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  It was during the course of the next two years that HandMade’s reputation for making low-budget, short-schedule, mass-release films, using British financing, was forged. Scrubbers was in many ways an odd choice for HandMade’s first post-Time Bandits film. It remained out of kilter with everything they subsequently produced and is the company’s sole dip into unadorned social realism. It was also one of their most fraught productions and left veteran producer Don Boyd still spitting venom at the name of Denis O’Brien and HandMade 20 years later.

  From its earliest days, Scrubbers was stigmatised as the female Scum, a largely unfair comparison, although it did hail from the same makers of the highly controversial Roy Minton drama, banned by the BBC, about the injustices in a boy’s Borstal which shocked the nation and forced the government of the day into positive action. Don Boyd asserts, ‘Scum changed the law... it really was groundbreaking in that sense. There were questions in Parliament and the Home Office completely overhauled the Borstal system after the release of that film.’

  Returning from America having produced John Schlesinger’s elephantine farce Honky Tonk Freeway, Boyd faced massive pressure to make a Scum follow-up. He resisted. Then the idea cropped up that perhaps it would work if the same uncompromising study was done but this time focusing upon the turbulent life at a girl’s Borstal, viewed mainly through its effect on two very different young women. It was Boyd’s assistant who came up with the inspired notion of bringing in Mai Zetterling as director.

  Still fondly remembered as an actress, notably her sex kitten role alongside Peter Sellers in Only Two Can Play, Mai, now 58, had moved into directing feature films and acclaimed television documentaries in her native Scandinavia. When the idea of Scrubbers was mooted, she bit almost immediately and set about totally rewriting a provisional script penned by Roy Minton, who was eventually paid off, though retains a screen credit.

  Getting such a difficult project financed proved relatively straightforward. Boyd had various money offers on the table but HandMade stood out as the best option. They had a good reputation, he felt, and the Python connection was another plus. A meeting was arranged at Cadogan Square. As far as Boyd was concerned, ‘The HandMade office was very odd because you would go in downstairs and there was this strange area where you hung around until they let you go into this tiny, horribly claustrophobic lift which took you into an area that could have easily been a residential apartment. I always felt there was this rather greasy, ingratiating atmosphere there. It was a slight, crusty, old world feeling combined with a sense of secrecy. You knew, of course, that if anybody was unwelcome they wouldn’t get up into that lift.’

  Once the financial aspect was sorted (Scrubbers was allotted a restrictive but fair budget of around £600,000), Boyd sought from O’Brien reassurances that his own company, Boyd’s Co, would not become subservient or gobbled up by the mightier HandMade. ‘Denis explained to me the system he had, he said he was very keen with George Harrison to give a big boost to the British cinema. I told him the film was set up to be a Boyd’s Co production, we had funds attached to it and that we had a separate identity, that we were a production company that made movies, successful ones, and we didn’t see how this was going to work into the HandMade set-up. And he managed to convince me, very cunningly, that Boyd’s Co wouldn’t be emasculated if I was to produce the film personally.’

  This was agreed and the contract was signed, a punitive contract that, in hindsight, Boyd wouldn’t have touched with a barge pole. Basically, it was a case of, if the film comes in on budget then you’ll earn your money. But Boyd sensed O’Brien’s real intention was to undermine his position as producer and manipulate the project away from Boyd’s Co completely. There were mind games going on, childish in nature, such as sending a thank you gift of wine to every member of the crew except him. ‘Denis was terrible during the shooting and George Harrison wasn’t any better. It was all very familiar to me because I’d just been for three years in Hollywood and I knew how the games were played. The politics of film-making is just complete bullshit. Denis kept playing this weird sort of paternalistic game as well. Although we were supplicant he made you feel that you were part of a little family that he was going to be involved with and look forward to nurturing. It was all complete nonsense because at the same time whenever there was an opportunity businesswise to marginalise what I represented, he would take that opportunity, so I always felt very combative with him. And he would always say, “Now look, Don, don’t feel like that. I’m on your side.” He made me feel that I could be part of the family and then at the stage where it was clear he was getting his way, then I was suddenly an orphan.’

  Deeply distracted by the strange dichotomy which existed between the two companies and the personalities involved, Mai Zetterling approached the project with impassioned energy nevertheless, hoping to touch the public’s conscience. Spending some three months on research, Mai spoke with social workers and ex-Borstal girls, aware that the background to the film needed to be totally authentic. Directing for the first time in the English language, she also worked extremely closely with her largely inexperienced cast, including the young Kathy Burke and Robbie Coltrane. He recalls, ‘I was almost the only male in the cast, and the girls forgot I was there after a while and started talking like they were alone, which was quite an eye-opener. Mai wandered about with a bullwhip and was very funny, and, of course, I bored her to death asking her about all her films as an actress, which was fascinating. I also met Kathy Burke, she must have been a teenager then, and fearless. At times it felt like the real thing, a lot of the girls had done time and began treating me like a screw, so the dynamic was there. I was asked to be suggestive with a vacuum flask, if I remember right, so no change there.’

  It must also have helped that Mai was a woman. It’s debatable whether a male director could have pulled off such a project quite so effectively. Boyd believes, ‘Mai had the sensitivity to deal with a woman’s issue in a sociological context. She also had an individual take on life and I felt the film needed that to separate it from Scum. It shouldn’t have been a female Scum, it had to be something that had its own identity.’

  But being a woman in a prodigiously male-orientated industry fostered its own unique set of problems, notably with the assistant director who resented Mai’s exalted position. Boyd observes, ‘To demonstrate the degree of antipathy between Roger, the AD, and Mai, Roger had baked a special cake which was presented to Mai at the end of wrap party. It was in the shape of a penis and testicles and that was his present to her, indicating what she had represented to him, which was a man. He didn’t understand that she would be offended by that and she was deeply offended by it. He thought it was a funny way of saying, “Look, you’ve won your spurs, you’re one of us,” and Mai was saying, “No, I’m not one of you and, by the way, I didn’t want to be one of you at all.” It was the worst thing he could have possibly done. Poor Roger, he later fell off a cliff in Turkey, killed himself directing a commercial.’

  Scrubbers went before the cameras in February 1982 on location at Holloway Sanatorium in Surrey, a one-time insane asylum where Nijinsky met his end in 1950 having become a raving lunatic and where Tony Hancock was once a patient. This oppressive and rambling gothic edifice, derelict for two years, housed both the production offices and the studio where makeshift sets, based on photographic material from various women’s prisons, were authentically reproduced. The makers wanted everything fantastically close to real life, from the clothes to the interchange of dialogue. O’Brien fretted over whether all the slang words might render the film too colloquial and ruin its chances of playing overseas. He also despised the amount of foul language used. Mai herself feared the swearing might condemn her film to an X rating, but still believed the way these kids spoke couldn’t be softened. The Daily Star branded the Borstal girls ‘the most loutish and foul-mouthed ever to appear on a cinema screen’. In the end, Scrubbers was granted an AA certificate (today a 15) by censor James Ferman
who hoped this unflinching view of Borstal life would be a salutary lesson for teenagers on the cusp of a life in crime.

  Amid the ongoing tensions between Boyd and O’Brien, Ray Cooper was a beacon of sanity. Boyd says, ‘When there were times when Denis caused problems with me, Ray was a good person to talk to. I used him really as my buffer with Denis. He was a little bit enigmatic, I couldn’t quite understand what his agenda was, but what I loved about him was his romantic intellect, he had a very romantic view of what cinema could be like. He was very much on the side of the artist and his relationship with George made it difficult for Denis to be the bully boy all the time. We always knew that if we had a big problem we could go to Ray to help us out. He was a very important go-between in getting Denis to understand that, if you didn’t have Mai’s vision, the film wasn’t going to be anything, it was just going to be a mess.’

  Ray Cooper was Scrubbers’ most ardent supporter within HandMade and editorially important, too, having contributed comments as the script was being fashioned. Now, during shooting, he made sure never to be absent from the set and was a constant source of encouragement to Mai particularly. ‘I had a wonderful time with Mai, she was a joy to work with. It was actually the first time I did a little bit of direction. There were a couple of scenes which Mai very politely said, “Well, you do that one,” which was very sweet. It was wonderful, there was an energy there. I suppose because we were paying for it ourselves, we didn’t have anyone looking over our shoulder.’

  As for George Harrison, he was the most distant of figures, scarcely having any dealings with the film, attending only the one production meeting. ‘I remember George appearing on the set at the beginning,’ Boyd says, ‘coming over to me and saying, “What are you doing here?” And I said, “I’m the producer of this film.” And he said, “Well, I thought I was the producer.” I said, “George, it’s your money. What do you think I’ve been doing over these last few weeks?” Apart from that, I didn’t have a lot of dealings with George. I knew he was a figurehead that we could manipulate through Ray Cooper up to a point. George seemed happy to be the sleeping partner in all this. He wasn’t involved editorially at all. He approved the script but he wasn’t involved in any of the contracts or any of the financial arrangements; that seemed to be left entirely to Denis.’

  As on Time Bandits, it was when the film was in the can that the real problems started. ‘We brought the film in on budget,’ Boyd adds, ‘it came in without any extra shooting whatsoever. And when we were editing it, we were left alone until really near the end, which is a very familiar technique of lots of executives, and then Denis jumped in and said, “Right, I’m now going to be involved in the finalising of it.”’

  O’Brien wanted Scrubbers shorter and less violent, to sanitise it, basically. He even tried to play Boyd and Mai off each other, which didn’t work. Though, finally, Mai realised that she had to ingratiate O’Brien, after all he was going to be the film’s future, not Boyd, and more or less in the end got the cut she wanted.

  As for Boyd, he became persona non grata and was ditched completely, barred even from attending test screenings of his own movie. ‘Once, essentially, Denis got out of me what he most wanted, which was the creative and producing input that made the film what it is, I was written entirely out of it and, to this day, I’ve never had a statement from them. I’ve never had any money. I never got my fee. I never heard another word. I produced an important film and I didn’t earn anything from it and neither did my company. Once everything had been paid out, our involvement actually cost us money.’

  Even marketing and distribution decisions were taken without input from Boyd’s Co. Any suggestions that were put forward went unheeded. ‘Denis just wanted me out of the picture,’ says Boyd, ‘because he didn’t want any of the glory to go in any direction other than to him or HandMade. We wanted to put on the posters, “From the producers of Scum”, but HandMade didn’t want any of that. It was a big mistake, a very stupid mistake, it would have made it much more commercial and made me wonder how commercial Denis wanted it to be, whether he wanted it to just disappear.’

  Upon its release in November 1982, Scrubbers was met with generally warm notices. ‘This is a more powerful, compassionate movie than Scum, made with passion, blazingly well acted and it troubles the conscience, which is no bad thing,’ wrote the Daily Mail. The Guardian said, ‘It is an impeccably liberal scream against the system which still manages enough crowd-pleasing tactics to keep the customers happy.’ Of course, there were detractors. ‘Alternately overplayed and trivialised, pile-driving and prurient,’ slammed the Financial Times. The Western Mail found Zetterling undecided about how she wanted Scrubbers to work. ‘In the end, it falls uneasily between campaigning documentary and sloppy melodrama.’

  After opening the London Film Festival, Scrubbers played in a few West End venues and sporadically round the country before disappearing from the public gaze, rarely surfacing since. Boyd’s feeling is that ‘it was very frustrating to think that a film that was well reviewed, that we put so much work into, should have had such a tiny release and just marginalised entirely by HandMade, especially as HandMade then went on to proclaim all kinds of important things for the British film industry. Denis didn’t really back it properly and I just felt he had a strange agenda in relation to it. I don’t think he liked the film and just decided to write it off. And, of course, that seemed to suit the tax arrangements. We just felt we were the also-rans that Denis didn’t want to back and certainly didn’t want to acknowledge because of the ambiguity with my company. He didn’t want anyone to think that HandMade hadn’t made the film, while all they’d done was provide the money. Denis’s main involvement was to sign cheques and to cause problems at the final cut and that was it. We, Boyd’s Co, made that film and we lost money out of it and we were not involved in the distribution and so weren’t even allowed to participate in any of its success, limited as that was. And I have enormous resentment about that.’

  Amazingly, when Scrubbers finally opened in America in February 1984, Boyd wasn’t even informed by O’Brien. In New York at the time, it was left to a colleague to ring him up with the news. ‘Do you realise your movie’s opening?’ Boyd rushed out to buy a copy of the New York Times to read for himself its flattering review. He couldn’t believe it.

  In spite of what happened, Scrubbers remains a film Boyd looks back on with unreserved pride. ‘It’s a really good film. Mai did a brilliant job. I don’t think it’s better than Scum, but I think it’s a very different film that works on its own level. Mai’s big thing was that people had this independent spirit that could shine despite the hellishness of a repressed system. That was her message and it was a very warm message. If you look at the film you’ll see that that pervades everything. These repressed environments people talk about in concentration camps and prisons, our individual personalities would rather kick against the pricks and demonstrate our desire to be as free as possible within that repressed set-up. She felt that very passionately about women, that women’s dignity should survive. That’s what she was on about, dignity, and I think she succeeded.’

  If Scrubbers was hardly Denis O’Brien’s cup of Darjeeling — and there is probably much truth in Boyd’s accusation that he left it to wither on the vine — it was very much to the taste of Ray Cooper. And it amply demonstrated where, artistically, these two very different men were coming from. Cooper remembers ‘one of my first philosophical run-ins with Denis. We got into an interesting heated discussion. I said, “Well, Denis, if, say, The Long Good Friday had come to your desk as a script, would you have made it?” And he said, “No.” And I said, “Well, I would have.” We defined at that early stage some areas of differences.’

  O’Brien, it seemed, was still keen to exploit the worldwide brand name that was Monty Python, even though after Meaning of Life it was unlikely the team would ever make any more films together. Steve Abbott’s view was ‘it was absolutely clear that they now wanted to do th
eir own movies. Gilliam was going to do Brazil, and already from 1981 Charles Crichton was on the books of John Cleese’s company and was being paid to develop the script that later became A Fish Called Wanda. So just the logistics of setting aside a year where they’d all commit to doing a joint project made it unlikely.’ But Denis still saw to it that the comedy group continued to influence and colour HandMade’s production portfolio for the foreseeable future. ‘Denis’s basic reference point to side-splitting humour was Monty Python,’ Cooper says, ‘he was a huge fanatic, which is wonderful. Unfortunately, he tried to imbue other material with that sensibility, which is very difficult, but that was always what he was trying to look for.’

  It was as if O’Brien couldn’t let go of the Pythons both spiritually and, more importantly, financially. Abbott believes, ‘Denis was forever courting them individually to make films for him, but as a group, anyone who knew them at all knew that a group film wasn’t going to be forthcoming, certainly in the four or five years after Meaning of Life. And, of course, it never happened, and once Graham died that was it anyway.’

  Python meant bums on seats and no one knew that better than Denis O’Brien. Gilliam says, ‘When Python left, and it was our stupidity, we never made an announcement, we just said, “Goodbye, Denis,” and walked away from it. We never put a press statement out — you know, “Python leaves HandMade”, “Python rejects Denis O’Brien and everything he stands for”. We didn’t do that and Denis for another ten years played off that, he was still selling it as the same thing. That’s why a lot of people were attracted to it, people didn’t know that Python was no longer involved with HandMade Films, especially in Hollywood. And he just kept using us and George.’