Inspiring Minds feature:
Sir Alan Parker - 'from Birdseye to Bugsy'
Sir Alan Parker talking as part of Inspiring Minds, 2018
In March 2018, HAT had the great pleasure and honour of filming an interview with Sir Alan Parker as part of our Inspiring Minds project recording personal testimonies of some of Adlands great movers and shakers from what is known as the Golden Age of advertising.
There have been many tributes paid by the media worldwide to Sir Alan since his death on 31st July 2020 at the age of 76 as director of a wonderfully eclectic mix of feature films which received 10 Academy Awards and 10 Golden Globes and his own BAFTA Fellowship award.
But this amazing directorial and storytelling success came from his hard graft, passion and tremendous talent that was allowed the freedom to develop in the early decades of British TV advertising and paved the way for fellow Brits and TV commercial directors such as Ridley Scott and Hugh Hudson (also an Inspiring Minds interviewee) to pursue Hollywood careers.
These short films of Sir Alan Parker
'From Birds Eye to Bugsy' chart his progress in the ad world from copywriter at Collett Dickenson Pearce, which he joined in 1967, to becoming writer/director of his first feature film, Bugsy Malone in 1975, for which he received a BAFTA for the Screenplay.
Early days at Collett Dickenson Pearce
Alan Parker joined Collett Dickenson Pearce in 1976 as a copywriter. CDP at the time, with Creative Head Colin Millward, was a new breed of creative agency leading on colour supplement print ads. Alan settled well into this exciting, competitive world with other copywriter 'misfits' who were starting to write in a different way.
Debut Director
It was here at CDP that Alan's directorial talent was also able to blossom.....in the basement!
Directing Commercials - The Alan Parker Production Co.
Alan's obvious talent for directing did not go unnoticed and he was called into the Boardroom at CDP before Colin Millwood, John Pearce and Ronnie Dickenson where he was told he should leave - but leave to direct commercials. They offered him an interest free loan to start the Alan Parker Film Company and the potential for lots of work
Creative Freedom
Alan talks of the opportunity he had to experiment and cast ordinary people from outside London for the Birds Eye Beefburger commercials with Ben and Mary and the freedom to improvise with actors and art directors on set to make some of the most memorable and amusing ads of the 70s.
Facing the critics
Coming from filming TV commercials and the 'vulgar world of advertising' at the time, Alan was not taken seriously by the critics.....
From Adland to Hollywood
As a director of TV commercials, Alan began to feel the frustration of only dealing with 30 or 45 seconds but a lunch with colleagues David Puttnam and Charles Saatchi soon changed all that...
We are grateful to Sir Alan Parker for the use of some of his own images from his archive collection