Hollywood pulls the plug on dream book

Feb 4 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

THE might of a Hollywood studio has destroyed the hopes and dreams of an award-winning North-East entrepreneur. Photographer Pam Ainsley had been ready to launch her book of images from the making of the Oscar-nominated film Atonement in the US when Universal Studios pulled the plug.

Pam, who runs Thornaby-based Hopes and Dreams Photography, said: “It’s absolutely devastating. Everybody all the way along had given their approval. Even Ian McEwan, who wrote the book Atonement, wished me good luck on the launch of the book.”

The beach at Redcar stood in for Dunkirk in the film, which stars Keira Knightly and James McAvoy and is nominated for seven Oscars.

Pam photographed the filming and more than 1,000 local people who worked as extras on location. She displayed the 147 photographs which make up the book at an exhibition in Redcar.

The success of that show and the reaction of those who had visited persuaded her to put the pictures together in a book called The Filming of Atonement: Local Images of Local People. After attending the premiere of the film in Los Angeles, Pam decided to launch a US version of the book, which she intended to call The Dunkirk Scenes: The Film Atonement.

She had found printers in America and a firm to do PR for the book’s US launch. She had even agreed a deal with a leading chain of booksellers, which has more than 800 branches across the US, backed by the Government’s Passport to Export scheme.

“Everything was totally in place,” she said. “But Universal said they didn’t want the film being marketed as a war film. That’s only a small part of the book. I’ve written back to impress that on them and said please will you reassess the situation.”

The UK wing of Universal has agreed that Pam, who was the runner-up in the 2007 North-East Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, can continue to sell the UK version of the book through her website and at the Teesside branch of Borders.

She said: “Universal are a big company and they know you can’t fight them.”

You can see the British version of the book at Pam’s website at www.pamainsley.co.uk