A MATCH MADE IN MOVIE HEAVEN
Before the stars arrive, get to know two of the biggest star makers: Tom Bernard and Michael Barker
You may not recognize their faces, but here’s why you probably should: Michael Barker and Tom Bernard are carrying some serious star power,
Michael Barker and Tom Bernard talk about their uncanny movie partnership, which has sparked many TIFF hits, as if it were a successful marriage.
And why not? Their 20 years as co-presidents and cofounders of Sony Pictures Classics, the New York distribution and production label behind such hits as Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon and Midnight in Paris, means they’ve been together longer than many marital unions.
“One thing we learned a long time ago — when you have fights, just make sure it gets over quickly. We never leave the room without resolving it,” says Barker, 58, the chatty live wire of the duo.
Adds Bernard, 60, the pair’s taller and quieter member: “We’ll try and convince each other of an idea or a plan, but it’s in a manner of what is the best idea for whatever we’re working on. The conflict would be to try and find the solution.”
It seems the fights have been few and far between, judging by the high number of quality films released under the SPC banner, which together have received 126 Academy Awards nominations (many for Best Picture) with 29 wins.
Even a partial list of their films reads like a greatest hits collection of quality cinema of the past two decades, both for dramatic and documentary works. Their eclectic choices span the globe and all genres.
Besides Crouching Tiger and Midnight in Paris, they’ve also brought to the art house — often via a TIFF premiere — such notables as Capote, An Education, A Separation, Run Lola Run, Take Shelter, The Raid: Redemption, Inside Job, The Fog of War, The Lives of Others, All About My Mother plus two recent Palme d’Or winners from Cannes, The White Ribbon and the brand new Amour.
The list goes on and on. So do the kudos Barker and Bernard receive from such influential film figures as TIFF director Piers Handling, who has long counted on them — as well as SPC co-founder Marcie Bloom and Executive Vice President Dylan Leiner — to bring great movies to Toronto.
“They bring us a rich and diverse mix of some of the best films made every year, films that our public loves,” Handling says. “They’ve remained true to their belief in an artist-driven cinema, know how to get the maximum out of every screening, and approach each festival with the precision and dedication needed to land a rover on Mars.”
The admiration is mutual. Bernard and Barker, who first went to TIFF in 1979 and 1981 respectively, joke that they’ve been working Toronto’s film festival longer than Handling, who joined TIFF in 1982 (although he’d been attending as a film buff since its 1976 debut as the Festival of Festivals).
“It’s always been one of the most important film festivals in the world,” Barker says. “But even more than that, I think going to the Toronto film festival and seeing the movies in those big theatres with the responsive Canadian audiences really helps us do our job.
“It not only launches our movies and has the movies shown in the best possible way, but it also gives us direction on how to handle our movies, how to market them to the public.”
Bernard agrees, but he shares an oft-voiced concern that TIFF may be straying from its roots into becoming more of a glittery festival of stars and Hollywood packaging.
“It’s taken (TIFF) a long time to get caught up in the premiere thing,” he says. “Their motivation was to show the best movies, not just the latest ones.
“They’re starting to get a little caught up in the premiere thing and I think that’s a mistake . . . it’s an easy trap to fall into and the festival hasn’t, but you hear rumblings every now and again.”
There will be no shortage of top-drawer auteur directors at TIFF as long as Barker and Bernard have anything to do with it. This year they’re bringing eight films to the fest, including
Amour, the late-life love story that this year won Austria’s Michael Haneke his second Palme d’Or at Cannes.
The other seven films on SPC’s TIFF 2012 slate include savvy picks from Cannes, Sundance and other cinema hot spots: Jacques Audiard’s offbeat love story Rust and Bone, Pablo Larraín’s politically aware No, Amy Berg’s justice-denied doc
West of Memphis, Susanne Bier’s Nordic rom-com Love is All You Need, Dror Moreh’s Israel counter-terrorism doc The
Gatekeepers, Ramin Bahrani’s rebel son drama At Any Price and James Ponsoldt’s tippling teacher drama Smashed.
How do Barker and Bernard spot great films? They follow the people who make them.
“We have always subscribed to the auteur theory,” Barker says.
“We study filmmakers and we come from the point of view of trying to make choices about filmmakers that you believe in. A through-line of our survival in the business is sticking with the filmmakers we choose.
“This year we have Rust and Bone with Jacques Audiard; we were at TIFF three years ago with A Prophet. We are at TIFF this year with Michael Haneke and his Palme d’Or winner Amour; we were there three years ago with The
White Ribbon, and two years before that with Caché. Sometimes (the directors) go away, but eventually they come back to you.”
The two are also on the lookout for great cinema experiences that make them want to get behind a film, even an unconventional or challenging one.
“It’s the film that speaks to me, that connects to me — that’s the one,” Bernard says.
“I don’t think that the technical aspects necessarily are something that’s important. I think it’s how the story is told and the elements that are used to tell that story.
“They could be as a loose as a movie like Easy Rider or as sophisticated as a movie like (Kurosawa’s) Ran. There’s a magic to me in how the story touches people, how it is told.” The duo both name Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon as their top success. They got involved with this 2000 martial arts drama when it was just a glimmer in director Ang Lee’s eye, with Bernard persuading Barker that an Asian film could do well in the Western world.
Did it ever: Crouching Tiger took in $128 million at the North American box office and garnered 10 Oscar nominations (including Best Picture), winning four of them (including Best ForeignLanguage Film).
“It was a breakthrough movie, the way it spoke to so many different audiences,” Bernard reflects.
“It broke the subtitle barrier. It put an Asian director in a world of the Oscars that don’t normally acknowledge those people or that group.”
Bernard and Barker have actually been together for close to 30 years. Prior to creating and running SPC, they established the specialty film imprints United Artists Classics ( Ticket to Heaven,
The Grey Fox) and Orion Classics ( Ran, Slacker, Babette’s Feast, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown).
Those two labels have since becomes victims of downturns, mergers and other industry upheavals, but Sony Pictures Classics endures, as does the partnership of Barker and Bernard.
And it gets right back to that marriage analogy again.
“The thing is, we’re very different kinds of people and I think we both acknowledge that — one has a skill that the other one doesn’t,” Barker says.
“Tom has skills I don’t have, and he acknowledges to me that I have skills he doesn’t. We feel a need to complete ourselves with the skills of the other person.”
Adds TIFF’s Handling: “They believe in long-term relationships — Pedro Almodovar, Michael Haneke and Woody Allen are just a few examples — and champion foreign-language films in an increasingly conservative marketplace.
“They love the artist and will fight tooth-and-nail to have their films seen and appreciated by as many people as possible. I admire their taste, commitment and love of the game.”
“One thing we learned a long time ago — when you have fights, just make sure it gets over quickly," says Michael Barker, left, who has partnered with Tom Bernard at Sony Pictures Classics for 20 years.