Producer's Portrait:
Boje Buck Filmproduktion; Claus Boje - Always Different Always Boje
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"I had always wanted to produce, but I didn't know who or with whom", recalls Berlin-based producer Claus Boje whose interests also stretch to running cinemas in Berlin and Munich and owning a distribution arm Delphi Film.
"Then I saw some shorts by Detlev (Buck) and heard him announce plans to make a film following on from his time at the Academy", Boje continues. This project proved to be Buck's 1991 feature debut Karniggels and led to the founding of their joint production company Boje Buck Produktion.
This first success was then followed by other Buck films: No More Mr Nice Guy (Wir können auch anders, 1993), Jailbirds (Männerpension, 1996) and, most recently, Love Thy Neighbour (Liebe Deine Nächste, 1998) which opens in the German cinemas on Christmas Eve.
Ideal Collaboration
"Our collaboration is, as a rule, such that both sides have a so-called right of veto", Boje explains their mode of working together. "You just get on and do something and then the partner must react to this with the right of veto. It may be that they are not in agreement with the main actor or the screenplay, so then they must find a solution where both sides can agree. This is only possible if you are both basically on the same wavelength. You may have different viewpoints and argue, but the partner serves here in a way to help to formulate one's opinion more clearly. The other person is a kind of touchstone".
This autumn, Boje Buck Produktion has worked on a project which marks several firsts for the company. Sonnenallee, the directorial debut by theatre director/actor Leander Haußmann is the first German project Boje Buck has produced which didn't have Buck in the director's chair; it is also at DM 7.2 million the company's most expensive production to date; and the co-production with Ö-Film and broadcaster SAT.1 is their first ever studio-based production.
Studio Babelsberg has ploughed some DM 3 million into the building of an enormous open-air set on the Babelsberg studio lot, reconstructing part of Berlin's Sonnenallee which crossed the no-man's land of the Wall and the border fortifications for almost forty years until 1989.
The collaboration with Leander Haußmann came together after he appeared as the prison director in Buck's Jailbirds. The screenplay was worked on over the last two years by Haußmann with East German novelist Thomas Brussig (Helden wie wir) with some input from Buck, and the first day of shooting on location in Berlin was 8 September.
"The film will be released in the cinemas on 7 October 1999, the 50th anniversary of the creation of the GDR", Boje declares, "and we are hoping that this will be the film about the East per se".
The cast boasts a whole raft of "new faces" - from Alexander Scheer and Teresa Weißbach through Robert Stadtlober and David Müller to Patrick Güldenberg and Alexander Beyer - to play the young East Germans, while the adult roles are taken by older actors like Henry Hübchen, Ignaz Kirchner, Traute Hoess and Katharina Thalbach. And, naturally, producer Buck doesn't pass up the chance of appearing before the camera, either.
International Perspectives
Claus Boje isn't wanting to restrict his activities as producer to the German market, though, but is interested to spread his wings beyond Germany's borders. In fact he served as the German production partner on Polish director Maciej Deijzer's Brute (Bastard), starring Til Schweiger, Polly Walker, Pete Postlethwaite, and John Hurt, which was co-produced with Poland's Heritage Film and Douek Productions from France. Til Schweiger's performance as the central figure Brute was his first in an international production and won him a best actor award at the Polish national film festival in Gdynia.
Commenting on his experiences during Brute, Boje declares that "when I do a co-production, I want to be in the driver's seat. So, in future, I would always want to be the majority producer. And I am really mainly interested in being involved in English-language projects".
Useful background
The producer hat is not the only one Boje has to wear: his background as an exhibitor and distributor naturally comes in very handy when evaluating a project's chances with audiences because he has that all-important connection with the "grassroots": "I have a feeling for why people spend 10 or 15 Marks for a cinema ticket".
In his opinion, "the greatest changes in the German film industry in recent years have been in the exhibition sector through the appearance of the multiplexes which have tapped into potential new audiences. Naturally, on the other hand, there has been a competition of displacement. One can observe a process of concentration going on and see the formation of large chains, something that has been happening for a while in other countries like the USA, France, England or Australia. Moreover, the going public of Flebbe is a clear sign, and the investment by Greater Union in Kieft & Kieft and Hoyts in Theile shows that the German market has become interesting for international capital and private investor capital, unlike the situation a few years ago".