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Marriages and engagements
Page 8079was obsessive about detail, Parker had
graduated from advertising copywrit-
ing to directing television commercials.
He declared that he wanted to make a
film in every genre. Dramas he made
based on real-life events, including
Midnight Express (1978) and Mississippi
Burning (1988), prompted controversy
and claims that he was distorting the
history of sensitive subject matters and
manipulating audiences for political
ends or simply for entertainment.
Parker dismissed critics as “eunuchs”.
He attacked fellow film-makers, Holly-
wood executives and the entire British
film industry. “I have a low tolerance for
bullshit and a very quick tongue,” he
said. He subsequently surprised many
by becoming chairman first of the Brit-
ish Film Institute and then the new UK
Film Council and disgusted many of his
fellow working-class auteurs by accept-
ing a knighthood in 2002. He tried par-
ticularly hard to avoid his friend Ken
Loach, but on inevitably bumping into
him was lambasted with: “Alan, how
could you? How could you kneel to that
woman?” All that Parker could offer in
return was that the Prince of Wales had
invested him.
Alan William Parker was born during
a bombing raid in London in 1944. He
grew up on a council estate in Islington,
north London, in 1944. His father, Will-
iam Parker, was a housepainter; his
mother, Elsie, a dressmaker.
When he began to emerge as a film
director, he told critics that his father
was an avant-garde artist who worked
exclusively in grey. The story is at once
indicative of a mischievous sense of hu-
mour and a disdain for critics and what
he saw as their elitism and snobbery.
A bright and studious child, he
gained a scholarship to Dame Alice
Owen’s School in Potter’s Bar, Hert-
fordshire. Leaving at 18, Parker started
work in the post room of an advertising
agency. He worked his way up to be-
coming a copywriter and then a direct-
or at Collett Dickenson Pearce, the in-
novative agency that revolutionised
British advertising in the 1960s and
1970s with a mix of surrealism and hu-
mour. Parker’s own commercials in-
cluded the Cinzano Bianco adverts
with Leonard Rossiter and Joan Col-
lins, lampooning the pretentiousness of
adverts for the rival brand Martini. He
recalled often competing for the juici-England, he worked largely in the US or
with American companies, though his
films were often critical of American
society.
Shoot the Moon (1982), Birdy (1984)
and Angel Heart (1987), his first film as
writer-director for a decade, were all big
American productions. He addressed
racism in Mississippi Burning, which
brought another Oscar nomination
and further complaints about historical
inaccuracies.
The Commitments was a warm-heart-
ed, foul-mouthed portrait of a ragbag
bunch of Irish soul musicians and sing-
ers who dream of stardom. Shot on a
relatively modest budget, it was funny
and became a big hit. Parker said the
film was his most enjoyable experience.
The reason, he said, was the young cast,
plucked from the back streets of Dublin.
“The kids arrived in minicabs and
couldn’t believe there was free food.”
He again returned to the musical,
adapting the West End and Broadway
hit Evita in 1996, having “bullied” Ma-
donna into the title role. It got decent
reviews and did reasonable business.
Parker said that Madonna deserved her
good reviews. “Her lip-syncing was im-
maculate and she worked out all her
moves in the mirror the night before.
She was on set smiling at 5.30am every
morning.”
By his early sixties he admitted he
had lost his hunger for making films.
Within the industry Parker was known
for his doodling and cartoons, which of-
ten attacked contemporaries more sav-
agely and effectively than words. They
were published in several collections.
In his final years he indulged his pas-
sion for painting and screen-printing.
His first marriage to Annie Inglis in
1966 ended in divorce in 1992. He is sur-
vived by their four children: Lucy, Alex-
ander, Jake and Nathan, a screenwriter.
He later married Lisa Moran, who was
his assistant on The Commitments and
became one of his producers. She and
their son Henry also survive him.
He was proud to be one of the last di-
rectors to shoot on film, eschewing the
latest digital techniques and in later
years returned to live in London full-
time. He still described himself as “a
hooligan from Islington”, but had clear-
ly mellowed, his eyelids crinkling up as
he laughed in retelling anecdotes from
his film-making days.Sir Alan Parker, CBE, was born on
February 14, 1944. He died after a long
illness on July 31, 2020, aged 76Alan Parker in 1973 and, right, with Madonna while filming Evita. Below, Bugsy Malone and its splurge guns made his name
HULTON DEUTSCH/GETTY IMAGESest commissions with another nascent
British film director, Ridley Scott. “It
was a two-horse race.”
Several directors, writers and execu-
tives from CDP would go on to become
prominent figures in the British film in-
dustry and in Hollywood, including
David Puttnam, who suggested Parker
think about writing film scripts.
Parker was initial-
ly sceptical when
Puttnam told him
that he and Charles
Saatchi intended to
move into the film
business and en-
couraged him to
write a screenplay.
That venture fiz-
zled out and
Saatchi formed his
own advertising
agency instead.
However, Putt-
nam persevered
and between them
Parker and Putt-
nam came up with
the idea for Melody
(1971), a schoolboyromance, which reunited the Oliver!
pairing of Mark Lester and Jack Wild. It
marked the debut of Puttnam as a film
producer and Parker as a film writer.
Melody was savaged by critics and did
little commercial business. Parker con-
tinued to make commercials, wrote and
directed short films and got his initial
breakthrough as a drama director with
The Evacuees (1975). It won Parker a
Bafta award.
His next big film for adults, Midnight
Express, was based on a book by Billy
Hayes, a young American who was
caught smuggling drugs, served time in
a Turkish prison and finally escaped.
The film was visually and narratively
exciting, with Hayes as the hero of the
piece and the Turks as villains. The film
was shot on 53 consecutive days, during
which John Hurt took his method act-
ing so seriously that he declined to have
a bath. “I would see him in the bar at the
hotel and he would say ‘come and have
a drink’,” Parker recalled. “We would
say ‘no thanks!’.”
Midnight Express was attacked as
racist, and both Hayes and the writer
Oliver Stone expressed reservations,
with Stone belatedly visiting Turkey to
apologise. Nevertheless the film was an
international hit and won two Oscars,
including best adapted screenplay.
Fame (1980) was another musical,
following students at New York’s High
School of Performing Arts. It consoli-
dated Parker’s earlier success and led to
a spin-off TV series.
Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982) played out
more like a long music video than a
conventional feature film. It was in-
spired by the Pink Floyd album of the
same name and written by the band’s
singer and bassist
Roger Waters.
Parker described
shooting the film as
a “miserable expe-
rience” because
Waters was so diffi-
cult to work with,
but he liked the end
result. “Sometimes
out of misery comes
good work,” he said.
The Wall was shot
at Pinewood and
was a rare return to
the UK for Parker.
He made no secret
of his disdain for the
British industry.
Although he main-
tained a home inP s a r W c b r o g a wth
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