Johnnie Frankel: The Way I See It

Johnnie Frankel doesn’t sleep much, but that gives him more time to watch TV box sets and think about work. As president of multi award-winning production company Rattling Stick, which he co-founded with Ringan Ledwidge and Daniel Kleinman, he’s rather busy. Still producing for Kleinman, he’s worked on such triumphs as the Cannes Grand Prix-winning Guinness noitulovE. Before that he was busy working at RSA, Paul Weiland’s, Blink and, even earlier, as a tennis coach in Durham. He talks candidly to Carol Cooper about being unbusy at school, Ledwidge’s controversial Christmas ad for Sainsbury’s, the importance of being nice and his musings on his manhood…

I was born 7 April 1964, in Battersea, South London, and for the first 10 years of my life lived right by Battersea Park.

My earliest memory is from when I was about five. My mum gave me a glass of orange juice because I had a bad tummy ache (not sure how the juice would have helped, but hey, this was the 60s). I drank the juice and then threw it straight back up over my mum. She called the doctor who took one look at me and whizzed me off to hospital. Turned out I had a burst appendix (the doctor wasn’t sure I would make it).

My dad was a dentist until he was about 55 when he switched careers and became a restaurateur (that’s a long story). My mum was an admin officer at the French Lycée in South Kensington. I was one of four children – an older sister and two younger brothers. As the oldest boy my position within the pack was pretty strong.

I don’t remember a huge amount about my childhood, but my parents assure me that I was a very happy child who didn’t cry or make a fuss – which is weird because now I cry at pretty much any available opportunity, I’ll come to that later.

I had my one and only fight walking back from school one day with a friend who got picked on by two boys. I went to help him and got a shoeing from the two kids. My mate fucked off and left me. I learnt a valuable lesson that day: if a friend is getting picked on, pretend not to notice and jog on.

When I was 10 we moved from Battersea to just off Kensington High Street. Kensington Market (now a PC World) was my main hangout as a teenager – it provided an excellent, diverse social education. School was a mixed bag: Hill House for a year (rust-coloured knickerbockers, gold-coloured T-shirt and jumper with a gold/brown cravat – a strong look for an 11 year old). On to a Surrey boarding school for a year, no idea why my parents thought that was a good idea, as it wasn’t. And then City of London from 13 to 17. Holidays were spent in a Wiltshire holiday cottage. We didn’t travel to sexy world destinations like we do today, but it was great.

I had no aspirations or ambition as a child. I very much lived in the present, and still do. When I was at school I didn’t even know there was such as thing as a producer or director or production companies or even an advertising industry (I think the careers advisor forgot to mention any of those as choices), so when I left aged 17, I was a bit lost.

I’ve had a couple of nicknames: Rubber Johnnie at school, I still laugh about that one; and then later in life, Johnnie Romance, which I may have come up with myself – it stuck and didn’t do me much harm!

I didn’t really like school (the learning bit anyway). I wasn’t stupid, but I was lazy. I didn’t put the effort in and, as I found out later in life, putting the effort in is pretty essential. I only scraped two O-levels and was asked not to come back to do A-levels. That was like being expelled, only slightly less edgy. 

As a punishment for my failure, my parents sent me off to southern Spain to take part in a student/tennis program. It was amazing. I re-took and passed my O-levels and also passed a tennis-coaching exam. I then went to work at a tennis centre in North East England, helping to run the place and teach tennis to juniors.

Thanks to my dad’s dental nurse, Rosie, I leapt from working as a tennis coach to working in film as projectionist and dubbing mixer. Rosie’s friend Lyn managed Cine-Lingual Sound Studios in Soho and was looking for an assistant. In my interview Lyn asked me if I knew what a dubbing studio did and I said, “Is it like when they sing on Top Of The Pops but they aren’t really singing?” She said that was close enough and gave me the job.

When I was working at Twickenham Sound Studios as a second assistant dubbing mixer I got to meet some pretty amazing people: Richard Attenborough (hands down the nicest man that I ever had the good fortune to work with); Franco Zeffirelli (hands down the most sensitive man I ever had the good fortune to work with); Bernardo Bertolucci, Mel Gibson, John Cleese and a mad American/Belgian yogic director called Armondo Linus Acosta, who directed a film version of Romeo And Juliet that was played entirely by feral cats, except for John Hurt, who played a crazy bag lady – true story.

I ended up working on commercials when I found out a friend who was an editor at Daniels Garland Walter, which specialised in the editing of commercials, needed an assistant. After a job interview involving four pints and a slap-up meal at the Rasa Sayang he gave me the job.

I have nothing but incredibly fond memories of everywhere I have worked. I went from DGW to RSA, which was an amazing training ground. Back then, in the 90s, it was run by Jo Godman who was notorious for being a hard taskmaster, but if you did your job well you were well looked after. I knew virtually nothing about production but had a brilliant, patient teacher in Pauline Hurst, the best producer I have ever known. Moving from there to Paul Weiland’s (after a brief stint working at my dad’s restaurants) I had Mary Francis as my boss, another hard taskmaster but very much in the same vein as Jo Godman. These were two of the best training grounds for production, so to have back-to-back jobs at both was unbelievable.

In the early days of my career, I was very very driven, very keen to succeed. I genuinely enjoyed my job so much that it was easy to work hard. (‘Work hard, play hard’ was Jo Godman’s motto. I followed it like a religion – still do.)

If I wasn’t a producer and could be equally successful in another profession I would be a triangalist (the person who plays the triangle in a massive orchestra).

The best piece of advertising work I’ve seen is John West Salmon Bear. Annoyingly, Danny [Kleinman] directed it before I joined him, but when I got offered the job I thought I can’t believe I am going to be producing for the bloke who directed that ad!

I have been involved with many amazing projects in my career, but if I had to pick a favourite I think it would be Guinness noitulovE.  It’s an amazing demonstration of how a really simple idea, brilliantly executed, can produce a stunning end product. Up until the last month of the production (it took around a year to make) we were using a track by Groove Armada called Purple Haze. Then someone suggested we look at some alternative music and Peter Raeburn at Soundtree Music came up with Rhythm Of Life and said he could make it work if he had a bit of time to edit the track and fit it to the pictures. The rest is history. There is no denying the significant impact that track had on the ad and it shows how important the right music can be.

I think the most significant change that has affected the ad industry since the 90s is the way in which brands can now advertise. When I started there was TV or cinema, posters or print. That was pretty much it. The internet has changed our lives irreversibly and clients now want to use every available platform to reach as many as possible.

When I left Blink [producing for Dominic Murphy] to join Spectre in 2001, one of the reasons – apart from the fantastic opportunity of working with Daniel Kleinman – was to cut down on the foreign travel, as my first child, Molly, had been born. Working with Dominic was amazing, but we were both young(ish) and relatively free to do what we wanted. This meant long shoots abroad and that was going to be hard to maintain with a wife and baby at home. I was also looking for a bit of stability in my life.

When Rattling Stick launched in 2006 we decided we wanted to keep the company small, with the quality big. We have 14 directors now and a key consideration for us is our ability to nurture and build their careers. We are all very closely involved with each director and that takes a huge amount of time so we all think very carefully before taking on anyone new. We’ve made some very difficult decisions and had to pass on some great talent in the past. But between Katie [Keith, ‘First Lady’], Andy Orrick (our ‘Chief of Stuff’) and myself, we do look at every reel sent to us.

The controversy surrounding Sainsbury’s Christmas Is For Sharing is a good thing in my opinion. The worst thing you can do is produce an ad that no one has anything to say about. It’s much better to court debate (especially on the sort of scale that this ad has) than to leave people with nothing to say. It’s stimulated conversation around the moral limits of advertising, but equally it has helped engage a whole new generation of Gogglebox-X-Factor viewers in the narrative of the war – just read Twitter! We had no end of emails from schools who wanted more information or to use the film in lessons and assemblies.

When I read The Guardian’s criticism of the ad [“The film-makers here have done something to the First World War which is perhaps the most dangerous and disrespectful act of all: they have made it beautiful.”] it did send a shiver down my spine. However, on further reflection, I don’t agree. It’s a closing statement designed to shock and while the ad is beautifully crafted, I don’t come away with the feeling that WW1 was beautiful and I don’t think many others do either, but bravo to the journalist for writing a cracking end line.

My feeling is that complaints about the Christmas Is For Sharing ad could have been fuelled by some of the media’s slightly cynical view of supermarket brands. I think consumers on the whole liked the ad. On YouTube (which we know never lies) the ‘likes’ are around 88,000 to just under 3,000 dislikes. The media needs to generate stories for people to read. Writing “I think the Sainsbury’s Christmas ad is jolly good” is not a great line. Whereas, “Sainsbury’s kidnap WW1 for their own evil gain” is far more likely to create a buzz. It’s the journalists’ job and they are very good at it. Ultimately it goes back to creating a controversial piece of work that hopefully stimulates interesting debate, and this ad did that in spades.

Creatively, 2014 was fantastic at Rattling Stick. We were runners-up to Academy as Campaign’s Production Company of the Year and at Christmas we had Andy McLeod’s #WinChristmas for Mulberry, Ringan’s Sainsbury’s, Ivan Bird’s Walk Throughfor Sky Movies, David Edward’s Found It for Debenhams and Pete Riski’s Let It Go for Vodafone, which all did really well. Financially it is tough out there. Budgets are shrinking and clients are wanting more for their buck than ever. I think one of the reasons why we have done well is that as a small company with small overheads, none of our directors are pressured into doing work they don’t find creatively stimulating. They get to pick and choose with very little pressure from above which can only be a good thing. Also it doesn’t hurt that our core philosophy is to always try and work hard, be nice, collaborate wherever possible and not just focus on the bottom line (but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?)

Awards matter if you win and don’t if you don’t. Of course it is nice to win an award, and particularly when you get Production Company of the Year [as Rattling Stick was voted by Campaign in 2013, British Arrows in 2012], as this is less about one person and more about a company. What is interesting to me is how the work is viewed and perceived and how much debate it stimulates, not whether a jury of your peers feel it is worthy of their seal of approval.

Radiator was Rattling Stick’s first feature. When Danny’s friend Mel Agace came to us with the script, we loved it and felt privileged to be asked to help. Features are something that we want to continue to develop at RS. It was a nice surprise to find out that Barbara Broccoli was involved, as we know her well from the Bond titles that Danny has done for the past 20 years.

In terms of brands I’d like to work on, Volvo Trucks comes to mind. Van Damme’s Epic Split is one of my all-time favourites.

If I name the directors I would like to work with, will their MDs think I am trying to send out a message? Good. Dougal Wilson, Tim Godsall, Chris Palmer, Frank Budgen and Steven Spielberg.

I’m obsessed with TV. The first box set I ever bought was The West Wing. It was when I was in Australia shooting Johnnie Walker Fish. I’d go to bed and within an hour or two (due to brutal jet lag) be wide awake. I saw the entire series on that trip and was hooked. These days I mostly like crime, specifically Scandinavian crime – The Killing, The Bridge, Wallander are all good, as are the French shows Braquo and Spiral. But they can get a bit dark so I like to sprinkle a bit of humour in there, too – 30 Rock, Modern Family, Community and Arrested Development. Also a special mention to [UK TV series] Peaky Blinders, which is trying to show the Americans we can do period TV that isn’t as mundane as Downton Abbey. And it has splendid suits, too!

There are two excellent pieces of advice I have been given: never say no (unless it’s to your 10-year-old daughter asking for her 21st [chocolate] After Eight in under five minutes); and be nice. It costs nothing to be nice and you will find people will go the extra mile if you are.

I would advise anyone with aspirations to work as a producer that the most important thing is your work ethic. If you are the first in and last out and spend your day trying to help others you will go far. Enthusiasm is also key. If you don’t love what you do, find something else.

The worst day of my career was shooting an Olympus ad with Frank Budgen that starred Naomi Campbell. I had only just started producing and was completely out of my depth.  Frank’s day tends to start at around 5pm and Naomi Campbell tends to turn up when she likes and is not what I would call a team player. The result was a horrific shoot that very nearly took me out of the industry.

The best day of my career was perhaps when Richard Attenborough took my face in his hands and told me not to worry when my name didn’t appear on the rough end credit sequence on the film Cry Freedom and that it would definitely be there for the finished version. I went to see it with my family and when the credit came up it read ‘assistant dubbing mixer – Jonathan Frankel’. It was possibly the longest credit in cinema history and took up pretty much the whole screen.

I think achieving both artistic merit and success for the brand are equally important.  Everyone wants to make an ad that receives creative accolades, but there is also a huge amount of satisfaction to be had from knowing that you helped create a positive vibe around a specific brand. If you treat your audience as humans rather than consumers, which great advertising always has, then everyone wins.

I manage a balance between work and family life very badly. If I spend too much time at work then I feel guilty that I am neglecting my family and vice versa.

My biggest fear is that my kids [aged 10 and 13] will never leave home.

I last cried when (spoiler alert) the monkey died in the film Night At The Museum 3. My family take a huge amount of joy over the fact that I basically cry at everything.

My greatest weakness is consuming a Wispa bar and bottle of pinot noir in front of River Monsters [wildlife documentary series]. It’s also my idea of heaven.

The closest I’ve ever been to death was the aforementioned burst appendix. Also, at the end of my first term at my school in Spain when I was 17. We went out and played drinking games and on the way home I fell asleep while driving my motorbike. I drove off the edge of the road and came to in a dry riverbed under a bridge. Another yard or two and I would have hit the bridge and that would not have ended well.

I Googled myself a while back, can’t remember why, and found that a picture that I had completely forgotten about (of me) had made it on to the ginger beard coalition website, amazing. 

The best day of my personal life was the day I married my wife Samantha. The worst was the day my friend Piers died. I used to go fishing with him and since he died I haven’t been as much. When I do go, I think of him – a positive thing as my memories are many and fond.

My heroes are Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard, Franco Zola and Jeremy Wade [the presenter of River Monsters].

If I could time travel I would travel to the roaring 20s. It looks like fun and I love the clothes the men wore then.

I have pondered long and hard about what makes me the most angry and after lying in bed all last night unable to sleep, I think the answer is insomnia.

I do care what people think about me, because I don’t like the idea of people not liking me – who does? But then again there is no way in the world that everyone is going to like me, so to those who don’t, fuck you.

If I was the UK prime minister for a day I would breakfast at The Wolseley [café on Piccadilly], lunch at Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons [Raymond Blanc’s Oxford eaterie] and dine at The Fat Duck [Heston Blumenthal’s Berkshire restaurant].

I am not particularly ambitious. I would love to look back on my life and think that I did everything as well as I could – that would be my ambition.

I would like to be remembered as loud, gregarious, funny, irreverent, kind.

Am I an introvert or an extrovert? Introvert.

If I could change one thing about myself – I’d really like a smaller willy.

At the end of the day, what really matters is family. Before Christmas I was away working in the US. Schedule changes and bad weather made it unlikely I’d be back in time for my ten-year-old daughter Scarlett’s dance show. I did everything to try to get home and with a huge effort involving many people I made it straight from the airport to the show just as her dance started. It was a miracle. Neither Scarlett or Molly (my older daughter) knew I was going to be there and the looks on their faces when they saw me will stay with me forever. If you could bottle that and put it on a shelf I would love to make the ad to help sell it.