One biopic of the late British pornography entrepreneur Paul Raymond might be worth watching – two surely seems excessive. But two are in the pipeline and Raymond will be portrayed by major talents in both. Steve Coogan is the lead in Michael Winterbottom’s version, which is backed by the broadcaster Channel 4 and is already in post-production. Tom Hiddleston (who was F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Midnight in Paris” and Loki in “Thor” and “The Avengers”) will star in “The King of Soho,” adapted from the biography written by Howard Raymond, Paul’s son, who will serve as technical advisor on the movie.
Until recently, Winterbottom’s films was to be named “The King of Soho,” but he and his producers relinquished the title last week after Howard Raymond sued for the right to use it. Raymond had trademarked the title, as the Daily Mail reported on Friday.
“I am delighted that Michael Winterbottom has agreed to change the name of his film as it was causing a huge amount of confusion in the media that two films were being made about my father under the same title,” Raymond said. “It is unfortunate that it proved necessary to have to resort to legal proceedings to bring this issue to a conclusion but I am pleased that they have had a change of heart and backed down.
I have never wanted or sought to prevent this rival production from making a film about my late father’s life.”
“Now I can’t wait to see Tom Hiddleston play my father in a film based on my book called ‘The King of Soho’ and which will be released in cinemas under the name ‘The King of Soho,’” Raymond emphasized, lest there should be any doubt. (He will also get to see the actor Matthew Beard play himself.)
“I don’t know what Michael Winterbottom will now call his film,” Raymond added. “That is now up to him.”
Winterbottom’s film, which spans some forty years in the history of Soho (London’s red-light district in the West End), co-stars Anna Friel as Jean Raymond, Paul Raymond’s wife, a nude model and choreographer; Imogen Poots as their daughter Debbie, who was in the process of taking over her father’s empire when she died of a heroin overdose at the age of 36 in 1992; and Tamsin Egerton as Fiona Richmond, the softcore actress and porn scribe who became Raymond’s girlfriend. “Little Britain”’s Matt Lucas plays the American drag queen Divine.
Although Raymond (1925 – 2008) was notorious for launching London’s first strip club, the Raymond Revuebar in 1958, and for deluging British newspaper shops with such “top shelf” porn magazines as Men Only, Razzle, Mayfair, and Escort, he made millions of pounds investing in property and real estate, particularly in Soho, in the 1970s. By the time of his death, he was estimated to have been worth £650 million, though in all likelihood he was a billionaire. Not bad for a former dance band drummer, dishwasher, and black marketeer.
Winterbottom’s movie was written by Matt Greenhalgh, who previously wrote the screenplay for “Control,” the film about Ian Curtis and Joy Division. Since Winterbottom’s “24 Hour Party People” also depicted Joy Division’s rise and Curtis’s suicide, the meeting of writer and director seems fated. One would expect their film about Raymond to be a social satire of a specific era in British sybaritism and amorality – with Debbie Raymond’s tragic death representing the fallout.
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