After attending an advance screening of THE LOOK OF LOVE and uploading my view, THN was privileged enough to be invited to the premiere of the film concerning impressario Paul Raymond’s rise and fall as King of Soho, the porn industry and richest man in Britain. The film looks at the life and times of the entrepreneur, covers the lives and loves he affects and shares, and his immoral forays into drugs and debauchery. At the premiere, the stars of the film including Steve Coogan, Chris Addison and Dara O’Briain were kind enough to give a few words to THN, as was the director Michael Winterbottom. This is what we found:
Dara O’Briain plays a comedian performing in Paul Raymond’s Revuebar, in a classic 80s Alexei Sayle style, which, reportedly is where O’Briain based a lot of his material, the character enters the proceedings when Raymond’s personal and professional world begins to fall apart and decline into sordid acts and sleazy magazines.
THN: So Dara, what was it like working with all the nudity on set, was it awkward?
Dara: Actually none of that happened while I was on set, although I spoke to Steve and he said there was so much of it, it was like aversion therapy for tits! But nothing while I was on set on a cold dreary morning.
THN: Did you know anything about Paul Raymond before the film got in touch?
Dara: Well for years I’ve been calling him Paul Raymond (like James Bond) so I thought he was a much more glamorous person than he actually was. Obviously I knew a bit about him, like the club and the magazines and I knew he was this huge landlord, but the full story no I didn’t.
THN: Have you had a chance to see the film yet? What do you think people will be impressed by?
Dara: I have. They’ll be impressed by the performances, Steve’s really good Imogen (Poots) is fantastic, Chris is great, so the performances are fantastic, and it’s not as usual a tale as you’d think people would make of this, like sales of porn, it’s much better fleshed out than that. Rather than take easy moral lessons it does more.
THN: Did you enjoy your introduction into acting?
Dara: Well it was a chance to piss around, they asked, do you think you can play a comic? And I thought ‘I think I can do that?’ So it was a pleasure doing that in a different medium, where you get to try a few things every so often. This seemed like a fairly low impact way to have a go at acting.
THN: I know the role didn’t require you to take your clothes off, but were you tempted?
Dara: You know what, it would seem desperately inappropriate, they weren’t even filming any of those things when I was there, so if I’d insisted on doing them half-naked it would have seemed wrong. The DVD unfortunately won’t include a deleted scene with this in. My character arrives when that sort of thing is receding a bit, all the glamorous sexy girls with feathers and stuff, which was really a bit irritating!
THN: Would you want to do any more acting?
Dara: Possibly, if something comes up, it’s not a priority and I don’t think I was naturally born to do it. I can play me, and I can play another form of me like this is. Push comes to shove if I have a chance to do some acting or stand on a stage and do my own stuff, I’ll do my own stuff.
O’Briain looking classically articulate.
Chris Addison plays Paul Raymond’s right hand man Tony Power. Owner of Men Only magazine, Chris not only aids and abets Raymond’s exploration into the world of erotica, but provides his daughter Debbie with a constant stream of narcotics which will ultimately result in her demise. Alongside all this, he sports a rather unfortunate wispy beard courtesy of the props department!
THN: So were you sad to lose the beard after filming?
Chris: You know I think I was more sad to lose the clothes than the beard. I was sad to lose the beard in a way, but as a tall thin gangly person, I found that the 70s gear I was wearing worked well for me! I loved it, kind of tight in the upper leg, flared, I absolutely loved it. That’s the bit I’m sorry to lose.
THN: What drew you to your character in the first place?
Chris: Tony Power was the man who first successfully brought the idea of pornography to Paul Raymond. And he brought him a magazine called Men Only which at the time was just a crappy magazine, so Raymond said ‘I’ll edit it, fill it with the world’s most desirable women, and it’ll be a massive hit.’ On the basis of that they built a huge magazine empire in the UK and in the US which made Raymond a multi-millionaire from which he was able to become a property billionaire. So that’s the positive if money’s your thing. The negative bit is that he also was a very hedonistic guy Tony and he introduced to Paul Raymond, who in a weird way was a bit of a prude, drugs to him. And to his daughter Debbie who died of a drugs overdose. So in a happy-go-lucky, ‘lets have a good time’ kind of way, Tony brought death and destruction to Raymond.
THN: What can audiences expect from this film?
Chris: They can expect one of the most beautiful films, it looks incredible. They can expect performance of genuine power from Steve Coogan, I don’t think he’s ever been better. As is Imogen Poots, and Tamsin Egerton and Anna Friel, they’re all incredible. Along with that they can expect their favourite British comedians being more bleak and less comic. There’s definitely laughs, but it’s quite a sad story.
Steve Coogan takes the leading role in The Look of Love as the much talked about richest man in Britain Paul Raymond. From humble beginnings as a mind reader, Raymond soon overtakes much of Soho with striptease joints and his famous Revuebar, a haven of erotic shows and comic performances, lending to the film’s wealth of comic talent. THN managed to grab a few moments with the talented star:
THN: What attracted you to the role of Raymond?
Steve: Just that he was interesting, he lead a a colourful life, it seemed to capture a certain period of British history where things were changing during the 1960s and 1970s. Public taste was changing, and people were becoming more liberal to sexuality and he was at the forefront of that and seemed to be living through that. Also in terms of sexuality sometimes British cinema tends to avoid it because it’s embarrassed with it and tries not to deal with it. And that made it attractive to Michael and I, because we could examine the changing of social laws. Also his character was interesting because he came from this background and created an image for himself and that’s always a fruitful area to look at. So the character was a lot of things, he was a pioneer, he was bold, he was inadequate, he was driven by money, and ultimately unhappily because of that, so there’s a tune of drama there.
THN: Can you ever imagine your daughter taking you out partying like Debbie does?
Steve: (laughs) That’s not going to happen.
Coogan looking dapper.
Being the director of the biopic, Michael Winterbottom was an important person for THN to hone in on during the premiere, he also paused to part with a few words:
THN: What can audiences expect to see from the film?
Michael: I think the world that the film creates, which shows that there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface. I hope there’s stuff in the film that you haven’t seen from Soho. There’s a lot of singing, a lot of dancing and people having a good time. But within that it’s a family story, a family with the dysfunction that goes on.
THN: It feels very authentic, how much work and research did you do into Paul Raymond and Soho at the time?
Michael: We spent about two or three years on research and the stories. The fact that people will work all night researching has a surprisingly big influence on the story. And we thought a lot about that night time world of Soho that lets you go beyond the surface and I hope a lot of that is in the film.
THN: Have you had any contact from the family or the estate of Paul Raymond about the film?
Michael: Yeah actually they visited the set and they’ve seen the film. I think they feel that Steve did a good job of showing who Raymond is. I think a lot of people thought that what we’ve done is quite accurate.
Having seen the film, and now spoken to the cast, and director, it is clear that due to the amount of work that was put into it, The Look of Love is a film which not only captures the essence of Paul Raymond himself, showing the decline of a powerful man who loses what is most important to him, but as Michael Winterbottom points out, due to the attention to detail and the research conducted the essence of Soho was captured too, lending to this enjoyable, heartfelt and accurate biopic.
THE LOOK OF LOVE opens in UK cinemas on April 26, with the US release TBA.
