Dubai: Kate Moss. A Dubai concert promoter. A stage show featuring a fishnet-wearing transvestite. And Yoko Oko.
Not only are these – and more! — all connected by one person, they are all part of one film at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival.
The incredible story that unites them all is The Last Impresario, a documentary by Australian filmmaker Gracie Otto, about the life of Michael White, British film and theatre producer who has kickstarted the careers of Moss and John Cleese and brought the Rocky Horror Show to the stage, among many other achievements.
So where does the Dubai promoter come in?
Richard Coram, one of the UAE’s longest-running event organisers, is a producer on the film and was instrumental in getting it a slot at the festival, despite it missing the deadline for submissions.
“We submitted it as a late entry, it was accepted immediately and put in,” Coram said on Sunday (the film screens on Tuesday at 9pm). “One of the things that Michael White has to be credited for is a global contribution to the arts.”
White’s stage show production of Rocky Horror inspired Coram to get into the business side of the entertainment industry, he adds, making him one of the indirect recipients of White’s uncanny ability to get the right people into the industry.
“I think he was so good at picking people for their inner spirit and giving them a launching pad that I don’t think that there was anything necessarily untoward involved,” says the film’s producer Nicole O’Donahue, like Otto, an Australian.
Otto met White at a party at the Cannes Film Festival, where she began learning about his career. When an auction of his memorabilia came up in London not long after, she seized her chance to get some footage.
“I realised I had better go and jump on this now, and maybe film that scene, in case I ever make a film. It wasn’t a traditional way of making a film.”
That was just the start of a film that involved 60 interviews, with the likes of Cleese, Moss (“ really down-to-earth and cool”), Vogue’s Anna Wintour (“just charming and lovely, she spoke so highly of Michael and she knew him since she was 21”) and Yoko Ono.
“Naomi Watts, who is an associate producer on the film was the first big-name celebrity to jump onto the film. After that, people would say ‘yes’. It’s nice to meet people like that, who haven’t forgotten about people who have helped them in their careers.”
White, now 78, had reservations about some of the film, says Otto, but now loves it. “He loves memories and remembering the good times,” she says.
Did you know?
Gracie Otto (sister of Lord of the Rings actress Miranda Otto) chose her title to highlight a job that’s seen less and less in the entertainment industry – that of the impresario, an old-school producer of theatre and film that carries an air of mid-century entertainment. “I think the word impressario comes from the showman, someone putting things on. And today there are so many producers involved in projects, it’s like an old term that’s nearly finished. They’ve got like 30 producers attached to a project. We were going to call it “Chalky”, which is his nickname, but this has more weight, I think.”
