“His was the face everyone wanted to see”: UK industry remembers the late Film Four exec Bill Stephens

The industry has paid tribute to Bill Stephens, the hugely popular former head of sales at Film Four International, who died earlier this week in the UK, after an illness.

Stephens worked at Channel 4 and then Film Four from 1984 to 1998, where he oversaw the sales drives for iconic films including Alan Clarke’s, Rita, Sue And Bob Too, Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff, David Leland’s Wish You Were Here, Mike Leigh’s Naked, and Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting and Shallow Grave.

“I remember Bill as a kind, witty, man full of good humour,” said Alison Thompson, co-founder of Cornerstone Films. “He was a very well-liked and respected member of our community.”

“Bill and I  were ostensibly competitors, but there were never two friendlier competitors,” said Jane Barclay, founder of the now-defunct Capitol Films. “We spent far too much time having fun dinners instead of wining and dining our distributors. Bill was always kind and supportive and he also had the right joke for every occasion. I have the fondest memories of him.” 

“He was such a cheerful, consummate salesman, so popular among buyers. He was very fair, very thorough,” added Grace Carley, chief executive at UK sales agent trade body, Film Export UK, I really don’t know anyone who had a bad word for him”.

After FilmFour, Stephens joined Renaissance Films until 2001. He later headed the German-owned sales company K5 International in the UK in 2007 and ran his own consultancy, Nexus.

“As an independent film seller, he was always relaxed and charming but simultaneously dogged and meticulous. He really loved the nuts and bolts of the international sales process,” observed Charlie Bloye, who worked with Stephens at Renaissance Films. “We worked together for about two years, but then we were firm friends for the following 20.”

“He knew what would sell”

“People were literally standing on top of our shoes to get to Bill,” recalls producer and DNA Films founder Andrew Macdonald, of the Cannes market screenings put on by Stephens for Shallow Grave that resulted in a buying frenzy.  

“[Stephens] had an incredibly hard job because the creative people made the decisions and then he had to recoup,” said Macdonald, who also produced Trainspotting. ”He was always very generous. He knew what would sell.”

“He was very, very well-liked and very genial in the right way. “He was very supportive to me and to lots of other people. On Trainspotting, we wanted to work with PolyGram and Miramax. He helped put those deals together. But it was still a Channel 4 film and they own it still.”

Stephens was an integral part of Film Four alongside executives including David Aukin, the head of Film Four from 1990 until 1998, Colin Leventhal, former head of business affairs, and Allon Reich, now at DNA Films, who was a script editor and deputy commissioning editor for film at Channel 4 from 1991 to 1998.

“It was very interesting on Shallow Grave,” Aukin recalled. “We were rejected by Cannes which was very disappointing. But Bill didn’t let that stop him. He believed in the film as much as we all did. He set up these screenings. They were enormously successful and he sold the film pretty much across the world, an amazing boost to British film at that point.”

“Sales is really the tough end of the business,” Aukin continued. “If a film is a success, it’s a great movie. If it’s a failure, it’s the fault of the sales team. They rarely get credit.”

Aukin pointed out Film Four’s aim at the time was not primarily to make commercial movies. Many of the features it produced in this period were made by first-time filmmakers. “But Bill was very patient. He understood what we were about. He accepted that and was a wonderful ambassador for us.” 

Reich recalled working alongside Stephens as a young executive. “He was like the old hand who knew the ropes, full of bonhomie and very generous-spirited. He never made a new person who knew almost nothing feel like they knew nothing.”

Reich accompanied Stephens to the Academy Awards in the mid-1990s, when films such as The Madness Of King George and Four Weddings And A Funeral were nominated for Oscars. 

“It was my first time working in Los Angeles. We got to the hotel and [Stephens] had a convertible [car] waiting,” Reich remembered. “He took me to the Hollywood Athletic Club where we had a burger and played pool on a table next to Keanu Reeves. That was very Bill. He was brilliant at festivals.”

Reich also went skiing with Stephens in Sundance. “He was part of this crazy group, me, Andrew Macdonald, John Hodge, Jude Law and Paul WS Anderson. It was Shallow Grave and Shopping.  Bill took a collection of us up the slopes in Park City. He was very much the group leader.”

Reich pointed out that Stephens had a tricky job. “Not every [film] was Trainspotting. But he gamely went on selling everything. His was the face everyone wanted to see at these festivals. He brought people together. He was a very generous, warm spirit.”

“He would be there with a large cigar, chatting to everybody, drawing them in, always very genial, friendly and easy going,” agreed Mark Adams, former critic, distributor and director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Bill’s Girl 

“Bill was a real family man, and that is what he loved about retirement, just being in and around family,” said Bridget Pedgrift, who worked alongside Stephens at Film Four as head of marketing. “People who loved him really loved him. There was a whole group of us from Channel 4 that still meet up now. We were due to meet up next Monday. We used to call ourselves Bill’s Girls.”

John Durie of Strategic Film Marketing remembered meeting Stephens in 1981 when he worked in the London office of US distributor Sunn Classic Pictures. 

“Bill was one of the first people I met when I started in the industry,” he said. “I was told by my then boss Denis Cave from Pic Publicity, ’You’re going to like him, he’s a great guy’. And Denis was totally right because when I turned up at Bill’s Sunn Classic office on Marlborough Street, under this enormous desk he was sitting at, he was in his socks, shoes to the side and was smoking the most foul-smelling cigar.

And I thought, ‘I do like this guy’. “His initials were BS, but there was no BS from Bill. Actuall,y to his old friends and family, he was known as ’Steve’. He called things as he saw them. Sometimes that shook people. But I know to me, and many others, professionally and personally, he was incredibly giving, supportive, and extremely loyal.”