Hippie-hippie fake

Thursday, 2nd October 2008

Olivia Cole on why biopics of living writers and artists are rarely a love-in

For Robertson, the trial (and in particular the outcry when the defendants hair was cut) was ‘a generational clash of fairly major proportions’, events of serious legal and socio-historical significance. It’s seen as a zeitgeist moment now: did it feel like one at the time? ‘Yes, I think it did. There was a great sense that we were crusading for openness, and honesty and less hypocrisy.’ For his part, Robertson is one of a handful of participants not to have had a sense-of-humour failure over their possibly cartoonlike representation: ‘I can’t wait to see if I get to sleep with Sienna Miller,’ he jokes. ‘I ran into some of the people from Working Title a couple of months ago and gave them a shock. They said we’ve been watching rushes of you all day, and we can’t believe how old you look.’

In response to my queries and requests for interviews with the production team, Working Title this week reiterated that the plan was always for the film to be released in 2009 but admitted, ‘We don’t have a release date yet.’ ‘Only a British judge could ever have been dumb enough to think that Felix Dennis was anything other than Donald Trump in loon pants,’ said one former Oz writer this week. As a globally successful film powerhouse, it’s astonishing that Working Title didn’t think about this too.