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The Making of a Film Idol

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by David Paul Nixon
They had a dream…

Producer Clinton Montague had the rights to make a movie based on the The Guvnor: the bestselling biography of East End hard man Lenny Mclean. Entrepreneur Patrick Barber wanted to set up the country’s biggest online talent database. Together, in 2003, they founded ‘Film Idol’: a cross-country search for 86 undiscovered actors and 2000 extras to star in it. So why, four years later, haven’t you seen The Guvnor advertised at your local cinema?

With wonderfully dry narration by Richard E Grant, The Making of a Film Idol takes us through Montague and Barber’s 30-date club venue tour, from its ill conceived beginnings right through to its end: a mess of incompetence, lies and poor management.  This is car crash entertainment.

It soon becomes clear that Montague couldn’t organise a prayer in nunnery.  The tour is plagued by advertising blunders and venue problems, and then his money runs out.  Barber sullenly steps in with more dough, but is he there to keep an eye on his enthusiastic but bungling partner? He’d much rather be out talent spotting at the nightclub’s events.  And what talent he finds…  Watch his face light up when at one club he’s told ‘this is a tits out venue’.  

What these people are willing to do (or put up with) to get a part provides an all too depressing insight into the minds of the reality TV generation.  Auditions are plagued by hopeless hopefuls, desperate wannabes, flesh-flashing floozies and the down right bizarre.  You can only feel sorry for the earnest few who arrive with their fingers crossed hoping this will be their big break – although the gangster with a rucksack full of money is a bit much.
But the worst is yet to come. Touring with them is warm-up man, Nathan ‘Cream’ Merry, the icing on this badly baked cake. He’s worked with Beyonce, Busta Rhymes and P Diddy. Death Row Records are keen to sign him.  He even gets a sexy text from Holly Valance! Strangely, though, this occurs after one of the crew shows him how to send text messages to his own phone.  Grant’s narration is restrained at first but it isn’t long before he’s let loose and rains down derision on all involved.  

The Making of a Film Idol isn’t just an entertaining and funny story of a project doomed to failure.  It’s a rather sad reminder that anybody can proclaim themselves a producer and get a project off the ground. There are too many Montagues’s and Barber’s in the world, and taking note of all these goings on could save you from investing your time and hope in the wrong people, as ultimately many people did.  For as the film concludes in 2007, we discover there are 86 very disappointed people still waiting out there today.

Dir Quentin Reynolds, UK 2007, 87 mins

The Making of a Film Idol is released on DVD on 30th May 2007.

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