Max Carlish

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Max Carlish

Max Carlish is a British documentary filmmaker and lecturer in media studies, he was born to Jewish parents in the city of Birmingham. Carlish helped produce an Emmy and Bafta-award-winning television series about the Royal Opera House. He is most famous, however, for his attempts to produce a so-called rockumentary about Pete Doherty, singer and guitarist with The Libertines and Babyshambles. Doherty was charged with assault and blackmail of the filmmaker after Carlish sold photographs of Doherty taking heroin to Sunday newspapers.

Carlish's footage was used in a programme entitled Stalking Pete Doherty broadcast on 17 May 2005, and then again on 11 March 2006 on Channel 4. The programme focused on Carlish's obsession with Doherty more so than it did with Doherty's life, and much of the footage showed how Doherty wanted nothing to do with Carlish or his film.

"I've never heard of a journalist slash documentary maker who would so demean himself in order to get his story as Max Carlish, who made himself the clown of the Babyshambles posse as if it was an honourable tactic. Max Carlish deserved a good punch on the nose." Neil McCormick, music journalist ^[3]

"A friend of mine saw the footage of him taking heroin and thought I could sell them,” Carlish commented. “Before I knew it I was in the middle of a bidding war. I was desperate for money and by this point I had convinced myself I would never see Pete again, would never be able to complete my film." [4]

"Max on Pete on Kate, Max inside Pete up Kate". Carlish, seen here sporting the black eye he received from Doherty, was widely ridiculed as a "documentalist" [1][2]

Carlish never finished his film. Stalking Pete Doherty was produced by North One Television, who, in the words of one critic, "recognised that it was Carlish's struggle and failure to make his film that was the real story". Doherty reportedly attempted to halt the broadcast by Channel 4, on the basis that the footage taken by Carlish was in fact owned by his management company [5]

Carlish was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham where he was a keen amateur dramatist, and where at least one contemporary remembers him as energetically outspoken even at a tender age