context. Why Thomas? Why now? But the problem is that this is as much about Cousins as it is about the great producer – why do we get to see a shot of Cousins stark-naked in a swimming pool? At least in his recent and insightful The Story of Looking [+see also:
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Cousins is trying to make a movie in the style of the cinema that he feels Thomas produces. He talks us through the sex scenes, the car scenes, politics and death, jumping back and forth between the movies, which are all given numbers in the order Thomas made them. It might have been a good idea to tell this story a bit more chronologically as well. This trip was made in 2019, when Thomas was on the way to the festival to launch Takashi Miike's millionth film, First Love [+see also:
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film profile], but Cousins doesn't delve into how fascinating and difficult it is to launch a movie at Cannes.

Rightly, the most space is reserved for The Last Emperor and Naked Lunch, but without revealing enough stories from behind the scenes. Conversely, some of the best moments come when Cousins discusses one of Thomas's lesser films, Dom Hemingway [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile]. The doc features talking-heads interviews with some of the stars of Thomas's pictures, Tilda Swinton and Debra Winger, and they tell us what a rock star Thomas is, how amazing he is to work with, and that it's about the picture and not ego. Cousins could have paid heed to this advice.

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas was produced by the UK’s David P Kelly Films, and its international sales are overseen by Visit Films.