MRH: Paul Schrader’s answer to the dilemma is that he has film prints for all of his movies, so if anyone wants it for a retrospective screening or whatever, he has it. But it is a big cost to him because it’s a film print rather than a video transfer that the studio provided.

OG: It does seem absurd, but it wouldn’t happen now because there are digital versions of new films that are made as part of the post-production process anyway, but Universal have over the last 3 years that I’ve been involved with Privilege have actually been quite good.

There was the usual brush-off, and then Peter had actually been promised by the head of Universal Home Entertainment that they wouldn’t stand in the way of the film being made available, so Peter had to invoke that particular promise, and that got it rolling, and from that point onwards it ran very smoothly. I got the deal done, I got the materials, and the DVD’s ready. I spoke with Universal last week, and they seemed to be quite happy with it.

MRH: I guess from your end, it’s proof that being persistent and patient and diplomatic is worth the effort, but I guess for producers, it can be daunting that a DVD release can take years, shepherding a project from total apathy to the official go-ahead.

OG: I think about five years ago Peter wouldn’t have believed this day was possible. In fact, when he got hold of copies of the DVD that I sent him, he referred to it as a ‘Red Letter Day,’ which is nice, you know? I didn’t really think that when I first started on the first films of Peter that Privilege would eventually become part of the series.

MRH: What surprises me the most of Watkins work is that, in spite of all the different stylistic changes and rule breaking over the years, whether it’s in a docu-drama format or whatever, I’m surprised that Watkins’ work is incredibly fresh, and very contemporary. I wonder if you have any thoughts as to why his films still make a strong impact, and why they are genuinely worth revisiting?

OG: It’s funny that it’s true. There are some people around that consider Privilege dated. You look at some of the comments on the IMDB.com, but the only way that Privilege is dated is basically the look; there is something of a sixties look. But in truth, like all of his films, they seem to have an aesthetic that goes beyond being trapped in that particular time, you know? People say that his films are prescient, and he’s proved to be right.

MRH: I guess I’m more fascinated by the fact that his film technique is so very fresh, and that people can learn from and incorporate some of his ideas into their own efforts to make a stylistically fresh film –

OG: And they do. Take Canada: A People’s History, and the way that history is handled in that particular series; it invokes Culloden, and the approach that Peter has to history. When I first saw the British version of The Office series, where you have people looking at the camera and responding to the camera in that way, I’m thinking, ‘This is straight out of Peter Watkins. If he made a sitcom, it would look like this.’

MRH: If Watkins had begun his career today, would he have been able to do all of the daring things that he did then, and would there be less critical derision?

OG: I don’t think that the climate that is around now is more accepting. I think it’s a political thing. Peter is also a fairly difficult character, and he has managed to fall out in one form or another with a lot of the people that he has made films for. I’m talking about organizations like the BBC, like Arte for La Commune, or the Norwegians on Edvard Munch.

One of the things that I don’t think he’s quite come to terms with – and I’m not talking about falling out necessarily with people who appreciate his aesthetic and appreciate his importance as an artist – it’s his falling out with organizations and people who are perhaps paeans within those organizations.

These are people who don’t quite get him for his films, and they’re trying to sort of fit his films into the mechanism of those factory environments which they don’t necessarily fit. He doesn’t accept the compromise of having to work in that particular way to make a film to fit a slot; he’s totally uncompromising with what he has to say, and with credit, it’s the way he should be.

But that’s also meant he’s been marginalized, and pushed out into the cold. Not only by the industry as such, where it’s the TV or film industry, but also by his peers. He was always upset at the time by the trouble with The War Game that his filmmaking peers at the BBC did not actually rally to his support. At the time, the BBC were refusing to transmit The War Game, and that upset him enormously.

He understood to a certain extent that you had this monolithic organization like the BBC with its kind of inflexible practices, but he expected more from his filmmaking creative and artistic colleagues, and he didn’t get it. (Lindsay Anderson, I think, was one British filmmaker of note that didn’t support him when he should). That’s probably one of the reasons why Peter Watkins left England.