British film producer Jeremy Thomas took to the Edinburgh International Film Festival stage Friday night to reflect on his legendary, decades-spanning career.<\/p>\n
Thomas and Irish director Mark Cousins pondered over the state of the film industry during a 90-minute conversation, which also covered Harvey Weinstein, Harry Cohn and Thomas\u2019 time spent with some of the biggest filmmakers in history.<\/p>\n
More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Thomas, also the former chair of the British Film Institute, is a frequent collaborator of David Cronenberg<\/a>\u2018s, having worked on Crash (1996) and Naked Lunch (1991). He is best known for producing Bernardo Bertolucci\u2019s The Last Emperor<\/a> (1987), which won a whopping nine Oscars the following year, including best picture.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m having difficulties finding work that satisfies me, principally,\u201d Thomas admitted to Cousins. \u201cI\u2019m still making films, and I will continue making films, but the scale that I make films at \u2014\u00a0the size and the lack of responsibility, which was encouraged by those around who gave me money\u2026 I couldn\u2019t make Naked Lunch today.\u201d<\/p>\n What was clear was Thomas\u2019 yearning for a time when producers were given total control over their films, an undertaking that he described nowadays as a far bigger, and more complex, group effort. \u201cI was trusted for 30 years\u2026 by a group of people who wanted to make money out of me,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I got freedom. [They thought], \u2018Jeremy knows something we don\u2019t know. We\u2019ll give him 30 million bucks.’\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was at the tail end of the golden age of cinema, when films made money in the cinema before VHS was even thought about. That\u2019s where I come from,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd to continue working, to continue being relevant, I have to mutate. And that\u2019s a fact, and I accept it.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cI\u2019m satisfied when I get one over on everybody, when I make a film and I did it, I got it, I own it. It\u2019s mine. I\u2019m in charge of it. Nobody can tell me [they] didn\u2019t like that\u2026 I\u2019m in charge of it all, and I can\u2019t do it as I want to anymore, because I\u2019m an old man. I can\u2019t go and find somebody to give me 40 million bucks anymore. I\u2019ve got to find a way to collaborate with many, and subjugate my craziness into normalcy.\u201d<\/p>\n In between discussions about working with the late Gene Hackman and Nicolas Roeg on 1983\u2019s Eureka, and Thomas\u2019 childhood spent on huge Hollywood sets at Britain\u2019s Pinewood Studios, the pair also talked about Weinstein \u2014\u00a0and why Thomas hated him.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a terrible enmity with Harvey,\u201d he told Cousins. \u201cI would turn my back on him in public and [say], \u2018Don\u2019t talk to me.\u2019 I took [it to] a shocking level of rudeness. I couldn\u2019t stand him, but I didn\u2019t know why. But now we know why I didn\u2019t like him,\u201d Thomas said, referencing Weinstein\u2019s sexual abuse charges<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thomas revealed that in the wake of the controversial film Crash, following James Spader and a group of people who find themselves aroused by car crashes, he had people calling for him to be hanged and press gathered around his house. \u201cI was heavily attacked,\u201d he said about Cronenberg\u2019s widely-banned film. \u201cIt didn\u2019t offend me in my morality\u2026 If I can get away with it, I want to expose people to [boundary-pushing content]. Everybody\u2019s protected in cotton wool, even then. They\u2019re offendable, continuously offendable.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas added towards the end of the session: \u201cI don\u2019t like cultural domination of things. I like a big mixture, somehow being on the outside, and the counter culture\u2019s on the outside\u2026 I\u2019m continuing making films, economically for myself, but I still believe in the importance of this craft and art, because everybody in this room got their knowledge pretty much through the cinema. About the world, love and emotions and parents and sisters and brothers and hardships and poverty and everything, you didn\u2019t get it through personal experience. You didn\u2019t get it through the papers\u2026 You got it through movies.\u201d<\/p>\n Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025 runs Aug. 14-20.<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" British film producer Jeremy Thomas took to the Edinburgh International Film Festival stage Friday night to reflect on his legendary, decades-spanning career. Thomas and Irish director Mark Cousins pondered over the state of the film industry during a 90-minute conversation, which also covered Harvey Weinstein, Harry Cohn and Thomas\u2019 time spent with some of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1963195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[346426,345415,344284,304614,346423,346425,346424],"class_list":["post-1963194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-british-film-institute","tag-film-industry","tag-film-producer","tag-harvey-weinstein","tag-jeremy-thomas","tag-mark-cousins","tag-naked-lunch"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/I-Cant-Find-Somebody-to-Give-Me-40-Million-Bucks.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1963194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1963195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1963194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1963194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1963194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}