Hot Press meets James Morris of Irish Film Board

James Morris has had a varied and fascinating career. Originally a musician and film editor, he became the boss of the now iconic music recording studio, Windmill Lane, where most of U2’s albums were recorded. He was subsequently, variously, founder of The Mill film and television production company; a founding member and original chair of TV3; a board member of the Irish Music Rights Organisation; boss of Windmill Lane Pictures; and, latterly, while still active with Windmill, chair of the Irish Film Board.

No wonder James Morris is a walking wealth of knowledge and insight into the film, television and music industries. After eight hugely successful years, he has just stepped down from his role with the film board. Despite the harsh budgetary cuts inflicted recently due to the recession, James’ tenure saw the production of some of Ireland’s most critically and financially successful films ever, including The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Once, His & Hers and The Guard, as well as the Oscar-nominated short films The Door and Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty. His sharp business sense and keen eye has helped the Irish film industry to grow and develop. The results are internationally acclaimed.
I met James Morris during his final week as the Film Board Chair, and spoke to him about how his experience in music and television helped develop film board policies; the challenges facing the industry – and how it must adapt in order to survive and flourish...

You studied History and Politics in Trinity and UCD, but it seems you always harboured dreams of being on the stage.
I did a lot of work in the Players Theatre, and was in a band with a guy called Shaun Davey, called The Blues Assembly.
Were you any good?
We were pretty good – we made money! We signed a record deal after that. We did a demo with Donal Lunny in his flat in Merrion Square. Shaun’s a real talent. I was a good team player but I wouldn’t have the talent he had, so after a while – particularly after doing some recording – my limitations were cruelly exposed in the studio!
Having trained and worked as a film editor in London you decided to come back to Dublin and build a recording studio. That was a bold move.
At that time, if a British band had any success, the first thing they had to do was leave the UK for tax reasons. But they had to release another record, so the studios in Europe and Jamaica and all around the world were making a good living. Having had a bit of contact with music, I had an insight into all of that. I said, ‘Look, as film editors, we have to work on whatever is available locally’, which in Ireland was commercials. There was no independent sector then. But if we added a recording studio we could bring in bands from around the world, as well as being a real centre of excellence for the local music scene. So we built the studio. Then my college friend Paul McGuinness started managing U2 and he rented an office. He brought the band in there. We didn’t know at the time what it was going to turn into. But that was the origin of it [Windmill Lane]. There was also the influence of MTV. Suddenly every band who came in wanted a video, and here we were, a film company sitting on the floor above a recording studio.
Did the venture feel like a big risk?
Absolutely, it was a risk. I suppose at that time my attitude was that we were risking what we had made for ourselves. We were only risking what we’d never had a few years before anyway. You didn’t have the same kind of caution that age and experience teach. We went for it but we felt very strongly that we could do it as well as anyone else. I suppose I got a lot of confidence working in the film industry in Soho in London for four years, so when I came back it was a deliberate decision to say ‘I want to do it here’ rather than live there for the next 20 years. That was probably to do with my own background and dual identity – ‘Are you English? Are you Irish?’ – and I just thought I would settle that one by being Irish. And that means living here and working here. And that’s what I have done ever since.
In 1988, your career took a sharp change when you became a founder of TV3.
In those days there was a monopoly in television here. I felt there was no opportunity for anybody unless there was competition in broadcasting, and I felt that very strongly. I started saying it and, of course, paid a bit of a penalty in terms of my relationship with Montrose. I was well aware it would happen. We were the last country in Europe to have a State monopoly on broadcasting, so I felt that it was time to change. It was an alternative voice on television, so news and current affairs were always going to be the backbone.
You got the licence in 1989. It was taken away in 1992 and you had to go to the Supreme Court to get it back. Talk about a rocky start!
It was taken away by the IRTC in controversial circumstances and it turns out they were wrong to do it. We sought a judicial review on the grounds of breach of natural justice. The reason they took it away was that, having given us a licence there was a big delay – in fact the department of communications was not able to give us frequencies – so we had a licence but no transmission. Then when it came along to doing transmission there was a massive delay and that affected our ability to raise funds. Confidence in the whole thing was starting to seep away. We had the backing of Smurfit, we had the backing of a couple of major European broadcasters, including ITV. We had really a great consortium and Paul [McGuinness] and Ossie Kilkenny, who was with me on it as well and it was called the Windmill Consortium.
Did the Minister have a role in all of this?
The Minister who was responsible – Seamus Brennan, who is now deceased – when they gave us frequencies, he decided that he was going to bring an Act into place, and he announced it just as we were on the road, fundraising. Our financial advisors said we had to withdraw our fundraising document, because there was now uncertainty as to the form of regulation – it is a regulated industry. We then had a lot of protracted arguments and they took the license away without telling us they were going to do it. That had a big impact on me, and the studio. We went into examinership. But it all came good. Our business at Windmill has always been a great business, so there wasn’t any doubt about that. But the decision to commit so heavily to TV3, which was my decision, had pretty rough consequences. But we got through it.
You actually wrote an article for Hot Press about having the licence taken away – tell us about the reaction.
Yes, I did a big article in Hot Press in the middle of it all. It turned out to be a few weeks before. I am told that article really provoked the Chairman Seamus Henchy, who was an ex-Supreme Court judge, to take the licence away because he was so angry at it. It’s an extraordinary thing. The Chairman of the IRTC – which is the BAI as it was then – was an ex-Supreme Court judge. Our senior counsel was Mary Finlay who is now a very eminent judge in her own right, and she did say when she met me, ‘You realise that Seamus Henchy is one of the three greatest judges we have ever had in the State’ – which was a polite way of saying ‘What kind of idiot are you to take this chap on?’ I felt we had no choice, and in a way, the worst had happened. By taking the licence away in the first place, we had to write off all our investment. We refinanced, and a couple of years later, having gone to court, the licence had to be given back to us. But that’s what triggered the article.
You have always been an advocate for the creative industries, in terms of their job creating potential. In the context of film, do you think Section 481 has achieved its goals?
Section 481 – it was originally Section 35 – is essentially, an investment incentive, offering tax breaks to people who put their money into making films. 481 is about project finance, it is not about financing companies. It is investment in projects, which in turn, generate economic activity. The purpose is as an incentive to create an Irish film, TV and animation industry. I think it has the potential to be more effective, but the 481 mechanism has proved to be a very solid requisite for the industry. It’s changing now from an investor base to a tax credit, which is a bit technical but it achieves the same result: it will be more cost effective for the government and it will deliver some added advantages for the Irish film industry.
A lot of low budget features are made here. How can Ireland in general and the Film Board in particular help these films get more exposure and recognition both domestically and internationally?
The first thing a low-budget Irish film has to do is compete in cinemas. Irish cinemas and distributors do positively discriminate for Irish films as much as they can. However there is a commercial aspect to their business, which has to recognise the weight of films. There are more films made than can ever be shown on our screens, so there is a real competition for screen time. Secondly, the kind of films we make often require word of mouth. The way the system works in the cinema at the moment, if you haven’t had an extremely high first weekend, you are taken off, automatically. We have initiatives that are working away at this. We supported and made a contribution to the Lighthouse, way back. There’s another arthouse cinema in Galway, Solas, which when it comes about, will be a terrific project. We work with distributors and help producers do their own self-distribution on lower budget projects. But it’s a challenge, getting out there.
Where does the audience come into this?
Cinema audiences are very divided now. You have the young audience, the big, event films coming out, and they are really driving the box-office. And then you have different films. A really good adult film, a George Clooney film that everyone rates very highly and is an award winner like Up In The Air. The box-office in Ireland would have been €200,000 or €300,000. When our films achieve that, which is the same as a George Clooney Oscar-winning film, that is seen as a failure because it is not the €5 million that The Hobbit made. There is a mismatch of expectation a lot of the time. But I do believe that we, in the industry, have to explain all that, and certainly a lesson I have learned is that the industry has to make its case. We are in huge competition with video games and other forms of entertainment or other sectors in the economy and there are limited resources. The truth is the government is more interested in jobs than the value of work, although I have to say that films have a reach internationally, and an impact that nothing else has.
We saw that international impact with the success of Once, which was a very low budget film.
Once is still a film we quote. It cost €300,000, it made $12 million in the US. You are never going to do that on a regular basis, but the fact that you did it once sort of makes a point. The real thing is; what was it about? Well, it was contemporary Dublin, it was a contemporary story and it had a certain charm and it was a filmmakers’ piece of work. That had a universal appeal and it travelled around the world – though it was still recognisably an Irish film, which is important. Fáilte Ireland, for example, in all their surveys of tourism quoted that eighteen percent of people who came here in the last year said they chose to come because they had seen Ireland on screen. That’s why people have a screen industry. Because at the end of the day, our national identity and what we’re about is expressed through a number of areas in the arts. Whether it’s music, theatre or literature, it’s recognised as Irish. We definitely punch above our weight in international film festivals and awards, and there is a recognised Irish cinema, and Irish film identity, building. It’s pretty difficult to describe it in precise terms, but it’s developing: they are often personal films, and they do partly reflect creative imagination and partly reflect Ireland in its present state.
You mentioned getting TV stations involved with promoting film, but the Film Board wasn’t involved with the RTÉ’s big shows like Love/Hate or Raw.
We are engaging with RTÉ, particularly with our new CEO, James Hickey. I think there’s a real opportunity. Objectively, the evidence is that Irish films do remarkably well on air, and that there is a real interest and appetite. If you talk to kids who go to see Irish films they’ll say: ‘I’m not really interested in going to see that’. Whereas on TV, there is a real appreciation for it. So in a curious way, television reaction has proven to be a lot better. The TV critics respond to the films we make in a better way than the film critics do, when they see it as a first night screening in a cinema. When you see one of our films in the context of an RTÉ schedule it usually looks pretty good, because it is a movie. When you see a film running next door to The Hobbit and Prometheus and all those films, it mightn’t look quite as impressive. So it’s just perception isn’t it? But producers have to take responsibility for their films, they have to increasingly take responsibility – with the right kind of support from the Film Board – for finding and reaching audiences as well.
With such a focus on the commercial side of film and generating investment, profit and sustainability, how do you maintain artistic integrity and quality?
We call it a dual mandate. Creative filmmaking is the heart of it, actually. What is the engine of commercial success? Audience appeal – so they are not really separate. But I suppose I have focused on the commercial and industrial side because you have to bring some kind of sustainable arguments to that – and we are competing with every other sector in the economy. In terms of filmmaking, we have a structure in the Board, whereby we have what’s called Production Development. There was a CEO who was coming to the end of his time when I was appointed. We then appointed Simon Perry, who had very strong creative credentials, and really the CEO and the production development department, who are what the Film Board is, are the custodians of filmmaking. It wasn’t my job to read scripts or make creative judgements about why projects should or should not get funding. But we have put in place a really good team and we are in the process of changing it again now because, just like the role of Chair or CEO, I don’t think they can become positions of permanent employment because preferences set in and so on.
Are you worried about the future of film? Piracy is a huge issue, particularly when it comes to DVD sales, which are essentially disappearing.
DVD sales have gone, a lot of it now is going to be VOD. I have to say, I do get infuriated when I see politicians who simply don’t understand that you have to protect intellectual property. ‘Copyright’ is a lousy word because it doesn’t have a good connotation. If you write something and you put your name on it, you have put all your time and effort into that and if it has a value, you want to get paid for it. A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work is the principle here. To say that content should be available free… Maybe stop calling it ‘copyright’ and come up with something like ‘digital fairness’.
Do you think there is anything that can be done to stop piracy?
Yes I do. I think the public themselves would also react, if this idea of digital fairness and intellectual property was understood, and if the pricing was fair. The music industry learned this to its cost, in that it really milked the CD market to death. Had CDs been priced to a much lower level then the whole switch-over to illegal file-sharing might have been a different thing. Obviously there is no easy answer, but I think you’ve got to recognise the principle and have to have the co-operation and agreement of the distributors of the content [the telecoms – Ed]. We know that the technology is there, because even if we don’t have it, the CIA has it! (laughs) We know it exists – so if you were to apply that kind of military surveillance technology to the ordering of entertainment over the internet and a fair price was paid or certain things were made free, that should work.
Looking back over your time in the Irish Film Board, what were the projects that you were most proud of?
The biggest box-office successes in my time were The Wind That Shakes The Barley and The Guard. And actually Man About Dog, which is a great film, one of my favourites. Then you get into very personal films, and difficult subject matter films. Also, if you look at a film like The Runway, or some of the documentaries that we have made... I think His & Hers is a spectacular piece of work. There is a really original work there.
Do you feel it’s the right time for you to go?
Leaving will be a change – but I will still be doing something connected with filmmaking, that’s for sure. You’ve gotta have new thinking, new blood and all that. We brought that principle in as well, in terms of the creative process. The Board is made up of people who are connected to the industry in one way or another, who bring some knowledge and experience about filmmaking with them as members of the Board. So somebody else now takes over and I’m sure they will have the same passion for it as we all did. I think if you’re going to take it on, you have to really want to do it – otherwise there’s not much point.
You could become a film critic and see everything!
(laughs) I will get to see more films! That’s one thing that I’m going to do straight away; I will probably go to a few film festivals. A friend of mine advised me, he said, ‘What you should do is start going to festivals and actually look at some films for a change!’ I’ve got to catch up there.