Sutherland Interview

Alex Sutherland

Stuart

Sutherland

The Sharpe television series has been a family affair from the beginning and no family is more associated with the birth and continued success of the series than the Sutherland Family. Patriarch Muir Sutherland left a very successful career in Thames Television to found Celtic Films Entertainment LTD. Together with Malcolm Craddock’s Picture Palace they had the idea of making a television series from Bernard Cornwell’s successful Sharpe books. He was joined from the beginning of creating and filming this much loved series by his sons, producers, and partners, Stuart and Alex Sutherland.

Today sixteen successful episodes and as many years later, the Sharpe television series is still a Sutherland family affair.

Sharpe Pointe recently had the pleasure of interviewing Stuart Sutherland, Producer/Partner, Celtic Films Entertainment, LTD, and Alex Sutherland, Production Supervisor/Line Producer, Sharpe Films, about their life and work.

Traci Moore and Myriam Lechuga

You have a British father and a Spanish mother, two very strong cultural identities. Were you raised in both the UK and Spain? How do you each navigate the two cultures in your own life? Do you find yourself switching cultural identities depending on where you are and whom you are with?

AS: We have a large Spanish family living mostly in Madrid. I spent a lot of my earlier years living in Madrid and Spanish was my first language until I attended boarding school in England at the age of 8.

I would most defiantly say that in the early 80's & 90's there was a big difference in the identities of each of these countries but this has changed dramatically over the last decade as Europe has become so integrated.

SS: Yeah, I think that would be correct to say that I’m a cultural identity switcher. When we were growing up we spent most of our school days at boarding school. This was before they became totally multicultural so at school we were always the Spaniards and then the holidays we used to spend in Spain. And over there we were the hooligans....our youth coincided with English football hooligans rampaging through Europe so the name stuck for a while. Our family is heavily skewered Spanish. I have something like 16 first Spanish cousins and about two on the English side. So I guess my business mind is Anglo Saxon and my heart is Spanish.

Tell us what it was like to grow up in a family so well known in the film and TV industry?

AS: I started as a runner in 1989 on a TV series called The Saint; my father was a good friend of the producer. This was certainly helpful at the start but I soon found out that I had to work twice as hard as anyone else as I was the son of a producer and nepotism was something that was not looked at too kindly at the time.

SS: Well it helps you get your foot on the ladder but that’s about all. My first job was working on the Barcelona Olympic ceremonies. It was a friend of a friend of a friend of the family who gave me the job. But I worked 7 days a week for 3 months. Regularly sleeping only 4 hours a night (the nightlife was very tempting!) and I got paid £200 a month. I had to arrange my own accommodation and learn how to drive around the city. There is always the pressure to work harder so no-one could ever throw it in your face...the department that I actually worked for was the lighting department. It was the first Olympics that went truly for a huge spectacular. It was a demonstration of pride of the Catalan people to show that they could put a huge world event together like no other. I worked directly for the biggest Producer of Music concerts in the world. He produced the shows of Blues Brothers, Pink Floyd, Jackson, Genesis etc etc. It was a great experience and led to me going on a world tour with Phil Collins as his Assistant Production Manager for two years. So coming back to your question, I guess you realize that doors will open but you have to take advantage of the opportunity and learn to think laterally from the get go. There are seldom second chances in this game

AS: Muir was highly respected within the television industry at the time, so we had to be careful to maintain this. His work ethic is very simple as he believes in hard work & honesty, I just try to follow this in my work.

SS: Muir’s a great role model and a great source of knowledge. Times move on but drawing on the past is normally the best way to deal with the future. So it’s great to have an oracle in the family who has instilled that there is no short cut to success. I would say that he has taught me that to succeed in this business you need to have a combination of self belief, talent and perseverance. He is always coming up with new projects and never lets up. We’re a very open family who spends 99% of our time discussing the business.

SS: When you film abroad in remote locations you are thrown together in rather intimate circumstances and this creates a strong bond between the cast and crew. For instance in India we used to have a pool competition or a weekly pub quiz. Typical English pub activities. In Russia we had a great all female Portuguese Hair and Makeup crew. The two girls used to cook great food for anybody that wanted to stop by every Sunday afternoon.

Two Brothers

Two Countries

One Sharpe Vision

Continue to

Above, at right: Hard at work: Alex Sutherland

Alex Sutherland leading the French on location.

On the set of Sharpe’s Honour

Above, right: Alex Sutherland enroute to another Sharpe location.

L to R: Top: Scott Cleverdon. Alex Sutherland, Jason Salkey

Bottom: L, Pete Postlethwaite, R: Lyndon Davies

©Stuart Sutherland, Yuglo.com

When you were kids did either of you rebel or want to do something other than work in film and television production when you grew up? If so, what was it you wanted to do?

AS: It was very clear for me that film was the only place to be in; I started in the business at 18 straight from school. But if I had gone into another trade it would have been hotel management as I love travelling and living in different countries.

SS: When I was a kid I wanted to be a policeman...but I soon grew out of that. Film and TV was always going to be the path. I almost ended up doing a theatre degree at Uni but then headed to business school and did summer courses at UCLA with the idea of working in LA to end up producing. I also travelled around Latin America when I was 19 after graduating high school, as you guys would say. I toyed with the idea of staying in the music business when I worked for Phil Collins but decided to go back to film.

Do you feel you are judged differently by your colleagues because of your family connection when you are working together on a film project?

AS: In the early days most definitely but as you move up within the industry this is usually only done through merit, so you are only judged on your work rather than your name.

SS: Not really. We’re a family business and proud of it. We all have different skill sets which combine to make a powerful team. Over time you develop your own relationships and people are unaware of family connections unless you raise it. People end up judging you on merit (I think) so they are more likely to take issue with whether they think that you are any good or not. But if you know your stuff...end of conversation.

What’s it like living with the legacy of Muir Sutherland? How has he influenced your work today?

Can you give us an example or a story that illustrates Muir’s way of working?

AS: Muir is relentless and never gives up, on many occasions it would have made more business sense not to continue with the pursuit of making Sharpe. He was told on numerous occasions by many people that Sharpe could never be made on a British television budget.

SS: When I went to University in London, Muir asked me into his office which was 20 mins from my Uni. He explained that he owned a catalogue of TV distribution rights which he wasn’t doing anything with and he had decided that instead of giving me money through University he wanted me to work out a way of how to commercialize these rights. In return I could keep a 15% commission. I stood to make a lot more money if I was able to make some sales. He gave me a desk, a list of contacts, and told me which TV markets to visit around the world to build up my own contacts. That was my entry point into the business side of the industry. In order to know what to make you need to know what the market wants to

This was an invaluable lesson and led to me representing from 40 hours of programming to over 600 hours in less than a year for Latin America. This was the territory that I built up the largest rapport with! At the time it was an afterthought; territory so big companies we find dealing with a kid from school. So Muir is very much about putting it all together, identifying an opportunity, getting a team and then leaving them to their own devices to execute his goals. He’s not a meddler but always there to give advice and support should it be needed. The critical point is that he also incentivizes you.

Aside from this it took him 6 years to get Sharpe off the ground. He believed in the project and worked tenaciously to make sure it would make it to the screen. In the process taking big financial gambles and scouring the world for locations that would be cost efficient yet not sacrifice on the look and feel of the films. seventeen years later we are still here.

For those unfamiliar with the film industry, can you explain the differences and the main responsibilities of an executive producer, producer, line producer, unit producer, and production manager, etc.?

AS: An Executive is usually involved in the financing side of the film.

The producer is the person behind the project and has usually the person who has nurtured it from its birth.

A Line producer is entrusted in how to best divide & spend the money. He has contacts with the widest range of crew for each job and negotiates the rates with them or their agents.

The job is very hands on and deals with all the issues that occur right from the beginning to the end of the film. It's a bit like an architect, he draws up the floor plan in order for the producer and director to create the dream.

A unit manager usually deals with logistical issues such as transport & locations.

The Production Manager is the person directly below the line Producer. He is also the main liaison between the producers & the crew. He deals with a lot of the dirty work. Some of these grades and responsibilities may differ in the United States.

SS: Not really much to add to the above. The Exec Producer/Producer in many instances overlap. It really depends on the individuals skill set. Whether they are more creative or financially focused. The Exec and Producer are really in charge of getting the thing together from book or synopsis to the screen. Putting the finance together, the international sales, the team together. Hiring the writer, director, cast choosing where to shoot, sometimes predicated by soft money given my governments. There is so much to do on a film and it only takes one little mistake to make the whole house of cards fall down that makes getting the right team together key.

Can you define ‘soft money’ ?

SS: Soft money is the term used for money provided by local tax incentives, i.e: states in the US give you rebates on local taxes or financial incentives to film in their state. I study these very carefully and determine how we can get the biggest bang for our buck. The idea of these incentives around the world is that we bring jobs and expenditure to the local economy. In the US these incentives were brought in the stop the seepage of productions that were going to Canada to film where there used to be quite generous incentives.

In the early series, did you both work on the set before you were professionally credited?

AS: I started on the 2nd Sharpe as the 3rd Assistant director.

There are many stories. Making a huge television film in Russia/Ukraine during the middle of the 90's was certainly an experience which will stay with me. A lot of the serious situations arose from logistics, communications (a lack of) and language. For most of the local crew we were totally mad and they did not understand why we had to work so hard. In one of the night sequences "the taking of the wall at Badajoz" we shot in minus -18c. I remember this being one of the most difficult periods of filming that I have ever experienced. The extras were so cold that they were drinking Vodka just to keep warm. Needless to say that over the course of the evening working with them became impossible.

SS: I worked as a 3rd Ad on the first Sharpe after the Olympics. 3 months in Yalta in 1993. A crazy place. Gorbachev was under house arrest not a 100 miles away from where we were re-enacting the Napoleonic wars with Russian soldiers wearing their red army uniforms underneath their British and French costumes.

What were you expecting in the Crimea before you arrived, and what was it really like when you started working in the midst of the fall of the Soviet Union?

AS: Most of the stories that came out of the Crimea are actually true. The conditions were truly horrendous and very not exaggerated, we really had a very hard time out there. But on the same note we had some wonderful experiences and we bonded very tightly as a crew, the camaraderie was a real life experience. I still have some very good friends that I am in contact with regularly.

The fall of the Soviet Union was an incredible as well as a surreal experience, while we were aware that things were going on around us they had a limited impact on us. Communication during that period was almost non existent, we had one phone in the office that worked from time to time, no TV, no radio, no newspapers we were pretty isolated.

SS:I did one tour of duty as per above. Alex sums it up well but you’ve got to remember that in the hotel there were no plugs in the bath tubs as they couldn’t afford them. There was rampant inflation, people walking around with bricks of money. You could call England from the hotel landline for an hour and the call would be free...it was very surreal but a great place to bond with the cast and crew. A lot of vodka and whisky was drunk.

Our readers love hearing about the good times experienced on the set of Sharpe. Can you give us an example?

AS: What Sharpe taught all of us very quickly was that if we wanted to survive the shoot we need to trust each other. The camaraderie between the crew was the best I have ever seen. Needless to say that almost as many marriages have come out of Sharpe as films.

One of my fondest memory is having completed filming in the Ukraine on Sharpe 3, probably the toughest mentally for all of us due to the lack of water and diseases that surrounded us.

We boarded a plan to Portugal for the final weeks filming. The plane ride was a nonstop party from take off to landing. I think that every airline rule was broken during the flight.

There was this wonderful euphoric feeling of having achieved something special during such a difficult period.

All the cast and crew would bring things from back home. Bottles of wine, spirits, cigarettes, spaghetti etc. It was like a Turkish bazaar and the evening ended up quite raucous. It was a great way to bond. There are so many stories.....in the last Sharpe we built a village from lots of timber. Instead of selling it back to the factory at the end of the shoot we donated it to the local town so that they could build a school from it. In Turkey the cast and crew put a fund together when Adapasarri was hit by a big earthquake (where we were filming). Daragh who played Harper was very proactive in making sure we gave something back to the local community. And as Producers we always believe that it is important that we leave a lasting legacy in some small way to the team and communities that we leave behind.

We know from Jason Salkey’s Harris Diaries that there was tension between the producers and the actors and crew. What was going on at the time from your point of view? How did you let off steam in your off hours or are there any off hours for producers?

AS: There was tension and being the son of one of the producers was certainly a tricky thing to balance at the beginning. Only on limited occasions did the situation become serious, we usually found a way to avert a crisis. The tension disappeared once we got out of the Crimea and moved the production to Turkey.

I think that Sharpe 3 was the toughest both physically and physio-logically; due to the long period of time most of us spent under very trying conditions.

On my hours off in the Crimea I just slept as much as possible as we were working really long hours & I was usually first up & last to get back.

Other than that I took long walks around the town or visited other cities near by such as Sebastopol. Richard Moore organized some wonderful expeditions around the historic battle fields.

SS: I think the Harris diaries did overblow the situation. On Sharpe 1, there were a few tense moments, one created by me that has gone down in folklore as the Dymigi bacon riots. I was on set 5am and the bacon had just arrived from London. I was going about my daily routine when I saw all the Russian crew walking past me with bacon mountains on their plates. By the time I got to the catering van most of the bacon had gone. The cast were none too happy.

We’ve all heard the stories about the terrible conditions in the Crimea during the first few Sharpe seasons – no water, bad food, etc. However as producers you can't just sit on the sidelines, you are responsible for finding solutions. Tell us how you each handled the problem of water and food shortages for example, and other unique or challenging problems you faced those first few years.

AS: The truth was that a lot of these problems were out of our hands, as there was no water in the Crimea for anyone at that time. The only solution was to hire in water trucks so that we could shower and cook.

I know that after a few weeks and at great expense we managed to pay off an official to provided our hotel with running water for a couple of hours each day.

The food was awful because that's what was there at the time, we bought a lot of food with us from the UK but a lot of it went missing as soon as we arrived!

Left, Muir Sutherland on Sharpe’s Challenge set with Daragh O,Malley