It is a measure of his success that producer David Puttnam's name is more often associated with his films than those of his directors (anyone remember the director of "Chariots of Fire"?). As producer of the Oscar-winning "Chariots" and subsequently-nominated The Killing Fields and The Mission, Puttnam had assumed, by the mid-80s, a Midas touch with commercially successful, critically-acclaimed films that few other producers -- let alone European producers -- could equal at that time.

The Coca Cola corporation, who in 1986 were the owners of Columbia Pictures, was keen to have Puttnam work his magic on its movies and in August that year appointed him chairman and CEO of the studios. But during his fifteen monthsí tenure, he found the age-old conflict between art and commerce and, by extension, the chasm between European cinema and Hollywood product, irreconcilable. As Puttnam says in his new book ('The Undeclared War: the struggle for control of the worldís film industry'), he tried against the odds -- and ultimately resigned after failing -- ìto bring a more sophisticated boutique mentality to what was in essence a department-store operation.î

Besides his role as special advisor to the Club of European Producers during the GATT negotiations in Uruguay (and the brinkmanship of the December 1993 events he details in his book is eye-opening), Puttnam has returned to producing. He currently devotes his energies to his production company Enigma Productions, while remaining an outspoken and articulate member of the industry.

Simplistic as it may sound, production is where finance is expended; distribution and exhibition is where it is recouped and, according to Puttnam in "The Undeclared War", apart from a brief European dalliance at the beginning of the century, it has been America which has controlled -- or, some would contend, maintained a stranglehold -- on film distribution ever since. According to Puttnam in the book, it is only when European producers manage to accord the same importance to distribution, marketing and exhibition as to production that they will be able to compete on an equal commercial footing as Hollywood.

On a recent trip to Dublin, David Puttnam stopped off in Dublin's Irish Film Centre to launch ìThe Undeclared Warî. Paul Power met up with him to discuss the book and its premise and, as Puttnam produced two films shot in Ireland (Cal (1984), War of the Buttons (1994)), his thoughts on the Irish film industry.

Paul Power: The title of your book is ìThe Undeclared Warî. So does this notion of an ongoing ìwarî between the American and European film industries have an industry in sight or will it remain in flux for the foreseeable future?

David Puttnam: To an extent I think it will always be in flux because the whole law of economics is that nations prosper at the expense of other nations. For example the Japanese electronics industry is in terrific shape at the moment but it's also under threat from Korea and probably Taiwan and certainly eventually China.

What I think is peculiar about this particular war -- and it's a very emotive word that's there in order to sell the book, I guess -- is (a) the amount of time it's taken and (b) that the early protagonists -- the people who appeared to have swept the pool for the first 10-15 years, Europe generally, but the French in particular -- got so comprehensively eclipsed so early on and that the early domination that the Americans established, instead of being challenged, was built on. What also makes it interesting is the manner in which, in my judgement, the Europeans have not acted in their own best interests and have consistently fumbled and fudged, as it were, their reaction to that threat.

PP: At what level do you mean: producers, directors, politicians or other decision-makers?

DP: At every level. At a political level Americans had a completely consistent and practical relationship with successive administrations going back to 1917. There's never been any question in the minds of any U.S. administration that what was good for the American cinema industry was good for America.

It is equally true to say that in Europe commercial cinema as a notion has never really bitten. Just take Ireland: there's never been a consistent sense in Ireland that, whatever happens, what's good for Irish cinema is good for Ireland. That's still debated weekly or monthly within the Irish Treasury: should we really be supporting this in any way?

So here's this absolute, almost kind of Jesuitical, conviction that exists in the U.S. which has never been matched by any similar conviction in Europe. It starts there. The next thing is that the U.S. industry from day one, largely because it wasn't very successful, certainly in terms of production and manufacturing process, started life as an exhibition business: it was about bums on seats from the very first. And the dominant figures from the American motion picture industry were exhibitors' and eventually distributors'. They've always been in the position of buying or making what they believed the audience wanted to see and the idea that America protects itself to the extent of wishing all movies to be made in America is, as we all know, a fantasy. Americans are brilliant to the extent that they don't mind who makes the films, they don't mind where the talent comes from, they don't mind where the locations are, they don't mind who's the partner financially. What they do insist on is that they are the distributor, they are the marketing source and that they own the copyright.

PP: There seems to be a blinkered obsession with the bottom line here -- how can this be justified without paying due attention to the creative side?

DP: The creative side in American terms is that aspect of film-making that serves the machine. It doesn't have a separate life, whereas in Europe the creative side has a life all of its own. In fact it has such a strong life all of its own that at times it doesn't even attach itself to or have a relationship with the commercial distribution sector. I mean, it's true to say that in the U.K. the cultural aspects of cinema for most of the 25 years that I've been in the industry has lived a completely separate life from, say, the exhibition sector. They barely meet each other. The senior figures in the exhibition sector wouldn't even recognise most producers or directors if they met them.

PP: But thereís a move eastward now: a lot of British ex-pats, such as Charles Finch, David Heyman and Barnaby Thompson, are returning from L.A. to Britain. They should give the industry some of the business acumen and chutzpah it needs.

DP: I think that's true. I think it will go in that direction without any doubt at all. The most important development to help that has been this recent round of Arts Council franchises. Not just who got the money and who was successful but the whole process of applying for the franchises meant that people ended up talking to each other and creating structures for the very first time. That, to me, was the most exciting thing of all. The industry for the first time ever talked to each other, talked to itself, assessed itself and had to say "Hang on a second. If we are an industry then we have to develop structures which are of an industrial nature. We can't go on forever being a quasi arts form with an occasional foray into the industrial process.î When Ken Loach and Mike Leigh sit down and create business plans with distributors, something's happening. It's interesting and I'm very proud of that.

PP: In Ireland, now, thereís a definite move away from films for artís sake and thereís a more MEDIA-wise generation of Irish producers emerging who have a keen eye on the marketplace with savvy product. Is there a similar wave sweeping across Britain and Europe?

The remainder of this article can be found in Film West 29.