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The ruthless math of a Hollywood career | Martin Campbell | TEDxVitosha
The ruthless math of a Hollywood career | Martin Campbell | TEDxVitosha
TEDx Talks
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17:25 · Jul 19, 2026
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There
was
someone
who
famously
said,
you
know,
Translating…
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1
/388
0:05
There was someone who famously said, you know,
0:07
there are two absolute certainties in life.
0:11
And one is death and taxes.
0:15
Well, I'm a director and a director has absolutely one certainty.
0:20
And that is that if your film makes money,
0:23
you're a hero and your career goes up.
0:27
If your film doesn't make money, you're an orphan and you go down.
0:32
It's simple as that.
0:32
Your career goes down.
0:34
To begin with, I never even knew what a director did.
0:38
I'm a New Zealander.
0:39
I was brought up on a farm
0:42
and my first job after leaving school was um uh was working for an
0:47
aerial mapping firm,
0:49
right?
0:49
Aerial mapping where they made contour maps from aerial photographs.
0:55
And it was as boring as hell.
0:57
I mean, it was so boring.
0:59
And while I was there, for whatever reason, I made an 8 mm film.
1:05
And I sent it down to the New Zealand's national TV station
1:11
and I won a competition.
1:13
I was full of uh bravado
1:16
and I decided I wanted to be a cameraman,
1:19
a TV cameraman.
1:21
So, I drove down to the station in Wellington,
1:24
200 mi uh journey on my motorcycle.
1:27
I got an interview and I said, you know,
1:31
I now want to I want to be a TV cameraman.
1:33
I won the competition.
1:35
Um and they said, basically, get out.
1:39
Right.
1:39
I said to them, well, what about if I go to London?
1:43
Uh will I have a chance there?
1:44
They said, that's less than zero.
1:46
If you think it's a problem here, wait till you get to London.
1:48
Right?
1:49
So, I gave up my job at the aerial mapping.
1:53
I then worked in an abattoir, right?
1:56
What was known as we call them in New Zealand freezing works, right?
2:00
And meat packing place.
2:02
For 9 months I worked there.
2:04
I earned some money.
2:05
I got on a boat.
2:07
And I went to London with virtually no money, no career,
2:12
and uh just with this um with this kind of passion to become a
2:19
cameraman,
2:19
TV cameraman.
2:20
Now, at this time I didn't even know what a director did.
2:24
I I had no clue as to what director did.
2:29
So, when I got to London, I did odd jobs.
2:32
I worked in a biscuit factory, this, that, and the next thing.
2:36
And after a couple of months,
2:38
I went there specifically to a place called Elstree in London.
2:42
Why?
2:42
Because MGM Studios were there.
2:45
Stanley Kubrick was there shooting 2001.
2:49
There was ABC Studios, a big British studio.
2:52
And there was also ATV, which was a big TV company.
2:56
Well, a girlfriend of mine bought in the Daily Telegraph, and guess what?
3:01
There was an advertisement for uh training cameraman.
3:06
There was four positions.
3:08
They had 1,400 applicants.
3:09
I applied, and by some miracle, I actually got one of those jobs.
3:13
I don't, to this day, know why I got it.
3:16
I had no experience with cameras.
3:18
I was very interested in photography.
3:21
I love movies, all of that stuff, but there was nothing really.
3:25
And I guess everybody's career,
3:28
there's always luck has a lot to do with it.
3:30
In my case, this was it.
3:32
So, I then went into TV.
3:37
And as a cameraman, I was a trainee.
3:40
Um and I worked my way up over a period of four, five years,
3:44
something like that.
3:46
And at the TV studio, every I guess once every 18 months,
3:50
they would advertise for trainee directors
3:52
and three times I went up to what they call the sort of board
3:58
where you had to have your interview
4:00
and three times I failed.
4:02
I didn't get it.
4:03
At the end of the day and I left the company.
4:06
I left ATV.
4:08
I teamed up with a very successful writer
4:11
and I was his assistant for quite a long time during the 70s
4:16
but I met a lot of producers,
4:19
directors, people in the film industry
4:22
and by this time I directing was what I wanted to do.
4:27
I I had this kind of dream that I wanted to be a director.
4:31
I wanted to direct movies and towards the end of the 70s,
4:36
a friend of mine, a director friend, very good director,
4:38
he was asked to do a TV series called The Professionals
4:43
and it was a big action series.
4:45
He asked me to do a second unit
4:46
which I did and
4:48
because of that the producers of the series said to me,
4:52
well, you can do second unit on the next one
4:55
and the next one
4:55
and then they gave me episodes to direct.
4:59
And from there I did all I think four or five major series.
5:05
They were very successful TV series
5:07
and it was very simple
5:10
because what you got was two weeks preparation.
5:13
You were given a script that you couldn't change the script.
5:15
You couldn't do any work on.
5:16
There's your script, two weeks prep eight day shoot, four days edit, out.
5:22
So you really learned your trade.
5:24
You had to work fast.
5:26
You had to be on your toes
5:27
and you had to know what you were doing.
5:29
So great training ground.
5:31
Roughly about 19 80 85 I did a TV series called Edge of Darkness.
5:38
It was a six parter and it turned out to be very successful.
5:42
It won I think six Academy Awards
5:45
and so on and
5:46
so forth and my agent came to me
5:48
and said,
5:49
"Look, you've got to go to Hollywood.
5:51
You've got to go to Hollywood based on this, all right?"
5:54
So, off I go with him to Hollywood and I meet uh executives,
5:59
uh I meet agents, I go to the studios,
6:03
and they're all telling me how wonderful the series was.
6:07
And after a while, I realized they hadn't even seen the damn series.
6:11
They hadn't even looked.
6:12
So, this was Hollywood introduction to Hollywood.
6:15
All these people saying how terrific it was, how wonderful it was,
6:19
and most of them had never even seen the series.
6:22
Right.
6:22
But, subsequent to that, I got a script called Criminal Law.
6:27
It was given to me.
6:28
The company said, "Yes,
6:29
we want to make it and we want you to direct it."
6:32
I thought, "Terrific.
6:33
That's great."
6:34
Uh this is what I've dreamt about.
6:36
A movie to start with is never green-lit.
6:39
In other words, what a green light means is you're going to make the
6:42
movie.
6:43
They're going to finance it.
6:44
It's going to happen.
6:45
They only do this when they've cast the movie.
6:48
The company said, "Look, why don't we get Timothy Hutton, right?
6:52
He's absolutely terrific."
6:53
So, I meet Timothy Hutton.
6:54
Hutton really liked the script, said, "Yes, I'll do it."
6:56
A week later, the head of the company said, "No, no, no, no,
6:59
we don't want um Timothy Hutton.
7:02
Uh go and meet Jeff Daniels, right?"
7:04
So, I go and meet Jeff Daniels,
7:08
and over a period of probably three or four months,
7:12
they changed their mind about the cast at least five or six times.
7:17
It was terrible.
7:17
They wouldn't green-light the movie.
7:20
Uh so, with this,
7:20
we finally end up I had to go to the man's office,
7:24
the head of the company's office, lock his office door, and I said,
7:28
"I want Gary Oldman."
7:29
You all know Gary Oldman, right?
7:31
Yeah, terrific.
7:32
So, I I and I said to him,
7:34
"Pick up the phone and make the deal."
7:35
So, he said, "Yes.
7:36
I I Okay."
7:37
So, he did.
7:38
He made the deal with Gary.
7:40
I let him out of the room, and I thought that's it.
7:43
Thank God, we can now go ahead.
7:45
Next day, he rings me and says, "What about Jeff Goldblum?
7:48
Why don't we get Mercifully, that went away, and we made the film.
7:53
The film went fine.
7:54
I did the editing, that was fine.
7:56
Showed it to the company, they liked it, they had a preview.
8:00
Now, previews, I never I was so naive,
8:02
I didn't even know they had previews.
8:04
That's where they get people off the street, basically.
8:07
They're invited to come to a showing of your film,
8:10
and as they come in, they're handed questionnaires.
8:14
A lot of questions on it.
8:16
And the questions, first of all, the did you like it?
8:20
Did you think the film was excellent?
8:21
Did you think it was very good?
8:22
Did you think it was good?
8:24
Did you think it was fair?
8:25
Is the film too long?
8:26
Is it too short?
8:28
Which actor did you like best?
8:29
Which character did you like best?
8:31
Which did you like least?
8:33
So, you sit there cringing in the back,
8:36
watching this your film basically get ripped apart by the audience,
8:40
because they're all critics, of course.
8:42
And what happens is that once the audience leaves,
8:47
and all this stack of questionnaires, they go through it, analyze it,
8:53
and based on that, they will tell you that So,
8:56
they all think it's a little bit too slow at the end, right?
8:59
So, we'll have a second preview, you need to recut the picture,
9:03
and see if we can improve, right?
9:05
The only two boxes they're interested in are very good and excellent.
9:10
Uh and what they're aiming to do is you're marked one out of a
9:14
hundred,
9:15
basically.
9:16
And mercifully, on Criminal Law, it was highly rated.
9:19
And we got a very good score, which was great,
9:22
because we didn't have a second preview.
9:24
I forget what the figure was, probably, I don't know, 78, 80,
9:28
something like that.
9:29
That was good.
9:30
Uh my next film was a film called Defenseless.
9:34
We We the movie, and I edited the movie, and we previewed it.
9:40
The preview was a disaster.
9:42
Absolute disaster.
9:44
And and out of 100, it scored 25.
9:48
So, it was dreadful.
9:50
I mean, I came out of there out of the preview
9:53
as I'd been hit with a baseball bat.
9:55
I couldn't believe it.
9:56
My editor got fired.
9:57
We did 3 days extra shooting.
9:59
You know, we put the film together.
10:01
The company had their cut.
10:03
I had my cut.
10:04
Both cuts were previewed, and theirs got a few points more than mine.
10:07
So, that was the cut that went out.
10:09
It was a a very sobering experience.
10:12
And for a director to have your film basically torn apart,
10:17
uh it it's kind of shocking.
10:18
But, you learn some lessons.
10:20
And then, I was luckily was offered a film by HBO called Cast a
10:26
Deadly Spell.
10:27
I made that movie,
10:28
and movie fortunately got very good reviews and was very successful for HBO.
10:33
So, I managed to uh fight my way back.
10:37
The next movie I did was uh a movie called No Escape,
10:42
which I shot in Australia.
10:44
Anyway, that film didn't make any money again.
10:47
So, you know, as I said before, your film makes money, you go up.
10:51
Doesn't make money, you go down.
10:53
So, I get a call from the head of MGM,
10:57
and he says uh a man called John Calley.
11:00
And he says, "Would you come to my office?"
11:02
So, I go to his office, and he says,
11:05
"How would you like to direct Bond?"
11:08
And I couldn't believe it.
11:09
I said, "What What do you mean?"
11:10
He said, "Direct Bond.
11:12
How would you like to do it?"
11:13
I said, "Why me?
11:14
Why Why Why would you choose me?"
11:17
Thinking No Escape didn't do any business.
11:19
And he said, "Well, I saw Edge of Darkness, the TV series,
11:23
which I really liked.
11:24
And I also saw No Escape, right?
11:28
Which I thought you did a great job, blah blah blah blah.
11:31
I And it's a much bigger film than the budget would suggest.
11:36
So, do you want to do a Bond?
11:38
So, I said, yes.
11:41
And that was the best period in, you know, the politics,
11:44
there were no politics really with it at all.
11:47
The great thing is I had two terrific producers, Barbara and Michael, Barbara Broccoli,
11:52
Michael Wilson.
11:53
The problem for them was
11:56
that it was 6 years since they'd done the previous Bond film.
12:00
And the Bond film had not done that well.
12:02
It made a profit,
12:03
but it was I think it was one of the lowest returns,
12:06
and that was the Tim Dalton movie.
12:08
Now, we cast Pierce Brosnan.
12:10
Pierce was originally going to do it before Tim Dalton,
12:14
but because of a contractual problem with the TV series he was doing in
12:18
America,
12:19
he couldn't do it.
12:20
So, we had Pierce.
12:22
The problem was the studio felt that Bond was past its sell-by date.
12:26
In other words, there was a 6-year gap between the Dalton one
12:29
and the the one
12:30
that I was doing,
12:31
GoldenEye.
12:32
The wall had come down, the Cold War was finished.
12:36
Did any anybody actually really want to go and see Bond anymore?
12:39
So, that was their problem, which meant the budget was very tight.
12:42
But, we had to do cost-cutting.
12:44
We were originally going to St.
12:45
Petersburg.
12:46
I don't know if you remember the tank chase in that movie.
12:49
The whole unit was going to go to St.
12:50
Petersburg to shoot the tank chase.
12:53
We didn't have the money to do it,
12:54
so we sent the second unit to St.
12:56
Petersburg to do.
12:57
We built St.
12:59
Petersburg at the studio, and we shot the sequence there.
13:04
So, the film fortunately turned out very successfully,
13:07
and for the first time I had actually made something
13:10
that uh had made a lot of money,
13:13
and was very successful.
13:16
Then, it came to Zorro, which was a film I didn't want to do.
13:20
I was actually offered the script, and I thought the script was awful,
13:23
and I said, no.
13:24
A week later, they came back and said,
13:26
you have to do this script. and I said no,
13:28
I don't want to do it.
13:29
End of story.
13:30
And then a week later they came back again.
13:33
They brought me up there and they say you have to do it.
13:35
And again I I only got out of the room by saying, well,
13:38
I'll think about it.
13:39
So, I left the office, I went down to my office,
13:43
the phone was ringing and it was Steven Spielberg,
13:46
who is his company were making the film so they were financing it.
13:50
And he told me how wonderful I was and all that.
13:52
And by the way, I want you to do Zorro.
13:55
So, of course, you know,
13:57
uh blowing smoke up my bum and telling me how wonderful I was.
14:01
And so, I decided to do it
14:03
and then thought this is the worst decision I've ever made.
14:06
So, Banderas was on board.
14:08
Tony Hopkins, who played the older Zorro,
14:11
was doing a film up in Canada
14:14
and I went to see him in Calgary where he was shooting
14:17
and he said I can't do it.
14:19
He said I have a terrible back.
14:20
I'd love to do it but I can't.
14:22
I came back to LA and I sent it to Alain Delon,
14:27
of all people, in France because he spoke perfect English,
14:31
he had played Zorro before.
14:33
Never heard from him.
14:34
Never heard back.
14:35
Not Never.
14:37
And which was a good thing because Hopkins rang me and said,
14:40
I can do it.
14:41
Catherine Zeta Jones was uh someone that Spielberg suggested.
14:46
So, I'm now agreed to do it.
14:48
I'm halfway through pre-production
14:50
and then the whole of the top brass at the studio got fired
14:54
and they were replaced.
14:56
Which now meant the people that had greenlit the movie had gone.
15:00
Any incoming executives, they never want to do the projects of the outgoing.
15:06
Luckily, the man who is now heading the studio,
15:09
the new head of the studio, was again John Calley,
15:12
who I'd done GoldenEye with.
15:14
He rang me up and he said, I don't like the script,
15:17
I don't like the project, and I don't think it'll make any money.
15:20
I said, good, well, just cancel it then.
15:22
And I I'm fed up with it.
15:24
I never wanted to do it in the first place anyway. 10 days later
15:29
we're green lit.
15:30
And I rang him up and said,
15:32
why why the hell did you green light this film?
15:34
He said, well, I'm in it for $12 million
15:37
because of writers and actors
15:39
and um we've got Banderas who had to be held over
15:42
and the cost is $12 million.
15:44
So if I cancel I have to pay $12 million.
15:48
He said even if it's terrible I can get 45 million foreign.
15:51
So anyway, we went down to Mexico.
15:55
We shot it.
15:56
No executives turned up
15:57
and they even sent a directive to say tell Martin to cut the training
16:02
scene,
16:02
which is actually one of the best scenes in the film.
16:04
Cut it.
16:05
We haven't we can't afford it.
16:07
Cut it.
16:07
And I went to the producer and I said, you know, screw them.
16:11
What I'll do is I'll shoot for a day and a half.
16:15
Don't tell the studio that's what we'll do.
16:17
So we did.
16:17
Anyway, we finished the film.
16:19
And we went back to the studio.
16:22
Nobody turned up.
16:23
They'd kind of given up on the film.
16:25
There's always a big moment when you show the studio your cut,
16:29
the director's cut.
16:31
Remember coming out the day they saw the film
16:34
and they were all coming towards me.
16:35
I came out of the
16:36
and they all looked like they were going to a funeral.
16:40
They all had this expression of like, you know,
16:42
this is this is going to be awful.
16:45
Anyway, they came in and the reverse happened.
16:47
Of course, it it they loved it
16:49
and suddenly of course nothing was too much.
16:52
Literally in the space of seeing the movie they got me a better office.
16:56
They did all the usual usual stuff
16:59
and mercifully the film turned out okay
17:02
and it made them a lot of money.
17:04
So if you get knocked down 100 times get up for the 101st
17:10
and keep going no matter what.
17:18
>> >> Thank you.
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