From the Scotsman,
reporting from the Cannes Film Festival, 22 May 1999

Miramax hope to release My Life So Far in the United States in July and in the autumn in the UK, it was revealed at the Cannes Film Festival, yesterday.

The film is based on the autobiographical memoirs of Sir Denis Forman, television executive and now chairman of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. His alter ego in the film, Fraser Pettigrew, is a ten-year-old boy growing up on a Scottish estate in the Thirties with his eccentric inventor father, beautiful mother, a domineering grandmother, and a foreign governess whose presence causes emotional ripples. The story is related through the boy's eyes as he comes of age in an atmosphere where adults indulge their childlike desires.

Miramax chose the film for a special private screening earlier this week before a VIP audience who included stars Colin Firth, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Irene Jacob and Malcolm McDowell as well as Jerry Hall, Minnie Driver, Kate Moss and Angie Everhart.

Lord Puttnam, chairman of the National AIDS Trust, said at the screening that he felt his career had now come full circle. His first film Chariots of Fire was premiered at Cannes 26 years ago ­ and My Life So Far was his last film as a producer before receiving his peerage. He has dedicated the film to the Edinburgh actor Ian Charleson who starred in Chariots of Fire and who died of AIDS in 1990.

Hudson said the main appeal of the story, written by the playwright Simon Donald, was that "it had some edgy twists on the usual period drama". He said: "First and foremost though it is a happy film about an adventurous childhood, something you rarely see any more at a time when so much innocence has been shattered."

The child lead is played by an Edinburgh schoolboy Robbie Norman, who was 11 at the time of shooting two years ago. He had never acted professionally before.

Filming took place at Ardkinglass House on the banks of Loch Fyne where for one dramatic scene a huge ice rink was constructed for a curling contest. Hudson said: "The thing I love about shooting in Scotland is that you are completely removed from the world. We really had that feeling of being a family, isolated from all the turmoil."

Miramax is run by the brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein and one reason for the delay in the film's release is believed to be Harvey Weinstein's insistence on nursing it through certain stages of post-production. He took a particular interest in the soundtrack and a new score was ordered from the composer Howard Blake to replace the original music.

Miramax's track record in picking up and promoting relatively low budget films has become legendary in the film business. Mrs Brown was a modest part-BBC financed production until it received the treatment, scoring both at the box office, critically, and in awards ceremonies. Weinstein hopes to repeat the trick with My Life So Far. He said: "It's a totally charming movie." Read the full article here

Roger Ebert reporting from Cannes, May 20:

Eighteen years ago I saw Chariots of Fire here at Cannes. It was booed by the French and dismissed by the British, but America took it to heart and it won an Oscar as the year's best picture. It was produced by David Puttnam and directed by Hugh Hudson, and I remember having dinner with them after the premiere, at an unusually quiet party that seemed to have little to celebrate; the consensus was that the film hadn't impressed the audience.

Tonight I went to another premiere of a film produced by Puttnam and directed by Hudson. It was My Life So Far the story of the first 10 years of a boy raised as part of a large and eccentric family on a great estate in Scotland. Father (Colin Firth) is "an inventor and a genius" who bets his fortune on sphagnum moss. /.../ Uncle (Malcolm McDowell) is a millionaire who returns from France with a bride half his age (Irene Jacob). All is narrated through the eyes of young Frazier, who studies books from his grandfather's library and stuns a dinner party with his reasoning about how his mother and aunt might go into prostitution.

David Puttnam is now Lord Puttnam. His film played at the Miramax charity premiere for AMFAR, Elizabeth Taylor's AIDS charity. Guests proceeded afterwards to Moulin du Mougins, in the hills above Cannes, for dinner and an auction so successful it has raised $10 million in seven years (including Harvey Weinstein's $50,000 bid for Naomi Campbell's navel ring).

"This is my last film and my last Cannes," Puttnam said somewhat winsomely, introducing the evening. What does that mean? I asked him. "I'm in the House of Lords now, and helping to direct the government's education policy," he said. "I thought perhaps I could handle two careers, but it can't be done. So there you have it." At one point Puttnam was actually brought to America and given the reins of a major studio, Columbia Pictures. But his tastes were said to be too venturesome and not mass-market enough. He mused Thursday night about his Hollywood adventure: "I was too English, too middle-class, and too nice." The evening was co-chaired by Miramax mogol Harvey Weinstein, who cheerfully acknowledged he was none of the three.