Space Pirate Video

Well, the interview with Film4 went out on Friday, preceding the opening of the FrightFest season on the channel. They intercut me sitting in the crypt with a lot of mini-clips of the film, not spoiling much but giving a good sense of the atmosphere. I thought I came across okay, although my friend Mark (camera op on Goth Cruise, and co-tenant of our office) insisted on rewinding the clip straight afterwards (thanks to Sky+) and pinpointing the bit where I apparently looked 'actually quite insane'. Cheers for that.

In a weekend of screen appearances, I also went to see the cast and crew screening of Mark Devenport's 'Big Things', where I have a tiny role as a pissy pirate working in a fancy dress shop. It was a great turn-out for the film, especially seeing as it was on at 10am on a Sunday morning, and it was really good to see it on the big screen. Mark, for the first time since I've known him, was very nervous beforehand, but it sounded as though they got some really good audience responses. Most of the cast and crew were there, including Johnny Phillips, who is really funny as the on-again, off-again professional actor who auditions for the film-within-a-film. London-based, Johnny has been involved with filmmaking around Nottingham since he worked on Chris's 'One For The Road' as a bullying alcohol management group leader, and was around one day when I was writing the script for 'Mum & Dad'. I needed a story for dad to tell at the dinner table, and Johnny told me one about a friend of his who worked in a warehouse. The story makes it into the film, where it is told by Perry Benson - who happens to be one of Johnny's best friends, and had no idea that the story had come from him. It's like an intricate spider's web of coincidence and fate. Or something.

Also at the weekend, I did one of my periodic sweeps of charity shops in Sherwood, home of a treasure trove of Big Box Eighties VHS Tapes. This time I managed to pick up the second sequel to Psycho, 'Psycho 3' directed by Anthony Perkins himself, which I don't think I've ever seen, but which, apparently, has a plot based around 'Vertigo'..., and also a sci-fi film called 'Space Island' which I mainly bought because, although you can't see it here, it has a holographic cover! (Also, on the back it's got one of those great drawings you used to get on posters which seems to have been done by an artist with access only to the two stills of Ernest Borgnine and Antony Quinn which appear next to it
As the name implies, the film is a space version of 'Treasure Island' starring Borgnine and Quinn. It's a German and Italian co-production, directed by Antonio Margheriti (also known as Anthony M. Dawson), who also made 'Cannibal Apocalypse', 'Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye' and 'Castle of Blood'. He's got one of those great genre filmmaking careers that also includes titles like 'Hercules against Karate', 'The Unnaturals' and 'The Long Hair of Death'. (Oh, and 'Code Name: Wild Geese'...). Searching around, I found a great tribute website run by his son, which includes loads of trailers and clips.

The third purchase of the day was a real rarity - a DVD of 'Dark Shadows', the gothic Sixties American soap, produced by Dan Curtis ('The Night Stalker', 'Trilogy of Terror').
(I mean, 3 and a half hours for £2.99, that's got to be a bargain... ) I've only ever seen clips of the programme - which went out 'as live' on TV - but the story around it sounds really interesting, and it also partly feeds into another script idea I'm working on, set in New England.

Finally, and most terrifyingly, there was the one purchase I didn't make - this book: 100 per cent nightmare fuel. It's probably the most disturbing thing aimed at children I've seen since this: The Pop-up Safety Book, featuring a tiny clown with a knife and his pet raccoon. "Sleep well, kids. And don't have nightmares..."

Pissy actor

I'm not the only person who's been busy making a low-budget feature in Nottingham over the past couple of years. My friend Mark Devenport has also been working on a film, which is just nearing completion. Produced by Luke Dennis (of Anonymous Room Productions) and co-written with Tony Claasen (who also plays the lead role), Big Things is a comedy about a frustrated bike courier trying to make a low-budget feature film. Mark and his crew have been filming on and off for over two years, with a hardcore of crew, including DOP John Ross, who have stuck with the project for the duration.

Although the film involves a lot of people I know - Chris Cooke and Donna Bowyer have both done some additional camera work, Micaiah Dring (from 'Cry' and 'Mum, & Dad') plays Tony's girlfriend in the film, and Ruper Proctor (King of Short Film) and Johnny Philips, both from 'One For The Road' have parts in the film - I haven't been involved. At least, I wasn't until last week when Mark asked if I'd play a small role in one of the new scenes they're shooting for the film. Which is how I ended up dressed in a Seventies shirt and a pirate hat, as the shop assistant in a fancy dress shop for an afternoon last week. It was just a short scene, a couple of minutes long, between me and Tony. My direction from Mark was that my character was 'pissy' - he thought that was something I'd be good at. Although there was a basic outline for the scene and there were a few lines that Mark and Tony wanted to get in, it was left quite open for me and Tony to improvise the dialogue for the scene, which we managed to hone down into something workable (and hopefully funny).

I'm not an actor, although in common with most people involved in low-budget filmmaking, I've ended up appearing on screen out of necessity (or as a favour to a friend) a few times in my career. My last notable part was probably in another Mark Devenport film, 'Still Life' where I was dragged in at the last minute to play a guy auditioning for a role in a porn film. (It'd probably be wise to stress at this point that the audition was more like a job interview than anything more 'physical'). I was told to take my shirt off and put on a leather jacket, sit on a sofa and answer the questions fired at me. I decided that my character Terry Leather (a name we pulled out of nowhere, or more likely, from the fact that I was wearing the leather jacket) would be quite matter-of-fact about what he did, almost as though he considered it akin to plumbing. (Weirdly, a character with exactly the same name appears in the new film 'The Bank Job', played by Jason Statham. Probably with a shirt on.) (In the same film I also ended up being a body double for one of the lead actors, who had to go to work one day when he was needed for some scenes. I played his hands in a couple of cutaways and, with his hat on my head and a big light behind me, his shadow on the wall.)

Prior to that role, and probably the reason Mark thought I'd be up for it, I'd played the lead character in a film that I'd made called Valentine, which was all about a man tied naked to a chair. Not having made a film before (at that time), I had no idea about where to get actors from, and even less confidence about convincing somebody to take their clothes off and let me strap them to a dining chair, so I ended up doing it. (It was very tastefully done, though. Nothing to frighten the horses.) The film seemed to go well (despite the trauma of having to watch myself naked on the big screen at Broadway during one of the early Bang! film festivals), but made me certain that I didn't want to carry on acting in my own films.

In a way, although I've got no ambitions in that direction at all, I think it's good for directors to put themselves in that position (I mean acting, rather than being tied naked to a chair) - it helps to have an idea of what is going through an actor's head, at least to a small degree, when they're in front of the camera and being directed. Trying to remember your lines, stay in shot, not bash into the mike or the furniture and on top of that, be convincing, is a real job, and it's good to have that in mind when you come back to the other side of the camera.