Interview: Quentin Thomas, film censor (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
WHEN Quentin Thomas justifies a brutal nine-minute cinematic rape with all the dispassionate circumlocutions of a John Major anecdote, you start to understand how this career civil servant persuaded Gerry Adams to sign up to the Good Friday Agreement. It was not, perhaps, that Adams was charmed into renouncing violence by the relentless sly diplomacy that, in the Northern Ireland Office, earned Sir Quentin his knighthood. Far more likely that Adams, frustrated at Thomas's congenital inability to give a question a straight answer, chose to sign through sheer frustration.
Eight months into his job as president of the British Board of Film Classification, Thomas retains the bureaucrat's infuriating refusal to speak for himself - always a challenge to the curious interviewer.
His high-profile role as the nation's censor has thrust him into a battleground every bit as sensitive as a Stormont power-sharing negotiation, but Thomas would rather edit himself out of the picture in favour of corporate blandness. With every reductio ad absurdum and refusals to "posit a false dilemma", he even sounds like John Major.
What, for instance, has surprised him since taking up the £28,000, 25-days-a-year job? "A very agreeable but not surprising discovery is that I think the board is in good shape," he offers with not inconsiderable generosity.
What about the fury over Gaspar Noe's Irréversible, whose aforementioned extended rape scene, which he passed uncut, sent Middle England into apoplexy? "It's an example of a fuss which is perhaps a little greater in the anticipation than the reality."
In his new role, Thomas, 58, carries considerable public influence yet he seems strangely reluctant to give away his own views. So much for putting "transparency" on his wish list for the board. When he was appointed last August to succeed Andreas Whittam Smith, commentators remarked how he studiously avoided controversy, even when naming his favourite films - She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) - old enough to be beyond memory.
Married with three adult daughters, he had been restoring the family home in Tuscany when the head-hunter's call came. As a regulator financed by the film industry - the BBFC is a company, its film certificates a bulwark against statutory regulation - the front man suits his paymasters in favouring consensus over controversy.
"We're in a period where the system for censorship is relatively uncontroversial," he insists, each word pre-screened, "and I would attribute that to the way, particularly under my predecessor, there was a move towards openness, transparency and accountability." Yet his fascination with the board's "iterative process of public consultation" (I will spare the details) is not what excites his critics. They accuse him of playing into the hands of exploitative filmmakers. Michael Winner says he is "one of the most dangerous [men] in the country" for seeking to clarify his powers in law.
The board is certainly less censorious than ever before: so far this year it has considered 150 films and cut just three, plus 2,262 videos, of which it demanded changes in only 95. The Evening Standard's film critic Alexander Walker says Thomas is too keen on avoiding trouble: "I see many more movies than Thomas and Robin Duval [the board's director] combined, and I see the way the 'norm' is going. It's becoming more violent and more commercially exploitative. The board should be enforcing greater standards of discipline and denial, but the industry has one criterion: to make money."
THOMAS says he is not bothered by his critics, though he was " enormously flattered" by Michael Winner's attack. "There's a very experienced team of examiners who look at films according to the guidelines we have worked out after public consultation." The consultation, he says, shows that people are mostly concerned about drugs, constraint in sexual portrayals, and, to some extent, bad language, especially in children's films.
"On the other hand, there does seem to be a view that, at 18, more explicit portrayals of sex are acceptable," he adds. With Irreversible, "the key thing about the rape is that it's not actually very explicit, showing lots of flesh. It's painfully clear what a deeply painful experience rape is, so we decided it was right not to cut it."
Does he believe that pornography can cause people harm? "I believe very seriously that we have to attend to the possibility that it does, and we proceed on the basis that it may do." Should he not, as his critics suggest, be helping to keep pornography away from mainstream culture? "Our research shows that increasingly people want more latitude for the adult viewer to decide for themselves on explicit sex." The last film he saw was Frida, which was "quite good", but he refuses to disclose how many films he watches. How good, then, does he feel British films are at the moment. "Ah, that's not for me to say." Pause. Did he recall who won the Oscars? "I can't honestly remember who won what. Oh gosh. I don't think Michael Caine won, did he?" He cannot name any of the Bafta winners.
Another tack. Does he have a particular moral code? "I'm not sure I want to say anything about that." But people do care about his views - so would he consider himself a tolerant person? "As I say, the key thing is that we operate a system that's coherent, transparent, accountable..." There begins another stream of subjunctives and policy statements.
When I point out his repeated lapses into diplomacy-speak, he smiles. "That's the training." He does, though, manage finally to confess that "I don't think I've yet been depraved and corrupted," which prompts him to laugh. He gets up to leave for a board meeting, but not before momentarily allowing a shaft of light to fall on Sir Quentin, the individual.
"So what are you going to do?," he asks quietly. "You going to shaft me?"
(Evening Standard, April 9 2003)
WHEN Quentin Thomas justifies a brutal nine-minute cinematic rape with all the dispassionate circumlocutions of a John Major anecdote, you start to understand how this career civil servant persuaded Gerry Adams to sign up to the Good Friday Agreement. It was not, perhaps, that Adams was charmed into renouncing violence by the relentless sly diplomacy that, in the Northern Ireland Office, earned Sir Quentin his knighthood. Far more likely that Adams, frustrated at Thomas's congenital inability to give a question a straight answer, chose to sign through sheer frustration.
Eight months into his job as president of the British Board of Film Classification, Thomas retains the bureaucrat's infuriating refusal to speak for himself - always a challenge to the curious interviewer.
His high-profile role as the nation's censor has thrust him into a battleground every bit as sensitive as a Stormont power-sharing negotiation, but Thomas would rather edit himself out of the picture in favour of corporate blandness. With every reductio ad absurdum and refusals to "posit a false dilemma", he even sounds like John Major.
What, for instance, has surprised him since taking up the £28,000, 25-days-a-year job? "A very agreeable but not surprising discovery is that I think the board is in good shape," he offers with not inconsiderable generosity.
What about the fury over Gaspar Noe's Irréversible, whose aforementioned extended rape scene, which he passed uncut, sent Middle England into apoplexy? "It's an example of a fuss which is perhaps a little greater in the anticipation than the reality."
In his new role, Thomas, 58, carries considerable public influence yet he seems strangely reluctant to give away his own views. So much for putting "transparency" on his wish list for the board. When he was appointed last August to succeed Andreas Whittam Smith, commentators remarked how he studiously avoided controversy, even when naming his favourite films - She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) - old enough to be beyond memory.
Married with three adult daughters, he had been restoring the family home in Tuscany when the head-hunter's call came. As a regulator financed by the film industry - the BBFC is a company, its film certificates a bulwark against statutory regulation - the front man suits his paymasters in favouring consensus over controversy.
"We're in a period where the system for censorship is relatively uncontroversial," he insists, each word pre-screened, "and I would attribute that to the way, particularly under my predecessor, there was a move towards openness, transparency and accountability." Yet his fascination with the board's "iterative process of public consultation" (I will spare the details) is not what excites his critics. They accuse him of playing into the hands of exploitative filmmakers. Michael Winner says he is "one of the most dangerous [men] in the country" for seeking to clarify his powers in law.
The board is certainly less censorious than ever before: so far this year it has considered 150 films and cut just three, plus 2,262 videos, of which it demanded changes in only 95. The Evening Standard's film critic Alexander Walker says Thomas is too keen on avoiding trouble: "I see many more movies than Thomas and Robin Duval [the board's director] combined, and I see the way the 'norm' is going. It's becoming more violent and more commercially exploitative. The board should be enforcing greater standards of discipline and denial, but the industry has one criterion: to make money."
THOMAS says he is not bothered by his critics, though he was " enormously flattered" by Michael Winner's attack. "There's a very experienced team of examiners who look at films according to the guidelines we have worked out after public consultation." The consultation, he says, shows that people are mostly concerned about drugs, constraint in sexual portrayals, and, to some extent, bad language, especially in children's films.
"On the other hand, there does seem to be a view that, at 18, more explicit portrayals of sex are acceptable," he adds. With Irreversible, "the key thing about the rape is that it's not actually very explicit, showing lots of flesh. It's painfully clear what a deeply painful experience rape is, so we decided it was right not to cut it."
Does he believe that pornography can cause people harm? "I believe very seriously that we have to attend to the possibility that it does, and we proceed on the basis that it may do." Should he not, as his critics suggest, be helping to keep pornography away from mainstream culture? "Our research shows that increasingly people want more latitude for the adult viewer to decide for themselves on explicit sex." The last film he saw was Frida, which was "quite good", but he refuses to disclose how many films he watches. How good, then, does he feel British films are at the moment. "Ah, that's not for me to say." Pause. Did he recall who won the Oscars? "I can't honestly remember who won what. Oh gosh. I don't think Michael Caine won, did he?" He cannot name any of the Bafta winners.
Another tack. Does he have a particular moral code? "I'm not sure I want to say anything about that." But people do care about his views - so would he consider himself a tolerant person? "As I say, the key thing is that we operate a system that's coherent, transparent, accountable..." There begins another stream of subjunctives and policy statements.
When I point out his repeated lapses into diplomacy-speak, he smiles. "That's the training." He does, though, manage finally to confess that "I don't think I've yet been depraved and corrupted," which prompts him to laugh. He gets up to leave for a board meeting, but not before momentarily allowing a shaft of light to fall on Sir Quentin, the individual.
"So what are you going to do?," he asks quietly. "You going to shaft me?"
(Evening Standard, April 9 2003)
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