The compliance department of a large investment bank is not where you’d expect to find an aspiring screenwriter, and yet Alexander Cooper, who recently joined the complaints and advisory team at HSBC, is hopeful that his idea will be picked up by a Hollywood bigwig.
Cooper joined HSBC three months ago, having previously worked at Goldman Sachs in the City, but his true passion lies in the movie industry. He has been attempting to drum up interest for his film Sandow – loosely based on real-life Victorian strongman, Eugen Sandow, who started the world’s first body-building competition – and has secured parts as a supporting actor in films like The Greatest Living Englishman and The Imitation Game, a film based on the cracking of the Enigma code during World War II, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch and is due to be released in 2014.
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“I have a passion for film, and I’m convinced that the Sandow idea is a good one, but I’m still feeling my way around Hollywood and haven’t made the right connections yet,” he tells us. “I’ve told a few people at HSBC about the idea and they’re supportive, but I only bring it up if people ask – not everyone’s interested.”
Investment banks are more likely to finance films than provide the talent for them – or, in the post-crisis years, provide the inspiration for the story in movies like Margin Call and Too Big to Fail – but financiers turned film-makers are not unprecedented.
Investment bankers Matthew Holt and Michael Axelgaard released horror film Hollow in 2011 after two years juggling their day jobs with writing, directing and shooting the movie. It’s a Blair Witch Project-style concept, made for just £100k, with lots of shaky ‘undiscovered’ footage that pieces together the final moments of two young couples found hanging from a spooky-looking tree in Suffolk and the “ancient evil” that drove them to suicide. It was nominated for an outstanding new cinema award at the British Independent Cinema Award, but has an average user rating of two out of five on the Rotten Tomatoes website.
“We spent every moment we had outside work burning the midnight oil,” Axelgaard told the Evening Standard in 2011. “I didn’t sleep, and I lost all my friends because every waking moment I spent working on the film.”
Axelgaard still posits himself as a film producer and director, but has maintained the day job in structured acquisition finance at ING investment bank and hasn’t been involved with any new projects since Hollow. Holt, meanwhile, has executive produced Hide and Seek, a romantic drama which is due to be released this year.
Cooper has pitched numerous ideas over the years including a horror flick called The Rectory, a ghost story inspired by spooky happenings in his childhood home, and other short stories he admits could be filmed on a shoestring. For Sandow, though, he’s aiming for a big budget production.
“I may have bitten off more than I can chew,” he admits. “But it’s just a case of finding the right backing. My brother is writing a novel on the same story, if that takes off it could generate interest – a lot of films are made about novels, aren’t they?”
If the idea sounds interesting, you can show your support for Sandow the movie here.