TIMES OF LONDON
Feb 2, 1995

Beggar for the idle millions;Cinema

Alexandra Frean

Three years after Leon the Pig Farmer walked off with prizes at the Venice and Edinburgh film festivals, Gary Sinyor, who wrote, co-produced and co-directed the low-budget production has still to make a penny from it.

But Sinyor remains defiant. His second film, Solitaire for 2, goes on national release next week and plans for his third and fourth productions are already well advanced.

Made on a budget of Pounds 1.5 million (ten times the budget for Leon the Pig Farmer), Solitaire for 2 is a comic love story about a man who is an expert in body language and a woman with extra-sensory perception. He, a silver-tongued control freak with a gift for seduction, is terrified of commitment. She, a bookish archaeologist, uses ESP to discover his every thought and detect his hidden desires.

The film, a kind of cross between a screwball 1930s comedy and a 1990s trip into heightened reality, stars Mark Frankel (from Leon the Pig Farmer) and Amanda Pays.

"It is all about the games people play in relationships, only he cannot really play any games because she can see straight through him," Sinyor says. "Having a character who can read minds is a way of letting the audience
explore their own anxieties."

Something of a control freak himself, Sinyor, 32, was actively involved in raising the budget for Solitaire for 2, as well as writing and directing it. Despite the enormous critical success of Leon the Pig Farmer, finding the cash was not easy. Having initially promised to bankroll the production, the distributor Miramax pulled out a year ago, leaving Sinyor to scrape around for cash in much the same way as he had to make Leon the Pig Farmer.

Sinyor's experience with his pig film serves as a cautionary tale to budding film-makers. When it was released in 1992 the film was hailed as a triumph of optimism over common financial sense. The production team raised Pounds 150,000 to cover the bare necessities of food, transport and film stock through selling shares to private investors, who put in as little as Pounds 1,000 each through a Business Expansion Scheme. The crew and actors took their payments on a deferred basis, meaning they would not get a penny until the film went into profit.

Despite rave reviews, the film was not a financial success. The investors and non-deferred creditors have only just been paid back and the Pounds 350,000 owed to cast and crew is still outstanding.

Like so many British films before it, Leon the Pig Farmer was a victim of the British cinema distribution system, a system dominated by a handful of (mostly American-owned) major players with close and virtually exclusive
links to both the main cinema chains and to the Hollywood studios. Low-budget independent producers with invisible publicity budgets often find it impossible to break into this cosy arrangement and get their work into anything other than a handful of small arthouse British cinemas.

Sinyor was on the point of abandoning his film career when he was rescued by two Manchester businessmen, who agreed to underwrite the full Pounds 1.5 million.

He hopes, however, not to have to face the same funding struggle again, now that he has been taken under the protective wing of the visual entertainment and media company Chrysalis.

Sinyor is now part of a stable of young talent Chrysalis has signed up over the past year or so in return for a slice of the profit on anything they make. Although not a Chrysalis employee in the conventional sense, Sinyor now receives a "salary" from the company as well as office space and administrative back-up. "They have no editorial input to the projects I develop, but they get a percentage of each film I make and get their development money back in the budget," he says.

"It's a very nice position to be in from my point of view, because most producers just sit around all day getting paranoid and wondering which commissioning editor they will have to go begging to for money. I do not
necessarily have to do that now."

ARIZONA REPUBLIC
June 5, 1996 Wednesday, Final Chaser

SECTION: LIFE; Pg. C5
REINCARNATED 'KINDRED'?

Compiled from reports from the New York Daily News and Hollywood Reporter.

Fox's sexy vampire drama  "Kindred: The Embraced"  may find life after cancellation.

Boosted by rabid enthusiasm from cyberfans, creator and executive producer John Leekley and Spelling Entertainment are talking to Showtime and other outlets about producing future episodes and TV movies based on the show. Fox canceled the show because of ratings rather than creative reasons.

"The fat lady hasn't sung yet," said Leekley, who has several other network deals. "Our viewers were ferociously loyal. The pile of e-mails from our Web site is 3 feet high. That translates into an awful lot of viewers for Showtime or whoever else picks up the show."

LONDON SUNDAY MAIL
June 26, 1994

Betterware chief's film deal
Paul Durman

ANDREW COHEN, who runs the Betterware home shopping group, is risking L500,000 on a new British film.

Loans from Cohen's investment firm, Andrew Lynton Holdings, have allowed writer-director Gary Sinyor to make Solitaire For 2, a romantic comedy starring Mark Frankel and Amanda Pays, which is heading for a January release.  Sinyor made a name for himself with Leon The Pig Farmer, a Jewish comedy made on a tiny budget which won awards from the Evening Standard and at the Edinburgh and Venice film festivals.

Cohen is now under-writing a scheme to raise L625,000 for the new film from private investors. Solitaire Productions is one of the first Enterprise Investment Schemes, a Government-backed initiative to encourage investment in private companies.