Harrison, the Filmmakers’ Friend

George Harrison’s contributions to music and popular culture have been receiving so much deserved attention since he died Nov. 29 that it’s easy to overlook the significant role he played in the movie world.

On film, Harrison is best known for appearing as the sardonic, mop-top version of his Beatle self in “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!,” but his most lasting movie work likely came behind the scenes.

If you’re a fan of Monty Python’s “Life of Brian,” you can thank Harrison. After a squeamish EMI abandoned the irreverent 1979 religious comedy, Harrison and his manager, Denis O’Brien, formed the HandMade Films production company to provide a financial lifeline, thus enabling moviegoers forevermore to mimic “Thwow him to the fwow!” and to whistle “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” (not, mind you, a Harrison composition).

With HandMade Films, Harrison went on to produce or executive produce numerous key British films of the 1980s, including Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits” (1981); the Michael Palin movies “The Missionary” (1982) and “A Private Function” (1985); “Mona Lisa” (1986), which propelled the careers of star Bob Hoskins and director Neil Jordan; Bruce Robinson’s “Withnail and I” (1987); and “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” (1987), for which Maggie Smith won the British Academy Award for best actress.

“He was a film buff’s dream as a producer because he made films he actually wanted to make,” film critic/historian Leonard Maltin said.

“He made them for all the right reasons, and none of them apparently had anything to do with money. Needless to say, he’s independently wealthy and could take a flier on some daring, even blatantly noncommercial projects, and we in the audience were the beneficiaries.”

“We tend to do movies that come to us because no one else wants to make them,” Harrison told Newsweek in 1987.

Like his fellow Beatles, Harrison’s association with film began with his appearance in “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964), followed a year later by “Help!” Harrison didn’t have the flashiest role in either movie, but he exhibited the dry wit that would come to characterize many of the films he produced. (Best moment: His dismissal of trendy new fashions in “A Hard Day’s Night” as “dead grotty.”)

“Now, I happen to think that George was the best actor of the four of them, by far,” filmmaker Steven Soderbergh said in his dialogue with “Hard Day’s Night”/”Help!” director Richard Lester in Soderbergh’s 1999 book “Getting Away With It.” “I don’t think there’s any question.”

“I don’t think there’s any question either,” Lester agreed, “but I’m not sure if you went around and asked people who saw the films that they would necessarily [agree].... George was always the one that was forgotten. So he just did it and got on with it.”

“It’s amazing, there’s not a line he doesn’t nail,” Soderbergh said.

Nevertheless, while the other three Beatles attempted larger film acting roles without quite crossing over to a new career--Ringo Starr in “The Magic Christian” (1969) and “Caveman” (1981), among others; John Lennon in Lester’s “How I Won the War” (1966); Paul McCartney in his singularly awful “Give My Regards to Broad Street” (1984)--Harrison contented himself with the occasional cameo role, such as an Arab-garbed extra in “Life of Brian” and the clueless television reporter in Eric Idle and Neil Innes’ 1978 Beatles parody TV documentary “The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash.”

He produced the film of his “Concert for Bangla Desh” (1972), and although he described his involvement in “Life of Brian” as an impulse move, after the Python film grossed more than $35 million (on a $4-million-plus budget), he became devoted to supporting filmmakers’ often-idiosyncratic projects.

His style, by most accounts, was hands-off and nurturing.

“I hope I can understand their problems and that they can see I do,” Harrison said in 1988.

“It was as good an experience as you can get on a movie,” director Tony Bill said of making his 1987 film “Five Corners,” HandMade’s first American production. “Somebody says, ‘Hey, I want to give you the money to make your movie, go make it and come back when you’re finished,’ and pretty much that was it.”

Harrison remained in England while the movie was shot in New York City with a young Tim Robbins and John Turturro, and a pre-comeback Jodie Foster.

Bill said that his only minor clash with his executive producer illustrated “George’s sense of propriety and humility”; the disagreement was over whether to use the Beatles song “In My Life” over the opening titles.

“It was the only thing on the movie that George resisted,” Bill said. “He didn’t want at all for the movie to seem to reflect any influence on his part, and he was afraid that it would be mistakenly perceived as being imposed on the movie, whereas, in fact, I was the one who wanted the piece.”

The movie biz being particularly unforgiving, flops such as the 1986 Madonna-Sean Penn bomb “Shanghai Surprise” (1986) and Jonathan Lynn’s 1990 comedy “Nuns on the Run,” featuring Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane in nuns’ habits, helped turn HandMade’s black ink red.

The company was sold in 1994, and Harrison sued O’Brien the following year, claiming that his former manager had cost him more than $25 million. In 1996, a Los Angeles Superior Court awarded Harrison $11.6 million, representing half of HandMade’s debt.

Harrison was out of the movie business. But the films live on.

“They were distinctly British films,” Maltin said, “and I think that was one of his mandates, that he wanted to breathe some life into the British film industry--and did.”

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Mark Caro writes about movies for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune company.