DAVID PUTTNAM / PRODUCER

With 1981 best picture Oscar winner “Chariots of Fire” topping his resume, producer David Puttnam--Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, C.B.E.--has had a full life. But when he says “My Life So Far” (reuniting him with “Chariots” director Hugh Hudson) is his last as a producer, he’s not retiring--at 58, he’s got three Blair government appointments in addition to his House of Lords duties.

CIVIL SERVANT: “This genuinely is my last film as a producer. I may executive-produce. But I love the jobs I’ve got with the government [including chair of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts] and would be jolly sorry if someone took it away from me.”

TOGETHER AGAIN: “Working with Hugh Hudson again was a real treat. He’s got a lovely sense of period, comes from a family not dissimilar to what we have in the film. He brings something extra--doesn’t just direct a film, but lives it.”

FAMILY VALUES: “I found ‘My Life So Far’ as a very funny book [“Son of Adam” by Sir Denis Forman, based on his own eccentric family]. It’s a family that hung together through all this craziness. I’ve had enough of films that pretend life is a series of simple choices.”

POSITIVELY: “What is inexplicable to me is how anyone with a brain would write, direct or participate in a film that promotes violence. They have a clear image of what a civil society is like. Why not spend your career promoting that vision rather than working against it?”

RIGHTS AND WRONGS: “The tragedy is it’s the irresponsibility of artists that invites the government to take a position on artists. Freedom from censorship is very recent and fragile, and if you abuse it, you lose it.”

SHARP SHOOTER: “Charlton Heston is a very nice man, but his position on gun control in this country [Great Britain] would be considered an obscenity. People would regard it as completely insane. We had two major killings here last year. People just don’t use guns in Britain. There is no gun culture here, I’m happy to say.”

NEXT UP: “I have three scripts at Warner Bros. which I

would executive-produce. One is with Anthony Minghella, ‘Fade Out,’ which I think will be made. One is with Taylor Hackford, called “Serenade,’ and there’s ‘A Very Long Engagement,’ which Hugh Hudson loves, a marvelous, bleak look at the First World War.”