This site remembers Anthony Minghella CBE, a man whom it was impossible not to like; a towering talent of the British film industry, always gracious, modest and loving.
Remembrances are invited from those who knew him. Sadly, we cannot publish all comments.
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67 comments:
hullo. I met Anthony only a few times over the last few years and had such indelible impressions of him. My good friend Lisa Gunning worked in music video and commercials as an editor, and was then invited by Minghella in 2001 to cut a short film he'd made called 'Play'. She then went on to edit his feature 'Breaking and Entering' and 'The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency'.
I remember so well going to an early 'friends' screening of 'Breaking and Entering' and sitting around in the bar of the Everyman with a dozen others. Anthony patiently asked everyone (uncles, aunts, friends, the bar staff, the lot..) what they thought of the film and how he could make it better. He was unbelievably humble. This all from a man with such an astonishing filmography as a writer, director and producer. And every time I have met Anthony he has been like this; intellectually curious, funny, wonderfully open and humble about his work.
Which is not to say he wasn't also incredibly concise and masterful in the way he spoke about his filmmaking practice. When we invited him to the Shooting People Xmas party in 2005 to speak about his craft, many remember how eloquent he was. The interview is here:
http://shootingpeople.org/interviews.php?mode=minghella
The way he discusses his quest for truth and honesty in his work, is perhaps a real reflection of the kindof person he was.
I last saw Anthony in New York in October last year and was reminded again of how someone who is so celebrated, could also be so low-key. He was directing the opera 'Madame Butterfly' at the Met and was also one of the exec producers on feature 'Michael Clayton'. Lisa was invited to a private screening of the film and being in NY, I tagged along. The screening was full of A-list actors.. Tilda Swinton, George Clooney.. the grande dames of NY.. Joan Rivers, Jackie Collins.. you get the picture.. At the end of the screening there was a big dinner put on for everyone present. So did Minghella go? No.. It was his anniversary with his wife Carolyn and they said they wanted to explore NYC and do something small and sweet together instead.
I'm not across the huge amount of work I know he also put into the BFI. But I remember him being surprised by how much he had to fight for the importance of film in the UK. In the brief times I spent with him, I saw and heard how much he believed in film and how much he believed in and worked with independent voices. But more than that too.. he reflected a real humanism - the kind of which moved me to tears - whether from the staging of his opera, from the music relationship he developed with Gabriel Yared in The Talented Mr Ripley, from the performances he drew out in The English Patient… He was a master of so many things and yet at the same time, he seemed so curious, self-effacing and open to all.
Cath Le Couteur
Shooting People
i feel so lucky, so much blessed that one day our roads have crossed ,Anthony my friend,my soul mate who made me blossom and create the best of my music .you are alive for ever in my heart .despite my sorrow,i'll keep going on and remembering you through my work . I can see you smiling at me,always...there are no words,in english or french to say what I mean ,I will say it in music throughout my life . gabriel yared
my thoughtsand my love go to you,Carolyn,Max,Hannah,Tim,Karen,Natalie,to you all my friends
gabriel
If there ever was a man whom I could truly call an example, both as an artist and as a human being, it would have to be Anthony Minghella.
We were originally introduced through Gabriel Yared, who wrote such extraordinary music for a director whose films were themselves composed like the greatest symphonies.
I first met him years ago at the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles, where, being a young budding filmmaker with a real chip on his shoulder, I ranted to him about my frustrations and aspirations. And Anthony just listened, with that disconcertingly calming, wise smile and finally just said, "Not everyone has to be poor in order for you to be rich." Now, frankly, I had no idea how to react to that. I was furious inside: "Me, rich? I AM poor. How dare this man accuse me of such a thing."
And then his words sunk in: Anthony taught me humility, patience and inner beauty. And everytime I hit a low in my life or career, I would hear his words and get back on the right track.
While I don't think I will ever be able to do Anthony justice, I hope that, in that beautiful place he has traveled to - but much much too soon - he will smile down at me and the countless people he blessed with inspiration, and know that, without him, we would not have achieved a thing.
Both as artists and as human beings.
My love goes out to Anthony's beloved family and the beautiful people at Mirage.
Jörg
I've been surprised to find just how much Ant's always danced through my mind - never thought much of it, but now realise that it was more than is usual... and with it came the thoughts of all of you I've met & known via him.
I remember when we were finishing up Ripley, and we shared a moment... and found myself thanking him for making this film. Not many I might say that to.
And years later in the Chapel, another moment and another word of thanks came out, for 'saving my life', for lack of a better way to put it. Elaborating that his decision to keep my father on The English Patient after he'd offered up a 'resignation', in order to care for his family, when I fell gravely ill. That decision of Ant's - that kindness - made a difference to our family's world that I cannot begin to express.
So again, for so much more, I thank you Anthony
And to everyone, family especially, all my thoughts and all my love.
- Walter the Younger
Before meeting Anthony, I knew I would like him, because I had heard so many good things said about him by Gabriel Yared, who admired him and respected him deeply. And each time we met, I could see more and more why everyone who crossed his path loved him and admired him. He was truly inspiring and giving. I made a documentary about Gabriel and followed him in his collaboration with Anthony for the score of Cold Mountain. I am forever grateful to Anthony for helping me acquire the copyrights for clips from 3 of his feature films, as I would not have been able to complete this film without his generosity and support. It was a great privilege for me to meet his family, and to see how important his family was to him, to witness the love and affection he expressed for them. The world has lost a great man and a great artist, who will be greatly missed.
My heart felt thoughts are with his family and all those working with him at Mirage.
Sending you all much love and light in this terrible moment.
Rani Khanna
To me, Anthony was a gentle voice over the phone on the other side of the Atlantic, waylaid with me on route to talking to Tom. Tom would tell me, "you'll get to know him, you'll like him." Then, one day as Anthony was mixing Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency, Tom asked me to bring him a package: "say hello, he's very nice." Having heard from so many people, in off-hand comments, in attitudes, in the way anyone talked about him with a smile, I did not doubt it. And yet I was nervous about meeting someone whom I admired so much, and about whom I knew so many good things must be true.
It was late on a Friday afternoon as I walked down the halls to the mixing stage whose cracked door leaked a temple's silence. I slid inside, into the dark room with its many-buttoned altars of technology and a screen whereon an African plain spread out, and a bouncing Jeep kicked up dust, before me. I could barely make out human figures in the room, so I traced the projector's light back from the screen. As if by a miracle, all its rays converged on one man. He hunched over a console desk, one hand melting down onto his knee, another elbow propping his chin and cheek in the cup of his hand. Eyes intent on that imagined world before him, Anthony was a perfect tableau of casual composure, unmitigated attention, and skillfully channeled passion: a man at peace in his work, an artist. As much as I wanted to say hello, how could I? How could I wait for that perfect image to break or disturb that man communing with his work as purely as his audience would months later. So, I quietly left the package and dissolved back into my workaday reality, retaining only that joyful, inspiring picture of an artist at home in his milieu as a token.
Of course, this tragedy has insured I would never know more of Anthony than that. And I suppose, after reading the beautiful fountains of bittersweet remembrance his passing has unleashed, one could be sad at the missed opportunity of knowing such a great man, a human and artistic light. Of course, the grief of you who truly knew him, his family and friends, is incomparable and unspeakable, so any sadness I have could not even register enough to give meaningful succor. But even if it did, I hope there is a higher, richer note that breaks the cacophony of grief and loss, and that's the joy of ever having been touched by Anthony's life to begin with. In his influence and his inspiration, he gave form to this world, and even in this loss, the world retains the gift of his presence on its stage. My heart goes out to everyone in their sorrow, but I hope it will not totally eclipse the joy that can be taken in the memory and triumph of life that was Anthony Minghella.
John Lopez
Anthony was a friend, a brother, a mentor, a director and so much more. He was a man bathed in light, an illumination he shared with all of us. When we worked with him on his films he kept us all there close to him, touching us occasionally or asking us “Are you happy?” his on set mantra. The Film Set was so much a part of him that you could feel his heartbeat pulsing in the 10k’s or the energy in the air. You could warm yourself in this rhythm and feel free to share his creativity and love. My deepest condolences to the Minghella family for your immense loss. May the heartbeats of his life and work long continue to beat in all of our hearts.
I wrote this song for Anthony on the plane back from New York today. I'm hoping that our mutual friend Guy Barker (the wonderful trumpet player from Ripley) will play it at Ant's memorial. It is based on a blues by Melba Liston that was popularized in song by Lambert, Hendricks and Bavan. Anthony and I had so many fun-filled days and nights listening to endless jazz cd's to pick the songs out for Ripley. I know if Guy plays it loud enough he'll hear it up there.
Minghella's Blues
(to the tune of "Melba's Blues")
I sat down and wrote out this melody
for a friend
A man whose deep and soulful spirit should
never end
A cat who touched people's hearts wherever
he went
Because his gifts as an artist were
Heaven sent
And I called it
Minghella's Blues
He was a simple storyteller from the
Isle of Wight
And the stories that he told us were
out of sight
He had one basic rule which was:
Tell The Truth
And he looked at the whole world
through his never-ending youth
And he called it
Minghella's Blues
Minghella told me something special many
years ago
Something that really stuck with me and I
can't let go
He said he sought out what we have in common as
human beings
Not the things that separate us but the
love in between
And I miss him
Minghella's Blues
For all the people that have known him
We lost a brilliant piece of light
And now we find ourselves struggling though the
lonesome night
But the many gifts that he gave us will not
disappear
They will only make us stronger and in
voices clear
We'll be singing
Minghella's Blues
We'll keep singing
Minghella's Blues
Unlike most on this thread I have nothing to do with film, I met Ant through Tim. I recall our first proper discussion was after the cast & crew screening of Ripley in Saul Zantz's facility in Berkley, I think the score had just been completed, as I exited the screening room after the movie had finished some crew were huddled around a TV watching an Oprah interview of Ant with Jude and Cate. I rushed past and out, my head filled with the complexities of the movie, to the balcony for a cigarette. Ant almost immediately followed and despite reticence at providing my insignificant opinion, he massaged, as was his wont, one from me, interested in my critique, agreeing and responding to the points I made.
I was fortunate to have met him a number of occasions since usually on set, from Play to Cold Mountain and No 1 yet was always met with the same smile, interest in what I was doing and warm intellectual hospitality.
My thoughts love and sympathy go out to his family, Tim and all at Mirage, but I guess ultimately to anyone who ever knew him, as this thread and other comments prove the void he has left for so many will never fill.
Simon D'Oyly
I only ever met Anthony the once. Yet he made a huge impression. The event was the 2006 British Federation of Film Societies Film Society of the Year Awards Ceremony. Anthony had accepted our invitation to present our awards and what a superbly gracious guest he was. His speech to the audience is an absolute highlight and the full text is available at http://www.bffs.org.uk/pdfs/NewsReel%20Apr%2006.pdf
We had hoped to work with Anthony again but are eternally grateful for the contribution he made not only to the BFFS but also to the world of cinema and music.
He will be sorely missed. Our thoughts and prayers go to his family, colleagues and all those who mourn his untimely passing.
David W Miller
Chairman British Federation of Film Societies
Benet this is a test email.
I was Judy Scott-Fox's assistant at William Morris when I first read a play by Anthony Minghella. It was Cigarettes and Chocolate. Then I read The Storyteller, so I was completely charmed by him even before he walked into Judy's office and introduced himself. I was just out of college and knew nothing. He was wise and kind and big-hearted and instantly started to tease me about how I mispronounced my own name -- to his ear at least. Ever since, I was "Bath" to him, not "Beth."
On my first trip to London, he invited me over to his lovely house to experience the double treat of the arrival of the rest of the family and, joy of joys, the world-famous Minghella ice cream straight from the Isle of Wight. As I attempted to grow up through the years, seeing him was like a marker for humanity. He was always deeply serious and soulful, delightfully playful and warm. It is hard to imagine anyone whose generous spirit could be so beautifully matched with real genius as an artist.
Yesterday, I was thinking about It's a Wonderful Life. If anyone could have been a real-life George Bailey, it was Anthony. His life touched everyone's so profoundly through his beautiful work and, more importantly, through his warmth and generosity. The world is a much better place because he was born.
Anthony had the gift of making everyone he met feel a part of his extended family. We all feel his loss deeply, although I am trying to balance my own heartbreak with the tremendous gratitude I feel for having been a tiny part of his wonderful life. I feel so lucky to have known him.
ANTHONY MINGHELLA - The Director’s Cut. Carnabt Street 10/07/97:
Living over “the shop”in his childhood gave him the stamina to cope with the noisy, carnival craziness of being a film director
It may not be the Swinging Sixties, but you could have fooled me. Outside the brightly flower-boxed window of Paul Weiland Film Company, Newburgh Street is on the quiet side, but just round the corner, Carnaby Street is noisily alive once more as late 1990s London leads the way into the millenium. He arrives from wherever he has been - the shortish, roundish, leather-jacketed figure that is Anthony Minghella - mega-Oscar-winning director extroardinaire of The English Patient. An immediate sense of subdued excitement, sounds of voices discussing, laughter, movement; this is a man whose presence lights up those around him.
A firm, warm handshake. ‘I hope this is the last interview I do for a very long time.’ But his eyes twinkle - he is smiling broadly. Still on the right side of 45, delightedly married to Carolyn and proud father of 11-year-old Max and 18-year-old Hannah, he has spent precious little of the past two years at home in London, on account of his total involvement with The English Patient.‘Since returning to this country, I'm trying to wrap up a lot of things I agreed to do, that's all. I really don't want to have a public life.’ In the past week, he's taken masterclasses in Galway, given prizes at the National Theatre, recorded a "Down Your Way" on the Isle of Wight which involved visiting a tortoise-breeding house - all great ways of "reintegrating" himself to being in England. He admits that this is a beguiling way to live, but not what he is supposed to be doing with his life. "So now I must try and settle down...get a life.'
Leaning back in his chair, arms behind his close-cropped head, he recalls a peculiarly public upbringing. Born in Ryde on the Isle of Wight of Italian parents, he was the second of five Minghella siblings - three girls and the youngest - a brother Dominic - born when Anthony was already a teenager. ‘Because we lived over "the shop", as we called it - the cafe in the High Street my parents used to run - we shared a communal kitchen. Our family kitchen was also the restaurant kitchen. This meant that every single person or event, every tragedy, every crisis, every failure, every piece of mischief, every regret was played out in public.’ He sighs deeply, remembering the way the family lived, without any formal structure. ‘My parents worked every day of the year and the cafe was open from when I woke up in the morning to when I went to sleep at night.’
No wonder, then, that the quiet years of study and writing between 18 and 30 - alone and peaceful in a library or his own room - were so very attractive. ‘They were a complete antidote to the noise of my childhood.’
He smiles on a thought that strikes him. 'Funnily enough, though, when I started directing my first film Truly, Madly, Deeply in 1990, I was sitting in the corner of a room with Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson. As we were rehearsing, there was a crew walking by lifting camera tracks and lights to set up a shot and I thought “I have been here before. I recognise this world of the intimate and private playing out in public. So making movies is just the same..." '
If the realisation came as a surprise, it enabled Minghella to get the balance of his life right. 'I found for myself a rhythm which can happily oscillate between the atmosphere of quiet study and research - which is the writer's life - and the noisy, carnival craziness of being a film director, where you are basically collaborating with two to three hundred people every day.'
How had his passion for the cinema come about in the first place? As a boy, the only culture readily available on the Isle of Wight was cinema culture. He laughs, thinking about it. 'There were three cinemas within a spit of my parents' cafe, including the Commodore - a rather grand place immediately behind us. I became very friendly with the projectionist, Vernon Cook, and he used to let me into the projection room and he gave me cinema posters.' He makes the point that for most children in the early sixties cinema was much more of a presence than television and radio.
Eventually Anthony's father let him have a room in a cottage behind the cafe which he decorated entirely with movie posters. 'I suddenly felt as if I had two escape routes from my fairly insular existence - music, which I was learning to make and to involve myself in, and cinema, which was a kind of dream in the dark.' From the beginning, he loved the odd intimacy that cinema gives - 'when you sit in the dark and enter into a separate world.'
He pulls himself back into the present for a moment and purrs contentedly: 'Now I have fetched up in film direction, I can't think of any other job I could do which stretches all my particular interests so completely.’
The name Minghella conjures up visions of Mediterranean sunshine, warmth and passion and rightly so. There is no English blood or culture in the family background whatsoever. Although both his parents were born in the United Kingdom, their parents came coincidentally from neighboring villages in southern Italy. ‘My father’s story is an odd one.’ Edward Minghella already had a British passport when he came to England at 19, because his itinerant parents had been walking around various parts of Europe and he happened to be born in Scotland. From there, he went to Paris and back to Italy, returning to this country at the beginning of the Second World War, only to be called up. He was an interpreter in the British Army.
Today’s high-profile ice-cream business on the Isle of Wight grew out of inauspicious beginnings.As with many young Italian boys from southern villages where there was no money, Edward was brought over here to work for board and lodging and scratchy wages - in his case his employer was a successful company in Portsmouth where he learned the ice-cream trade and was soon seen to be a good and honest worker. Striking up a friendship with the boss’s son, he heard about three Italian sisters and a family cafe across the Solent and went over to meet them. Within a year, Edward and one of the sisters, Gloria, were married. ‘Because he knew about icecream, not cafes, he bought a van and started driving it round the Island in 1950, and that was how it all began.’ Anthony leans back in his chair again: ‘ I’ve often thought that he dragged himself out of a complex and deprived family situation, travelled a long way, then quite suddenly stopped, put down roots and never thought to move again.’
His eyes light up, as they do when he thinks of the special people in his life. ‘They are wonderful people, my parents. They created a life for themselves with no resources; they began with absolutely nothing.’ His mother was taken out of school in her very early teens - a great pity. ‘She is an extremely intelligent woman who, in other times and with other opportunities, would very probably have had a substantial career in law.’
He is grateful for the environment they created which enabled the five children to study and each of them is today a highly talented professional. He sees in this some sadness, as well as pride, for his father who has, in effect, educated all his children away from what he started. ‘But life is full of ironies, and my eldest sister seems to be getting more and more involved with the business , which would obviously not be a disappointment to my father.”
But there was another side to the coin: ‘We also learned the terrible pathology of the work ethic in the sense that we all worked all the time we were able to.’ This relentlessly demanding upbringing has actually given him perhaps the most appropriate gift of all - the stamina needed to survive as as film maker. ‘That’s what is the most difficult, finding the sheer stamina required to keep going as I’ve just been doing recently - working 20 hours a day for 120 days. Thank God I’m equipped to do it. Mind you, at the end, you just want to lie down and be left alone for ever!’
In all the frenetic bustle of the cafe, there was one person who alway had the time to talk to the young Anthony - his maternal grandmother. Scarred by her husband’s departure to Dublin, she spent a lifetime expecting him to come back to her. ‘She was an extraordinary woman, full of life and fun, but with this terrible shadow haunting her.’ He describes her with great affection, painting a graphic picture of a tiny woman, stunted by childhood rickets, a lover of the sea, a true eccentric with the lexicon of a navvy gleaned from running a cafe in the Glasgow Gorbals. ‘I would trudge along Ryde seafront beside her each morning while she gave me her view of the world and how it works,’ he remembers fondly. ‘It was a quasi-religious, spiritual education for me, which really had nothing to do with religion and nothing to do with the spirit...an odd, florid, sad and humorous outlook on things. But her influence on me was immeasurable.’
His secondary schooling, spent initially at St John’s College - a Catholic boarding school in Southsea - was fraught with problems. He describes himself wryly as an unexceptional but rather difficult adolescent, glum and ‘certainly more angry than I have ever been as an adult. An admission:’ I’m not sure I could like the boy I was if he were in the room now ‘I was very exercised by the idea that the system didn’t reflect the realities that we were living in, and this did not go down terribly well at the school, which was extremely disciplinarian.’ Anthony and St John’s finally went their separate ways, by mutual consent, and he went back to the Island to finish his secondary education smoothly, but without academic dedication, at Sandown - then a Grammar school about to turn comprehensive - where he spent many happy hours in the art room which was the place for painters and musicians to get together.
During those patchy schooldays, Minghella the pianist came to the fore as music became the great salvation. ‘I started to play in bands, and to play by myself -singing and writing what were probably quite awful songs.’ He feels strongly that, for one who is not raised in a highly cultural environment, music is the one door that anybody can prise open. ‘Music became absolutely essential to my life; this was when I started to write - I wrote lyrics - and I started to think about how to capture something that was inside me rather than look around me.’
The thought of a university education held little appeal after his lacklustre school experience and he applied to Portsmouth Art School to do a foundation year without much thought. Then a wonderful thing happened quite by mistake. ‘I was expected to go through the motions of applying for university, so I quite literally let the handbook fall open where it would and applied to a batch of places under HKKL covering such varied courses as American Studies, politics, English. I noticed the entry under Hull mentioned a brand new drama department building, so I applied for this course too.’ He vividly remembers going to Hull, being approached by people who seemed genuinely interested in”his” things: “Oh good, you play the piano.You write songs. You’re interested in art - come and look at our design shop. We have a recording studio.” ‘The very minute I got there, I knew that was IT; I went from being a rather disenchanted boy to wanting desperately to be allowed to go to this place.”
Did he mind the idea of leaving home? Minghella emphasizes that this was a big bonus. ‘As a kid, I spent the whole time thinking how great it would be if I lived in a city or somewhere I could be anonymous and free, and not always defined by this cafe, this High Street, and this tiny island. Of course, with hindsight, I realise what a wonderfully rich and expansive childhood it was but, at the time, all I knew was that I had to get away as quickly as I possibly could - and I did.’ He admits that one of the great attractions of going to Hull was that it was a long, long way away.
So a marvellous blossoming period began - a time of total transformation culminating in First Class Honours and the offer, readily grabbed at, to stay on at the university as a lecturer. ‘I had access to the theatre, to music, to writing, and I went from being somebody who would never write an essay, would never read a book, to being someone who was never out of the library, who went to every lecture, every tutorial, and became the worst kind of slave to academia.’
It was during his last year as a student that Anthony wote and adapted a short story into an evening of what was ‘grandiosely called a musical’. A call from Z-Cars creator and writer Alan Plater expressed admiration for his talents as a writer. ‘ “No, I’m a student at the University,” I said. “Maybe that’s what you do, but you are a writer,” insisted Plater “and I should like to commission you to write a play”. ...So began a great friendship and an invaluable dramatic learning experience.
Marriage to psychology student Yvonne, the birth of baby Hannah, and the breakdown of the marriage - with mother and child leaving to live in London - brought Anthony’s Hull idyll, and his lectureship, to an abrupt end. He leans back and gives deep consideration to his next words.’I am picking my way through this because I have only ever spoken to one other person in the media about this before and then the report made it all sound catastrophic, which it wasn’t at all - not least because I have a wonderful daughter from that relationship and I am on extremely good terms with her mother.’
He thinks carefully again. ‘Let me see if I can say this properly...this was a friendship that formalised into marriage, but really couldn’t sustain itself as such, and it broke up at a difficult time because there was a young child involved. It would be a lie to characterise the failure of any relationship as being easy, but I can truly say that the impact of it was only positive and a blessing. The marriage wasn’t, for either of us, right, yet we were able, and are able, to sustain a very good partnership over the past 18 years with our daughter.’
‘It also had a galvanising effect because the first thing I did was to resign my job as I didn’t want to be living in Yorkshire while they were living in London.’ So he handed in his notice, went to live in London and became a writer. ‘Had the relationship sustained itself, the chances are I’d still be in Hull being a teacher.’
London also brought a happy reunion with Carolyn Choa - first met when she was an 18-year-old English and drama student at Hull, and who was now, in 1981, living in Hampstead. ‘Over the course of the next year, I saw a lot of Carolyn which was for me a very good thing, and the start of the relationship which is my greatest achievement.’ Today, Carolyn, who comes from Hong Kong, is a talented professional in her own right: translator, choreographer, film producer, as well as great companion and selflessly supportive wife to Anthony and loving mother to their son Max. ‘She is the best thing that ever happened to me,’he declares.
He finds it hard to assess himself as a person ...a pause while he weighs up his thoughts. ‘I’d say that I’m a mildish person, in that I’m not conquering demons in myself.’ He remembers being taken aback when Hannah and Max were amused to see him being quite “beady” during a tele-documentary on the making of The English Patient, and realised that he could be tetchy if his work is not quite right. ‘I’m certainly not a shouter though, nor am I hostage to my temper, and, although I have got an enormous will, it seems to me to be very poor management if the way to articulate that will is to trample over other people.’
He seems to have the definite knack of getting the best out of people nonetheless. The reason is that Minghella believes that making a film is essentially rather like being the conductor of an orchestra. ‘No conductor imagines that he is as good a cellist as the cello player, or as good a fiddler as the violinist. So my job is not to be a great actor or cinematographer or editor, but to find ways of encouraging each of those artists to do their best. Each of them knows more about what they do than I do.’
‘I do like to work with the same people or group of people however.’ He can’t say strongly enough that Juliet Stevenson has been the most important “collaborator” in his working life and cannot wait to resume working with her. He mentions that Juliette Binoche seemed to have a similar spirit when working on The English Patient and that he would dearly love to find something to direct with both of them. ‘I love everybody called Juliet now,’ he grins broadly.
In fact, he’s extremely bound by habit.’I have never come accross anybody who lives such a disorganised life, yet who is still so bound by repetitions.’ He likes to do things in the same way. ‘If I go on a vacation and I find a beach that I like or a cafe that I like, then I always want to go to that beach or that cafe.’ The first thing he does when he visits his parents on the Isle of Wight is to walk from the house to Quarr Abbey because that seems to characterise the Island for him. ‘I am always trying to find out what lassoos an experience most quickly and most pungently. I did the same thing with a “desert walk” when we were making The English Patient.
For a few moments he considers the question of religion. He would not describe himself as actually religious, but is extremely conscious of the fact that he was raised a Catholic, appreciating that Catholicism acknowledges the capacity to hurt and to heal, to trespass and to reconcile. ‘The way I interpret the world is with a Catholic dictionary and I am very happy about that,’ adding that he doesn’t have any time for star signs and horoscopes.
Perhaps a little self-deprecatingly, however, there is one thing he admits to feeling superstitious about. ‘I have always been a huge fan of Portsmouth Football Club and for years, I convinced myself that my own success or failure was inextricably bound up with theirs! their struggle to get out of the Second Division has been mine too.’ Nothing seems to have changed that much: only last night - at one o’clock in the morning to be precise - he was calling Pompey to find out how they were doing; when he was in the Sahara, he had all his football mail delivered to him by courier. ‘Another passion I devloped in my adult life was for the music of Bach, but I have to say it is only as interesting to me as Pompey’s fortunes.’
Only two films in history have won more Academy awards than The English Patient so - having reached such a pinnacle of achievement - where does Anthony Minghella go from here? In no way does he want to dilute the importance of the awards, nor the enormously empowering result the film has had for him. ‘ The impact it has had on my life is extraordinary insofar as it has opened every door I have ever hoped would be opened to me. By the same token, having every door opened is not necessarily very useful because one of the great galvanising energies in life is having to barge against doors which remain belligerently closed.’ He likes to remind himself that he has only made three films to date, and hopes to make 33; that he has an enormous amount to learn, and that he must find other ways of defining success and failure than just by money and awards. ‘I hope that I can use the advantages of having made a good film to help me be better, rather than to imagine that I have peaked,’ he says firmly.
So, what is the next film project? Is it to be Charles Frazier’s American Odyssey Cold Mountain, for which Minghella is incorrectly reported to have paid $1.5million (actually United Artists paid this for the book)? Or novelist Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, or Fadeout for producer David Puttnam? It’s possible he may choose to do an adaptation of his own award-winning BBC radio play Cigarettes and Chocolate, which is about Lent and a woman who gives up talking - a choice which would have the added attraction of not having to leave England. ‘I will make all these,’ he says firmly - ‘it’s just a case of when.’ He is pushing along the various drafts and trying to see which of these projects matures most quickly. ‘I think each producer would like me to do his first but I shall wait until one of the drafts says “I’m ready to go now.” I am certainly not going to jump into any of them until I am convinced that I have got the material to the place that it is ready to go.’
In the meantime, he is happy about the injection of lottery money, and the new tax breaks for the British Film industry, happy with the new Government...’I’m glad they’re in.’
This all seems a far cry from the pilot episode of Inspector Morse which Minghella was asked to write -a shot in the dark which in those early days seemed ‘more likely to prove a folly than an institution’.
We have well overrun our time but Anthony Minghella is still sitting, relaxed and easy. Outside a strident tooting on the corner of Carnaby Street - his taxi is impatient to carry the director to the next somewhere. Suddenly the door bursts open .. a dark-haired smiling man erupts into the room... it is Paul Weiland himself:: ‘Can I say on record that I love this guy?’
first interview. EA with love
As we have been in touch in recent years, I wanted to express my heartfelt sympathy to you at this desperately sad time. I am sure you must all be in a state of deep shock but I imagine the experience of working for such a great and humble man as Anthony will live on in your hearts for a very long time.
His work had a profound effect on me and I feel privileged to have met him.
My sincerest condolences, thoughts and prayers.
Michael Ford/BBC Religious Programmes
I didn’t know Anthony as well as some who have posted here, but even so was fortunate enough to experience his kindness and generosity of spirit. We first met to discuss the possibility of my working with him and he suggested Giraffe on Hampstead High Street as a venue (the builders were still in at Fleet Road). I remember thinking how not many Hollywood-based directors of a similar caliber would be inclined to go somewhere where they might be seen by – gasp! – regular people and how refreshingly unpretentious this was. At the meeting Anthony was most interested in the aspect of my background that was the least commercial, least germane to the job at hand, most left-field, and most, from my point of view, creatively exciting, and that was what he wanted to know more about. Almost immediately I felt like I was talking not to some major filmmaker making a decision about whether to hire me but to a friend on the same wavelength.
We stayed in touch and I can’t say how much his responsiveness and encouragement meant to me. He was full of curiosity about life and people, keen to encourage the green shoots of creativity wherever and in whomever he found them, and, most of all, the opposite of up himself - rare enough qualities in anyone, let alone an Oscar-winning writer and director. Deepest sympathies to Carolyn, Max, and Hannah, and to his extended Mirage and creative families. We will miss seeing what that fertile artistic spirit would have come up with in years to come but are grateful for the wonderful body of work he has left us. A great loss, on so many levels.
Ellin Stein
The last two times I saw Ant really sum up the man for me:
In October, I’d just moved to LA. My first night in Santa Monica, I decided to go out and get something to eat. Dithering for a moment outside the Robata Bar, I turned onto Santa Monica Blvd – to see Ant and Carolyn walking towards me.
Now, truly, this was an amazing coincidence – I had absolutely no idea they were in LA, and the fact that they just happened to be walking back to the Huntley Hotel at that precise moment - that, frankly, they were even in Santa Monica at all, which was not a part of town Anthony ever frequented – was kind of mind-boggling.
But what I cherish most about the encounter, outside of the sheer serendipity of meeting two of my favorite people in the world when I was feeling somewhat vulnerable about my 5,000 mile move from home, was the way Ant reacted – he just took my arm as he walked by, continuing his conversation with Carolyn, as though this was the most unbelieveably normal thing for him.
Which I actually believe was the case.
Beloved all over the world, Ant could bump into literally thousands of people – probably hundreds of thousands - touched by having encountered him, or his work.
If he’d been a mountain climber, he’d certainly have come across someone who knew and loved him. They’d have been astounded to see him – but Ant, nothing if not amazingly practical, would just have given the person a hand with their grappling hooks, tied their ropes together, and helped them ascend to the top, casually throwing into the conversation some amazing insight into his fellow climber’s latest piece of work/relationship/whatever issue was most important to him or her at the time.
The last time I saw Anthony was in Malibu at Christmas, when he was staying at some insanely over-the-top mansion his friends at CAA had found for him. But who cared about the Jackie Collins’ décor when you could snuggle up in the warmth of Ant and family? I missed Hannah, but Carolyn was there, and Max and his girlfriend, and their dog – and bundled up in that nest of love for a couple of hours, why would you want to even contemplate being anywhere else in the world? We talked about the latest on the projects we’d worked on together, about the projects we were planning at our respective companies going forward, about the latest in our personal lives. He showed me the unbelievably hilarious film he’d made with so much love and affection for Harvey’s wedding, and the evening disappeared in an ocean of laughter, wisdom and love.
I know we all wish we could be back in that wonderful place - but every time we remember those very special moments shared with Ant, at work or at play, his beautiful spirit lives on in all of us.
I send huge love and sympathy to Carolyn, Max and Hannah, and to my gorgeous extended Mirage family of Sydney, Franklin, Karen, Tim, Caroline, Natalie - and everyone else lucky enough, like me, to have had Anthony as part of our lives.
Colin Vaines
I have thought about what to say for almost a week now. I have realized that nothing I can say, could ever do justice to an amazing man like Anthony Minghella. I think of Anthony everyday. For the last months he and I were together everyday. I had the honor of serving him while in Los Angeles. I miss him. He was much more than a boss, he was a friend. I have so many stories from the last 8 years, so many memories, they flood my mind, but at this moment my heart still breaks for him and his family. Anthony treated me like family. Anthony taught me so much. We went through so much together. I will miss him everyday. Everyday. I'm sad.
The world is suddenly upside down, and not just because I happen to be in Buenos Aires..
What an unfathomable loss for all of us – Anthony's family, friends, and colleagues - as well as the worlds of opera, cinema, theater, television, music and civilized culture in general.
A light has been abruptly switched off, some part of the universe unplugged. Anthony was so powerfully warm and human, intelligent, supremely creative, humble, caring and funny, that all of us who met or worked with him immediately welcomed him into ourselves, to an extent that we are just beginning to comprehend now that his physical presence is no longer with us.
And yet he leaves behind him the comet streak of his work, and its brilliant swath against the darkness provides some consolation for us who knew and loved him, as it will provide inspiration for generations to come. I feel honored and privileged to have walked with Anthony for a few miles of his life's journey. Farewell, dear friend.
Walter "Waltiero" Murch
Anthony was a man who exuded warmth, kindness, creativity, wit, generosity of spirit, intelligence and enthusiasm. Because Anthony had very openly professed his love of Glenn Gould's Bach, we felt he was someone we had to invite to be on the jury for the Glenn Gould Prize. It was our great privilege to have Anthony in Toronto with Carolyn last month. Anthony was a vital part of the jury - his input was thoughtful, insightful, well-measured and yet always tendered respectfully and in a modest and unassuming way. Anthony's spirit and humane impulses are reflected in the choice of the Prize Laureate selected by the jury - Dr. José Antonio Abreu, the Venezuelan statesman whose national system of children's and youth orchestras has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of young persons at risk.
What I'll remember most about Anthony is how much I liked him - even on short acquaintance, he was the kind of person who could not help being drawn to, hoping for a long and rich friendship with. He was an engaging conversationalist who genuinely listened. You could tell immediately that he had a special capacity to share and give joy, to care about others, as his beautiful body of artistic works so eloquently attests.
All of us at the Glenn Gould Foundation feel terribly saddened by Anthony's loss, and our hearts go out to Carolyn, Anthony's children, friends and colleagues.
Brian M. Levine
Managing Director, The Glenn Gould Foundation, Toronto Canada
THE MONASTIC MINGHELLA
‘I travel too much. I work too long hours and far too many days of the week, so to see the absolute antithesis of that life is enormously attractive to me.’
Anthony was referring to Quarr Abbey close to the family home on the Isle of Wight. The Benedictine monastery held a place deep in his affections. I was interviewing him for a BBC Radio 4 'Sunday' series to find Britain’s most popular spiritual place and was intrigued to discover that it wasn’t so much the drama of the monastic liturgy that appealed to his sensibilities but the form and function of the abbey’s architecture, music and monastic structure.
‘I feel drawn to rules and I feel drawn to routine because my life is so empty of rules and routine,’ he told me. ‘One of the requirements of visiting my parents, who still live in Ryde, is that we walk up to the abbey, sit and think, then go back for breakfast and lunch. It’s become part of my journey to the island. I have to go and sit in Quarr, speak to some of the monks and refresh myself.’
As I think I may have reminded him at the time, Anthony bore more than a passing resemblance to the great American monk-writer Thomas Merton. (He, too, died suddenly in his early fifties).
Anthony had agreed to meet me at Abbey Road Studios in North London where he was putting the finishing touches to Cold Mountain. Before the start of another gruelling day, he had cleared an hour from his diary to record his thoughts. Eloquent and engaging as ever, he did not convey the impression of a film-maker under pressure. Perhaps this was part of the Ripley director’s disguise. After I had switched off the minidisc machine, he didn’t hurry off as if he had something more important to do. He just relaxed on the black leather sofa and chatted as if we were old friends. It gave me an opportunity to tell Anthony how his work had opened up new horizons for me. I told him I hoped to write about him one day, although I don't think he felt the time was right for a biography. He was, after all, a man of humility.
His last words to me were: ‘Go and visit Quarr Abbey.’ The following year I made the trip and was not disappointed. Anthony may not have been a monk himself but rarely have I met someone more spiritual – in the broadest and deepest sense of that word.
Michael Ford
Writer & Broadcaster
only recently did you come into my life and yet it felt like i knew you years. when i saw the news, i realised how well known and well liked you were.....Lords,politicians,statesmen and who's who in hollywood all spoke about there fond memories and of your contributions made during your stay with us on this planet.never have i worked with someone like you before, or even met someone like you. we had a discussion once about how easy it was for you to show affection by simply putting your hand on my shoulder. i never experienced this kind of bonding, not even from my close family. you showed me how to do this, you taught me how deal with people and how to respect, love and enjoy what we do. i had really hoped that we would get to work together some day again, just so that i could be near you again.everyone in South Africa is sad by your passing. what a privilege to have known you and your family.fond memories will remain with us forever.the last time Yvette and I saw you in London was fantastic. we were so happy to see No.1 Ladies at you office. much respect and love from your friend Johnny Breedt (westrand)
I have known Anthony all my adult life. When I left university I worked for his agent Judy (in a very junior capacity - mainly doing press cuttings and filing) and then I went on to work with Paul Weiland and David Barron, both good friends of Anthony's, as their Head of Development. Even then, when I wasn't quite so junior, my main job was arranging meetings and taking notes. So though I knew Anthony, it could easily have been that he didn't know me. And yet he always greeted me like a friend, always remembered where we'd originally met, never forgot my name or my son's name .. Anthony knew so very many people, was loved by so very many people, but always took time for even the junior people around him, was always gentle and kind and made everyone feel important and special. Dom has written in the papers about how there was something almost religious about being around Anthony and that's what I felt. He had such a light and such an infectious love of life. He was a joy.
I last heard from Anthony when he and Caroline and Tim sent me flowers last month after an operation. I never got to thank him. Those flowers really made my day, not least because when I opened the card I saw his name and his face came into my head and it made me smile.
My heart goes out to Anthony's family, all of whom he talked about so much and with such glowing love and pride. And to everyone at Mirage who were like a big extended family.
Stevie
Sweet Anthony with the eyes of an eagle.
We were in Kingston Jamaica last week when I got the call that "Anthony died last night"...it sucked, it hurt, I cried like I haven't for a long time. I was mad at God. Why does he let the good ones die? He's fucked.
I'm still kinda mad at him, but anger is no good...so I will forgive and let go...in a while.
I had more contact with Anthony via Tim Bricknell over the years than he himself because of the business, but when I first met Anthony, Carolyn and Max in San Francisco at a small private show of Michael Franti's...it was a family affair and I was happy to be able to bring them joy that night because they were lovely, joyful people with heart. That's how I felt and still feel about all at Mirage and especially Tim. Then came the fun Franti & Spearhead show at London's Royal Albert Hall...it's now a blur, but the ladies of Mirage, Tim and I boogied, laughed and broke loose...I think Anthony was there...can't remember now...our shows are a blur....too many people and too much fun...we are a social bunch you know.
Managing Michael - a special artist - brings special people. I fell in love with Anthony before I met him and after seeing The English Patient, the beautiful PSA for the 'Drop The Debt' campaign he cut with Michael was gorgeous and moving and then the relationship with Tim, Albert Berger, Max, Carolyn...I fell in love with the family. Special people like Anthony bring together like minds and lives...that's the beauty of meeting people and the awesomeness of waking up every day...you never know who you are going to meet or what is going to happen.
I saw Anthony last year at The Chapel. Can't remember why we visited...me and my husband whom he was sizing up like a father...I think it's those eagle eyes...he observes people - the artist that he was.
Arrgh!!!
So pain sucks! It's takes a long time between the busy moments to get over it. Sadness, anger, reflection and confusion. Life is all this and Anthony brought that to his films and his life and his heart...he gave and seemed to love life.
Thank you for this blogspot...it's def a release...a way to share the pain, the loss, to feel connected to others that feel the same. I am not alone in these awful, sad feelings which is a crumb of what his loved ones feel and makes my pain a grain of sadness. So - I wish you strength and will to overcome that black hole of young death.
A great heart, a great artist, a great leader and a great man is lost. We love you Anthony and the Mirage and Minghella Family.
I loved the enthusiasm of Anthony - the intelligence and kindness. he was an enormous support when we had our little Film Festival and any time spent in his company left a kind of glow. We will all miss him, that Italian from the Isle of Wight!
Priscilla and Antonio Carluccio
I had the enormous privilege of knowing Anthony in two very different phases of my life. The first time was at Hull University where Anthony was our hugely popular and maverick Drama Tutor. We Drama students had no doubt in our young minds that were sitting in the presence of some kind of gentle genius as we listened to Anthony talk passionately about Brecht and Beckett, his brown eyes twinkling brightly. Even in his early twenties, Anthony was writing plays at a prolific rate: we students were gasping, nay, reeling at his talents!
On leaving Hull, I lost touch with Anthony, but a few years later, when I was organising a Benefit Concert for a fellow Hull student, John McCarthy (who was then being held hostage in Beirut) and I got back in touch with Anthony. Anthony wrote to me, kind and supportive as ever, letting me know how he was hugely impressed with our Campaign, urging me to keep going - encouraging words yet again!
When I arrived on the beautiful Isle of Wight, I remembered that my former Tutor had hailed from these shores, so got back in touch with Anthony. I informed him that I was (as he had been) a former BBC Drama Script Editor and that I was now screenwriting. Anthony wrote back: he was thriled that I was writing and was delighted to hear that I was living on his beloved island - 'I envy you', he wrote, busy with the Opera he was directing in New York.
Now, it was clear to me that my former Tutor was one of the world's busiest men and I didn't really expect him to read the screenplay that I had just finished, but read he did. He also emailed back encouraging words and offered me the back up of his company, Mirage Enterprises, suggesting I came in and meet with his Script Supervisors, as he was away filming. Anthony's assistants, Caroline and Natalie gave me brilliantly detailed notes on my work and I was treated with kindness and decency. The ethos that Anthony had set up within his own company was about treating talent with respect and lending a supportive and listening ear - often a rarity in the pressurised world of film.
That was so typical of Anthony - really caring about a former student and what was happening in their career and taking positive steps to help. Anthony came down to the island last year to screen his film 'Breaking and Entering' for one of his mother's charities. We hadn't seen each other for years but his warmth was immediate as he batted away the local newshounds to take fifteen minutes with me. In that short space of time, I felt totally understood and supported by him as a fellow writer and he gave me highly pertinent notes on my screenplay. He added that things were tough in the business right now but was, as ever, warmly encouraging. That essential ingredient of what made the man so unique was there in bucket loads: his inclusiveness (one became 'familigla' in a moment of seconds!), his support and sensitivity and his ability to raise people up around him, so that they instantly became better human beings. It was absolutely extraodinary to witness. It was as if people all around him were suddenly bathed in some warm 'light'.
Anthony has not just inspired me as a writer, but also as a human being. Anthony's extraordinary ability to shower love on all around him made him unique, not just in the film industry in which he dazzled so brightly, but also in the wider world at large.
Sleep well, sweet Anthony. Your amazing body of work is an inspiration to us all. It will make us work harder, do our 'best' for you. A 'beautiful man', as one film director so aptly put it, you had a truly beautiful soul that shone out brightly. You will never be forgotten, Anthony, and I can see you now, up there, wise, mischievous, Puck-like, twinkling down at us as you playfully sprinkle around handfuls of your magic dust.
Barbara Jane Mackie
"Countless people in the dark,
a leader guides onto sunny paths"
(Christian Morgenstern)
Anthony, you lead many of us onto these paths with your incredible warmth, generosity and wisdom.
With this, your gentle guidance we were able to find our rythm and confidence to follow our dreams.
I feel so privileged and lucky to have known you, even though it was brief...meeting you all these years back in 2000 and later having had the chance to work with you on the wonderful project "PLAY".
I myself will never forget the day I came out to your beautiful home in the country with Tim and how you encouraged and motivated me there with that gentle smile of yours.
I will always recall especially how you showed an exeptional and rare generosity and wisdom in leadership by making me and my team feel as if each and everyone of us was an absolutely indispensable part on this project.
In the short while I got to know you a little, you truly brought light onto "my" path and on this path I will continue with everlasting grateful and fond thoughts of you.
My deep sympathy and love go to Anthony's family and Tim
Anthony's death leaves a hole in this world. My heart and prayers go out to his family and the legions of friends he left behind. His kindness, intelligence, generosity of spirit, and creativity radiated from him and brightened the surrounding world. I feel blessed to have known Anthony and I know my family certainly is. He will be sorely missed.
Dear Anthony,
There will always be a place in my heart for you because you inspired me as you did the entire No1 crew and cast. Your special quality was to make everyone feel a significant part of the making of your film and that is so very rare among directors and yet so very important and visible in the end result. Your wonderful films are testament to that. Thankyou for the opportunity to be part of No1 your parting gift to a world that needs to understand its message and will hopefully sense the love and integrity that has been poured into it.
With much love and sadness
Jane Corden
Anthony Minghella died on the morning of the night of what was our London Premiere of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency movie. This was a movie that Anthony and I had been working on for about eight years together, a long journey, full of faces, sangomas, elephants, people, and a gentle and beautiful continent, Africa.
It is a complete shock when someone dies so suddenly, at such a young age, a light that extinguishes before you have expressed all that you should have expressed. I’m deeply sorry for his family, his friends - what a giant man, and a giant life! It is especially a loss for us, because Anthony was one of the rare poets who could translate such an event’s meaning (or lack thereof) for the rest of us. We look to him, his canvas, the interplay of light and dark, to guide us.
As the many stories emerge about his love and generosity, I most enjoy those that depict the human man, his inner conflicts, the rich tapestry of his life, for those simple moments, to me, are what informed and shaped his poetic genius. Tiny moments, a single image, I can hear Anthony saying, are what makes up our humanity, and there were certainly times I probably tested his humanity, but never his spirit – for he had an endless spirit.
His were big and small virtues all wrapped together uncannily as one. I remember his patience, a quality I don’t have, as I drove around in circles in a parking lot at the University of Botswana. We had come to Gaborone together so he could put the finishing touches on Richard Curtis’ and his screenplay for No. 1 Ladies. I was playing the expert and got us completely lost, driving around, what turned out to be a parking lot in the dusty capital. Anthony never said a word, never chided me. He always took the ordinary and made art from it.
He had a rare inquisitiveness matched by a visual immediacy. He had an eye. Boy did he have an eye. I remember once while scouting, a lilac breasted roller flew by. An explosion of colour. I’d been coming to Africa for 35 years and still couldn’t keep birds and species straight. In less than four hours in the bush, Anthony had already absorbed it all. He could have been intimidating – he saw so much – but his infectious good cheer made him otherwise.
He was casual in the best possible sense of the word. He and Carolyn came to the house for dinner once in London, the first time he was to meet Alexander McCall-Smith. After a pumpkin soup starter, worthy of Mma Ramotswe, Anthony cleared the empty soup bowls with me. In the kitchen he quipped, “I know how to do this. I did this as a kid in my parents’ café.” And he shuffled off to get more empty bowls.
There have been suggestions that like Fellini, as a teenager, he hadn’t enjoyed the work in his parent’s café. What young Italian man would want to bus tables when the beach beckoned and the sounds of Lucio Dalla wafted over the sand on a summer’s night?
But one sensed his roots made him accessible. One morning, on the same trip to work on the No. 1 Ladies screenplay, I picked him up at his modest cottage at the famous Mokolodi game reserve in Botswana, and had to pry him away from the cleaning staff. He counselled, consoled, cajoled, a young Motswana woman who wanted to get married but insisted that her boyfriend save up money to buy enough cows for her dowry first. Anthony crunched on cereal, out of an open box, “I love cereal” he looked passed me as I arrived, his mind far off with the woman’s story, her life, the cows, maybe his parents’ café, these seemingly random pieces, all connected to a full and vibrant understanding of life. We had to buy several boxes of cereal that trip!
He had a supreme talent for accepting life’s tangents as opportunities. Life presented itself in moments around every turn for him. When he and Carolyn arrived at the Sir Seretse Khama airport in Gabs, again the designated driver, I drove to pick them up. Carolyn had lost a small case so we had to wait. Anthony darted to the tiny bookstore contented. He loved a good book store (he loved stores generally, I found. I was always shopping with this great director.) There he found Unity Dow’s book, The Screaming of the Innocents, which became a key to the mystery of his No. 1 screenplay. Carolyn’s lost bag resulted in a found sensibility. No. 1 Ladies, a comedy, could only be made once he understood the darkness. Anthony said to me, “it’s like an oil painting. You start with a dark canvas, and then you add the light.”
And that’s what I think is happening now. ‘Our Ant’ is in the darkness and we have been left behind, suffering in shock. I do not feel him at the moment even though I am in the bush, a place he adored with the praying mantis, monkeys, grunting hippos. He found a new canvas in Africa, in Botswana.
But - I believe what will happen – for I have seen it over and over again in the years I have known and worked with him - - is that he will soon emerge for us, to soothe, translate, beckon, explain, calm – in the light. He will find his light, and lucky us, he will take us with him permanently, in magical ways, that we will see throughout our lives because of his influence, ways that will continue to inform, to tell us -- what it means to be alive.
I wish he were in Africa with me now, in the bush, soaking in life, losing his backpack, searching for his sun cream, laughing at his own bad jokes. But I do know that he will live on in ways I cannot yet understand, his ways, which will enhance and enrich our lives forever.
For that’s what he did. That’s who he was.
Thank you Anthony.
As Anthony's soul passes on, in it's continuing journey, I celebrate a life spent creatively, compassionately and with such kindness. He and his films brought so much love and understanding to us.
Anthony was,is and will forever be eternal. There are no beginings and no ends. Just a passage through the experience of eternity, part of which we call life.
Anthony and his wife Carolyn opened their home to me when I first came to London. They were always special friends. Always kind and generous whenever I felt the need for them.
Anthony was always available. Always. He never said no. He always found time. Such was his compassion and kindness that his was the first image that came to my mind when I would face a creative block or problem.
As always, when someone affects you deeply passes through, you wish you had spend more time with them. But I am just thankful that I had the moments I did,
Shekhar Kapur
As with everyone else who knew him, I am still in shock at this great loss. Anthony was a man so full of life, and enjoyment of endless possibilities. His skill as an artist was so beautifully balanced by his personal curiousity and generosity as a man.
He allowed me into his life as my study for my dissertation as a mature student. I had always admired his work, but that admiration increased tenfold as his infectious humour, dedication and respect of all those around him, as he worked on "breaking and entering" was entirely engaging. He treated everyone as family, and lunchtimes at mirage were like being in Italy-full of noise, laughter, gossip and plans.
I have no grandiose words to express how I feel. I can only say that I feel privilaged to have known him, and intend to work as hard as he did to keep my dreams alive. To do less would be to dishonour him.
To Natalie, Karen, Tim and all at Mirage, and to Carolyn, Max and Hannah-my love to you all. Ant was a gift that can never be forgotten.
I met Anthony in February 2004 when he awarded me the greatest honour I have ever been given in my professional life as a writer, an honour that most novelists would chew off their own arm for: he chose my book, The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, to adapt and direct as a movie. Our first meeting was at Mirage, where we all sat around a table piled high with food like a Harry Potter banquet. He was dressed entirely in black, which gave him a priestly aura. He was eloquent and modest and earnest and overwhelmingly generous about my novel. It was quite a formal occasion, involving agents and lawyers, but there were moments of laughter – though I was too stunned by the whole turn of events to take it in properly at the time. Half-way through, Harvey Weinstein called from the States and told me: ‘Liz, you can put on your party dress, because with Anthony Minghella in charge, we’re going to make one helluva motion picture.’ Afterwards, Anthony laughed gleefully and said that was ‘typical Harvey.’ It was clear there was huge mutual affection.
When the business part of the meeting broke up I told Anthony that his mother Gloria had been a student of mine on a creative writing course a couple of years earlier, and that I had also taught at his son Max’s school: at this he broke into another huge smile of delight. ‘That’s incredible! I’m going to ring Mum right away and tell her!’ And he whipped out his mobile: ‘Mum, can you believe this?’ It was immensely touching. I already knew from talking to his mother that he was part of a very loving, close-knit family, but now I had caught a glimpse of it.
Before we left, Colin Vaines showed the short, very funny spoof of Cold Mountain that he and the others at Mirage had made, in which as I recall Colin – or was it Tim Bricknell? - donned a blonde wig and played a very deep-voiced Nicole Kidman. It was hilarious, and no-one laughed louder than Anthony, who clearly loved to tease and be teased: for me, that little incident provided the icing on an amazing cake of a day.
A week or so later I had dinner with Anthony and Carolyn at their club, where we talked more about our children and our domestic lives than anything else: their son Max was just beginning his acting career, and Carolyn had just returned from a visit to the set in the States. They were both thrilled for him, and very proud. Over the months Anthony and I met again: first at my book launch, then at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, and later at an evening organised by the writers’ organisation PEN. Thanks to Anthony’s presence, these events attracted big crowds. I was immensely grateful that he had given up his time to showcase my work, out of the sheer kindness of his heart. He could have been doing a thousand other things.
He had planned to start shooting The Ninth Life of Louis Drax as early as possible, and had even started crewing up back in 2004, but a series of delays meant that he was only just re-entering the project when his life was cut short. Just two weeks earlier, out of the blue, I’d had an enthusiastic e-mail from him, asking if I could ‘bear’ to be involved, when the time came. Of course I could ‘bear’ be involved!
But the time never came, and I never got to know him better, as I had hoped to, or to start using the more intimate ‘Ant’ in lieu of Anthony, or to see the screenplay that would emerge, or to see any of the films he would have gone on to write, direct, produce and inspire.
Losses like this are brutal, senseless and unfair. They feel like robbery. And worse, random robbery. You want to get childish about it, and yell: ‘Why couldn’t ten other people have died instead of him? People who didn’t matter so much, people who weren’t so magical and so loved?’
It wasn’t just the priestly black outfit that gave me the impression that Anthony was a spiritual person: it was in his whole manner. So I guess if he were here now, he would give an elegant and generous answer to that childish question.
I only wish I knew what it was.
Your memory will never fade from our hearts and your spirit will always be welcome in our land.
The No 1 Unity and Transport Department.
The last I saw Anthony was at the Mirage Christmas party of 2004 (at least that's when I think it was) so I'll hardly say that I was a close friend but I had worked for a year and a half on one of his films. Although a few years have since passed, Anthony was never, ever far from my thoughts.
He had such quiet magnetism and warmth, he always made you feel welcome and respected no matter how ridiculous a thing you were saying. He always listened and made your ridiculous point seem not quite so ridiculous anymore (thankfully).
I have many memories of him, from discussing The English Patient with him and not having the heart to tell him that I had not seen it and wondering if he would notice that I didn't have a clue what I was talking about, to talking about how fiercely proud he was of his work on Grange Hill.
Although I wouldn't say that I was close to him he had a certain quality. Of all the inspirational people I have worked with over the years he is the one that seems to top the list. He is the one I wanted to periodically update with news of how I was doing in my career. Without his knowing it, he's a big part of the reason I have been pushing myself. I wanted to show him how I could grow from being a little assistant editor on his film.
He will be sorely missed, not just for his talents but because the world has lost a genuine kind man. I am grateful for having known him at all. I feel terribly, terribly sorry for his family and my thoughts are with them.
Dei.
When working with Anthony, he made you feel that your contribution to his film was essential to its success. A man of his stature (he'd hate that description - sorry) had no need to be so generous of spirit. But that was just how he was. Also, he was really funny.
There is an Anthony Minghella shaped hole in the universe.
I'll miss him.
Simon Chase
Anthony was my dear friend and occasionally also my moral compass. For me the most difficult thing to come to terms with over the past 10 days has been the suddenness, the absolute finality of it all. And alongside the shock, I can’t help feeling ….well, slightly ambushed. Which is both unreasonable and unfair because, except in his writing, the surprise attack was never part of the Minghella repertoire. Rather, Anthony drew you in close with that unique and totally beguiling mixture of Italian warmth and energetic argument. And the debate always underpinned at his end with logic not just emotion, and always seasoned with a healthy dose of pragmatism because Anthony seemed to me to be a person who preferred to dream dreams that he could then set about turning into reality.
Last week’s news stirred up a tidal wave of emotion and a lot of people have written eloquently and movingly about Anthony’s love for Carolyn and Max and Hannah and about his intelligence, and his charm and his commitment to the arts and especially to film. I can’t add anything to those words but at least I can try to recollect some of the different ways I knew him.
There was the Anthony I saw performing in public. Like at press conferences and film festivals. He could do the set piece presentation like nobody else. Always superfluent, always left any speaking notes trailing in the dust, kept his voice quite low, always kept the room leaning in. There was Anthony at parties, which was something else again. Charming, courteous, elegantly turned out with his “old world” manners to the fore. But to be honest I didn’t ever sense that he really enjoyed big parties. In fact I don’t think Anthony was really a “big party” kind of person.
There was the Anthony I encountered in big formal meetings. Like board meetings with 20 people around the table. And in those situations he always seemed particularly still. He would listen quietly and attentively and he always timed his interventions precisely and for maximum effect. And usually just when the argument was going the wrong way – not his way - he’d make his perfectly articulated point and tip the debate deftly back in the direction he favoured, and he always took care to come into the discussion far too late for the opposition to re-run their argument. A neat trick and I never tired of watching him perform it. But actually I don’t think Anthony was a “big meeting” kind of person either,
But then there was Anthony in small meetings. In his office at Mirage, in other people’s offices, in restaurants, in rooms, in the corners of rooms, in fact anywhere he could get eye contact and carve some time out of his permanently and ludicrously overstuffed meeting schedule. That nasty LA phrase, “good in the room”. But, oh Boy, was Anthony good in the room. The combination of the warmth, the charm, his undivided attention and the perfect expression of the idea – and every moving part of the proposition under discussion built on the strongest foundation of all; the fact that Anthony never put his name to anything he didn’t truly believe in. Resistance was futile
And of course there was Anthony one-to-one - where you felt like you were the most important person in the world. He travelled so much that “catching-up” with Anthony could get to be pretty much a full time job. He like to break bread, to talk and eat, and there were a lot of quite elaborate salad lunches in his office but there were also a vast number of take-aways snatched over the years in the backs of dubbing theatres across Soho. But wherever you went, there was always a steady stream of espresso coffee.
The first time we sat down to work together, he dared me to make him a promise; that I would always be utterly candid with him and in return he would do the same for me. We agreed to keep what we said, and what we said about other people, totally between us. It was a brilliant arrangement which over the years solved a hundred problems before they ever became problems. Of course, looked at another way, Anthony was a Catholic and he had put me in the confessional, a place where he was always going to be a lot more comfortable than I ever could be.
I remember spending a morning with him somewhere south of Kings Cross when he was directing “Breaking and Entering” and it was completely unsurprising to see how he effortlessly controlled the testosterone sprawl of a feature film shoot. He did it by turning even that complex, creative, labour-intensive process into a series of one-to-one meetings with his cast and crew until he captured on film exactly the vision he had in his head.
By chance Sydney Pollack was in London that day and we had lunch. Sydney and I both ate from the catering wagon while Anthony, as usual, ordered something hyper-healthy, that wasn’t on the menu, while he drank something natural and thick from a big cardboard cup. The lunchtime discussion was an open window on why the Sydney/Anthony Mirage partnership worked so effectively and I was so struck by the relaxed and totally direct connection between Anthony and Sydney, and the absolute level of mutual respect and affection.
Given all the globetrotting, inevitably I also remember Anthony for his 2 cell phones and his Blackberry. Outside the UK he suddenly morphed into Ant of Antcolony.com but any email or text or voicemail sent into the Anthill invariably got returned the same day. I still don’t know how he managed to keep in touch personally with everyone while meeting his own manic schedule. Every now and then you’d begin a conversation with Anthony at say, 11.00pm his time, and if you listened very carefully you might just hear the faintest click as the mental drawer labelled “Butterfly/NY/costumes” slid shut and the drawer marked “more cash for the BFI” slid open. But overall it was a remarkably seamless way of working.
Which triggers a final memory. Anthony always used to sign off his emails to me with the words, “Love there,”
Indeed, there was.
When I arrived on the set of Cold Mountain, I thought for sure that in the world of big Hollywood productions, that the egos would be raging, and people would be screaming at me within a few takes, etc.
I instead found the warmest of environments with people that had the most pleasant attitude. I was so shocked, I actually started telling people that I couldn’t believe the vibe was so warm on the set.
I was quickly told that it was because of Anthony Minghella, and that his warmth and understanding trickled down from the top to every person working on the film. I instantly learned a lot from Ant when I heard that statement. I’ll never forget it. I’ll also not forget him taking a chance on a young Punk like me and letting me be involved in the beautiful music from that film.
He saw, as I hoped he would, that folk music is a bridge we all walk upon.
Thank you Anthony, may the angels meet you halfway and escort your soul into heaven.
Jack White
Thank you Anthony for being you. For your generosity, wonderful spirit, warm heart, great smile and all the kindness you showed me. I am honored to have known you. Thank you for being you.
My love and sympathies to Max, Carolyn, and Hannah.
I had never met Anthony when he called from Asheville, NC to ask me to join him next day to see where the soul of the film he wanted to make was set. He was certain that if I saw it I would understand and help him make Cold Mountain where and how he envisioned it. I flew there the next day and revelled in the beauty he found, and for a short time was blessed with sharing his magnificent vision and thrilled to be in a position to help bring it to life. It didn't take very long for the financial realities to interfere with the purity of his vision and for us execs to start hacking away at at it. I've always felt that I let him down by not fighting harder for him - even with his eloquent remarks about how Romania more closely represented the landscape of the 19th century south, without it's tatoo of superhighways and strip malls, even when he said these things, I knew that he was disappointed to have lost the soul of the story by having to shoot in Bucharest and Brasov. It pains me to have been a part of limiting his grandiloquent vision. At the same time, I think the film was beautiful - think of the amazing sequence when Ada sees Inman finally returning to her and how it couldn't have been more gorgeous anywhere. He had an
enlightened rationale about this - that creativity needed limits and boundaries to thrive.... but I still knew that he was disappointed and pissed off about it.
did he know how he touched everyone - everyone he worked with and made them feel important?
I remember the look on the face of an intern after he returned from having driven Anthony - like he was touched by an angel. He was not only amazed that Anthony talked to him, but that he was actually interested in him and engaged with him about his hopes and aspirations, and the kid came back floating on air feeling validated and inspired.
For everyone he's touched, the power of his enlightened being will continue to spread expontentially.
Anthony Minghella: Writer, Director, Producer, Musician and Bowling Champion
Most of us know Anthony as one or all of the first three titles above and there's no question he has made a most significant contribution to the British film industry as one of it's foremost ambassadors.
Perhaps less is known to of his extraordinary musical sensibilities and prowess on the bowling alley.....
Anthony Minghella: The Musician
I was fortunate to work with Anthony on his last two films as his Music Supervisor. Now, looking back, the idea that he needed any "Musical Supervision" seems laughable. Something I quickly learned about Anthony was that he knew his music. It was such an important component in his world that it influenced his writing; it provided him with another lens while shooting; it was a thread that ran right through his life and his creative process. And it wasn't just that he loved and understood how to use music - he made it. During the first sessions at Abbey Road recording the "Breaking & Entering" score and while the rest of us were still trying to figure out how this collaboration between Gabriel Yared and Underworld might work, Anthony, without even appearing to think about what he was doing, sat at a Piano and started to play and sing. He hadn't yet even witnessed Gabriel, Karl and Rick working together, but he seemed instinctively to know the language they were developing between them. I think the resulting soundtrack to that movie is perhaps one of his less recognised triumphs.
Anthony Minghella: The 10-pin Bowling Champion
It was Christmas 2005, and a group of us were going bowling. Why? Well I asked that too - and without blinking an eye, Anthony explained that he had in his youth been a Bowling Champion of some repute and that he just fancied doing it again. Fair enough. He was very convincing and I was/am extremely gullible. However, on arrival at the Bloomsbury Lanes it very quickly became apparent that I'd been duped. He was absolutely terrible and delighted in the fact that he made the rest of us look and feel like champions.
These are very particular memories I have of Anthony. An insightful, sensitive and inspiring collaborator who always managed to make you feel good about your contribution.
I'm going to miss him enormously and will be forever grateful for the opportunities, guidance and encouragement he offered me, and my thoughts are very much with his family - his Mum and Dad, Carolyn, Hannah and Max - and with his extended family at Mirage - Caroline, Karen, Natalie and Tim.
I remember Ant, knee deep in mud on a hillside in Sinaia Romania, almost 80 days into production on
"Cold Mountain", somehow with his dignity intact.
Watching England-Brazil in The World Cup at 4am in a hotel room in Nashville.
Always with music, making music, listening to a fully jammed I-Pod bursting with his wide ranging enthusiasms, often singing, sometimes pensive, other times his head bopping.
He was an accomplished soloist, a truly great writer, a filmmaker with his own distinctive concerns and poetry. But he was so strong in partnership as well. Collaborating with friends everywhere (how did he find the time?), always with Tim, with his Mirage family, his film family, and especially with Carolyn, Max and Hannah.
Some filmmakers only hear one voice. Anthony surrounded himself with an army of voices. They were loud, confident and skilled voices. And they all served to make him stronger. People gave everything they had to Ant. You wanted to do your very best for him.
I hear his robust laughter, delighted by an animated safety film before takeoff on Tarom airlines to Bucharest, featuring a father and his bearded 6 year old son.