Mosley Puffed By ‘Independent’ Film He Funded
Max Mosley will be lionised in an “independent” documentary made by a film company in which he and his wife are major shareholders, The Upsetter can reveal.
Mosley: It’s Complicated, which is billed as “unauthorised”, is expected in cinemas next month.
Actor Hugh Grant is among the fawning usual suspects to be found praising Mosley for taking on the press after a tabloid sting in 2008 exposed his predilection for sadomasochistic orgies with prostitutes.
The documentary makers were granted special access to the scandal-ridden Formula One motor racing boss turned privacy campaigner, who died of cancer aged 81 on May 23.
Yet over 95 minutes, Mosley is unchallenged about a violent racist past and support for his Nazi-sympathising parents, Sir Oswald Mosley, the British Union of Fascists leader, and Lady Diana Mitford, a friend of Adolf Hitler.
There are no critical voices in the film about the post-war period when blacks, Jews and Indians were terrorised by the racial hatred Mosley and his father incited during anti-immigration and pro-apartheid demos.
Mosley, apparently dressed as a Teddy Boy, whipped up racial hatred during the Notting Hill riots in 1958 and the following year campaigned in same area where his father gave an election speech on the exact spot that Kelso Cochrane, an immigrant from Antigua, was stabbed to death by a gang of white youths.
Also missing is any account of a now notorious election leaflet that Mosley published in 1961, which makes a direct link between “coloured immigration” and the spreading of “terrible diseases.”
Nor is Mosley asked to explain why he never unreservedly apologised for the views he claims to have abandoned overnight in 1963 – when he realised his father’s political ambitions would not succeed.
Anti-fascist organisation Hope Not Hate (formerly Searchlight) have turned far-right activists and neo-Nazis experiencing a crisis of conscience. Some have even been trusted to go back inside the movements of hate as double agents. But the first step is an apology for the things done and said and, importantly, an explanation for why the far-right attracted them in the first place.
Instead, Mosely tells Michael Shevloff, the writer, producer and director of the documentary:
“I was influenced by my parents, particularly my father, a controversial figure. But everything he did in his life, he did because he thought it would be for the benefit of other people.”
Media Diamond
Shevloff, 56, who is based in Los Angeles, produces Top Gear USA and other light entertainment shows. The Mosley documentary is his directorial debut. The British filmmaker is understood to have met Mosley when making a documentary on F1 racing drivers in 2013.
Media Diamond Limited, the company that owns rights to the Mosley documentary, was set up in 2017 with Shevloff as the only director. Unusually, he paid nothing for his controlling shares.
The company’s accounts, however, show that Mosley and his wife, Jean, are the real financial backers. Mosley met her when they were seventeen at a social function of the Union Movement, Sir Oswald’s post war fascist party.
Jean does not appear in the documentary but Mosley paid £600,000 for their shares in Media Diamond. This financial link is not declared by the documentary or in any promotion material.
Shevloff does not deny that Mosley bankrolled the documentary. He said:
“The film is unauthorised. It is completely independently conceived, created and edited. The film was shown to Max Mosley. He had no editorial input or control. The film is my portrait of his life and an account of the time that we followed him. Media Diamond is an active production company with various projects.”
Shevloff praises Mosley as “an extraordinary man” who saved “tens of thousands” of lives due to his work on car safety.
The documentary opens and closes with Mosley campaigning for better crash-proof cars in India and musing over the effect of accidents on a brown population he now wants to protect.
Shevloff denied the emphasis on India was an attempt to offset his subject’s past racism. The director said:
“Max Mosley’s road safety work began over 25 years ago, after Ayrton Senna’s death. I think it is perhaps the least known but most interesting part of his life.”
His governing role at the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and successful libel battle over the sex scandal, which eventually led to the closing of The News of the World and ended his dominance of motor sports, are the other key pillars of the documentary.
In it, Mosley says he suspects one of three unnamed F1 figures may have been behind the tabloid sting but denies a friend’s claim that he leaked a picture of Jean-Marie Baluster in Nazi uniform at the height of their feud over the sport’s leadership.
Bernie Ecclestone, Mosley’s long-term F1 business partner, gives an on screen apology for not supporting him during a FIA vote of confidence that followed the orgy scandal and reveals he told Margaret Thatcher she should give Mosley a job in her cabinet.
“He could have been an excellent prime minister for the UK but, when pushed, he thought his father’s history might have held him back. I believe, as do many prominent people, that he was wrong. We need a few more Max Mosleys in this world,” he said.
Friendly Hacks
Since winning £60,000 in damages from his privacy case against The News of the World, multi-millionaire Mosley, directly or through a family trust, has funded more than this documentary.
The neo-Mosleyite beneficiaries include: IMPRESS, an attempt at a new press regulator; Byline Media, an attempt at real journalism; and Byline contributor Brian Cathcart’s attempt to remain head of media ethics while accepting £45,000 to complete a book.
Cathcart is also a founder of the privacy pressure group Hacked Off, which has Hugh Grant on its board. The actor said of Mosley in the soon-to-be-released documentary:
“Max is an ex-barrister and brilliant at thinking tactically outside the box and fearless, ready to take on the biggest monster. I’m glad he’s my friend not my enemy.”
Mosley may be in the great dungeon in the sky, but his millions remain here for friendly hacks.
Sadly, Hacked Off has decided transparency does not extend to its donors and therefore won’t confirm (or deny) that it too has taken Maxcoin.
And so it goes.