Sidestepping the spotlight, Peter Levelle has earned himself a solid reputation as a director who always delivers the goods. By Brian Davis
Peter Levelle is an unusually modest man. In the demi-monde of advertising film production, it's doubtful whether any other director has a less inflated opinion of himself or keeps such an assiduously low profile. The highest compliment he pays himself is to say that he's a "problem-solver with a reputation for consistency" and that he invariably tries to be honest. Ideally, though he's too polite to admit it, he'd prefer not to talk about himself at all.
Also, he's arguably the only director in town whom people spontaneously describe as "a real gentleman." Bomber jackets, T-shirts, and jeans are not part of his make-up; nor, more significantly, are arrogance, flippancy, and cynicism. Levelle looks and sounds less like a commercials director than a self-effacing and benevolent schoolteacher. One of his former colleagues at CDP says that "he's one of the very few people who knew how to deal with Frank Lowe. He sometimes treated him like a naughty schoolboy."
His style is wry, low-key, and pragmatic. What he finds hard to deny, though he does his dissembling best to disguise it, is that his experience has given him an uncommonly broad knowledge of the production business. He produced for five years at Picture Palace and spent a further five years as head of TV at CDP before venturing into fully-fledged direction in 1982 at his own company, Beechurst.
According to the aforementioned Lowe, who is not a man to deal in indiscriminate compliments: "Of all the producers I've worked with, he's number two to Alan Marshall, which is high praise indeed. He's very nice, very organized, and a delight to work with."
Whereas most British directors keep their European work in a closet, Levelle is more than happy to unveil the commercials he's made in France, where he's worked since 1983. "In Paris I'm known for making small and funny vignettes," he says. "It's the kind of work I'd like to do more of in Britain, but these days I rarely get the chance. People seem to think, quite wrongly, that I'm somehow above it."
One of his favorite and most famous commercials is a diverting conversation piece which could easily have been made by Alan Parker. It's the Cockburn's port Russian submarine spot in which the pronunciation of the product's name causes more than a little difficulty. According to Saatchi's Harry Shaw, who wrote the Cockburn's commercial while at JWT: "Peter is a quietly confident, very amenable director who knows exactly what he wants. He's strong, but he doesn't shout about things. He doesn't go in for fancy camera angles—he gets to know the actors and then lets them get on with it. He's also a very nice man to work with."
Levelle's skill with actors, famous and unknown, is unquestionably one of his fortes. Producer Trevor Evans, who worked with Levelle at Picture Palace, CDP, and Beechurst before setting up Smith Jones Brown and Cassie, says he remembers Levelle being particularly good at handling personalities like Joan Collins and Leonard Rossiter (Cinzano), the two Ronnies (Hertz), and Omar Sharif (Olympus). "He's always very calm, the perfect gentleman," says Evans. "He's good at dealing with actors, clients, agencies, and temperamental directors. At CDP, he was always very patient and diligent. He wanted the best for the agency, and he made the TV department highly successful. He's excellent at meetings, but he's never been a real socializer. Though he always works hard, he likes to go home comparatively early and be with his family. Essentially, he's a very shy man."
Levelle, 49, says that both as a director and a production company proprietor, he wouldn't mind being a second Roger Woodburn. "I admire Roger's work enormously, and I've got great respect for the way Park Village is run. The care they put into their work and their attention to detail are amazing. And I'll bet you'd find that they're cheaper than most other production companies in town. If Beechurst could become another Park Village, I'd be more than happy."
His ambitions are apparently being fulfilled. Levelle and Beechurst, whose other directors are Michael Apted, Jack Bankhead, and Simon Shore, have established an enviable record for quality and reliability over the years. They go about their business with unusual discretion, and though they've won their fair share of baubles, they never sweep the board at awards events. But their cool and solid professionalism is impeccable. If you want fireworks or vicarious thrills, try another company.
"People who go to Peter know they're in safe hands," says Paul Weiland's John O'Driscoll, who worked with Levelle at CDP. "They get the film they want. He's accomplished and professional and a real diplomat as well as being a true gentleman. He started to direct in-house at CDP and he made some very nice films on tiny budgets, particularly for EMI. He's got the sense and knowledge of Roger Woodburn, though not necessarily Roger's gift. But he's certainly a talented director."
Levelle entered the business by accident. After dropping out of his university engineering course, he found himself stuck in his native Devon which, though pleasant, was "in a time warp." After unsuccessfully applying to the BBC, he answered a small ad in a newspaper and abruptly emerged as a messenger at Greys. Running errands didn't detain him long. After six months, he graduated to the production department before becoming a reluctant account executive. "I actually wanted to be in the TV department, but then so did everyone else."
He made useful contacts with the film production business, however, and in 1967 he became a gopher at Michael Law Films. "I took the job for half the salary I was on at Greys—that seemed to be the story of my life at the time—but I was finally doing what I wanted to do, and I gradually worked my way up." He progressed to being a producer at Gerry Poulson Films and was then headhunted to the London office of the American Rose Magwood production company, where he worked with director John Crome. When Rose Magwood proved reluctant to expand its British operation, Levelle and Crome joined Malcolm Craddock in setting up Picture Palace. Levelle ran it for five years.
"It was a good company and did well enough, but it never quite broke into the top rank," he says. In 1977, Frank Lowe and John Salmon asked Levelle to join CDP to take charge of its TV department. The inspiration for the appointment apparently came from Alan Parker. "I was in seventh heaven," says Levelle. "CDP was then at its apogee. It had never been and probably never will be quite the same again—it was an amazing moment in time. Every film we made was a candidate for an award. I remember that at one British TV Awards event we won 13 Golds and Silvers. It was almost embarrassing. It was so exciting to work there that I didn't take a holiday for two years."
(It was Levelle who set up the non-profit-making British TV Awards in 1975 after the collapse of the TV Mail roadshow. He organized it with friends via the AFVPA and initially financed it with his own money because he felt very strongly that Britain needed a national TV awards festival. He remains vice-chairman of the awards committee.)
Characteristically, Levelle understates his contribution to the CDP TV department. "It was just a question of getting a grip on it and using a bit of common sense," he says casually. Actually, the department had previously had a reputation for being profligate and unwieldy. According to Frank Lowe: "Because Peter is such a nice and organized man, he's very good at dealing with prima donnas. He's got an excellent technical knowledge of film, which means that he doesn't waste money. All the budget appears on the screen. He's also got a good understanding of editing, which is a very important attribute. Something people forget is that he can often be very funny."
Levelle started directing while at CDP. His first film was a 16 millimeter interview with Brian Clough for the Daily Express and he then made two award-winning films for EMI, Walk Don't Boogie and The Last Dance. He also won Clio and Cannes Golds for the Hamlet Columbus spot.
"At CDP I was getting the best of both worlds," he says. "I was learning how great advertising is created from people like Frank and John and I was seeing how great commercials are made by working with directors like Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, Mike Seresin, Bob Brooks, Len Fulford, and Tony Scott. But I started getting a bit of flak when I began directing because production companies thought I was pinching jobs from them. In fact, I was doing them because the budgets were so low that production companies wouldn't have been interested. In the end, after a wonderful five years, I decided it was time to leave because I didn't want the relationship with CDP to go sour." (He could have joined Frank Lowe when the latter left to form Lowe Howard-Spink, but he'd given his word to CDP that he'd stay for another year, and Levelle is a man of his word.)
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With producer Trevor Evans, whom he'd recruited to CDP from Picture Palace, he started Beechurst in 1982 and, with the minimum of publicity, which is something he consciously doesn't court, he's been working quietly away ever since. He says a job he handled a couple of years ago for the Water Authorities privatisation campaign "epitomises" the way Beechurst works in Britain. "We were approached by the agency, DMB&B, just before Christmas and the job had to be shot early in January.
The final sequence needed a shot of a housing close with dozens of milk floats driving around and the rest of the world stretching out behind them. I realised that it would have to be shot somewhere with hills so I did my own recce and eventually found the perfect location in Torquay. Probably other companies would have used two location finders and it would have taken twice as long and cost twice as much. We're a hands-on company and I don't believe there's anybody better than us at solving logistical problems."
Another problem-solving assignment was the "0 per cent finance" campaign of six Vauxhall commercials which he shot last summer for Lowe Howard-Spink. "The agency came to us and said they had six films to make and very little money and could we do it? I said we'd love to. They were all one-day shoots and required considerable effort and imagination, but I think they worked out well."
If Levelle has any doubts about the practicality of a script, he isn't slow to say so. "I think it's irresponsible and dishonest to accept a script which you know isn't going to work. I simply can't operate like that. I suppose I'm hopelessly responsible."
In Paris, as he says, he's known as a director of funny and sometimes zany vignettes. "It's as if my alter ego works in Paris. Over there I'm regarded as a sort of Graham Rose. It's just not the kind of work I get in Britain." His fast-paced and technically nifty French conceits, currently made through Frog Films, include spots for Liptons Tea, the Ecco employment agency, Folies de Danone and Très Près toothpaste. "They're great fun to do," he says. "I enjoy their vitality and irreverence."
"Working in France is also very morale-boosting. These days they could have any British director they want, yet they keep coming back to me, which is very good for my confidence. You go into a creative director's office in Paris and there's a wall full of 250 directors' reels. You think, 'Why me?' I'm delighted and flattered that they use me at all."
According to producer Jacques Arnaud, who worked with Levelle at the Franco-American production company: "Peter is very warm and pleasant and Francophile and very easy to work with. He's got a remarkable understanding of filmmaking and I think he's a first-class director. His weakness is that he's too nice. If he were an arrogant son of a bitch, everybody would think he was brilliant. But he's courteous and intelligent and he's got time for people. Even so, he's got a tremendous reputation in France."
Apart from Cockburn's, one of Levelle's favourite British commercials is the award-winning Condor Sub spot, in which a pipe-smoking gentleman uses a minute submarine to blow up a model boat belonging to a couple of yobs. "I'm as proud of that as of anything I've ever done," he says. "It's a perfect piece of storytelling. It's like a miniature three-act play with a beginning, a middle and an end."
He says that somebody once accused Beechurst of being "too efficient, as if we weren't exciting enough. But filmmaking isn't essentially an exciting process. Maybe I'm odd, but I like things to go well. I'm particularly fond of a commercial I did for Trackers because the set (of a convincing-looking wood) was super and worked very effectively."
Like Levelle himself, Beechurst—which has been run by Iain Reid since the departure of Trevor Evans six years ago—is efficient, pragmatic and cost-conscious. It was once asked to raise the price of a commercial because rival bidders had come in with budgets which were so much higher. The company is housed in unusually comfortable and charming offices off New Oxford Street and it owns all its own camera equipment. "As a company, we like to invest in the business," says Levelle, who five months ago opened an office in New York. "I like to think we care about film more than money."
A Peter Levelle commercial is unlikely to contain many surprises. It won't have the hard-edged dynamism of a Kanievska spot or the unexpected frissons of a Tony Kaye extravaganza, but it will certainly be well crafted and it will undoubtedly be just what the client ordered. According to one creative director: "That's both Peter's strength and his weakness. If you give him a storyboard, that's exactly what you'll get back."
If he fails to become another Ridley Scott, nobody will be surprised. If he manages to emulate Roger Woodburn, however, both he and everyone who knows him will be quietly delighted.
