Little White Lies: Director Interview

Posted by Mark in Movies & TV | 0 comments

I’m not a massive film buff – that’s more Sean’s domain – but this black comedy has really grabbed by the scruff of the neck and moved me! I stumbled upon it after a few friends recommended it to me. Sure, I knew I would be au fait with the plot built around a Welsh, working-class family coming to grips with their daughter having an Asian boyfriend.

After watching a few minutes I realised it was something special. That the low budget film takes place almost entirely in a typical terraced house lends even more credence to the high quality acting on show. Originally released in 2006, it’s never had the full credit it deserves, but you can currently download and watch it via Amazon for free. If this film does not both crack you up and disturb you in equal measure, your heart must be made of stone. Helen Griffin – who adapted her stage play ‘Flesh & Blood’ for the film – is just incredible as the downtrodden mother, as are both Jonny Owen as Steve, the increasingly right wing son, and Brian Hibbard playing Tony, the unemployed, ranting father. With the rise in nationalism and far right politics in this country there has never been a better time for reflection than now. I was privileged to be able to fire some questions to Caradog James, the film’s director. Hopefully they will give you an insight into the making of the film and the reasoning behind its creation.

Mark: Can you give me some background on the funding for the project?

The film was primarily funded by a Pharmacist, a Doctor and a cafe owner from Swansea. Because of our low budget the film wasn’t really finished until early 2008.

Mark: Had you seen Helen’s play ‘Flesh and Blood’ which I believe the film is based on?

No. I read the play and then spent six months with Helen helping her adapt it into a screenplay.

The writing in the play was so good that I didn’t need to see it performed – all the characters just leaped off the page and it was also very funny. I was captivated and found myself laughing out loud as I was reading it and that convinced me that it could work as a film.

Mark: Although made in 2006, the film seems even more relevant with the current upsurge in nationalism. My only concern as an outsider was that some of the characterisation was maybe stereotypical. By that I mean the long-term unemployed, layabout father, etc.

I think that now people are much more aware of the inevitable conflicts that are coming our way.  When we were putting the film together there was a complacent mood in the country – I think all the easy credit sloshing about gave a false sense of security to a lot of people. But in Swansea the writing was already on the wall – fear of immigrants and diversity was already fuelling violence and conflict. The long term layabout father may seem like a stereotype, but in Swansea it’s just the way that it is for a lot of families. Long term unemployment was, and still is, rife; and I feel that that sense of shame and the helplessness that long term unemployment brings to individuals and families is a driving force behind people joining the far right. A lot of these right wing organisations are very attractive because they take away blame and give people a sense of power. ‘It’s not your fault you can’t find a job it’s Mr Patel’s fault down the road.’ And bullying and terrorising and attacking minority communities’ gives people that have little control over their own lives a sudden rush of power that I think a lot of them find intoxicating.

It seems to me that the next decade is going to see all this and a lot worse. Personally I blame Rupert Murdoch and the gutter press – their lies and fear mongering fuel the mob. He’s only going to become more powerful and influential so I can only see things getting worse.

Mark: How did you go about casting the lead characters that are, I must say, portrayed in a staggeringly powerful way?

Helen Griffin who played the mother Karen also wrote the script. She’d only let me direct the film if I let her play the lead. It was a big decision for me because if she was terrible then the whole film would fall apart. I had a gut feeling that she could do it because of the way that she talked about the character, and the time that we spent together working on the script had given me clear sense of her intelligence and approach to characterisation. I also bought the DVD of ‘Human traffic’ and it was clear from that film that she had the technical skills needed for the role. So I just went with my gut and I’m really glad that I did because no one could have played it better.

The film was nominated for a BIFA and at the awards one of the judges, who is also a top UK casting agent, came over to me and said that Helen’s performance was one of the best she’d ever seen in a British film. She went on to win awards for her performance at several European film festivals and she won the BAFTA Cymru for best actress.

I hate the auditioning process. I never feel that you get the best out of an actor because an audition has nothing to do with the work. Some actors are great at auditions but terrible at the job – and there are many more that are terrible at auditions but wonderful actors. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the better an actor is at auditioning the less likely they are to be good film actors. Auditions are much more about theatre acting, cinema is much more about reacting and being able to tap into the moment. These qualities are impossible to judge in an audition. Filmmakers use auditions as a crutch because most film directors are terrified of actors. We could do what we wanted on this production because the budget was so low and I had brilliant and supportive producer in John Giwa-Amu. Where we could, we selected our cast by meeting them and having a chat about the role. When you meet an actor on an equal footing you get a much better sense of who they are and how clever they are. A clever actor is worth his or her weight in gold. It’s only much later in the process that you take out the script and a play around with some of the scenes to try stuff out.

Jonny Owen is a perfect example of this. I’d already seen some of his work so I knew that he was a dynamic and charismatic actor. So when we met it wasn’t an audition it was more of meeting to see if we could collaborate together. Jonny is very well read and passionate about history and politics so it was clear that he was going to bring a huge amount of depth to the role because he understood exactly who the character on the page was. I also wanted an actor with movie star looks to play the role of the son Steve – it would have been too easy to cast someone that looked like a thug. With Jonny Owen playing Steve it’s a lot harder to dismiss the character because Jonny makes him feel like someone you know and like.

Brian Hibbard was another example of this. I knew that he could act because he gave a great performance in a short film that John Giwa Amu directed called ‘Barry the Barber’. But when we met for a chat I knew that he would be perfect because he’s such clever and interesting man.

Mark: In what ways as a director can you get the best out of someone like Jonny Owen playing this kind of role? I mean, I can’t think of anyone whose own political views are more polarised than his character.

I feel that a good director collaborates with his actors. A lot of directors talk about finding a performance or ‘getting the best out’ of an actor – really it’s about working together. That’s why you try and surround yourself with clever actors because they’ll find ways to make the scenes much better than you could ever do on your own.  An actor’s main focus is the details of the scene, the director’s main focus is the overall purpose of the scene within the movie as a whole. Jonny’s great on the details. We discussed the character at length. One of the aspects of Steve’s journey that we really wanted to express was the way that his character found a new sense of power and self-respect form his involvement with the far right.  We felt that this was important because it’s true. The only way that some of these people can feel powerful is by attacking those with even less power than them. Jonny suggested that Steve’s new sense of self respect could be portrayed by his physique and clothes and so even though he hardly had any prep time he lost weight and put on a fair bit of muscle for the role. In the run up to production I think that he was in the gym at four every morning and eating as much protein as he could get his hands on.

As far as politics as concerned Jonny is as far as you can get from his character but an actor’s job isn’t to judge the people that they’re playing. Their job is to help us the audience understand the character. Everyone is a hero in their own mind and that’s the only effective way that you can approach characterisation.

Mark: Do you feel that the humour sit’s right alongside the serious subject matter?

The job of a film is to entertain, not educate. If the film wasn’t as funny as it is I wouldn’t wanted to have made it. It’s easy to make a film that rants at people, any idiot can do that. To make people laugh and have fun and then to make them cry – that’s hard. It was one of the most difficult things to achieve but from the reaction that we’ve had it was worth it.

Mark: Can you give me some in depth detail on the Amazon competition and why you have decided to enter it now four years later?

‘Little White Lies’ has never been given a fair shot at finding an audience. Those few people that have seen it have all really loved it – and it’s won a boat-load of awards against films with 20 times its budget, but getting it to a wide audience has been very difficult. The TV channels have all said that that it’s too Welsh and that if the film had been set in London then they would have bought it. I guess that Doctor Who has changed some of that prejudice since, but I still feel that there is a huge sense of snobbery from the TV channels in this country. The regions are patronised and marginalised – we’re allowed to do fantasy, but reality and art is still something that is the preserve of ‘London’ filmmakers.

Distributers discussed the idea of a limited theatrical release but decided that the film wasn’t violent or sexy enough to make any money and backed out. This is a film designed for a wide audience, it’s funny and moving and relevant and so we’ve been biding our time. I’ve been waiting for a way to get our film seen but also a way to pay back the courage and loyalty of our wonderful investors. Amazon was perfect because it’s a huge company that people trust – so we felt that people would watch a movie on the Amazon site. The trouble with other internet movie sites is that most people have never heard of them or they’re no good at long form content. Amazon has the money behind it to publicize the projects in the competition and it meant that anyone anywhere in the world could see our film if they wanted to.  We could finally find our audience.  And there was a chance that we could finally get our investors back their money.

The details of the competition are that every month they choose a best film and give it a hundred thousand dollars. The twelve films selected throughout the year are put into another competition and the winner of
the gets a million dollars. Films are selected by the number of good reviews and downloads they get. The most watched and best reviewed films go to a jury of ‘Hollywood producers’ who select the winner. The wining films are free for anyone to view on the site and they are also shown to Warner Brothers studio. Warners will buy some to be distributed, remade or turned into TV shows.

For us the biggest draw of the competition was that the film could finally be seen. So far we are the number one film on the whole site – out of two thousand projects. The reviews that we’ve had are phenomenal – it’s wonderful to read them because this is a film that has a huge emotional impact on people from all over the world. We’ve had five star reviews from Merthyr Tydfil to Moscow.

Mark: As a director do you feel there is enough in the way of accountability and redemption at the end of the film without giving too much away?

I think that there’s hope at the end of the film. I’m a hopeful person and I believe in second chances so I guess that’s where it comes from. But there’s very little in the way of accountability. I believe that most people who do terrible things and incite terrible acts of violence get away with it. I guess that that’s reflected in the ending too.

Mark: How hard is it to work within the confines of shooting almost the entire film within the setting of the house do you feel that by doing so it almost adds to the edginess and rawness?

We rented a house for a month for £700 hundred quid and told the estate agent that they had to stay away. We then turned the place into a mini film studio. We repainted all the walls and built a couple of sets upstairs including the bathroom because the real bathroom was too small to film in.

I had to stay there a couple of nights while we were filming to make sure that no one would nick the lights – which we had to leave up because our schedule was so short. So it was pretty intense to work all day filming and then go to sleep on the scummy sofa on the set and then wake up and start a new day of work.

I liked the fact that it was a real house – you see a lot of fakey camera angles when they pull out the walls of sets in bigger budget films. You also see a lot of huge homes and apartments in films because the directors want room to lay track and zoom about but often the homes could never be afforded by the characters living in them. I liked the constraints and claustrophobia of the location because it felt real and it forced me to improvise and come up with visual solutions – and I thrive on that pressure.

The biggest problem wasn’t the location it was the schedule. I think we had 16 full days of filming and that was really tough.

Mark: I can’t understand why this was not picked up by network ITV am I right that it was shown exclusively in Wales are there plans to release it to a wider audience especially with the popularity of the work of the likes of Shane Meadows?

We can’t understand it either. Everyone that sees the film loves it and I think that the performances are wonderful. I hope that now the people can see it anytime that they want for free at Amazon Studios the film will start to have an audience that the London commissioning editors refused to give it. Shane Meadows has always been protected and supported by Tessa Ross at film four. He’d be fucked without her. We’ve never had a powerful champion protecting and supporting our film. Unfortunately good work and talent isn’t enough in the film business – it’s also who you know and where you work.

Mark: Finally, thanks for bringing this film to my attention! I would like to say that it ranks right up there alongside Fish Tank as one of the most important pieces of independent film making of recent years.

That’s really wonderful to hear, thank you. I hope that people go to Amazon Studios and check it out for themselves. Even better, leave us a comment to let us know what you thought.

The Jam – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

http://studios.amazon.com/movies/447 free download