Not Unlike a Rolling Stone

LONDON —  On most movie sets, it’s the star actors who are the center of attention, the ones toward whom all eyes discreetly turn when they walk onto the set. They’re usually the subject of cast and crew gossip and speculation, of whispered conversations behind hands. It’s rare to find a film where a producer is the focus of such intrigue. But then, it’s rare to find a film producer who’s also arguably the most charismatic rock star of the last four decades.

“Enigma,” a thriller set in England during World War II, is such a film. One of its producers is Mick Jagger, whose company Jagged Films has nursed the project for more than three years; between (and often during) Rolling Stones world tours, Jagger has tenaciously kept “Enigma” alive through various financial and logistical setbacks. Street Fighting Man becomes Deal Making Man, you might say.

Though widely known as a shrewd business operator, Jagger has had plenty to say about the creative aspects of “Enigma” too. One Friday last month, he strode onto a sound stage at Elstree Studios, out in London’s northwest suburbs, to check out how shooting was progressing. The film is directed by Michael Apted (whose last outing was the James Bond flick “The World Is Not Enough”) and stars Dougray Scott (“M:I-2”) and Kate Winslet. It was adapted from the Robert Harris novel by Tom Stoppard, one of Britain’s most distinguished playwrights and an Oscar-winning screenwriter for “Shakespeare in Love.”

“I like to visit the set once or twice a week, see what’s going on,” Jagger said. “You don’t want to get in the way. It’s a bit of a fine line. Though, of course, most of the work’s been done before you start shooting.”

All eyes, predictably, were on him. Even in his “civilian” capacity as producer rather than performer, Jagger engages the attention. He turned 57 this month, but looks far more lithe, trim and fit than any of his rock contemporaries: In a pink-checked dress shirt worn outside his black jeans, he wandered around the set, chatting affably with crew members, listening attentively and frequently flashing his broad trademark grin.

Clearly Jagged Films has the clout to advance its case in movies; who, after all, would not be intrigued by the prospect of taking a meeting with Mick Jagger? But does he have what it takes to establish himself as a producing entity in the long run? Apted believes he does.

“He’s pretty savvy because he’s done a lot of movies as an actor,” Apted said. “So he’s not an innocent. . . . He’s very supportive, and he hasn’t tried to push his weight about.

“It’s weird, because he’s one of my heroes, he’s my generation. You’re working with him, then suddenly you have this flash and you think: ‘Christ! It’s Mick.’ He and I are the same age. I started [as a documentary filmmaker] when the Beatles and Stones were starting out, so our careers are parallel. He’s always been a hero, a legend, and now here he is.”

It’s a temptation to assume that for such a successful and hugely wealthy man, producing films might be a fleeting distraction, a pleasant way for a dilettante to pass time before adopting a new interest. “It’s not,” he said flatly. “It’s a long-term commitment. We [he and his Jagged Films partner Victoria Pearman] have other films in development. We know other people might not want to make everything we want to make. But there will be other films. And I’ve already been around ‘Enigma’ for three or four years.”

It was in 1996 that Jagger bought the rights to “Enigma.” The book deals with a group of British mathematicians and military men attached during World War II to the Bletchley Park unit, 40 miles north of London, where they set about breaking complex codes used by German forces. The brilliant English code-breakers succeeded in infiltrating German intelligence, managed to track and predict enemy troop movements, and thus certainly shortened the war. (In the film “U-571” earlier this year, Americans were incorrectly credited with breaking the German code, which caused an uproar among the British.)

Using this real-life backdrop, Harris created a fictional story, centered on an outstanding young mathematician, Tom Jericho (Scott), who suffers a nervous breakdown at Bletchley Park, but after recuperating returns to help decode German U-boat submarine movements in the Atlantic, where they were poised to attack Allied vessels. While engaged on this crucial task, Jericho must solve another mystery: the disappearance from Bletchley Park of Claire (Saffron Burrows), a young employee with whom he has fallen in love. With the help of Hester (Winslet), a friend of Claire’s, he uncovers the truth.

“It’s a fascinating topic,” Jagger said. “Bletchley Park was one of the last secrets to come out of the war, and it always interested me. It didn’t enter anyone’s consciousness until the end of the ‘70s. There had been books before, but no one took much notice. I’d read many of those books, but it wasn’t until Robert Harris’ that I thought it would make a good movie.

“The idea of breaking codes during wartime is intriguing to me. Bletchley Park was like a microcosm of the British class system. And the way it was kept secret for so long is fascinating. I knew some of the families of those women, and their sons and daughters would say to me,” and here he dropped his voice to a whisper, “ ‘Mom used to work at Bletchley.’ They were still secretive about it, even though after the war it wasn’t really secret anymore.

“It’s a great background for a drama. This is a classic triangular love story set against this wartime atmosphere, which makes the drama telescoped because of the emotions involved. They’re so on edge.”

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Jagger wasn’t alone in his enthusiasm for Harris’ book; it turned out Lorne Michaels, producer of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” (and many “SNL”-offshoot movie projects), also wanted to adapt it for film.

“Yeah, Lorne and I were bidding against each other,” Jagger said. “We met in a lift going to Penny Marshall’s birthday party, as one does, and I asked him: ‘Are you bidding for the rights to this book?’ He said ‘Yes.’ The next day I called him and said, ‘So am I, why don’t we just buy it together?’ So we did, and after that it was quite easy.

“I went to see Tom Stoppard to ask him about writing the script. I looked on his bookshelves, and there was a whole shelf of Bletchley Park books he’d already read!” Jagger said with a laugh.

It was Stoppard who brought Jagger the Harris novel. “I was going to visit Mick on holiday, and he asked me to bring this new novel with me,” Stoppard recalled on the set at Elstree. “I’d had a proof copy sent to me. So I took it with me. I assumed he just wanted to read it. I didn’t realize he was shopping.”

How does Stoppard rate Jagger the producer? “Very impressive, actually. One sees why the Rolling Stones have lasted and worked as an enterprise,” he said, adding half-jokingly: “He has a regrettable executive streak, which I’m sure the artist in him tries to disown. But the fact is, he’s got great executive intelligence and energy. And he’s a bastard in a nice way. He wants things to happen when people say they’ll happen. People think Mick’s a passenger, or window-dressing. The opposite is the case. He’s the one who comes to locations; he worries about somebody’s costume.”

Jagger, on his first film as producer, was urged by Apted and Pearman to confront the formidable Stoppard and ask him to rewrite a draft of his script. “There was a draft they didn’t think was warm, dramatic or sexy enough or something,” said Stoppard, amused at the recollection. “And they made Mick tell me. Don’t quite know what went on there. But Mick was delegated to give me the news.”

“Yeah, that was one of my jobs,” Jagger said, with a sigh, when asked about the incident. “Michael used to send me in to Tom to ask about script changes. He was a bit shy about telling Tom it was crap.” He giggled at the notion. “I had to do the dirty work. It was very nicely done, and Tom doesn’t mind constructive criticism.”

Clearly the difference of opinion caused no rift. “It’s nice that he’s got this serious second string to his bow,” Stoppard said of Jagger.

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Indeed he has, though he isn’t alone among rock artists in venturing into film producing. In 1978, ex-Beatle George Harrison formed HandMade Films, which enjoyed successes (including Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” and the cult comedy “Withnail & I”) but collapsed when Harrison split acrimoniously from his business partner. Elton John has formed a production company called Rocket Pictures; its first film, “Women Talking Dirty,” has already been shot in Britain. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. had a producer’s credit on the British-made glam-rock movie “Velvet Goldmine” and last year’s indie hit “Being John Malkovich.”

Of them all, Jagger seems arguably the best equipped to produce, partly because film is already familiar to him. He has acted in such movies as “Performance” (1970), “Ned Kelly” (1970) and “Freejack” (1992). Then there’s the hands-on role he adopts on the Rolling Stones’ gigantic world tours.

“I’ve always done a lot of production for Stones documentaries, and some of them were quite big,” he said. “The Imax one was really big. I do a lot of work like that without really realizing that’s what I’m doing--hiring people, firing them sometimes, getting money together, making sure it’s distributed, advertised, promoted and so on. So I’d done that for a bit, and I thought, well, maybe I should be [producing films].”

His new career certainly didn’t come about because he can’t get no satisfaction as a Rolling Stone these days: “No, no. Somebody encouraged me in L.A. to do it, and I slowly got into the idea that I’d do it more seriously. And it can mean anything--producing films is meaningless. Managers of actors get to be producers just because their actors are in the film. But in this particular case, there’s been quite a lot of work for me.”

That’s an understatement. “Enigma” was originally due to be a Paramount film, but after casting problems the studio dropped it, and Jagger had to look around for alternative financing. London-based sales company Intermedia put up some money, and Apted was hired as director, but then he landed the Bond movie, which meant production on “Enigma” was delayed 12 months. Last year, everything came together, with Apted finally available, German and Dutch money on the table as well as a plausible leading man in Scott, who played the villain in “M:I-2.” The film has an estimated budget of $28 million.

“We’ve had to wait, change actors, look for money,” Jagger said. “It’s all pretty much par for the course, but that was my job, and there was no one else doing it at the time, just me and Victoria.”

In that period, Jagger and Pearman had time to look around, acquire properties and develop other scripts. Now they are almost certain what their next one will be: “Map of Love,” a biopic of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who became famous in the 1950s and wrote the legendary “Under Milk Wood.”

“It’s ready. It’s a very small movie,” said Jagger. It is written by Welshman Chris Monger, who directed Hugh Grant in “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain.”

“I was raised in Swansea, in South Wales,” said Pearman. “Hence the Dylan Thomas film that we will make next. I’ve been wanting to do it for many years, and when I teamed up with Mick, I said, ‘How about this?’ and he said, ‘Fantastic.’ ”

Pearman, who has worked at Universal, MCA TV, Warners, Island Alive and New Regency, moved from Britain to America 20 years ago and teamed with Jagger six years ago. Now, she said, the company has 10 projects in development.

Two, unsurprisingly, are music-related. Pearman describes “Swap” as “a dark comedy, a story of a rock star who’s disenchanted and swaps roles with one of his roadies.” She calls “The Long Play” “a story of 30 years in the music business. It’s about the machinations of hit-making.” Jagger wrote its script with author Rich Cohen (“Tough Jews”) and has taken the idea to Martin Scorsese.

“We’d hope to do that after ‘Map of Love,’ ” Pearman said, adding, “Mick and I have similar tastes. I think we’re on the right track. We waited a long time to get ‘Enigma’ done. It’s been a real labor of love.”

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The actors on “Enigma” seem impressed with Jagger. Scott recalled meeting Jagger for a talk before being offered the role. “I went there thinking, ‘What’s all this? Why is he so interested in making movies all of a sudden?’ But he turned out to be very bright, very nice and we got on well.”

Winslet also confessed doubts. “Part of me thought, ‘What made him want to produce films?’ But we all went to Bletchley Park [before shooting started], and Mick’s really into it. He gave the actors CDs he’d personally made up of music from the period. As an actor, that’s the kind of thing you’d go off and do yourself.

“He was brilliant. I was really surprised. Producers usually sort out money and make the decisions. They hardly ever have that kind of input.”

Apted wants Jagger to play a major part in supervising the music for “Enigma” and even to compose some for the film. Jagger seems likely to take that challenge in stride too; he gives the impression of a man enjoying a new role in life.

“There’s obviously huge differences and similarities between film and the music business,” he said. “In the music business, to some extent, you can do something instantly for very little money. You need half a million dollars to make an album, which is a lot, but it’s not $30 million. For a big tour, you do need $30 million, so it’s not so different. You need lots of lead time, all these heads of departments, a theme, ideas, and a lot of talent. But you have to get the best out of the talent and make sure they get on for a very long time.”

(There are no definite distribution plans yet for “Enigma.” Intermedia hopes to show the film to bidders by the end of the year, aiming for a 2001 release.)

The skills needed to be a producer and to be the Stones’ front man aren’t so different, he thinks: “You need an eye for detail, you mustn’t lose sight of the big picture you had originally, you mustn’t compromise too much for money. You have to be patient with difficult money people. The talent can be difficult and fly off the handle.”

But now he’s on the other side from the talent. “Yes, but I don’t fly off the handle. You have to be assertive about what you want, but I don’t lose my temper with people. So I don’t have that problem. I’ve found it’s too much energy-expending, really.”

Is it possible he might find film producing so engaging he would consider finally putting the Rolling Stones out to pasture? Jagger flashed his wide grin again. “No, I think we’ll be touring the Stones again quite soon. I’m sure it will happen.”