In an exclusive interview with ASEAN Forum, the UK Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma explains how the world of international trade has parallels with making movies.
David Puttnam is a self-confessed optimist; a quality he believes stood him in good stead in his successful career as a film producer. “People have got to believe in something,” he says. “It’s like movies. Midnight Express would not have been the success it was if he hadn’t got out of prison. Chariots of Fire, no one would have gone to see it if he had come second. Human beings need hope.”
However, in adopting the same positive attitude to his current role as the UK Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy, now Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, he has received some scathing reviews.
“A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing,” led a piece by veteran correspondent James Pringle published in the Cambodia Daily, advising Lord Puttnam to “go back to the House of Lords and maintain silence on matters such as the present political situation in Cambodia, and the foreign journalists here, of which you have, at this date, so little knowledge.”