THE CHAMPION (REMEMBERING ALAN PARKER)

When I was 16, I entered a Young Film Critics contest run by Belfast's Queen's Film Theatre.

I was one of two runners-up in the schools competition and the both of us had reviewed Roland Joffe's Jesuits in the jungle drama 'The Mission'.

My prize was a film on VHS video for my school and a trip to the Dublin set of the Channel 4 miniseries of Maeve Binchy's 'Echoes'.

My fellow runner-up and I also went to a Dublin Film Festival screening of the Coen Brothers' 'Raising Arizona' with the QFT's Michael Open and an Italian embassy reception in honour of the director Francesco Rosi where we met Ken Russell.

The winner of the competition, however, reviewed Martin Scorsese's comedy 'After Hours' and Alan Parker was the judge.

Unable to attend the event announcing the winners, Parker sent a typically tongue in cheek message to us all, commending us on our reviews but explaining that the reason the rest of us didn't take the top prize was that we mentioned the producer David Puttnam far too much.

Alan Parker was a talented and very witty filmmaker.

But he was also a versatile filmmaker who could flit between musical movies to kids adventures, dark horror, political thrillers, comedy and relationship dramas.

Parker was as comfortable on the streets of New York, Dublin or Austin as he was in his native London.

And he was a massive figure in British and Irish cinema, unearthing and influencing fresh talent on both sides of the camera.

A chairman of the British Film Institute's board of governors and a two time Oscar nominee, he could be pugnacious in interviews but was also quick with a quip.

He was also an important and talented director with a terrific range who was not afraid to take on the filmmaking establishment, tackle challenging material or champion British and Irish talent.

Born into a working class family on a housing estate in Islington in north London, his mother was a dressmaker and his father was a painter.

Proud of his working class roots, Parker had little exposure to filmmaking in his youth but developed an eye for the visual image when he was introduced to photography by his uncles.

Although he studied science in Dame Alice Owen's School, Parker pursued a career in the advertising industry, initially working in his first employer's post room.

However, inspired by what he saw, he burned with a desire to write, crafting essays and ads when he returned home from work.

Encouraged by his colleagues, Parker secured a job as a copywriter and soon caught the eye of other ad agencies, winding up in the London firm, Collett Dickinson Pearce where he would first come across David Puttnam and Alan Marshall who would later produce his movies.

In 1968, he would transition from writing to directing adverts and would establish with Marshall a production company which would acquire a reputation as the UK's best maker of commercials.

It's most famous series of comic ads was directed by Parker for the Italian brand of vermouth Cinzano and featured Joan Collins and Leonard Rossiter.

Parker would later credit Puttnam for encouraging him to make a move into filmmaking by writing the script for Waris Hussein's 1971 comedy 'Melody' which did well in Latin America, Japan and South Africa.

However it struggled to win over audiences in the UK and US.

This led to Parker dabbling in short films, making two called 'Our Cissy' and 'Footsteps'.

Now focused on a career in film and television, Parker found himself directing Maureen Lipman in a BBC 'Play for Today' of Jack Rosenthal's 'The Evacuees' about a Jewish family during the London Blitz.

The production won a BAFTA for Best Play and also an international Emmy.

Parket wrote and directed his first feature 'No Hard Feelings', a Second World War love story also set during the Blitz with Anthony Allen, Kate Williams and Joe Gladwin which was later acquired and broadcast by the BBC.

In 1976, he got a chance to work with emerging Hollywood talent on the children's musical gangster comedy feature film 'Bugsy Malone' with Jodie Foster and Scott Baio.

A hit in the UK and a critical success on both sides of the Atlantic, the film brought him to the attention of Hollywood and it received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Musical or Comedy as well as two BAFTA nominations for Jodie Foster.

It paved the way for Columbia Pictures allowing him to direct the controversial, hard hitting 1978 Turkish prison drama 'Midnight Express' in which Brad Davis played a young American jailed for smuggling hash.

With an Academy Award winning script by Oliver Stone, the film was a commercial and critical hit landing Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Parker's first Best Director nod, Best Film Editing and John Hurt for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as an English heroin addict in the prison.

Giorgio Moroder captured an Oscar too for his score for the film which was also a contender for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Now firmly on the radar of Hollywood, Parker was engaged by United Artists to direct a film about aspiring performers training in New York's High School for the Performing Arts.

His 1980 film 'Fame,' which followed the ups and downs of the students, relied on an unknown cast that included Irene Cara, Lee Curreri, Gene Anthony Ray and Debbie Allen.

Despite attracting mixed reviews and tackling grittier issues than a typical youth musical, 'Fame' was a hit - with the studio initially limiting its cinema release in the United States to generate positive word of mouth for a film with no stars.

It spawned a hit single 'Fame' sung by Irene Cara, a successful NBC spin-off television series and landed 6 Academy  Award nominations, winning Best Original Song and Best Musical Score and earning Parker a BAFTA Best Director nomination.

Parker's follow-up in 1982 was a mostly well received relationship drama 'Shoot the Moon' with Diane Keaton, Albert Finney and Karen Allen which was in the running for the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

That year his ambitious musical 'Pink Floyd - the Wall,' based around the rock group's respected 1979 album of the same name, was also released with a pre-Band Aid Bob Geldof in the lead role of Pink and Bob Hoskins as a rock manager.

Featuring the animation of Gerald Scarfe, the film was a hit with critics and made a decent profit, appealing to fans of the English psychedelic rock group.

The Londoner's next project was a 1984 adaptation of William Wharton's drama 'Birdy' with Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage about the friendship of two teenagers who find themselves fighting in the Vietnam War.

Told in flashback, it was the first Hollywood production to use a Skycam - helping Parker to create the sensation of flying.

Critically well received, it featured a Peter Gabriel soundtrack but it failed to garner awards season momentum and struggled to draw audiences. 

Now one of Britain's best known and respected film directors, he was asked by Thames Television to make a documentary in 1986 about the country's history of film along with other directors Richard Attenborough and Lindsay Anderson.

Working with the film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, Parker's film 'A Turnip Head's Guide to the British Film Industry' was irreverent, poking fun at the film establishment.

Criticised by some including the critics Barry Norman and Alexander Walker who complained about the editing of their interview, it was adored by others and landed a Press Guild award for Best Documentary.

A year later, Parker found himself bringing one of the most exciting actors of his generation, Mickey Rourke together with arguably the world's most respected screen actor Robert de Niro.

The dark, gothic 1987 thriller 'Angel Heart' with Lisa Bonet and Charlotte Rampling drew mixed reviews from critics including Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert who objected to its violence, Satanic and voodoo themes and a graphic, bloody sex scene which some deemed to be almost pornographic 

The film, written by Parker, struggled to make its money back but, over the years, it has acquired a cult status, with Christopher Nolan citing it as an influence on his disorientating 2000 thriller 'Memento' and the British critic Mark Kermode also hailing it.

Parker earned his second Best Director Oscar nomination a year later for his anti Ku Klux Klan thriller 'Mississippi Burning' in which Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe's FBI agents investigate the disappearance of Civil Rights activists in the Deep South.

A powerful excoriation of racism and police corruption, it featured a blistering lead performance from Hackman and strong performances by Dafoe, Frances McDormand, Michael Rooker and Brad Dourif.

Nominated for seven Oscars, it walked away with only one for Peter Biziou's cinematography and captured a Silver Bear for Best Actor for Gene Hackman at the Berlin Film Festival, three BAFTAs for cinematography, sound and Gerry Hambling's film editing and four Golden Globe nominations.

However the film bitterly divided critics - some of whom joined the NAACP and the family of Martin Luther King in accusing the movie of whitewashing the Civil Rights struggle with a plot that concentrated on white characters.

The director nevertheless vigorously defended his film, which was a commercial success, arguing 'Mississippi Burning' was a piece of fiction based on historical events in much the same way that Oliver Stone's 'Platoon' and Francis Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' were fictional movies about the Vietnam War.

"I defend the right to change it in order to reach an audience who knows nothing about the realities and certainly don't watch PBS documentaries," he argued.

1990 saw Parker return with another civil liberties drama, 'Come See The Paradise' about the detention of Japanese Anericans in the United States during the Second World War.

Starring Dennis Quaid and Tamlyn Tomita, the 20th Century Fox film drew positive reviews from the critics but did not get much of a commercial push, failing to gain any Academy Award nominations despite being described in one academic study as having all the elements of Oscar click bait.

Disappointed by its underperformance at the box office, Parker turned his attention to a 1991 film adaptation of Dublin writer Roddy Doyle's cult rock band novel 'The Commitments'.

It would prove to be a genius move, helping recapture the magic of working with a largely unknown, young cast and to film live music.

The movie of 'The Commitments' came at a time of growing cultural confidence in the Irish Republic with the global success of U2, Jack Charlton's national football team lighting up the Italia 90 World Cup and the influence of the Catholic Church beginning to wane.

With its reworking of soul classics and its raucous, sweary Dublin wit, the movie launched the careers of Andrew Strong, Glen Hansard, Bronagh Gallagher, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Angeline Ball and Andrea Corr as well as featuring a great lead performance by Robert Arkins.

Despite being pretty much ignored by the Oscars, it won four BAFTAs including Best Film, Best Director for Parker, Best Editing and Best Adapted Screenpmay for Doyle, Dick Clement and Ian La Fresnais.

Well received by critics on both sides of the Atlantic, it was a minor hit that quickly acquired cult status and like 'Fame' it spawned hit albums and a stage musical version.

Colm Meaney, who worked on 'The Commitments' with Parker, was cast in his next film, a quirky, bawdy adaptation of T Coraghessan Boyle's novel 'The Road to Wellville' in 1994 with Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, John Cusack, Michael Lerner, Dana Carvey, Lara Flynn Boyle, John Neville and Traci Lind.

With Hopkins playing the eccentric early 20th Century doctor and nutritionist Dr John Harvey Kellogg, the health farm comedy, which was adapted for the screen and directed by Parker, was panned by critics and struggled to wio over audiences.

Parker received in 1995 a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours and would receive a knighthood in the 2002 New Year's Honours for his services to the British film industry.

In 1996, his 26 year marriage to Annie Inglis ended in divorce.

Parker would later marry producer Lisa Moran with whom he would remain until his death.

The director turned to the musical again in 1996, directing Madonna as the Argentine politucian Eva Peron in a handsome big screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's hit musical with Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce and Jimmy Nail.

A hit with audiences, it drew mostly positive reviews and won an Oscar for Best Original Song.

In 1998, Parker became the chairman of the British Film Institute's board of governors and a year later became the chair of the UK Film Council, becoming an a strong advocate for emerging filmmakers and the industry.

The Londoner went back to Ireland again for his penultimate movie, the 1999 adaptation of Frank McCourt's prize winning memoir 'Angela's Ashes' about his poor Limerick upbringing.

Working with Emily Watson, Robert Carlyle, Michael Legge, Ciaran Owens and Kerry Condon in a film mostly shot in Cork, it failed to gain any traction during awards season or to wow critics - although it won two IFTAs in Ireland and earned four BAFA nominations, including Watson for Best Actress.

In 2003, Parker returned to the Southern United States for the death row thriller 'The Life of David Gale' with Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet and Laura Linney.

But its convoluted plot took a bit of a critical lambasting and it barely made a profit.

It was to be his final feature film.

At the age of 70, Parker called time on his moviemaking career in 2017 after a struggle to get a 'Commitments' style film set in Glasgow.

The experience led to him to fall out with a friend over his failure to secure the necessary finance.

Tired of fighting movie financiers, he remained active on film industry bodies, received a BAFTA Fellowship and took to painting, staging an exhibition of his artwork in 2017.

Talking to the Guardian in 2017, he explained his disenchantment with the movie industry with a typically down to earth analogy which captured the wearying struggle to secure funding for movies.

"Whenever I go to the cash machine outside my local Tesco's, I see this guy who sits there nursing his dog in his lap, with his hand outstretched," he observed.

"I suddenly thought, that's me - except instead of a dog in my lap, I have a script. And there I am in the office of some studio executive where I offer my hand to beg for the money."

Parker battled illness in his latter years and with his passing he has left behind five children including his screenwriter son Nathan.

But he has also left behind a versatile and powerful body of work that any director would be proud of. 

And while he never walked away with his industry's biggest accolades, future generations will consume his films for many years to come and draw inspiration from him.

That is some legacy.

(Alan Parker passed away at the age of 76 on July 31, 2020)