Simon Channing Williams; Guardian (with lovely comments by Mike Leigh)
Hyfler/Rosner
Obituary: Simon Channing Williams
Resourceful producer of Mike Leigh's films for more than two
decades, from High Hopes to Happy-Go-Lucky
Michael Coveney
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 April 2009 13.57 BST
Simon Channing Williams, the film producer, who has died of
cancer aged 63, founded Thin Man Films in 1988 with the
director Mike Leigh and produced all Leigh's films for the
next two decades. And with another independent production
company, Potboiler Productions, which he formed in 2000 with
Gail Egan, he produced seven feature films including The
Constant Gardener, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz.
Channing Williams, who de-hyphenated his own name some years
ago, was the classic "can do" type of producer, unflappable
and generous spirited, an uncompromising defender and
protector of his directors and writers, who in the 1970s had
come through the ranks at BBC Television, where he worked
with rising star directors including Stephen Frears, Mike
Newell, Michael Apted, James McTaggart, Alvin Rakoff, Jack
Gold and Mike Leigh.
His last BBC assignment was as first assistant director on
Leigh's Grown-Ups (1980). An important collaborative
friendship was formed as Leigh recognised Channing
Williams's organisational abilities on the location shoot in
Canterbury, where two sets of neighbours - played by Lindsay
Duncan, Sam Kelly, Philip Davis and Lesley Manville - were
embroiled in a farcical staircase sequence with Brenda
Blethyn's glorious loose cannon of an unwanted relative.
The middle son of Major-General John Channing-Williams - who
was awarded the DSO for gallantry at the Normandy landings -
and his wife, Margaret Blatchford, Simon enjoyed a career at
the BBC and in films that was as big a surprise to his
family as it was to him. He was educated at St Piran's prep
school, Maidenhead, Berkshire and then Stowe school,
Buckinghamshire, where he acted in school plays and was
secretary of rugby, cricket and hockey, with special
responsibility for choosing the post-match pubs.
Taking a job as an assistant stage manager at the Windsor
Rep, he was told by veteran artistic director John Counsell
that h would never make an actor, so he joined BBC
Television at White City as a press operator in the captions
department. He transferred to the drama department as a call
boy, rapidly progressing to third assistant director.
Leaving the BBC as an established first assistant director,
he joined Anglia TV and then Tony Palmer as an associate
producer on Wagner, starring Richard Burton as the composer,
and featuring the sole screen appearance of Laurence
Olivier, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud together.
His last assignment as a "first" was on Hugh Hudson's
Greystoke in 1984, and that year he also produced Tony
Palmer's superb Puccini for television. By the time Leigh
was ready and able to make his first feature film since his
debut with Bleak Moments in 1971 - the British film industry
having decamped thereafter, in effect, to television -
Channing Williams was on hand to mastermind negotiations
with Film Four International, British Screen and Portman.
The resultant movie, High Hopes (1988), was another "tricky
neighbours" scenario demanding precise use of locations in
the King's Cross area and an understanding, which Channing
Williams had intuitively developed, of Leigh's unusual
working methods, starting with no script and constructing a
film through character research and improvisation.
Each man knowing that he had found his destined
collaborator, the pair formed Thin Man - at a time when both
were fairly corpulent - and embarked on a series of
brilliant and distinctive productions: the hilarious Life is
Sweet (1990), the pivotal Naked (1993), the emotionally
gut-wrenching Secrets and Lies (1996), the
proto-postfeminist, daringly structured Career Girls (1997),
the glorious Gilbert and Sullivan extravaganza Topsy-Turvy
(1999), the triple-stranded low key-epic All or Nothing
(2002), the abortionist drama Vera Drake (2004), with Imelda
Staunton's award-winning performance, and Happy-Go-Lucky
(2008), with the irrepressible Sally Hawkins.
There is no question that Leigh's talent was fully unleashed
in large part due to the rock-like solidity provided by
Channing Williams. But he was dogged by illness in recent
years and, at the cast and crew screening of Happy-Go-Lucky,
paid characteristically unsentimental tribute to the staff
at the Royal Marsden who cared for him. You would not
necessarily have known that he was thanking them on his own
behalf.
The Constant Gardener (2005) for Potboiler, directed by
Fernando Meirelles, was one of a recent batch of Hollywood
"issue" films - others were Stephen Gaghan's Syriana and
Paul Haggis's Crash - which voiced a new groundswell against
blockbuster and marshmallow. Weisz, who won the best actress
Oscar, played the wife of a British diplomat (Fiennes) who
is threatening to expose pharmaceutical companies for
drug-testing on Africans.
During filming, cast and crew, led by Channing Williams,
decided to set up The Constant Gardener Trust, starting with
all the location fees, to improve sanitation and education
in Kibera, Nairobi, the largest slum of sub-Saharan Africa.
Water tanks and toilet facilities were installed, community
projects started, and a secondary school in the desert town
of Loiyangalani, 600km north of Nairobi, will be completed
by the end of this year.
Channing Williams was presented with one of Kenya's highest
awards, the Order of the Grand Warrior, in February 2007.
Also through Potboiler, his other key films as producer, or
executive producer, included Douglas McGrath's Nicholas
Nickleby (2002), Lou Pepe and Keith Fulton's Brothers of the
Head (2005), starring Jonathan Pryce and the Treadaway
twins, and Fernando Meirelles's Blindness (2008), starring
Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.
He also ran two pubs in Newbury, Berkshire, the Five Bells
and the Carpenter's Arms, and at one time ran a film
catering company. He was a passionate angler, loved the
Scilly Isles - where he made Clive Rees's When the Whales
Came (1989), based on Michael Morpurgo's book - and latterly
lived in Penzance. He was married three times, first to the
make-up artist Shirley Jones (now deceased), secondly to
Dorothy King and then to Annie Long, a costume designer. He
is survived by Annie and their two sons; his twin daughters
and son by Dorothy; and five grandchildren.
Mike Leigh writes: Simon's heart was as massive as his
famous physical bulk. So was his charming, jovial, genial,
impish sense of humour. He was a natural-born producer - a
great leader, always an enabler, a protector; never a
dictator or an interferer. Infinitely generous, his life was
all about doing things for people, and bringing out the best
in everybody. He was the ultimate fixer, and a phenomenal
organiser. He relished the impossible challenge, and loved
the cut-and-thrust of negotiations, at which he was a
genius. He had no pretensions to be a story-teller, always
understanding the symbiotic relationship between the
producer and the creative team. But he thoroughly understood
film, technically and artistically, and his taste and
insight were always impeccable, incisive and constructive.
He would hate all this praise. He always talked about "just
getting on with it", which is how he dealt with his
spreading multiple cancer over nearly five years - quietly
and with no fuss. Bravely, he insisted on working almost
until the end. Finally forced to give in, he faced death
openly and with characteristic good humour. I saw him at
home in Penzance a fortnight ago. As we parted company for
the last time, we shared our favourite running gag. We
always disagreed as to which of us was the organ-grinder,
and which the monkey. We each claimed to be the monkey, but
I can now state beyond all doubt that Simon was the
consummate organ-grinder.
He died peacefully on Easter Saturday, surrounded by the
wonderful Annie and his loving family. He leaves an epic gap
in so many of our lives.
. Simon Channing Williams, film producer, born 10 June 1945;
died 11 April 2009