Chris Ball Interview in Wrekin News

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June 2018 · Issue 230 THE REGION’S FAVOURITE MAGAZINE
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Chris
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A Wellington man
at home amongst
the stars
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The Big Interview
Chris
Ball
A Wellington man
at home amongst
the stars
Richard Worton chats to Chris Ball
about his real-life journey from a
childhood in his beloved Wellington
to establishing a successful career
amongst Tinseltown’s movers
and shakers
If someone pitched to you
an idea for a film about a
boy from Shropshire who,
through a series of twists
of fate, ended up as a
Hollywood movie producer,
what would your reaction be? A bit
far-fetched, perhaps?
Then let me introduce you to
Chris Ball.
His real-life journey has taken
him from a childhood in Wellington
to establishing a successful career
amongst Tinseltown’s movers and
shakers; however, Chris is down
to earth, hugely engaging
and a man clearly proud of
and close to his roots in
Telford.
He was recently
back in the UK visiting
family, and to also
lend his support to the
Clifton Project, now
the Wellington Orbit,
which aims to breathe
new life into the former
HSBC (Midland) Bank
building. That took a
further step closer to
being realised just days
after we met, when
the board of the Clifton
Community Arts Centre Limited announced that the lease
on the building had been signed, giving the green light for
work to begin on converting it into an arts and community
space, including a cinema and a café/bistro. The cinema
will be known as ‘The Clifton Suite’, acknowledging the
former Clifton cinema in Bridge Road, which the group
had originally sought to revive.
His career credentials mean Chris is probably the ideal
person for the group to bring on board. We
sat down for a chat, perhaps no more than
a hundred yards from the Wellington
Orbit site, and I took the opportunity
to learn how he made his trans-Atlantic
transition, as well as finding out what
motivated him to become involved in
the project.
“I was born in Wellington,
the Wrekin Hospital, and all
my formative years were
spent there. I went to school
at Orleton Lane, at Wrekin
Road, then Park Junior,
and ultimately Wellington
Grammar school. I left
school in 1977 at the age
of 16 and started work at
Lloyds Bank in Telford Town
Centre, although funnily
enough I also had a job offer
from Midland Bank here on
the corner in Wellington,
where the new cinema will
be built.”
You might imagine that a young man might dream of a
career in the movies and end up working in a bank, but for
Chris it was quite the opposite:
“I’d always had an interest in finance and economics,
it was something I was intrigued by and something
I’d always wanted to do. Strangely, I’d always sat and
looked at the advertisements inside the Financial Times
and thought “wouldn’t it be wonderful to be involved in
international banking?”, and I think at some point I must
have mentioned that to someone working in Lloyds Bank.
When you’re working in Donnington or Shrewsbury you
don’t expect to get that call from head office, but that’s
what happened.”
Chris was working in Queen Square in Wolverhampton,
when he was offered a chance to work for Lloyds in the
United States. Chris and his wife Marion, who left her own
banking job at TSB in Wellington, were within a week or
two of leaving for Chicago when he was told:
“We’ve made a terrible mistake, you’re going to Los
Angeles.”
Instead of the Windy City, Chris landed in the City of
Angels – how did he feel about the change of destination?
“My story would have been very different if we had
moved to Chicago instead of Los Angeles as there is no film
business in Chicago, it would just have been a two-year
secondment to gain international banking experience”.
And that was how long ago?
“Well, we moved to Los Angeles in ’89, so it’s almost 30
years.”
Already I was struck by how much a twist of fate can
change your life; much like the Gwyneth Paltrow movie
of the same name, Chris has experienced his own ‘Sliding
Doors’ moments, when destiny takes a hand. However,
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much like a Hollywood script, success for our main
character didn’t happen overnight, and there were
some big plot twists still to come:
“I went to Lloyds in LA, and literally after maybe
two or three months Lloyds decided to sell up and
move out of the US. We finagled a secondment
from Lloyds to the people who were buying their
operations in the US, Daiwa Bank. We managed to
stay an extra two years, but I did eventually come
back.”
But not for long. Chris had established a working
relationship in LA with colleague Will Tyrer, and
from the highly successful film financing division
they established within Lloyds and Daiwa grew the
beginnings of their success.
“Will was the manager of the Lloyds LA branch
at the time, I met him on day one there. We’d been
doing film finance for a couple of years, both at
Lloyds and Daiwa, but when my secondment in the
USA ended and I had to return to Lloyds in the UK.
In the spring of ‘91 I was sitting at my desk at Lloyds
Bank in Sutton Coldfield, still quietly working on LA
film deals, when Will called and asked me to think
about leaving Lloyds in order to return to the USA
with the intention of starting of own film finance
company“.
“My wife and I had to make a big decision. After
much heart-wrenching contemplation I left Lloyds
and we returned to Los Angeles after only 4 months
back in England.”
The pair were taking a big gamble, particularly
with both having young families to support,
however the business they created, Newmarket
Capital Group, was to transform their lives.
“For both of us to leave the stability of the bank
was a big risk. We spent two very difficult years
trying to raise the money for a film finance business;
a pretty tough task, as it’s a crazy business. Finally,
in late 1993 and after perhaps twenty “Sorry, but
no“ meetings we had a meeting with a visionary
hedge fund guy in San Francisco, and after all of
five minutes he said “Yes, I’m in, I’ll do this “.
With their own company, a Beverly Hills office
and now, crucially, the financial support, Chris and
Will set about establishing themselves, building up
their business. Newmarket was originally a private
film finance company, and their first success came
with Bryan Singer’s cult classic ‘The Usual Suspects’,
a clever, character-driven crime mystery, that
ultimately garnered two Academy Awards.
“We went to Cannes, wondering “Is anyone
ever going to want to do business with us?”; there
were no film finance companies at that time, and
Chris pictured at his beloved AFC Telford United, he
watches games when he can on return to the UK. He’s
an avid follower of the club, keeping an eye on results
online and via the club’s Twitter feed.
Chris pictured outside
the front door of the
former HSBC (Midland)
Bank Building - now
the new venue for the
Wellington Orbit.
we were literally walking down the street when
two people we knew approached us and said: “can
you lend us $100,000 to secure the rights to The
Usual Suspects?” We were so excited that someone
wanted to do business with us that we loaned them
the money, they got the rights, Polygram made the
film and it went on to be this huge cult success. We
didn’t see any real upside from the film, but it was a
great way to learn. Here we were, out on our own,
and we were so happy to be repaid, like a bank, and
to get interest.”
Between 1994 and 1998 Newmarket financed
some 75 feature films, before expanding into the
production and distribution side of the business
with their own creative team on board. They
forged a reputation as champions of ‘indie’ cinema,
distributing moves such as ‘Memento’, ‘Donnie
Darko’, ‘Whale Rider’, ‘Monster’, ‘Downfall’ and
Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion Of The Christ’, with
production credits for, amongst others, director
Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Prestige’ and ‘The
Mexican’, starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts.
The Wellington Orbit
The Wellington Orbit will shortly be announcing further investment,
sponsorship and volunteering opportunities. If you’d like to know more, you can
contact them at: enquiries@theclifton.org or by visiting their stall in Wellington
Market on Saturdays between 9.00 am and 12.00 midday.
Chris estimates his involvement, whether it be
through financing, production or distribution, in
around 350 movies to date, however when pressed
to name which he was most proud to be associated
with, Chris nominated ‘Memento’. Starring Guy
Pearce and Carrie-Ann Moss, it follows a man
suffering from short-term memory loss who, as he
tries to trace his wife’s killer, is tattooed with pieces
of information he uncovers, so as not to forget
them. The film’s innovative structure and narrative
style marked Christopher Nolan out as a director
to watch, a reputation he has since cemented with
commercially successful but thought-provoking
movies like ‘Inception’, as well as three ‘Batman’
movies and 2017’s ‘Dunkirk’.
“That was one of our proudest achievements,
but fortuitous again. We’d hired this young guy to
help find and develop scripts, who was a friend of
Chris Nolan, and Chris came in with this idea for
‘Memento’, almost literally laid out on a napkin. He
was explaining the story arc, and from that we paid
him to write and develop the script.”
I wondered how he had felt when he saw his
name on the screen with an ‘Executive Producer’
credit for the first time – was it hard to take in?
“Yes, very much so. I think everyone in the film
business takes themselves way too seriously, so I
thought to myself I was very fortunate. Almost every
day I wake up and think “how did we end up here?”
And is it true that everyone in Hollywood is
trying to make it in the movie business?
“Absolutely so. Every waiter, every car mechanic
and every plumber; everybody’s got a script, and
even my doctor was a child actor, so it’s quite
remarkable, and you can’t get away from it.
That’s one of the things I enjoy about being here
(Wellington), that no-one’s in the film industry.”
With so much success, I asked Chris if he has
developed a feel for what will be a box-office
success, and is it easy to spot them?
“No, it isn’t, and I think a lot of people think they
can. You can have a great script, great director and
actors but it can be a terrible film. It is so difficult to
predict; people make all these films, they produce
them and they finance them, but the truth is that
most films lose money. We hear about the big hits,
the successes, but if you go to a film festival, to
Cannes or to Sundance, there are hundreds of films
there that will never see the light of day.”
So, for all the huge successes there have been
some failures?
“We were fortunate, a lot of those films didn’t
work out but a lot of them did. I always liken it to
the oil business; you dig wells and one or two will
spout up, and a lot of them don’t, but people only
hear about the good ones.”
Chris and his business partners eventually sold
Newmarket in 2009 to Exclusive Media Group,
becoming chairman, before then setting up Wrekin
Hill Entertainment in 2015, the name obviously a
huge nod to his Shropshire heritage.
“We set up Wrekin Hill, having done well out of
Newmarket. We’ll only do anything going forward
which we are completely passionate about, and
possibly projects that give something back. That’s
why we’ve become involved in the Clifton project. It
fits what we’ve done, and everything is right about
it for us.”
I do suppose that if you’re going into Orbit, then
who better to have on board than a man at home
amongst the stars?
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