Andrea Occhipinti, co-founder of Italy’s Lucky Red and one of the lead producers of Simon Stone’s Elsinore, told a packed press conference at Rome Film Fest how his personal connection to the film’s protagonist, Ian Charleson, drove him to tell his story.
Elsinore sees Andrew Scott stars as Scottish stage and screen actor Charleson as he takes on the role of his life as Hamlet at London’s National Theatre in 1989, while dying from Aids.
Occhipinti, who has an acting background himself, knew Charleson a little. “I felt the power of Ian’s story, an extraordinary man and artist, who, at the moment he was about to realise his dream, felt his health failing and he was about to die,” said the producer.
“I too have had many people close to me die of Aids, starting with Kermit Smith, with whom I founded Lucky Red and who died in 2001. In those years, there was no cure. It was a veritable epidemic, a plague for homosexuals. This film is a tribute to that era, which many young people have never experienced.”
In the film, written by Stephen Beresford, starting from Ethan Silverman’s original idea, Charleson keeps his homosexuality secret from the wider public for fear of damaging his film career.
“I was deeply touched by the fact that Ian didn’t want to come out,” said Occhipinti. “I too wasn’t out until 2008, because I knew it was something that could harm me. These are issues that have touched me personally.”
Elsinore marks Scott’s first feature producing credit, alongside Gabrielle Tana and Carolyn Marks Blackwood for London-based Magnolia Mae Films, Pete Shilaimon and Mickey Liddell for LD Entertainment, and Occhipinti and Stefano Massenzi for Lucky Red.
The ensemble cast includes Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Juliet Stevenson and Peter Mullan.
“It was very difficult to get this film financed because it’s gay and it’s about death,” added Stone. “It was very difficult to get people to believe that they could sell the tickets to a movie like this. I didn’t believe that those were real concerns. I had much more faith in humanity than the bean counters did.”
Tana, like Occhipinti, said she witnessed many friends and colleagues succumb to Aids in the late 1980s and 1990s. She revealed Scott’s commitment to the film and the desire of the rest of the cast to sign up was unmatched by any film she had produced to date.
“Nobody said ‘no’ to acting in this film. I’ve never had that before in my life,” Tana said. “One day, I was on the set, and I hadn’t realised that we cast Adeel Akhtar. He’s one of the most famous people in the UK. I said ‘What are you doing here?’ and he said it was an honour to be in the film. He’s a car salesman in a single scene. It makes me emotional thinking about that.”
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