Michael Sarne has had a multifaceted career as a director, actor and even a pop singer and managed along the way to direct one of the most notorious films of all time: Myra Breckinridge (1970). Needless to say, he's had a fascinating career and I jumped at the chance to interview him. Born in 1940 in London, Sarne spent most of the early 1960s singing and had a British pop hit with the novelty tune “Come Outside,” with assistance from Wendy Richard; during this period, Sarne also worked intermittently as a TV quiz show host. Sarne pretty much knew everyone who was part of the scene that became known as “Swinging London” and soon he was moving in the inner circles of the entertainment business. Sarne has also directed a number of television commercials, done film criticism for various cinema journals – such as Sight and Sound – and continues to moonlight as a pop singer in his spare time, in addition to numerous acting gigs. Through a series of chance encounters, blind luck, coupled with shrewd calculation, Sarne was soon directing the lavish Technicolor musical Joanna (1968) and then parlayed that into a contract with Twentieth Century Fox in Hollywood. Since then, he's been involved in a variety of other projects, but let him tell it in this interview from 30 April 2011, arranged by Jill Reading of the BFI.

WHEELER WINSTON DIXON: Well, I’ve been looking over all of your credits and it seems as if you did just about everything at one point or another in your career, so I’m just going to basically touch on a lot of that. First off, you were born Michael Scheuer on 6 August 1940 in London?

MICHAEL SARNE: Yes.

DIXON: I was intrigued by the 1962 pop record you made, “Come Outside,” as one of your early ventures into show business; you were about 21 or 22 at the time.

SARNE: That was produced by Robert Stigwood. A lot of my bios say that it was produced by Joe Meek, the guy who did the instrumental hit “Telstar” with The Tornadoes, but it isn't so. I did meet Joe a couple of times and I made a record called “Just Like Eddie” with him, which didn't chart. Joe and Stigwood were going through a little breakup at that time.