Go Hollywood, says U.K. film minister

Kim Howells, who was appointed Britain’s minister for tourism, film and broadcasting last month, touched off an uproar over the weekend by condemning some of Britain’s biggest movie hits and urging local filmmakers to follow the lead of their Hollywood counterparts. Howells charged that British movie producers were making too many costume dramas and “heritage” films because those tended to receive funding from the country’s Film Council. As reported by the London Independent, he also criticized the hit film The Full Monty, as “cliché ridden” and avowed that he did not like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill much either. “When are we going to have, for example, the first film about the foot-and-mouth crisis?” he asked. Howells also remarked that he had once visited Hollywood “and was hugely impressed with the way their writers forgot about their egos and just wrote, rewrote, rewrote and rewrote again until it was right. What I admired was the factory idea. An industrial process, if you like.”