A MODEST Dutch banker who helped revolutionise the Hollywood film industry in the 1980s is now himself the star of his very own movie.
Frans Afman passed away in 2011 but his daughter Rozemyn has made a fascinating documentary – Hollywood Banker –- that tells the story of the man dubbed 'the best known banker in the history of Hollywood’.
We see a clip of him being personally thanked by Arnold Kopelson, the producer of Platoon, as Kopelson accepts one of the seven Oscars the film won.
Rozemyn includes interviews with actors Kevin Costner and Mickey Rourke and directors Paul Verhoeven and Oliver Stone. Stone – who directed Platoon – says Afman was a 'Godsend’.
The Dutchman invented a new structure for financing that enabled film-makers to get the huge funds required to get the green light on projects, but structured the funding in such a way that the banks never lost out even if a film was a box office disaster.
Yet working for a Dutch bank and then Credit Lyonnais, Afman helped finance a host of hugely successful films, among them the Christopher Reeve Superman series, The Terminator, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Driving Miss Daisy and Basic Instinct.
Following a run of cinema screenings in Holland and Britain, the film is now out digitally and on DVD and writer/director Rozemyn – who lives in Amsterdam – is delighted with the finished product and explains how the project started.
“My father always wanted to write a memoir, but unfortunately he got terminally ill,” she says. “I was living in New York, so I moved back to Amsterdam to aid him and we had conversations and I asked him if there’s anything he wanted to do with his time.
“He said he wanted to write a book but never got the chance to do it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to write it, so I suggested we start doing interviews and see where I could take it.
“So I had 20 hours of interview footage before he passed away. I had all his archive material too – newspaper clippings and all the stuff he collected from the 80s – so it was easy to research but it did take me months.
“Then I came up with a storyline for the film and travelled to Los Angeles to meet his old colleagues. That’s how it started. I never expected all this to happen to my film. I wanted to make it to fulfil my father’s wish and to keep his spirit alive for me.
“Even if you’re not a film buff, I think you still see a beautiful story – a daughter telling her father’s story.”
She said it was great to get to hear stories about her father from stars and directors including Kevin Costner, Paul Verhoeven and Mickey Rourke – with the latter calling Afman “a classy elegant guy”.
“It made me realise that my dad was important. I was only born in 1983, so I was very young when it was all happening. The interview I did with Paul Verhoeven was the most interesting one, because he’s Dutch too and he was very emotional.
“It was interesting to hear big stars speaking so highly of my father. I was nervous when I interviewed Kevin Costner, but he was a very nice guy.”
In the film we see how Rozemyn, her parents and her three brothers would fly from their Dutch home to spend summers in a luxurious Malibu beach house with a private pool, hanging out with Dustin Hoffman’s kids and having Bruce Willis and Demi Moore as neighbours. Yet Rozemyn didn’t know what her dad’s job was – only that he always wore a business suit.
“In my 20s I started to be more curious about what he did. But he was away nine months of the year, so when you get older you think about that and now I wouldn’t give my children that kind of life.”
If it wasn’t for Afman, films like Platoon, Dances With Wolves and The Terminator wouldn’t have been made. He guaranteed Schwarzenegger’s fee for Terminator and when US financiers didn’t rush to back a Vietnam War film (Platoon) and a three-hour movie with some subtitles (Dances With Wolves), he got finance for them and they were huge hits.
In Hollywood Banker, there’s footage of Michael Douglas asking for Afman’s autograph and the banker getting name-checked at the Oscars.
“That wasn’t normal,” says Rozemyn. “It was the first time a banker ever got mentioned at the Oscars, so it was special.”
So of all the films her dad helped to finance, does she have any favourites?
“I love Platoon, Terminator 2 and Barfly. And Weekend at Bernie’s – what a classic. I must have seen that movie about 20 times.”
:: Hollywood Banker is out now on DVD, released by Bulldog Film Distribution, and on digital download.
