Paul Watson first brought Britain docu-soap in 1974 with a twelve part series, The Family. He also made Aussie-based titillater Sylvania Waters. His latest film, Malcolm & Barbara: Love’s farewell, is an altogether more sober affair about a marriage ending as husband Malcolm dies of complications arising from Alzheimers.
ITV will air it on August 8th, and (according to the Telegraph) their publicity claimed the documentary “ends when Barbara calls Paul to ask him to come as Malcolm is about to die … In moving scenes, Malcolm is surrounded by his family and Barbara strokes his head as he passes away.”
The Guardian takes up the story:
After the press screening on July 18, journalists were left with the impression that the scene ended with the filming of his moment of death, as the shot froze on Mr Pointon’s still face.
However, it is now understood that this footage of Mr Pointon slipping into a coma, with the rest of his grieving family around his bedside, was filmed two and a half days before his death.
Mr Shaps [ITV Director of Programmes] today said: “The film maker responsible, Paul Watson, has now confirmed that the film does not portray the moment of Malcolm’s passing, which was in fact some days later.
“This will be made clear at the end of the film on transmission and should have been made clear earlier.”
How did this come to light? Well, in a glorious piece of moralising commentary prompted by the selling of the film, Minette Marrin unleashed a sermon on the fearfulness of death, which led to Pointon’s brother Graham writing to set her straight, as you can see below.
So what do we make of Watson? Back in 1995 he told the Independent:
People accuse me of manipulation and I admit to manipulation — in the cutting-room. It’s called editing. If you shoot 10 shots, what do you do? You exercise prejudice, passion, certain proclivities. You build up an authored view. Hydrogen and oxygen on their own are boring, inert gases. Whack them together and who’d have thought they’d make this thing we all need called water? I’m interested in putting the essence of something in a sequence.I’m a devious, subversive, difficult sod of a film-maker, because now I know my craft skills so well I can make people five days later feel the hidden agenda to a film. Hidden agenda sounds so Machiavellian, but it isn’t.
I would guess that Watson thinks that Alzheimers is important, that the only way to get attention for the story was through a gimmick (death on camera), and that everyone concerned thought the film’s message about the disease and its consequences more important than the death itself. Once again, it is the selling of a film that seems to mislead.
And now Malcolm Pointon’s passing, having been grist to the mill of TV’s death– depicting insensitivity, is reground at the stone of TV fakery. And Paul Watson is a latterday Clifford Irving.
And meanwhile — somewhere out there — Minette Marrin rolls up another half-understood tragedy and prepares to discharge another cannonade.
