Johnny Cigarini (14 page)

Johnny ‘Biffo' Bindon died of an AIDS-related illness in 1993.

Work was non-stop. I was producing commercials for our top directors Bob Brooks and Ross Cramer. Len Fulford was also one of our stars, but I rarely worked with him. He made award-winning ads for Guinness and Courage Best Bitter. He had worked on the stills and commercials for the ‘Go to Work on an Egg' campaign and once told John Lennon, “I am the egg man”. He liked to think that was where Lennon picked up the line. Len became known for shooting food commercials. Delia Smith worked as the home economist with him and Bob Brooks, before making her own programmes and hitting the big time. I was working with the people at the top of their game. Good quality work brought with it good quality parties and that moved everything on at lightning speed. The years had felt like they had just vanished.

By 1977, I had been there for seven years, and Martin McKeand resigned as managing director of Brooks Fulford Cramer. He had ambitions in TV production (and later produced the successful TV series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet) and possibly could take no more of Bob Brooks' fiery outbursts, but I was luckier and worked closely with Bob as his producer. I liked him and he liked me, and his temper didn't bother me. Even when we were equal partners in the company, I always knew who was boss, because Bob was a brilliant director and he was the star. I had come to realise I didn't want to be the star, I didn't want to be famous. I remember my time in Rome, at the Cinecittà studios, when Clint and John Wayne and Robert Mitchum and Kirk were the stars, and in my later years when it was Eric Clapton or Bob. I, though, was never in the centre and I was happy about that. I had it in me, I think, to be smarter than to want that and to know that that wasn't really me anyway. Bob was Bob, I was Johnny Cigarini, and that was that. Bob and I would certainly have disagreements, but generally speaking, we did accept the other for who they were. So, I stepped in and bought a third of the company. Thus, I became managing director. Golden Bollocks Cigarini… managing fucking director. I guess he was still watching me from up there. Mum, too.

My first idea was to suggest to Brooks and Fulford that we take on Michael Seresin as a fourth director, although he probably doesn't know that. They agreed, and the company was then known as Brooks Fulford Cramer Seresin. Shortly after, we took on another director with an S initial, Richard Sloggett, and Ross Cramer left. As I was a company partner with a C initial, it was decided to call the company BFCS Ltd. and leave it at that. That was the end of the name changes and my initial was in there, kind of.

Michael Seresin is a brilliant cinematographer. He had lit many of Bob's commercials and had been director of photography on the great Alan Parker feature films
Bugsy Malone
and
Midnight Express
before joining BFCS, and afterwards
Fame
,
Shoot the Moon
,
Angel Heart
and
Angela's Ashes
– and as well as being a talented fucker, he was a handsome bastard. It is well known in feature film folklore that the director of photography (DP) often gets the lead girl. If I was a cynic, which of course I'm not, I would suggest those were attempts by the ladies to get photographed in the most beautiful of film lights, but I think it's more likely that the babes are drawn to the genius behind the camera without the ego, like the bass player in the band – the man of rhythm, of intelligence, of experience in the game. Michael had that going for him, but he also had another advantage: he was devastatingly good looking and a charmer.

On
Angel Heart
in New Orleans, he was great friends with the beautiful Charlotte Rampling and with the hot and exotic young American Lisa Bonet. I think the directors would often get jealous that Michael was getting all the female attention. And it wasn't just Michael Seresin. Hugh Johnson, another handsome cameraman, worked on Tony Scott's debut feature
The Hunger
, and went off to live in Paris with the leading lady, the iconic Catherine Deneuve. It was times like these when I would often wonder,
Why didn't Granny give me a camera instead of the piano accordion?

Michael had been directing commercials with his friend Souter Harris before joining us. He became a star commercials director with BFCS and won many awards for films for the VW Golf, Stella Artois, Renault (the Papa and Nicole campaign) and Citroën. He had illustrious producers like Glynis Sanders, before she went off and started her own company with Richard Sloggett and another of BFCS' producers, Jenny Huie, in the late eighties. While she was working at BFCS, Glynis married Tony Scott, Ridley Scott's younger brother and director of
Top Gun
.

I knew Tony in the early days; we used to meet up at Tramp. She had a very unhappy experience during the marriage. While Tony was shooting
Beverly Hills Cop 2
, he had an affair with the leading lady, Brigitte Nielsen, who was married to Sylvester Stallone. It was all over the newspapers and was very humiliating for Glynis. She had met Stallone and he would ring her house. That was the end of her marriage to Tony. Last time I saw Tony Scott, he was very friendly to me and invited me over to the splendid new RSA offices in Beverly Hills. His brother, Ridley, always greets me in the same endearing way, on the occasions we meet in restaurants or in the Sunset Marquis Hotel: “Hello, Wanker!” would be considered quite normal.

Angie O'Rourke, wife of Steve, the manager of Pink Floyd, also produced for Michael Seresin. Earlier in her career, she had been Alan Parker's PA, so she and Michael knew each other well. Another person to produce for Seresin was Michael Hayes, who had formerly been married to Jenny Armstrong of Jenny & Co, both of whom I had first met with Jenny Sieff before I first joined Brooks Baker Fulford. Hayes was later to marry Annie Pugsley, Len Fulford's producer, who took over from me as managing director of the UK company when I moved to LA. Ronnie Holbrook also produced for Seresin – yes, that Ronnie from the King's Road. After a stint as an antiques dealer, he started working as a freelance assistant director on commercials. Due to his considerable charisma, we offered him a staff job at BFCS as a producer.

Michael Seresin would still go off once a year to light Alan Parker's films. He was so busy and profitable shooting commercials the rest of the time, the other partners didn't mind him taking the time off. One time, Michael had just finished a film with Alan and was asked by Sidney Pollack to do
Out of Africa
. In effect, Michael wanted to go off and do two consecutive features, which was quite unheard of. He told me, “If ever there is one film I want to do in my life, it is this one.” I told him that if it was that important, he should take the job, but they couldn't agree on the fee and the job went to David ‘Wendy' Watkin.

I guess in life some things are meant to be, as Watkin won the Academy Award for Cinematography. Michael was also unlucky not to shoot
Mississippi Burning
, which also won the Oscar for Cinematography. He had been DP on all of Alan Parker's films, but missed out on that one because he was busy directing
Homeboy
, a feature film of his own. Peter Biziou, a contemporary of Michael's in London, did a great job on
Mississippi Burning
and won the Oscar. The point here is thus: if ever there is a cinematographer who deserves the Oscar, it is Michael Seresin. Alan Parker told me in Cannes one year that Michael and Vittorio Storaro were the two greatest cinematographers in the world, quite a statement coming from one of Britain's finest directors.

In 1995, after I had left BFCS Ltd. in the UK, the partnership fell apart. People had been telling me for years that would happen. Seresin contentiously bought out Bob Brooks and Len Fulford, and he went into a new partnership with Derek Coutts, director of all the Nescafé Gold Blend commercials, featuring my friend Sharon Maughan – the wife of my other friend, Trevor Eve. I was out and it was continuing, but BFCS Ltd. finally closed in 2001, after thirty-five years of existence – a long, long time in the commercials production business.

Michael still works as a director of photography on movies. His time is also taken up with a very successful vineyard he has in his homeland, New Zealand. He probably won't remember this – but it is true – he was going to call the wine by the name of the place it comes from, but I told him he was mad and that he should call it Seresin. He did.

Tony Scott died jumping off a bridge in Long Beach, California in 2012. The news was devastating.

In 1982 I broke up with someone (who wishes to remain anonymous) after four years together, my longest relationship ever. She ended the relationship, saying I didn't talk to her (again!) and she didn't think I was capable of giving love. I was devastated, but I think I agreed with her about not being able to give love. I didn't fight it, I didn't plead with her or even discuss it. I just froze.

I have never been in a romantic relationship since. Thirty years have passed now and I definitely have issues with women. When I am in a relationship, I self-destruct. I am so frightened that the relationship is going to end, my fear overwhelms me and I ruin everything. As my friend Sid Roberson used to say: “Bringing about that most feared, by the means taken to avoid it.” Also, I was very self-conscious about my twitch and I couldn't understand why any girl would want to be with someone who kept flicking his head.

Fifteen years later, when I was in LA having psychiatric counselling to help me give up work, I discussed with the therapist my inability to have relationships. It emerged that I had abandonment issues, going back to being left by my mother with her sister at age five and my mother's subsequent death. It seemed it had hurt me harder than I realised. I still blame the war – my not being able to love was a direct result – and all that the war produced, what with my family's split, the inertia between my parents and being sent to Margate. I don't think that five-year-olds can really grasp the concept of death, so they see it as abandonment, and the scars run deep. Deep. That's why I dumped so many beautiful women, to get in first before they dumped me. It was as if I was trying to take revenge on the female race, apparently! But really, it was a defence mechanism, the irony of course being that it wasn't and it was destructive. So destructive in fact that I cannot love, and what is more destructive than that? I decided to withdraw from romantic involvement, and to be honest, I have been happier since.

My being alone seems stranger to my friends than to me, although I don't think any of them see me as a sad and lonely man. Maybe this chapter will explain it. I have felt alone my entire life and that's how I am comfortable. I have never had a stable family life, so I do not feel the urge to find that stability, to have children and a family of my own. I am happy with my situation of just me – because it's all I've ever had. Although I have sisters, they are always far away, just as they have always been. I am, and always will be, an orphan. Meanwhile, I don't actually ‘suffer' from loneliness and being single has made me much more gregarious, and that has contributed to my interesting life. It has contributed to me having more time to develop my interests and just focus on me – I suppose – 'cause nobody else did, apart from the reverend.