The total potential loss to the exchequer before Rossminster's activities were curtailed was eventually estimated at £362 million while the tax eventually returned (with interest) estimated at around £500 million. Tax avoidance schemes had been commonly used for years by celebrities in the entertainment world to protect their income and had been used for some years in the US to finance films. Tucker, whose interest at least initially was as much as a patron of the arts as devising tax schemes, and Boyd were among the first in the UK to provide them to finance films. The film critic and historian Alexander Walker commented that financing films in such ways became a common practice at the time but suggested that ultimately it was self-defeating because the government of the day might well have concluded that if the British film industry was so good at inventing financial self-help of this sort then it had no need of government assistance. Indeed, the "1985 Films Act", pushed through parliament by Norman Lamont, a fellow alumnus of Boyd's at Loretto School, despite all-party protest, dismantled all subsidies to the British film industry. Boyd severed his link with Tucker in 1984. Boyd moved to Hollywood in the early 1980s for a two-year period, where he worked at both Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios and produced John Schlesinger's 1981 $24 million comedy "Honky Tonk Freeway." Boyd returned to the UK in 1982 and attempted to resume his directorial career with "Gossip", which was to be a satire on celebrity life in the early Thatcher years based on an original treatment by Frances Lynn. The production ran into financial difficulties - Boyd was the victim of an elaborate fraud - and the film collapsed after just two weeks shooting. Dan North, a lecturer in Film in the Department of English at Exeter University, has chronicled "Gossip" in "Sights Unseen: Unfinished British Films" edited by North. Stephen Fry was given his first job in film by Boyd as a script rewriter for "Gossip" and its story is recounted by him in "". Fry is supportive of Boyd in his book  In 1987 Boyd produced the multi-directorial opera film "Aria" which featured segments by Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, Bill Bryden, Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jarman, Franc Roddam, Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell, Charles Sturridge and Julien Temple. It was the closing night film, nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987, featured at numerous other major festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival and enjoyed multiple successful worldwide theatrical release.