Perhaps deep down at the bottom of the pond lies a soft, squelchy Alan Parker, but the impression conveyed is that inside the hard-as-nails Hollywood director is his previous incarnation, a hard-as-nails commercials director and inside the hard-as-nails commercials director is a hard-as-nails adver-tising copywriter who started work at 18 and has always regretted never having gone to university. For when I tell him it’s a lovely film, and that we laughed like drains during the preview, he replies: “Saw it with journalists, did you? They never like to laugh It gives the game away. They might have enjoyedit.”But for all the growling, Parker still feels a need to impress. It is not a matter of baroque, exotic boasts, but just flat, sad, little factual inserts: “You know all the films of this summer, I was offered most of them to do…”: or “I think that it’s very foolish to say or think that you could never improve on what you already did.”He slips in: “Over this film, when they write about it – there will be a thousand things written – there are a thousand critics and they will all be writing.” And should just one of those thousand critics write a bad review, Parker will still feel stung.For Parker is touchy about criticism Being a bit hard, he chips easily.For hard he is.

And at the end of the day, you still have to be a normal human being – that’s a tricky adjustment for anybody.”When I interview Parker, the damning reviews of his film are not yet published. He has just been in Germany, and the following day he is to face the American critics – thousands of them, he says, flying in from every corner of the States Maybe he has some inkling of the attack that is to come. You know, there are 70 people on the set all looking at me for whatever I want at that moment in time And, er, it is a very powerful position. That’s for sure.But I was kind of lucky on this one, it wasn’t so much that way, you know, I mean…” He pauses. “I think `bully’ is a bad word, there must be a nicer word for someone who’s strong.”Later he admits, “I have always said that film directing is a crash course in megalomania. The camera operator – he’s done seven films with him, and the film editor, they go back together 20 years.

And then he lists others who have been on similarly long sentences with Parker: the production designer, costume designer, make-up, hair…”I’m very, very strong in what I want done, and maybe I don’t tolerate people who aren’t doing their job well enough. “It’s not a fair criticism.” And then he goes on: How could it be true? After all, they are all still with him. Because afterwards, you are charm itself, putting your arm round shoulders, giving off gravelly laughs, sending your colleagues those slightly wobbly cartoons that you doodle duringbreaks. So when the next film comes round, of course they come back for more.”Who did you hear that from? Who told you that?”Sorry, can’t say.”Tell me.”No.”Well,” he barks. You make wonderful films, but you shout at people, you humiliate them publicly.

It’s blood and tears and graft and grey hairs on your sets, and people swear they will never make another film with you But then they do. Even an Alan Parker, it seems, wants to be liked.But that is a hard task Consider the enemies and all their bad-mouthing For you are a bully, Alan Parker. He puffs at cigarettes, he stares at his moccasins, he grins, he follows the cues to his own jokes and laughs. He is not himself a great performer – he won’t waste his energies unduly on an interview – but when he warms up he takes the troubleto tell funny stories: for example, the television interviewer who had “Jim” written on the sole of his shoe and, when Parker talked, waved his foot at him to ensure he called him by his first name You can see he couldbe an agreeable drinking companion. There he is 1992in Nigel Dempster’s Daily Mail diary: Alan Parker’s wife Annie, to whom he had been married for 26 years, is filing a divorce suit naming Parker’s young assistant, Lisa Moran There are wrangles over money.