All language subtitles for 4. 1997–2002

1997 comes,

and I've just finished the CJD story

for The Sunday Times Magazine,

and the picture editor there,

Aidan Sullivan, says, "Right, Greg,

that was heavy, that was great.

What can we,

what do you wanna do next?

You choose, you do it for us."

And I was like, "I wanna do something in the film industry."

And I was very inspired

by the set reports of Life magazine

from the sort of '50s

up to the, I suppose, the late '70s,

and in particular the work of the Magnum photographers.

I was bought a book by my father called "Magnum Cinema,"

and I would spend so much time

going over these, and I was big into movies.

So I, first films I went on,

I went on "Elizabeth,"

which was my first film,

and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"

was my second film.

So this is like 1997.

And I set to work

on producing a photo essay

of the British cinema,

or maybe I would call it a celebration of British cinema.

And British cinema was having a bit of a renaissance.

So "The Full Monty" had come out

to huge success and had been Oscar nominated,

and everyone was sort of very excited

about the British film industry.

So I got to work doing it, anyway.

I was petrified

of doing the wrong thing

or upsetting people

or getting a bad name for stuff.

So I didn't sell any of my pictures.

I just took them.

I would always show them

to the artists involved and get their approval,

but I never sold them when the films were coming out.

So I worked on this project for about three years

doing different commercial jobs to earn money.

And, but just kept my head down

and kept going on film set after film set after film set.

And eventually I'd sort of, you know,

I was on "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

I was on "Little Voice."

I went on quite a number

of really cool movies.

And I went on hundreds

of films that never ever saw the light of day as well,

learned a lot about the film industry

and how it all,

how it ran,

or certainly how it ran then.

So eventually I get to what feels

like a natural end to this project,

as in I've covered so many different aspects

of the film industry.

And The Sunday Times Magazine ran their pictures,

but I realized that I had a book in there.

So it was actually Rankin, the photographer

that approached me to do the book,

and we published that in I think around year 2000,

by which point I'd worked

on I think 120 or 130 movies.

The publication of that book,

again I've still not made any money at this point, right?

Publication of that book caught the eyes

of the producers of the Bond movies.

They asked me to come in, have a chat with them about stuff,

and sort of before I knew it,

this project that I could have sold

in different ways, but I kept quite pure on,

was the thing that got me

into my first really massive movie,

which was James Bond.

It was "Die Another Day" with Pierce Brosnan

and started a 20-year relationship

that I've had with the producers of the Bond films.

I suppose there's a bit of a lesson in that,

when I talk about, you know, making sure

that your singular view is how the world sees you.

Even though there was no social media back then,

that's, I suppose, a similar

or a certainly comparable,

that I waited till I had all the elements

that I needed to lay my marketplace out.

And then, and once I started showing people,

then I started getting the work.

I think it was Pierce Brosnan actually

who was the first guy, first big actor

to ask me to do a magazine cover with him.

And I did.

And I had to light this thing,

and I didn't know how to light,

so I went off, and I bought the wrong lights

and did the wrong things.

And I sorta got away with it.

I learned one incredibly important lesson.

We had this idea of him standing there looking really sharp

with two Doberman pinscher dogs.

And I didn't cast the dogs.

I just rented two Dobermans.

And I was expecting these kind of, you know,

like "Magnum P.I.," those sort of sharp clipped ears,

cut tail, really aggressive-looking Dobermans

that I'd seen in Helmut Newton's photos.

And instead they were these two (laughing)

really quite placid dogs with long floppy ears.

And we did get away with it 'cause we,

but those pics, the dogs didn't work.

Pierce said something very important to me.

He said, "Ultimately, Greg, that's you,

that's down to you, you should have cast the dogs,

and you gotta remember that in life, yeah?

You, not someone else, not the person producing the shoot,

no one else.

The buck stops with you, you should have cast the dogs."

And he was right.

And I thank him every time I see him for that

'cause that's very true and a very important lesson.

So if you can avoid screwing up a shoot

and hearing it from me, do.

And it's not about the dogs, of course.

It's about any of those details.

If they're coming in a car, exactly what is the car?

What's the color of the car?

What kind of roof is it?

You know, really checking,

and does the car work?

Can the model drive that you need to drive the car?

The amount of times you turn up on a shoot

where you've got a horse,

and you need the model to ride the horse,

and no one's checked whether the model can ride a horse.

So anyway, big lessons along the way.