The blurb on 'The Story Of Film' says it is 'the first film book that you should read'. The book's author, Mark Cousins, tells Derek O'Connor why he agrees
You don't have to dig too deep to find the 17-year-old movie obsessive buried within Mark Cousins. "I remember going to the ABC cinema in Great Victoria Street in Belfast to see Once Upon A Time In America, and I was the only person in the cinema," he says. "I just felt that Belfast was a ghost town when it came to accessing certain types of cinema. I didn't really even know at the time what I wanted. Nobody told me what was good, because there was no book that I could find - but also, even if I had have found one, there was no way to see these films. DVD is a revolution in that way; now, no matter where you're living, you can see all these phenomenal works of cinema. That's what I say to teenagers now: 'Your generation is the first generation that has an almost global access to films - you have no excuse!' "
For Cousins, it's been a remarkable journey, from those formative years in Belfast to his adopted home in Edinburgh, one driven by - above all else - an iridescent passion for cinema. For many, he remains best known for his memorable series of entertaining one-on-one interviews with screen icons, Scene By Scene, as well as a stint hosting BBC's much-missed cult movie show, Moviedrome. Cousins's on-screen gig, however, was an extension of his activities as a film writer, producer and director, not to mention his celebrated stint as director of the Edinburgh Film Festival. The culmination of these activities - and those passions - to date is his book, The Story Of Film, a concise, accessible, opinionated and eminently readable tome that does exactly what it says on the cover, exploring the history of the cinematic form from its humble origins onwards. It's as fine an introduction to the medium as we've encountered in an age; indeed, the blurb on the dust-jacket suggests, somewhat immodestly, that The Story Of Film is "the first film book that you should read".
"I would probably agree with that, actually," muses Cousins, who, he stresses, wasn't actually responsible for the aforementioned statement. "I wrote this book for me when I was 16 or 17. I had become really passionate about cinema, the things I was seeing on television, Hitchcock retrospectives, Welles retrospectives - but, short of those old Halliwell film guides, there was no book available that was accessible enough, that give me the bigger picture of cinema as such.
"The books that were there were celebrations of the old Hollywood system, so I was diverted towards Jimmy Cagney and Marlene Dietrich, but there was no one at that stage to tell me about Indian cinema or the great Hong Kong films. I tried to write something that might serve as a road map through movie history, one that gave equal weight to the film-making nations of the world and wasn't bogged down in jargon - so I really do think that it is the first book that the intelligent general reader should read."
The first thing that strikes the reader about The Story Of Film is the immediacy of the prose, which offers a welcome antidote to the reams of impenetrable theory peddled by the majority of film courses these days - a conscious decision, naturally, on the part of the author.
"I am, personally, rather bored by film theory, almost on a political level," says Cousins. "I think it is wrong to keep so many people outside the system, to keep the discussion of the ideas of cinema to those who know the lingo. I like to incorporate the personal when I'm writing. There are some things that you can objectively prove - that Intolerance was an influential film, that Psycho was an influential film - but then there are other things that are more to do with my subjective judgment, which are that there are certain film-makers who have been drastically overlooked.
"So I tried to stand back and be an objective historian on some level, to say that here is a story of influence that I can demonstrate. At the same time, it was also as if I had to include the character actors in this story, the people who really should have been influential but weren't. That's where my own personal taste comes into it."
Cousins's book comes into its own when it redresses the balance between the Hollywood juggernaut and the wealth of exciting film-making that has emerged across the globe in the past decade.
"The playing field is very uneven for film-makers," he says. "Especially in the 1990s when, for the first time, every continent is making truly great work. I think it's really unfair, and that's why I was determined not to pay too much attention to box-office success, to try where possible to say what was really innovative, tell those stories. A wee book like mine doesn't have much impact, obviously, but if it can get people - particularly people who are just beginning to read about film - to seek out some of the titles and film-makers, then it's been entirely worthwhile."
Unlike the majority of writers on film, who are, it sometimes seems, preoccupied with working through their own issues as failed film-makers, Cousins isn't afraid to pursue a simultaneous career within the business. In addition to his documentary activities (he's completing a film about Iranian cinema for Channel 4), he has established a film-making outfit, 4Way Pictures, in partnership with film-maker Antonia Bird, actor Robert Carlyle and author Irvine Welsh. He is currently developing an attractive array of projects, including Welsh's first original screenplay, Meat Trade, and an adaptation of the acclaimed Alan Warner novel, The Man Who Walks, both of which Cousins will produce. Asked what his ambitions for the company's endeavours are, he is characteristically blunt.
"It's going to sound very middle-of-the-road, but I want to make quality commercial pictures," he says. "My friend, Andrew McDonald, before he made Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, said he wanted to make quality commercial pictures, and me and all my other pals were banging on about being maverick and radical and whatever - now I totally embrace his point of view. You can make a decent film for £1.5 million, but you also want to 'get to market', as they say. I'm interested in anything that isn't formulaic, that isn't clichéd, that hasn't too fake a happy ending or too fake a sad ending - something that captures the reality of life, the rapture and the down stuff. That kind of thing."
He warms to his subject, outlining his intentions in no uncertain terms: "Most people think that the most commercially successful film ever made is Titanic, which grossed the most money, but the real measure of commercial success is, I think, if you put a pound in, how many pounds did you get back? What's fascinating is that, on those terms, the three most successful films ever are, funnily enough, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, that Taiwanese picture The Wedding Banquet, and Monsoon Wedding. Three wedding films, three ethnic wedding films - all have returned £40 for every pound invested.
"That is the kind of thing that Irish film-makers can learn from. There's something to do with community in those films - not all of which are great films, by the way - and Ireland has a sense of community, Scotland has a sense of community stronger than in many other western countries. If the film community in Ireland wants to have a real conversation with the business people, with the investors, they are the sort of films I think they should be talking about, the ones that can generate a huge profit, rather than just aiming for something compromised and mainstream."
Failing that, one supposes, sticking the word "wedding" in the title of a movie seems to work a treat.
In person, Mark Cousins cuts a modest, entertaining presence, far removed from his deadpan, somewhat aloof (and oft-mocked, as he gleefully admits) television persona. Making a brief stopover in Derry to deliver a lecture at the Foyle Film Festival, he's an animated presence, an infectious enthusiast for the transcendent power of the moving image. This enthusiasm is never more in evidence than when he discusses Scottish Kids Are Making Movies (SKAMM), the Edinburgh-based charity he co-founded in 1997 to help talented teenagers gain access to film equipment and "think creatively". It's a matter of deep personal interest to the man who, as he puts it, "plunged into movies" and never looked back.
"If you come from the one of the centres of film production, like Los Angeles or London, you have a head start," he says. "If you're born with a natural film-making talent and you live in, say, Santa Monica or Brixton, then chances are you'll filter into that system. In places like Scotland and Ireland, however, places that still aren't automatically associated with film production, it's crucially important that we come up with ways of making sure that if the new Francois Truffaut or Orson Welles is born into a community where film-making opportunities aren't readily available, that those talents aren't wasted.
"So that's why I got involved with setting up SKAMM, trying to incubate talent, to go out to communities and schools and find kids who may be showing interest and talent, and making sure they're not cut off because they feel excluded from the system. The film world has always been rather closed off in some way. Thankfully, with the digitization of the film process, the availability of cheaper, better digital film cameras, these things are changing. Charities like ours may find themselves swiftly redundant. If so, hallelujah."
The Story Of Film is published by Pavilion Books