Now available on DVD

Gracie Otto / Australia / 2013 / 85 mins

Any old hack could have pointed a camera at Michael “Chalky” White and asked him to talk and made a fascinating film. What makes Gracie Otto’s quite so compelling is how comprehensive it is, the filmmaker gaining access to just about everyone White has produced, married and got high with. John Cleese, Kate Moss, Barry Humphries, Naomi Watts, John Waters and Yoko Ono all turn up to share stories about the man.

Michael White was a theatre and film producer. Early on in the film Greta Scaachi calls him ‘the most famous person you’ve never heard of’ – and, whilst that may true, you will undoubtedly have heard of his work. It was Michael White who brought The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Joe Orton’s Loot and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to the London stage. It was Michael White who effectively gave Monty Python and the Goodies their big break. It was Michael White who introduced British audiences to Pina Bausch and Yoko Ono, and with his production of Oh! Calcutta! he challenged the Victorian morality still so prevalent in late ’60s, early ’70s London’s theatre-land.

What comes across from the documentary is that the Glasgow-born producer was a gambler, who took risks on the avant garde and steered away from the mainstream and the dull. But whilst this Dadaist, anarchist approach to theatre, film, dance and modern art saw him put on some of the most talked about shows in London (including the still influential Happening), it turns out he just wasn’t very good at the detail.

White signed the rights to Rocky Horror away for a pittance. After what seems to be a misunderstanding with Barry Humphries, White missed out on producing Dame Edna Everage in London, despite backing the Australian comic’s flop show in New York. Humphries’ story about their first night in the Big Apple is worth watching the film for alone.

Otto first saw White at Cannes. He was holding court, she went over and he gave her his phone number; it was the start of a friendship which allowed the filmmaker candid access to the producer. You get the impression such connections are very important to White. ‘I’ve had people who’ve cheated me, swindled me, but no enemies’, he confesses.

Yet not only does Otto’s relationship with White grant her access to him and the interviewees, but it also allows us to see White at his most vulnerable. The archive footage shows him riding high; Otto’s footage shows him in his daughter’s spare room going through the 1,500 letters and memorabilia he’s selling to keep himself afloat.

In documenting White’s life, Otto documents a very special period in British cultural life; a time of ambition and risk and pleasure which mirrors White’s own ambition, risk and pleasure. What it does is acutely make you aware of how there doesn’t seem to be nearly as much of these traits on the go anymore. Watching, you soon begin question whether you should embrace them yourself. You may end up like the White of 2013 – sickly, broke and near immobilised – but you will have lived.