Are Americans just simply too ignorant of history to appreciate historical films?
It wasn’t that small of a film but the company [Manhattan Pictures International] that distributed it here was very small. It was also the first film that they had. It did very well in Europe, which showed that the material did have some juice. It’s a tough one just to kind of hang out there and leave and not really do the work to interest people. On the surface, it’s pretty dry. The reviews, as a whole, were respectful and good but none of them said it was a barrel of laughs. I think it needed a bit of care in distributing it. It’s a skill to get films like Enigma, or films like Kinsey or Sideways, out to a big audience. It needs a very specialized marketing skill. I don’t think the people who did it would say different. They just didn’t have the expertise to get it out there. When a company like Miramax handles it, as they did in the UK and Europe, it really did get some traction. It’s not an easy film and there’s no point in pretending that it is. It’s never going to be a big film.
