A very modern marriage

Producer-director Don Boyd tells Donald Clarke how a chance encounter led to the making of his canded portrayal of a fascinating relationship in Andrew & Jeremy get married.

WHEN Don Boyd, whose fine documentary Andrew & Jeremy Get Married screens at next week's Dublin Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, first contemplated a move into the British film industry in the mid 1970s, the business was in the same moribund place as the blacksmithing and fletching sectors.

But Boyd is a stubborn fellow. Over the next few years, without ever sinking to a Confessions film or a sit-com spin-off, he turned himself into a cinematic dynamo. He directed East of Elephant Rock with John Hurt. He helped produce Scum and The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. He became a mentor to the great gay director Derek Jarman. Had he not cajoled himself into producing John Schlesinger's Honky Tonk Freeway - an unhappy addition to that list of true financial catastrophes headed by Heaven's Gate and Cleopatra - he might be running a major studio by now.

"Oh, yes, that disaster and the kind of schadenfreude that people manifested at its failure followed me round forever," Boyd, 56, grey-haired and beautifully spoken, muses. "I was the most prolific young film entity in Europe at the time. That really followed me. It was a massive millstone round my neck and is even to this day.

"For a while I was commuting to LA and then to Florida and New York. And then it changed. Just recently, I was talking to Franc Roddam, who, after directing Quadrophenia, was around Hollywood at the same time and we were wondering if we would like that life back. We both said no."

Should I believe that? "Yes. It would have ruined my marriage. I would have indulged in all the addictive excesses. I sincerely believe I would be dead right now. And, if I had become involved with the Hollywood ethos, I wouldn't have got to direct wonderful films like Andrew & Jeremy Get Married."

That would have been a shame. Andrew & Jeremy, made for the BBC and sadly denied a theatrical release in Ireland, is a candid, easy-paced study of the relationship between an apparently ill-matched gay couple. Boyd first met his subjects at a dinner party hosted by the writer Hanif Kureishi. He was amazed when bookish, posh Jeremy confided that the younger, tougher Andrew was his longtime companion.

"It was actually Hanif who put the idea in my head," Boyd says. "I found that I spent the entire dinner party prising information out of them and then Hanif said: 'Watch out for him, he's a documentary film-maker.' I casually said to them maybe they could be a subject for a film."

The relationship is a fascinating one. Andrew, a former bus driver and one-time heroin user, was raised on a housing estate in working class south London, where, desperately trying to conceal his own inclinations, he occasionally helped his mates bash the local gays. Jeremy, whose father was an army officer in India, attended Cambridge, was briefly and unsuccessfully married and is now a leading light in the London Gay Writers' Society. Despite the differences in their backgrounds, they make an endearing couple.

"One of the things Andy told me at the dinner was that he was interested in marrying Jeremy," Boyd explains. "Surprisingly, Jeremy had said no way. Anyway, I dismissed it as a concept. So we had been shooting for seven months, when they phoned me and said they were going to get married. I had to go back to the BBC and get an extension to the shoot."

There must have been a part of his brain that twitched in excitement. What a perfect conclusion for his picture. "It would be dishonest not to admit that," he says. "That is a very nice, rounded end to the film."

The UK does not yet sanction same-sex marriages, but such partners can go through a procedure known as a commitment ceremony. Following a brave initiative by Ken Livingstone, such celebrations, during which names are entered in a formal registry, may take place in London's City Hall. Andrew and Jeremy's near nuptials do indeed make a neat end to the picture. Boyd was, nonetheless, nervous about showing the couple his work.

"I was a little sneaky. I didn't want them to have a cassette. I wanted them to see it once and not be able to scrutinise it and change their mind from any first impression. So I showed it to them in a plush little screening room. I was sweating I was so nervous. Eventually they came out and they were absolutely delighted. Andy hugged me and said it was the best documentary he had ever seen."

Boyd was eager that the film be acceptable to the gay community as a whole and, with that in mind, screened it repeatedly for homosexual friends and gay groups. "Eventually I was happy that it ticked all the right boxes."

Some of his nervousness may relate to his own uncomfortable early exposure to homosexuality. While at boarding school, Boyd was seduced by his French master, an experience he described movingly in an Observer article of 2001.

"I will tell you right now that that incident has been an interface with gay people from the time I was first abused," he says cryptically. "I never even told Derek Jarman before he died and I always regretted that. I told Andrew and Jeremy the story and, like 99 per cent of the gay population I've talked to, they said: 'Don't apologise for that situation. It was a form of child abuse. You were raped.'"

Boyd pauses for a moment and adopts a confessional tone. "I have to admit that I find the idea of homosexual sex utterly repugnant in my own terms," he says. "I do not like the idea of doing it - because my association with it was so horrible - but I love tactile men. I kiss men. I like the idea of other men getting off sexually. I love the idea of them having pleasure in one another."

He really does seem troubled now. "I have never said this to anybody. I have hardly even discussed it with my wife. But I find the mechanics of homosexual sex something I just can't cope with."

Boyd's affection for Andrew and Jeremy comes through so strongly that he really shouldn't be concerned about his repugnance for the homosexual act. (One is reminded of Quentin Crisp's analogy: I really can't stand peas and I'm glad I don't like them, because if I did I'd have to eat them. And, you know, I really can't stand peas.) The film is both a gentle argument for equality and a sensitive portrait of two agreeable folk.

Sadly, it has a grim postscript. Shortly before the screening at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, Boyd received a phone call. "We just learnt that Andrew has cancer of the kidney and may require a transplant," he says. "I actually get very emotional even talking about it."

Don Boyd seems like such a kind fellow, you wish - despite his protestations - that he had achieved just a little more commercial success. Following the Honky Tonk Freeway fiasco in 1981, he did fascinating and challenging work, but never again looked like becoming a major mogul. He was, alongside the flamboyant Hamish McAlpine, one of the founders of the independent distributor Tartan (formerly Metro Tartan). He produced some of Jarman's finest films: The Last of England, War Requiem. And, in 2001, he directed My Kingdom, an extraordinary version of King Lear set among Liverpool's criminal underworld. Richard Harris, in one of his best late roles, caused all the usual mayhem.

"Richard and I had a very combative relationship," Boyd says. "But it was founded on respect. Just about the last thing I heard him say - well, apart from him telling me off for leaving the bar early - was that Don Boyd was a genius.

"I am not saying it's true, but to have Richard Harris say it is something of an achievement."

Andrew & Jeremy Get Married screens on August 1st at the Irish Film Institute as part of the Dublin Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. www.gcn.ie/dlgff