Rebecca O’Brien

Source: Rebecca O’Brien

Rebecca O’Brien

Revered UK producer O’Brien is a long-time collaborator of director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty. The trio’s achievements include two Palme d’Or-winning dramas, The Wind That Shakes The Barley in 2006 and I, Daniel Blake in 2016, both produced through their London-headquartered outfit Sixteen Films, founded in 2002. O’Brien’s first taste of producing came in children’s television, while her later credits include Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here.

Sixteen Films is Venice-bound with the world premiere of Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Harvest in Competition, while Laura Carreira’s debut feature On Falling will bow in Toronto’s Discovery strand.

What’s your office like?

We rent a couple of floors in a wonderful Georgian building on Wardour Street, in the middle of Soho. We’ve got two rooms — one which has been Ken Loach’s room with his assistant, and the other is the production hub. Our building has now got quite a few people in it. [Lobo Films producer] Andrea Cornwell is here, another producer has just moved in upstairs, it’s getting quite busy. I’m here most days.

What’s the first thing you do when you arrive?

I plonk my stuff under the table, switch everything on and get myself a cup of decaf coffee. My head would spin off if I drank caffeine. Every other day I go swimming in the Serpentine [Lido in Hyde Park] on my way in. I’m a cold-water swimmer so that wakes me up.

What was your first job in the film industry?

It was working for Lynda Myles, the legendary director of Edinburgh International Film Festival. I worked there during my university holidays for three summers. It was fantastic. There wasn’t the proliferation of festivals there are now, it was a very important festival. I worked on the programme, I did publicity and I learned at Lynda’s feet. She taught me an awful lot.

Who helped you the most when starting out?

Susanna Capon helped me to understand the nuts and bolts of producing. She had a little production company doing educational programmes — that was my apprenticeship.

Is producing getting harder?

Within [the period of] my career, computerising everything has made things more difficult rather than making it easier. It’s meant you can have myriad drafts of everything and everyone can comment on a document.

When you are doing a multi-finance project like Harvest, with 15 to 20 different lawyers working on it, the amount of work can be absolutely mind-boggling. [When] I was trying to get the film closed last summer, we were working until one or two in the morning most nights, prepping during the day, just trying to get through the amount of paperwork. That has got worse — and the problem has been that we’ve become more litigious and risk-averse, and more American in our practice. I wish we were more European, who seem much more trusting than our friends across the Atlantic. Every blade of grass has a lawyer over there.

What was your favourite film growing up?

I loved Mary Poppins, The Sound Of Music and Oklahoma!, and all the big blousy musicals that came out when I was a kid in the mid-’60s.

What’s your favourite festival?

I have a soft spot for Dinard, the British film festival in France. It’s one of those little film festivals where everyone goes and gets to know each other, and it’s a wonderful opportunity to see the British films you don’t normally see, because you always see the foreign films at other festivals.

What would you be doing if you weren’t in the film industry?

I might have become an architect. I’ve dabbled in a couple of building projects — I really enjoy it. I love reading the plans, understanding how it all works. It’s a similar job [to producing]: development, pre-production, the build…

How do you unwind?

I’m addicted to stupid little games and puzzles — Sudoku, crossword-type things. There’s a part of my brain that needs some distraction. When I gave up smoking, I’m talking 30 years ago, I needed something to do with my hands while I was on the phone. Production offices used to be full of smoke.

Who would play you in a biopic of your life, and who would direct… Ken perhaps?

No, that would be impossible. I’ve only once been in a Ken Loach film — I appear with a banner in the end credits of The Old Oak. Probably someone like Katharine Hepburn, and I would like it to be directed by Athina Tsangari. She would get me. I’m not a biopic fan so I hope it doesn’t get made.

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