David Puttnam
From Free net encyclopedia
Current revision
Image:David Puttnam Feb 2006 BAFTA fellowship.jpg David Terence Puttnam, Baron Puttnam, CBE is a film producer and politician. He sits on the Labour benches in the House of Lords.
After an early career in advertising and acting as agent for the photographer David Bailey, he turned to film production in the late 1960s. His successes as a producer include Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Chariots of Fire (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), Local Hero, Memphis Belle, and The Killing Fields and The Mission with Roland Joffé, mostly in association with Goldcrest.
He was Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Columbia Pictures from 1986 to 1988. During his time at Columbia he was criticised for concentrating on setting up lucrative production deals for his old colleagues and not on exploiting the studio's few box office hits. This strategic failure contributed to the sale of the studio to Sony.
He was knighted in 1995 and created a life peer in 1997, as Baron Puttnam, of Queensgate in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. In 2002 he chaired the joint scrutiny committee on the Communications Bill, which recommended an amendment to prevent ownership of British terrestrial TV stations by companies with a significant share of the newspaper market. This was widely interpreted as being aimed at stopping Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation from buying Channel 5. When the government opposed the amendment, Puttnam brokered a compromise — the introduction of a "public interest" test to be applied by the new regulator Ofcom, but without explicit restrictions.
He was chairman of the National Film and Television School for many years, and taught people such as Nick Park. He founded SkillSet, which trains young people to become members of the film and television industries. In 2002 he was elected UK president of Unicef.
Lord Puttnam has been the chancellor of the University of Sunderland since 1998.
In 2006, he was awarded the Orange BAFTA Fellow of the Academy. He made the occasion notable by delivering a particularly moving homage to his late father. He also congratulated contemporary filmakers (specifically George Clooney) for making films with integrity: the lack of such films being produced had been the reason for his retirement from the film industry in the late 1990s.
External links
- {{{2|{{{name|David Puttnam}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
- Template:Cite news - transcript of Sunday AM interview with Huw Edwards