Speaker 1: Oh, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say, good money to see this movie.
Speaker 1: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 1: hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 3: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 1: Don it off.
Speaker 4: That's what's so interesting about monsters. Most monsters are victims.
Speaker 2: How do you do? I'm Christopher Lee.
Speaker 5: Tool, handsome, erogant, im, curious, powerful.
Speaker 1: Oh he must be scary to meet.
Speaker 2: He went from.
Speaker 4: Tiny parts in swashbuckler movies in their early fifties to
Speaker 4: working with George Lucas and working with Jackson, I mean,
Speaker 4: the most respected directors in the world.
Speaker 6: He put that in perspective with his wartime experiences and
Speaker 6: so what.
Speaker 2: It was for intise it marked him.
Speaker 6: There is some mystery attached to his work during the
Speaker 6: war and immediately after it.
Speaker 4: He was involved with a lot of sabotage and targeted assassinations.
Speaker 1: Which of course the British government doesn't know anything about it.
Speaker 6: The British film industry was in its tenith, particularly after
Speaker 6: the war, there was a great hunger to create new stars.
Speaker 2: Everyone that will always remember him is Dracula.
Speaker 6: Great things are expected of him and here he was
Speaker 6: playing monsters.
Speaker 2: It had got him recognition, but it also was the
Speaker 2: sort of thing that he could never leave behind and
Speaker 2: that so many people thought was all he could do.
Speaker 2: He said to me that he pinioned me because I
Speaker 2: had seen so many of his movies. He wanted to
Speaker 2: move on from that.
Speaker 3: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 2: I'm your host Mike White.
Speaker 3: On this episode, I'm talking with John Spira. He is
Speaker 3: the director and writer of the new film The Life
Speaker 3: and Deaths of Christopher Lee. You've heard John on the
Speaker 3: show before. Most recently he was on the Morons from
Speaker 3: Outer Space episode. You can pre order the blu ray
Speaker 3: of the Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee over at Kickstarter.
Speaker 3: I will provide a link in the show notes. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 3: this interview. John Spira, how did you get involved in
Speaker 3: this project around Christopher Late?
Speaker 2: I generate to the project. It was my idea to
Speaker 2: do the project. Original kind of conception, righty, right from
Speaker 2: the get go, from the kind of the earliest genesis
Speaker 2: of an idea came from me in a weird way.
Speaker 2: I always work with marcro Gusa Hanks stars talk about
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty on everything really, which it's so fair.
Speaker 2: The director always gets the credit the stuff, although they
Speaker 2: also get the blame, so it's all right. Bat Hank
Speaker 2: is always there from day one as well, and he's
Speaker 2: my kind of closest creative confidant as well. So we
Speaker 2: would never do a project that both of us weren't
Speaker 2: excited about. So we had just finished our last project,
Speaker 2: which was our first TV series, which was called Real Britannia,
Speaker 2: which was the modern history of British cinema in four
Speaker 2: hour long episodes. We had to do that in some
Speaker 2: about eight months. It was really ridiculous. Everything from researching, writing,
Speaker 2: the whole thing had to be done really quickly. I'm
Speaker 2: really happy with it, but we ran ourselves into the
Speaker 2: ground doing it. We were exhausted. So when it finished,
Speaker 2: he went off to the Bahamas or somewhere and I
Speaker 2: just took to the Sofia basically, and I just decided
Speaker 2: that for two weeks I was going to do absolutely nothing,
Speaker 2: like nothing. I wasn't going to look at my computer
Speaker 2: and do no work. I was just going to just
Speaker 2: exist and sleep, or I wanted to sleep and that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. I hit the sofa and I got
Speaker 2: really addicted to watching old episodes of This Is Your
Speaker 2: Life on YouTube, which that you had that in the States,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you definitely have it, like the fifties and
Speaker 2: kind of sixties, and in this country it carried on
Speaker 2: right into the kind of nineties, maybe even further. So
Speaker 2: I was just watching the episodes of that, which I
Speaker 2: found really interesting because I'm interested in biography, I'm interested
Speaker 2: in an interview, I'm interested in cultural figures, and This
Speaker 2: is Your Life for such a weird way of doing it,
Speaker 2: there's nothing quite like it. We over here we have
Speaker 2: a great radio show called Desert Island Discs, which is
Speaker 2: a great way of getting into somebody's life in a
Speaker 2: non traditional way. And I think that's what This Is
Speaker 2: Your Life does because it's not the person who it's
Speaker 2: about doesn't really get to speak the whole way through
Speaker 2: the show. It's just stuff being presented to them, and
Speaker 2: you see them put into these kind of situations where they,
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going to quite happen. So it's great.
Speaker 2: It's a really good shot. But you've probably seen the
Speaker 2: Laurel and Hardy Boris Karloff episodes really wonderful things, and
Speaker 2: the British version is hilarious because in the ages we
Speaker 2: had such bad celebrities, so plowing through those and then
Speaker 2: it came up next video Christopher Lee, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm on board for this. I would love to see this.
Speaker 2: And I'd read his autobiography a couple of years earlier,
Speaker 2: and I'd really enjoyed that. It's a really well written book,
Speaker 2: and the thing that's surprising about it is that it's
Speaker 2: written in a very self deprecating man. Now anyway, so
Speaker 2: I'd enjoyed this book, and I was very excited to
Speaker 2: see that this is your life, and it was a
Speaker 2: really kind of shocking thing to watch because actually like
Speaker 2: he was having a horrible He really was having horrible time. Actually,
Speaker 2: and when you watch it, and it's worth watching he's
Speaker 2: on YouTube. If you really look at his face, he
Speaker 2: is absolutely panic from beginning to end. He does not
Speaker 2: like it. And in fact, if you've read his book,
Speaker 2: one point they bring out like his old army friends.
Speaker 2: But actually if the researcher had done their job, they
Speaker 2: would have realized that these men bullied he was in
Speaker 2: the army, and even they come to his wife at
Speaker 2: one point, who looks furious at these men. And what
Speaker 2: really struck me was it was such a strange episode,
Speaker 2: and what was particularly strange about it was that he
Speaker 2: clearly is someone who was used to controlling his own
Speaker 2: narratives and to not be in control was deeply upsetting
Speaker 2: to him. And if you actually listen to it, there
Speaker 2: are parts where people are clapping or people are laughing,
Speaker 2: or his microphones down. But if you listen to him,
Speaker 2: like there's a bit where they bring Oliver Read out, God,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't want Oliver reed Brown this is your life,
Speaker 2: and especially eighties Oliver Read and you actually hear him
Speaker 2: telling a story. If you listen Christopher, he's kind of
Speaker 2: correcting him while he's talking. It was really weird, and
Speaker 2: I just thought, what an interesting and what a fascinating
Speaker 2: There's just something there that I was immediately structed. I
Speaker 2: watched it twice by the idea that there's something there
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure what it is, but there's something there.
Speaker 2: And very quickly after that, we were in a situation
Speaker 2: where one of the people whose funds I work or
Speaker 2: funded I worked before, basically said they were looking for
Speaker 2: a documentary about an iconic British person, and so I
Speaker 2: was immediately I was just like committed christfully and it
Speaker 2: panned out, and then when I started doing the research
Speaker 2: into it, it was all all there. He's such a heat.
Speaker 2: There are so many legends about Christophiley, and the thing
Speaker 2: that's fun about it is that the most unlikely ones
Speaker 2: are true, and the ones that people most boundy about
Speaker 2: aren't true. But he didn't ever disavow people's notions because
Speaker 2: he liked having this kind of mystique around him, this
Speaker 2: kind of air of legend around him. And as soon
Speaker 2: as you start thinking christa Lene, you actually look at
Speaker 2: the facts, look at the career. It's amazing that nobody's
Speaker 2: made a proper documentary about it before. It's ridiculous because
Speaker 2: he holds the world record for the most appearances in
Speaker 2: a film, Like he's more acting roles than anybody else,
Speaker 2: and he as the film goes into hew he had
Speaker 2: this ridiculous life before he even got into film, And
Speaker 2: then he had a film career that spanned eight decades,
Speaker 2: which started with him in uncredited roles fighting Errol Flynn
Speaker 2: and the En, died with him in Alder the Rings.
Speaker 2: No one like that.
Speaker 3: Where did the idea for the style come from? Because
Speaker 3: you do it in such an interesting way. You've got animation,
Speaker 3: computer graphics, the puppetry of course, so many different styles,
Speaker 3: but it all comes together so beautifully.
Speaker 2: I knew from the get go that he's the thing
Speaker 2: that's so fascinating when you think at Chrisopher Lee. I
Speaker 2: was the other day. I was reading something about that
Speaker 2: that condition Cymastivia, where people hear sounds and sea colors,
Speaker 2: and I was thinking about that a lot, and I
Speaker 2: was thinking that when you think about people, you almost
Speaker 2: think about them in a constant You could assign color
Speaker 2: or a feeling or a tongue, like the whole career.
Speaker 2: But actually, if you look at Christopher Lee's career and
Speaker 2: his life, it's madly the fun. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: people who just go, oh, he was dragged him in
Speaker 2: the Hammer films. And now there's a lot of people
Speaker 2: who go, oh, he was the guy in Star Wars,
Speaker 2: or he was the guy in Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2: But the truth is he had all of these amazing
Speaker 2: periods of work where he was in there. There's great
Speaker 2: British awful nineteen forties what are called quota quickies, which
Speaker 2: is that in this country for a while, cinema was subsidized,
Speaker 2: so all these film companies were making bean movies just
Speaker 2: to make money and there no care attention I into.
Speaker 2: They were just churning them out. He was in those,
Speaker 2: then he was in the Hammer films. He went to
Speaker 2: Europe and was in those crazy Mario Bava and Jess
Speaker 2: Franco films, and then in the seventies he was in
Speaker 2: Ala and Bollywood. And actually, when you look at his career,
Speaker 2: it feels more like a kind of crazy patchwork quilt.
Speaker 2: I was always going to do it so that each
Speaker 2: section felt completely distinct, and it almost felt like kind
Speaker 2: of chapters and was a very different style of a
Speaker 2: very different feeling. Because his career was so mad, I
Speaker 2: wanted the film to feel Matt and the character that
Speaker 2: people know as Christopher Lee, which I think it was
Speaker 2: interesting and we had to focus in on it when
Speaker 2: we were getting the puppet bye. It was like what
Speaker 2: Christopher le is he going to be? He was in
Speaker 2: the public eye for eight decades, and I think that
Speaker 2: the crystally that people actually most think about it is
Speaker 2: not really the dragcular one. I think it's the kind
Speaker 2: of the nineteen seventies one. Maybe he was just making
Speaker 2: more films then, or maybe it's like the scar manga
Speaker 2: kind of thing. But when you think less fully, I
Speaker 2: think you do think gray hair, dark at the sides,
Speaker 2: that kind of age. And so it was I never
Speaker 2: wanted to be straightforward ever, because I just thought it'd
Speaker 2: be boring. He's not alive, so there couldn't be a
Speaker 2: central interview in that kind of way. So my original
Speaker 2: idea for the Narration was always for it to be
Speaker 2: very strange, and I always wanted him to be back
Speaker 2: from the grave. And I always wanted to script the
Speaker 2: Narration if I was very upset, and it's a good film.
Speaker 2: But I was very upset when Mark Cousins came out
Speaker 2: with that Hitchcock film where he did the same thing.
Speaker 2: He got an impersonator and he wrote a script and
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, I'm doing that. My original kind of
Speaker 2: inspiration for how the Narration is going to be was
Speaker 2: this fantastic advert on TV here probably twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: You can see it on YouTube, and it was a
Speaker 2: very famous British comedian called Bob Munkhouse, who was a
Speaker 2: legendary comedian, you know, the old start kind of suits
Speaker 2: and kind of punchlines, and the advert comes on and
Speaker 2: it's Bob Munkhouse, but it's three years after he's died.
Speaker 2: And the advert starts he's in a graveyard and he's, hey,
Speaker 2: Bob Munkhouse here, I died three years ago. And it
Speaker 2: was really even I watched it when we started making film.
Speaker 2: Even now it really stands up. It was very early,
Speaker 2: kind of could gu CGI, kind of manipulation, and they
Speaker 2: used clips of him and they put him into the
Speaker 2: graveyard and they used an impersonator and they manipulative lips
Speaker 2: and stuff, and it was an advert about prostate cancer,
Speaker 2: about checking because that's what he died of. And he
Speaker 2: tells jokes the whole way through it, and it's really
Speaker 2: well done. And I thought that that is really what
Speaker 2: I want to do. I want that Christopher Lee from
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, who we know, the kind of very authoritatives,
Speaker 2: kind of slightly wry. I want him narrating his story
Speaker 2: from the grave. It was a very long process to
Speaker 2: get to the puppet because we did try i CGI
Speaker 2: and all of that deep fake stuff was really happening
Speaker 2: at that point, and we did some tests. We got
Speaker 2: to go in and we did some tests, but firstly
Speaker 2: it looked creepy. There's something weird about it that just
Speaker 2: didn't quite sit right. Maybe we could have iron the
Speaker 2: kinks out, but it just it didn't feel right. And
Speaker 2: then secondly, John Laddis screamed at me and just was like,
Speaker 2: you can't do that. It's disrespectful to Chris. You can't
Speaker 2: do that. And at the end of it, I was
Speaker 2: just like, okay, fight, what are our other options? And
Speaker 2: Hank was the person who suggested puppets and we looked
Speaker 2: at all kinds of different things. There's a guy here
Speaker 2: who makes these amazing paper puppets that are kind of like,
Speaker 2: very satirical looking, and he can animate animate If not animation,
Speaker 2: he puppets them live. But I made a paper might
Speaker 2: look amazing. We tried some of that, but eventually with
Speaker 2: incredible company Arch Models Studios, who do all of Wes
Speaker 2: Anderson's They did all the Isle of Dogs and that's
Speaker 2: the Fox, and they did Frank and Weeney for Tim Burton,
Speaker 2: and they are lovely people, brilliant and they love old
Speaker 2: horror films. They came on board just made that amazing marionette.
Speaker 2: I wanted it to be a patchworker styles. I wanted
Speaker 2: it to always be surprising, to always be strange, to
Speaker 2: have a very weird tone to it, and I wanted
Speaker 2: it to feel quite irreverent. I just it's just about
Speaker 2: it not being boring and as a filmmaker, but the
Speaker 2: biggest princesson I get for all of my films is
Speaker 2: how much talking heads footage I use, because I really
Speaker 2: love talking heads. It's just my favorite thing. But if
Speaker 2: I've left my own devices, usually I would make something
Speaker 2: show Up which is nine hours long talking heads of
Speaker 2: people in different languages and stuff. But I've learned over
Speaker 2: the years what the audience is like, and I've got
Speaker 2: into that and become more adventurous. And on this film
Speaker 2: where it was just like, let's pull all the stops
Speaker 2: out and let's make it really fun, and I think
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 3: Did you always have Peter Surf and a Wents in
Speaker 3: mind for the voice or he was my first choice?
Speaker 2: And the funny thing is that I'd never seen him
Speaker 2: doing Yeah, I didn't know if he could do it
Speaker 2: or not. I assume he wouldn't have taken the show
Speaker 2: if he didn't think he could, So we didn't know
Speaker 2: until he sat down and recorded with on the first day.
Speaker 2: We didn't know what the voice was going to be
Speaker 2: and made him worked on it a little bit, but
Speaker 2: it's amazing he was. Yeah, he was always always first choice,
Speaker 2: but not just because he's a great impersonator, but he
Speaker 2: also he has that voice, and he's got a deep,
Speaker 2: sonorous voice, so it just it made immediate sense to
Speaker 2: me that he would be the guy to do it.
Speaker 2: But also the thing was important actually in the film,
Speaker 2: because there's so much of the narration, was what Peter
Speaker 2: does is so different. It's not impersonations are very different
Speaker 2: and performances. He does a performance. And it's funny reading
Speaker 2: the reviews that are starting to come out now, because
Speaker 2: some people are like, it's a spot on thing. I
Speaker 2: forgot that it was if in origin it just sounded
Speaker 2: like Christopher Lee. But the truth is it's not about
Speaker 2: being technically bang on the money because impersonations always have
Speaker 2: a level of exaggeration to them. Anyone could do a
Speaker 2: Crystophery impersonation. It's not a part, but it's a joke.
Speaker 2: It's not how he actually talked. You exaggerate yourself to
Speaker 2: sound like his kind of manner. But what Peter did
Speaker 2: really was. He got the spirit of him and he
Speaker 2: got the tone right, which meant that in the more
Speaker 2: serious moments, it doesn't feel joky at all, and he's
Speaker 2: able to be funny at times, serious at times, and
Speaker 2: everything the whole spectrum in between. He was just amazing.
Speaker 2: He really was amazing, and it was fascinating like watching
Speaker 2: him work and watching him sustaining performance. I think we
Speaker 2: did four sessions with him to get it, but it's amazing.
Speaker 2: He's a hilarious as you would expect as well, like
Speaker 2: he's I don't know if you've seen his show, like
Speaker 2: you can see most of his full up on YouTube,
Speaker 2: but he's just one of the funniest people in this
Speaker 2: country any great.
Speaker 3: I know you have some of Chris h Lee's relatives
Speaker 3: in the movie. How do they feel about this documentary
Speaker 3: and maybe some of the ones that didn't appear.
Speaker 2: It's really weird making documentaries because you work really hard
Speaker 2: to get people into the studio and then you do
Speaker 2: the interviews, and the interview you form you obviously you
Speaker 2: have experienced this bit. Over the course of even just
Speaker 2: an hour, you form a relationship with somebody and it
Speaker 2: can feel like friendship as well. And it can still
Speaker 2: really deep. How are one in the film? We've not
Speaker 2: before us. I know we've actually heard back from either
Speaker 2: of them, so we sented them to watch. We don't
Speaker 2: know if they've watched it. We don't know. But that happens.
Speaker 2: That genuinely happens a lot. It's really weird, but it
Speaker 2: does the whole of real Britannia. We insued all these
Speaker 2: legendary filmmakers and they were great and I all came
Speaker 2: in and they oppened these fantastic interviews, and then when
Speaker 2: it was done, we shut the screens out to everybody. Hey,
Speaker 2: we got a couple of replies, but that was it.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. Yeah, we have just I would
Speaker 2: love to know. It'd be interesting to find out, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I just don't know yet.
Speaker 3: You talked about the Hitchcock Hitchcock documentary, which I remember
Speaker 3: seeing theatrically years and years ago. How many years have
Speaker 3: you been working on this Lee.
Speaker 2: Project that was the new the Mark Cousins one.
Speaker 3: Oh, because there was one a few years ago where
Speaker 3: they had an impersonator telling stories with Hitchcock's voice quote unquote.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, maybe I missed that. That wasn't the Hitchcock
Speaker 2: tree fo one.
Speaker 3: Now I'll have to look up the title for you,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I remember the Hitchcock impersonator was just dead
Speaker 3: eyes sounded so good.
Speaker 2: Oh I don't if it's the same film there, because
Speaker 2: the Mark Cousins one only came out. It couldn't have
Speaker 2: even been more than eighteen months at the most. But
Speaker 2: it's worth sing. It's interesting. My mother scared me when
Speaker 2: I was three months old.
Speaker 1: She said, boot.
Speaker 5: Name hit Karma. Alfred height five for six. Wait, prisoner
Speaker 5: refuses to make a statement. Here's his record nineteen forty
Speaker 5: picked up on Suspicion nineteen forty four, Notorious nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 5: Were Window nineteen fifty six, The Man who Knew too Much. Well,
Speaker 5: I ain't a good record, but I'll try to do better.
Speaker 1: Better appearing on television.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, sir, but my family was hungry. Take him away.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, sir, you've got the wrong man, and
Speaker 2: now for for his contestant.
Speaker 6: Good evening, ladies and Jaelchum, Welcome to the Alfred Hitchcock
Speaker 6: look alike conton.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because this movie you announced that Kickstarter. It feels
Speaker 3: like just a few months ago, and then boom, that
Speaker 3: in my inboxs and like, this is crazy how fast
Speaker 3: this came together.
Speaker 2: When we did the kickstarter, it was already finished. The
Speaker 2: kickstarter was to raise money put the Blu ray together
Speaker 2: because the industry is in a really weird state right now.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much you know about all the
Speaker 2: prop that's going on, but the industry has never been
Speaker 2: in as bad as state as it is this year.
Speaker 2: Everyone is suffering. I don't know anyone who's doing it
Speaker 2: right now, and us included, even if we were doing okay.
Speaker 2: The problem with him on this film is that we
Speaker 2: lost US deal quite early on. We had a US deal,
Speaker 2: it wasn't finalized and it fell through. But we'd already
Speaker 2: started making a film. We'd already sold to other territories,
Speaker 2: so we would commit it to a different film, and
Speaker 2: that has made things incredibly difficult. But we finished, the
Speaker 2: film is done. These days, it's quite hard to sell
Speaker 2: the rights to things, even though we've got physical media
Speaker 2: kind of being I don't know if it's just documentary,
Speaker 2: but there's not a lot of interest in putting stuff out.
Speaker 2: And when you do get office from companies who do
Speaker 2: Blu rays, they're usually so low that it's up. I
Speaker 2: don't want to say it's offensive, but you're not going
Speaker 2: to make any money out of it because creative accounting
Speaker 2: and all of that kind of stuff. In this industry,
Speaker 2: if you don't get money up front, you're never going
Speaker 2: to get money. That's just how it works. And that's depressing.
Speaker 2: And I knew that there was a big audience of
Speaker 2: people who would want to own this film on physical media.
Speaker 2: And I've put stuff out. I put my first time
Speaker 2: out by myself. I sell public, self released that on DVD. Yeah,
Speaker 2: me and Hanks just decided, you know what, we'll hold
Speaker 2: on to the Blu Ray rays. I want to do
Speaker 2: it ourselves. So the kickstart was about raising enough money
Speaker 2: to put together a really great Blue ray. And it's awesome.
Speaker 2: We're I think we deliver in December. But it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's you get a kind of coffin. It comes in
Speaker 2: a wooden coffin, but you get all kinds of all
Speaker 2: the things are starting to kind of come in. Now
Speaker 2: we just go up. It's just really to see that.
Speaker 2: Oh that's nice. I like that. Wow. Really, we've had
Speaker 2: so so much cool stuff. When we got blowing the
Speaker 2: dark sticker sheet.
Speaker 3: Holy cow Oh, that's awesome. The wicker Man one with
Speaker 3: the hair everywhere, I love it.
Speaker 2: Wow. And then we've got heavy metal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that kind of Batman thing with the cave
Speaker 3: that wow.
Speaker 2: If you get you can still pre order it on
Speaker 2: kicks down there, and yeah, if you get the box
Speaker 2: that you get you get boiled pourings and stickers, badgers,
Speaker 2: postcards and we the art cards the David Keene section,
Speaker 2: which we should do like the animation and yeah, all
Speaker 2: kinds of extra fun. You actually, in fact, arch Modal
Speaker 2: Studios who made the puppet, they're making a bust. You
Speaker 2: get a bust of christ Rehy based on the puppet design,
Speaker 2: and it's the only way you're going to get I
Speaker 2: think they already making pretty hundred of them. So it's
Speaker 2: a really cool book set. So that's what the Kickstars
Speaker 2: was about, was about making like a really great physical
Speaker 2: media thing for people who are like real fans rially
Speaker 2: to it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's the thing I love about your work, John, is
Speaker 3: there are some people where the packaging is fantastic and
Speaker 3: everything looks great, and then you watch the movie and
Speaker 3: you're like eh, And then there are some people where
Speaker 3: they make fantastic movies and you watch those and the
Speaker 3: package is just a plain thing with maybe a postcard inside,
Speaker 3: and you're on both sides. You're making fantastic films that
Speaker 3: always I've never seen anything of yours that doesn't look
Speaker 3: incredibly professional, and then the packaging that you do. We
Speaker 3: talked about Morons from Outer Space with the film can
Speaker 3: and the book, and I mean, every time you put
Speaker 3: out something, it's like a big deal in I love it.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate that it's As a filmmaker, it amuses me.
Speaker 2: Event but I fall between two camps, which is financially
Speaker 2: probably a shade, which is that I'm in two separate camps.
Speaker 2: I'm a film geek, and I love all of the
Speaker 2: trappings of film geekdo, but I'm also quite a serious
Speaker 2: filmmaker in terms of actually when I make films, I
Speaker 2: take it seriously and I want the intelligence and I
Speaker 2: want to have depth. The problem is that I get
Speaker 2: lumped in because I make films generally about films or
Speaker 2: about pop culture subjects, and because they're not low budget,
Speaker 2: about media budget. But I get lumped into that whole
Speaker 2: fan documentary movement. I don't want to criticize them, but
Speaker 2: they are what they are, but I'm not that. So
Speaker 2: what has happened is that the people who desperately want
Speaker 2: to see my films are a different type of film geek,
Speaker 2: and they're very disappointed because they expect to see things
Speaker 2: which are going to be very standard documentaries and which
Speaker 2: are going to be lots of anecdotes about the thing
Speaker 2: that they love. Particularly. This very much goes back to
Speaker 2: Lactually Night, sixth film I did nominally about Star Wars,
Speaker 2: and then the people who I've really made the documentary for,
Speaker 2: who are a much more traditional documentary audience, they all
Speaker 2: completely annoyed it because it looks like a fan film.
Speaker 2: The fans who are excited about it, and they watch
Speaker 2: it and they go, it's just people being really emotional
Speaker 2: and deep. And then I've got the people who would
Speaker 2: really enjoy that aspect of it, going, why would I
Speaker 2: be interested in a documentary of a Christopher Ley. I've
Speaker 2: got this very niche audience, which is basically, you like intelligent,
Speaker 2: cultured film ten really more market.
Speaker 3: Than eye length of one, and I love it.
Speaker 2: It's pretty much. The great thing actually is is that
Speaker 2: when I get to do the press, it is like
Speaker 2: people like you and people like Heath from Syria at midnight,
Speaker 2: and people who are just so act to be passionate
Speaker 2: about film beyond Woking, Star Wars, Marvel films. It's so
Speaker 2: great to talk to people like you who are into it,
Speaker 2: are bashing about it, who get it, and who have
Speaker 2: frames of reference drengthing that I'm doing. The good thing
Speaker 2: about the modern age is that the streamers need a
Speaker 2: lot of content and they don't care about reviews. They
Speaker 2: just care about hits. They just care about how many
Speaker 2: people actually click on these things. Myself does. It makes
Speaker 2: money for people, and it means that I get commissioned
Speaker 2: to make more stuff. But I don't think I have profile.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I am excited about eky stuff. So
Speaker 2: when I retain the rights to things, or when I
Speaker 2: self published books and things like that, I will always
Speaker 2: go out of my way to do just a ridiculous
Speaker 2: package and to work with great people to make great products,
Speaker 2: because that's what I want on my shelf, Like I
Speaker 2: know what a film geek wants on that shell. And this, honestly,
Speaker 2: this bluere is going to be killed. It's so much
Speaker 2: fun designing the coffin boxes and stuff with the stuff
Speaker 2: that were coming up with he is ridiculous. But it's
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 3: You mentioned Dave McKean before, but tell me more about
Speaker 3: some of these artists that you worked with to come
Speaker 3: up with these different sections.
Speaker 2: And so Dave mckey's the most famous figured he was
Speaker 2: the guy who worked with and he's most famous for
Speaker 2: working with Neil Gaiman on Sadman. He did all the
Speaker 2: covers so that for the whole run of sad Man.
Speaker 2: And he has that kind of photo realistic, air brushy
Speaker 2: kind of mad style. And he's also a filmmaker in
Speaker 2: his own right. He did Mirror Maask, which was incredible
Speaker 2: but nobody saw I don't think Luna. And he's done
Speaker 2: great album covers. He did that Counting Crows, this Desert Life,
Speaker 2: and he's just this great artist and illustrator. Well, I
Speaker 2: did my Melias book. I did Forgot Jewge Melias. I
Speaker 2: still published this kind of stuff all the time. And
Speaker 2: he bought a copy and I saw it as his name,
Speaker 2: and I was just like, oh my god, David Keina's
Speaker 2: is buying this. I sent him a message. I actually
Speaker 2: said it out loadus extra stuff. Because one of my
Speaker 2: old friends I had been and just obsessed with King
Speaker 2: and forced me to look at all the David mckein's work,
Speaker 2: and he was he sounding. He took his life, his
Speaker 2: own life, and it was a kind of a very
Speaker 2: sad thing. But I basically wrote to Dave when I
Speaker 2: had his email and just said, look, I'm sending you
Speaker 2: some extra stuff, and I'm doing this because of my
Speaker 2: friend Olie, who was obsessed with you, and I just
Speaker 2: I wanted to put his Ollie's name in front of
Speaker 2: him and do something for Olie because and Dave wrote
Speaker 2: about this, loved the email, and he basically said, if
Speaker 2: I'd known you were doing a book about Malias, I
Speaker 2: would have loved to have been involved. And if you
Speaker 2: ever have a project, which you think, I'd be interested
Speaker 2: in getting touch So with this one, I thought he
Speaker 2: might be interested in this. So we got into bunch
Speaker 2: and he was like, I am interested, but I'm really busy,
Speaker 2: and it was like, hey, don't worry, that's fine, and
Speaker 2: he said, look, I want to do something, so send
Speaker 2: me the script. Let me know all the sections are
Speaker 2: going to be animated, and I'll find something like I did,
Speaker 2: no problem whatsoever, So send him the script and basically
Speaker 2: our dream came true, which is that he loved the
Speaker 2: script and he chose the biggest animated section because he
Speaker 2: just wanted to do it in his a section about Tolkien.
Speaker 2: And he said, what are your thoughts? And I said,
Speaker 2: I have no thoughts. Do exactly what you want. You've
Speaker 2: got the script. We at least had the guide track
Speaker 2: recorded at that point. We certainly supplied in repeater's voice
Speaker 2: before he was finished, and I just said, do whatever
Speaker 2: you want. You're day fifteen. I'm not going to tell
Speaker 2: you what to do. And halfway through he sent an
Speaker 2: animatic through and we were like, we could already put
Speaker 2: the animatic in the film. It's really good. And then
Speaker 2: we saw the finished piece and it was just so incredible.
Speaker 2: And he we had no expectations. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: he would deliver, but like he went off and he
Speaker 2: did a whole studio for it, and he animated it
Speaker 2: and he filmed it and he wrote his own score
Speaker 2: for it, and it's amazing, and it uses all different starts.
Speaker 2: Just his section uses all different styles of animation, and
Speaker 2: it's probably one of one of the two big emotional
Speaker 2: moments in whole film. I don't want to give too
Speaker 2: much away, but it's about his kind of connection to Tolkien,
Speaker 2: but it's also about ill health and he just delivered
Speaker 2: disgorgeous thing, so that was amazing. The opening sequence is
Speaker 2: animated by a stop motion animated called Astrod Goldsmith periods amazing.
Speaker 2: I've known her for years. I've always wanted to work
Speaker 2: with her, so it's great to be able to just
Speaker 2: give us some work and see what she could do.
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted that in the start of Terry
Speaker 2: Gilliam and our co producer Plovie Hancock is just she's
Speaker 2: incredibly well connected with artists in general, and she found
Speaker 2: a whole load of recent graduates from Goldsmith from other
Speaker 2: art schools who are like graduates in animation. So we
Speaker 2: looked through their show reals. They're incredible because animation is
Speaker 2: moving along digital the way there's the technology is moving
Speaker 2: and with AI as well to some degree, like animation
Speaker 2: is moving so fast, and actually the younger people are
Speaker 2: the most connected to it, so even though they're not
Speaker 2: established names, the work they're turning out was stunning. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Actually were loads of people and we looked through their
Speaker 2: show reels and we chose who they were and decided
Speaker 2: what would be appropriate sections for them gave them a
Speaker 2: little bit more good so I think, but generally, if
Speaker 2: you're working with good people, at least for the first shot,
Speaker 2: you should just let let them go and show you
Speaker 2: what they can do. So, yeah, loads of different animations,
Speaker 2: loads of different little sections, and I'm just yeah, blown
Speaker 2: away by it. Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it all looked so good, and even though it
Speaker 3: is a lot of different artists, it all feels other
Speaker 3: piece and like you said, quilt that makes up his life.
Speaker 2: It's just incredible. Yeah, it was very important to me
Speaker 2: because the sectionally, his military section in particular, was going
Speaker 2: to be difficult because there's not a lot of photos
Speaker 2: even of him from that time, and it's such a
Speaker 2: significant part of his life, and this is a big
Speaker 2: important section. I grew up reading those kind of weird
Speaker 2: war comics. I'm sure you've got them versions of them
Speaker 2: in the States in this country. They were all based
Speaker 2: on World War Two. It was all kind of ego,
Speaker 2: commando and stuff. And there's this great two thousand eight
Speaker 2: artists who we've used before for a few things called
Speaker 2: Simon Colby. I just said to him, you've got to
Speaker 2: turn this story into a full comic. The fact we're
Speaker 2: going to put the comic in the box as well. Now,
Speaker 2: but we had to literally frame by frame work out
Speaker 2: how we were going to tell this entire story. He
Speaker 2: did a beautiful job with that. And then we've got
Speaker 2: this great animator called Pair who also did our title
Speaker 2: sequence where where all the crystal is getting killed in
Speaker 2: different ways. He took the comic cart and he made
Speaker 2: the whole thing kind of three D and dynamic, and
Speaker 2: that just turned out so well, because it's really scary
Speaker 2: when you're doing these edits that you have three minutes
Speaker 2: of dialogue to cover that you have to find something
Speaker 2: to feel that that could be the hardest when you've
Speaker 2: made a documentary when you know how the sausage is made.
Speaker 2: Whenever you watch documentaries on TV, you can see when
Speaker 2: filmmakers are being lazy and stuff, and you can see
Speaker 2: when they just have a random photo and they go,
Speaker 2: oh god, lest you are really slow zoom into it
Speaker 2: because we've got thirty seconds of dialogue that's got we
Speaker 2: cover it up. And it's the hardest part of documentaries.
Speaker 2: So yeah, with the animations, there was always it's always
Speaker 2: a bit scary because there was so much stuff that
Speaker 2: had to be covered. But it just turned out so well.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that in an arrogant when I
Speaker 2: have saying that because we hired people who just did
Speaker 2: an amazing job. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3: As someone who chases down interview subjects all the time,
Speaker 3: I have to compliment you, and just the caliber of
Speaker 3: interviews you were able to get for this just incredible.
Speaker 3: And to hear these stories, to hear Lander is talking
Speaker 3: about can you keep a secret?
Speaker 2: John? Like?
Speaker 3: Those kind of things just wonderful. I don't have a question.
Speaker 3: I'm just giving you a compliment.
Speaker 2: That compliment is to Hank. Hank gets the interview. That's
Speaker 2: not me at all. I knew land this anyway, so
Speaker 2: I did get Land this. But everyone else is down
Speaker 2: to Hank, and he's just really good at getting people.
Speaker 2: But we've also got at this point, we've got a
Speaker 2: body of work where even if people haven't heard of us,
Speaker 2: when we list the people who've been in our other films,
Speaker 2: people get that we're serious about it. And the other
Speaker 2: thing that we do, which a lot of lower media
Speaker 2: budget productions don't do, is we always pay people, which
Speaker 2: even if they're very rich, wealthy people, they take you seriously.
Speaker 2: If you say that is a fee, they go, okay,
Speaker 2: it's more professional. And we also we very rarely go
Speaker 2: to people's houses like it's it can be very invasive.
Speaker 2: Some people want you to go to the house, and
Speaker 2: then it's okay, fine if you're actually asking us to.
Speaker 2: But I think quite often if a low budget or
Speaker 2: load to medium budget documentary gets in touch with people,
Speaker 2: there's a kind of oh god, I don't know who
Speaker 2: these people are. I don't know if they're professional. They
Speaker 2: want to come to my house, right, So Hank is
Speaker 2: incredibly professional. He's also called Tanks Does, which he thinks
Speaker 2: is the child because people just want to talk to
Speaker 2: someone called Hanks Does and thanks a great name. People
Speaker 2: like saying Hank, so when they find out, they go, hey, Hank,
Speaker 2: And I think that's all kind of part of it.
Speaker 2: But we've also we've got a really great crew. We
Speaker 2: shoot in a really good studio which is called Studio Complex,
Speaker 2: so there are problem makeup rooms of green rooms at
Speaker 2: technical and stuff, and as soon as someone comes into
Speaker 2: one of our productions. We have a small team, but
Speaker 2: we have a friendly and professional team and they really
Speaker 2: respond it's okay, they feel comfortable if they come bit nervous.
Speaker 2: We also have a lovely female team as well, so
Speaker 2: it's not an oppressive situation for kind of women coming
Speaker 2: in as well. And my style of interviewing is very
Speaker 2: it's just not it's not aggressive. It's more kind of
Speaker 2: based on listening and responding and seeing where the interview goes.
Speaker 2: With the films, I don't I'm very open to how
Speaker 2: the film presents itself and what comes out of it.
Speaker 2: So with the interviews, I never go in with an expectation.
Speaker 2: I never go with an agenda. I have a clipboard
Speaker 2: with questions John I very rarely have to ask those questions.
Speaker 2: It's it's usually just making them comfortable enough to speak
Speaker 2: about what they want to speak about on and around
Speaker 2: the subject, and then at the end of that, you
Speaker 2: edit and you pull out, you find out what you've
Speaker 2: got to put out of that. I think we've got
Speaker 2: a good reputation within the industry and if people are nervous,
Speaker 2: we can send them copies of our films and they go, okay,
Speaker 2: it's serious for me, really, Britannia was the one I
Speaker 2: could believe when Hank that the caliber of filmmakers that
Speaker 2: were coming in every day was insane. And as a
Speaker 2: kind of a kind of film, GA kind of British
Speaker 2: film in particular, I really have to check my head
Speaker 2: because some days you're doing three interviews and you're just okay,
Speaker 2: here comes Stephen free Is, here comes Ken Loach. Oh,
Speaker 2: and we've got Terry Gillian at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: and you just have to go okay. I said, I
Speaker 2: need to put my entire personality in a box, and
Speaker 2: I need to be just professional and just engage with
Speaker 2: a professional level. But so at this point we're we're
Speaker 2: quite comfortable with that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: When it was so nice too to not hear the
Speaker 3: same stories that you hear all the time. I love
Speaker 3: the stories.
Speaker 2: I love the.
Speaker 3: Story of Peter Jack talking about how Christopher Lee was like,
Speaker 3: oh no, this is how it sounds like when you
Speaker 3: stab a man.
Speaker 7: When wormtungue rises up and comes up behind Sarimon to
Speaker 7: stab him. Of course, it was my job as director
Speaker 7: to talk to Christopher Lee and to explain to him
Speaker 7: what I wanted. So I started to go into this
Speaker 7: long explanation about what sort of sound he should make
Speaker 7: when he got stabbed.
Speaker 1: It seemed to recall that I did say to Peter
Speaker 1: have you any idea of what kind of noise happens
Speaker 1: when somebody disturbed in the back.
Speaker 2: And I said, because I do. Yeah, it's not a
Speaker 2: it's because the breath is driven out of your body.
Speaker 7: He proceeded to sort of talk about some very clandestine
Speaker 7: part of World War Two.
Speaker 2: He used to be in the British Secret Service whatever
Speaker 2: they would call the OLSS.
Speaker 7: He seemed to have expert knowledge of exactly the sort
Speaker 7: of noise that they make, and so I just sort
Speaker 7: of didn't push the subject any further. I just said, well,
Speaker 7: you obviously know what to do, Christopher, so I'm sure
Speaker 7: you'll do it great, and he did.
Speaker 3: Those are great stories, but you're getting so much more
Speaker 3: out of these folks with these tales that they're telling,
Speaker 3: and just the connection that sorry to Harbin Jackson, but
Speaker 3: the connection between Jackson and Lee just you can feel
Speaker 3: that genuineness and just how important that role was to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a couple of things going on there. I
Speaker 2: this is pro about eight years ago. I used to
Speaker 2: work at the BFI Bridge Filnesstry interviewing people and the
Speaker 2: thing that I realized really quickly is that thirsty most
Speaker 2: people have a handful of stories that they're comfortable telling,
Speaker 2: and it's very well rehearsed, and if they're in a
Speaker 2: press cycle, they also have bits that they just a
Speaker 2: lot of being interviewed with people is going onto autopilot,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure you find bad times. And the other
Speaker 2: thing I found is that at the bfi IS, I'd
Speaker 2: have to research the interviews quite quickly, and literally you
Speaker 2: watch three YouTube interviews and you go, oh, they've told
Speaker 2: the exact same stories. Yeah, which is something I'm going
Speaker 2: to you of as well, because when you're publicizing something,
Speaker 2: that's what you do. So I've always had this policy
Speaker 2: of going if the story is out there and it's
Speaker 2: on YouTube, it's still going to go in my film.
Speaker 2: There's no point at being out there because the fans
Speaker 2: who are the main people who watch it already have
Speaker 2: access to that. So I will always if they try
Speaker 2: and give me the kind of reverse stuff, I let
Speaker 2: them talk themselves out and then I just stay quiet
Speaker 2: and encouraging. And Hank always describes it as there's a
Speaker 2: moment in my interviews about half an hour here people
Speaker 2: have told all of their rehearsed stuff and they look
Speaker 2: at me as what do you want from me, well,
Speaker 2: I think they're a similaryer of sweat develops. And actually
Speaker 2: my technique is based on my experience of therapy, which
Speaker 2: is that if you give someone a comfortable, welcoming environment
Speaker 2: where they feel safe, eventually they'll get off autopilot and
Speaker 2: they'll get to a place of intimacy and I'll get
Speaker 2: to a place of something they care about, and they
Speaker 2: become much more real. And that's always what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to do in every interview. Peter Jackson one blew my
Speaker 2: mind because I firstly, I wasn't sure that there were
Speaker 2: stories that had been told, because the Lord of the
Speaker 2: Rings has been so documented, and like you say, that
Speaker 2: story about stabbing someone is that's the one that always
Speaker 2: comes out. I had the story about a canal sport.
Speaker 2: The film People, A lot of the film actually is about,
Speaker 2: if you want like thematically, what the film is about
Speaker 2: is the idea that Crystal is the ultimate kind of
Speaker 2: authoritative figure and the projection that he's given through all
Speaker 2: of his films and through his personal life is this tall, imposing, errordite, clever, confident, wealthy,
Speaker 2: prominent man. And actually the truth is when you talk
Speaker 2: to people who knew him really well. He was deeply
Speaker 2: secure and fragile, and he was also driven by a
Speaker 2: kind of unexplainable like his work ethic is something that
Speaker 2: people didn't really understand because he made a lot of
Speaker 2: really shit films, really bad. I'm not being a dick
Speaker 2: about it, like I've watched them and almost half of
Speaker 2: I think Joe Dante in the film says, almost half
Speaker 2: of Chrystal Lee's arms are completely forgetten, a complete rubbish.
Speaker 2: He was always amazing in them. He never gave a
Speaker 2: bad performance in a film ever, but he was in
Speaker 2: a lot of really bad films. And to me, that
Speaker 2: was what was always interesting, was this notion of kind
Speaker 2: of frigidity, and we got that in all of the interviews.
Speaker 2: We got to the point where they would talk about
Speaker 2: his frigidity and his insecurities, and I think Peter Jackson's
Speaker 2: were almost more surprising than anyone else's because at the
Speaker 2: point he was That's what I love is he talks
Speaker 2: about it about how he was surprised because you're bringing
Speaker 2: Christopher Lee in and you're thinking, here is this guy
Speaker 2: who is a genuine legend the cinema. We're all nervous
Speaker 2: around him, and yet he finds out very quickly that
Speaker 2: Chrystal Lee is more nervous that he was. I love it.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you a little story. In the film. We
Speaker 2: interview why Anairos, who was Crystal Lee's son. We had
Speaker 2: contacted the family early on and thanks book to Geita,
Speaker 2: to Christian's widow, and she basically said, look, we've agreed
Speaker 2: before he died. He basically said he didn't want to
Speaker 2: do interviews about him, So it's not something we're going
Speaker 2: to get involved with. But I wish you really well
Speaker 2: with it. I could tell that you guys are serious.
Speaker 2: I can tell you and make a great film. Certainly
Speaker 2: not going to tell us not to make the film.
Speaker 2: We promised not to speak to people, so we can't
Speaker 2: be involved in that way. And at one point I
Speaker 2: decided that I really wanted to cover his heavy metal face,
Speaker 2: which is something which people find it very funny. And
Speaker 2: then the film it has its funny moments, but the
Speaker 2: truth is he took it very seriously and he made
Speaker 2: a couple of very rectable albums and also appeared on
Speaker 2: a bunch of other heavy mapple artists stuff, which was
Speaker 2: really in a really good way. So I said to Hank,
Speaker 2: can you track down anyone who worked with him? And
Speaker 2: let's say we're going to introduce some people about heavy metal.
Speaker 2: And when it turned out had been he played a
Speaker 2: prominent role in his personal heavy metal projects. So Hank
Speaker 2: got in touch with him and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll be happy to come over and do an interview
Speaker 2: and I'll bring a couple of the musicians and that
Speaker 2: will be great. And two days before he came over,
Speaker 2: we were talking to our consultants, Jonathan Rigby, who's Lee's
Speaker 2: biogras and he said, how's it going, what are you
Speaker 2: up to you? What's happening? And we said we're interesting
Speaker 2: this life from his heavy metal project Wan and Ross
Speaker 2: and Rigby, well, that's his sudden look and we were
Speaker 2: like what and he was like yeah, that's specifically sound
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, he didn't tell us that,
Speaker 2: And we've paid for a flight and he's coming over. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's weird. So the night before he went for a
Speaker 2: drink with Hank and he admitted to me, so I am,
Speaker 2: but I'm here to talk about the heavy metal project,
Speaker 2: not to talk as he which and that's completely fine.
Speaker 2: So I met him the next day when we were
Speaker 2: getting ready to do the interview, I said, don't worry
Speaker 2: or just at Cavin metal stuff. So we did the interview.
Speaker 2: He was absolutely great, and in the interview he did
Speaker 2: say a few things which were not about the heavy
Speaker 2: Metal project, which will be a bit more personally. And
Speaker 2: when we finished the interview, the other two guys last
Speaker 2: and he said, listen, I really trust you, and I've
Speaker 2: talked to Christine iHome was Christaly's daughter, and we agreed
Speaker 2: that if I trusted you, I would offer you an
Speaker 2: it to you as a sonate law. So if your
Speaker 2: sound a lot, I'll do that. And I was like,
Speaker 2: that would be amazing. He said great. So we did
Speaker 2: a secondary with him and actually, when you see it
Speaker 2: in the film, the bit where I don't want to
Speaker 2: for the ending at all, but he's got tears in
Speaker 2: his eyes and in fact, everyone in the director of
Speaker 2: photography sobbing behind the camera at one point of it.
Speaker 2: And it was very emotional and he was very raw
Speaker 2: and very open, and at the end of the interview
Speaker 2: everyone had wet eyes and we gave each other a hunt.
Speaker 2: It was really nice and I said to him, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to put anything in the film that
Speaker 2: you don't want me to put in the show. I'll
Speaker 2: never do that. So anything you want to just know
Speaker 2: that you can talk to us. We won't put stuff
Speaker 2: in that you don't and who was like, that is
Speaker 2: completely fine. I think everything I said I stand by it,
Speaker 2: so I think it'll be fine. And as he was leaving,
Speaker 2: he goes, got something for you. Okay, he said before
Speaker 2: I left Spain being Christina or watching videos if you
Speaker 2: on YouTube of interviews that you've done, and we were
Speaker 2: saying you look a lot like Peter Jackson was just like, okay,
Speaker 2: thanks you I've heard that before. And he said, I
Speaker 2: want to give you something, and he opens up his
Speaker 2: bag and he gives me Peter Jackson's original crew jacket
Speaker 2: from Lord of the Rings and he was like, Peter
Speaker 2: gave this to Christopher. Obviously it wouldn't fit Christopher, but
Speaker 2: we feel it would fit you. We feel like if
Speaker 2: I had a good time, I would give it to you.
Speaker 2: So he's given me that. It's just like amazing. I
Speaker 2: don't know what to do with this. Obviously we're going
Speaker 2: to get a frame at some point and hang it
Speaker 2: somewhere in our house. But it was you really if
Speaker 2: you take this stuff seriously and you know this because
Speaker 2: you're a great interviewer, If you take it seriously and
Speaker 2: you treat people like human beings, you can really build
Speaker 2: relationships with them. And even if I've never spoken to
Speaker 2: him since, but if I saw him in the street,
Speaker 2: I would give him a hug. And I think that's
Speaker 2: true of life. I think there are people who will
Speaker 2: be your friends for life, who maybe you just spent
Speaker 2: one great night with, I had one great conversation with,
Speaker 2: but you made that connection and because of that, you
Speaker 2: will always trust those people and you always care about
Speaker 2: those people. And I think that's what I'm always striving
Speaker 2: for in every interview I do. I'm striving to make
Speaker 2: a connection which is really real and really honest and
Speaker 2: really trusting. And like I say, all the films I've made,
Speaker 2: there are people who I interviewed for one day fifteen
Speaker 2: years ago who in my first film, I interviews my
Speaker 2: friend Jamie. I had never met him before. He had
Speaker 2: been in a band. My first film was about the
Speaker 2: music scene, Nots and radio Head at super Brass, and
Speaker 2: there'd been a band that I'd love growing up called
Speaker 2: The Daisies, and they were a natural part of the story.
Speaker 2: So I've tracked down that lead singer and he said
Speaker 2: he'd give me an interview, and the interview was so
Speaker 2: good that he's now He played guitar at my wedding
Speaker 2: and he's done the music for all of my films.
Speaker 2: He's the composer. He does the score for all of
Speaker 2: my films, and his score for the Christopher Liefel is wonderful,
Speaker 2: Like the opening title music, Oh I just I love
Speaker 2: it so much, And that came out of an interview
Speaker 2: that came out of sitting down in a room for
Speaker 2: an hour and a half and having an honest connection
Speaker 2: and conversation. It can be really meaningful if you were allowed.
Speaker 3: So when did you actually like this picture?
Speaker 2: We had to deliver it. I think we locked it
Speaker 2: in January. We were supposed to. It was supposed to
Speaker 2: go about in March because Sky are the broadcaster in
Speaker 2: the UK who Stunning and they were originally going to
Speaker 2: release it in March, so we definitely delivered it in
Speaker 2: time for March, and then they decided that they actually
Speaker 2: wanted to hold onto Halloween because they loved it. And
Speaker 2: they've now bought a hold of the Crystal Relief films,
Speaker 2: so they're programming like a whole kind of season around it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think it's been locked since January. I
Speaker 2: think that's right.
Speaker 3: And then you've done some theatrical screenings already.
Speaker 2: But we had our premiere about two weeks ago here,
Speaker 2: which is amazing and the audience A Square, which is
Speaker 2: the biggest cinema in the UK, and we're about to
Speaker 2: do one at the BFI. So part of the thing
Speaker 2: that's been confusing about this film is the way that
Speaker 2: you sell films is really weird. You sell it in
Speaker 2: territories and I think there are eighty territories worldwide. If
Speaker 2: you sell a film to America, you make enough money
Speaker 2: to make the film with a really big sale, but
Speaker 2: if you send it to Hong Koret you get one
Speaker 2: thousand pounds. So it's really weird that the kind of
Speaker 2: sizes stuff. And because we lost our America deal before
Speaker 2: we finalized it, we had already sold to I think
Speaker 2: it was Spain and yeah, did NAVYA. I think they
Speaker 2: had bought it quite early on because Sky were originally
Speaker 2: I release it in March. That was where the contracts went.
Speaker 2: And the thing that's really weird as filmmakers. Is this
Speaker 2: is all done by sales agents your point, it's quite
Speaker 2: boring for your appoint a sales agents. They go out
Speaker 2: making sales, they take a commission, you go the rest
Speaker 2: of the money. But sometimes a distributor. I would have
Speaker 2: thought if I was a distributor, I would be in
Speaker 2: touch with the filmmakers. I would even for the publis policy,
Speaker 2: for interviews whatever, But some they really don't. I guess
Speaker 2: they just show it on TV or they just do
Speaker 2: what they do with it. Then you just they're not
Speaker 2: contracted to tell you anything. Once they've bought it. You
Speaker 2: can specify in the contract hold back for when it's released.
Speaker 2: So it came out in Spain without even realizing it. It
Speaker 2: was really weird. It's just one day a review appeared
Speaker 2: and it was in Spanish. It was like, oh, it's
Speaker 2: on TV in Spain and it's not going to be
Speaker 2: out in this country for like months and months. So
Speaker 2: your house had screenings. I saw that one got happened
Speaker 2: in Helsinki the other day. But it's so weird. But
Speaker 2: you just don't find out about these things. You really
Speaker 2: have to be able to let something go, but you
Speaker 2: could get really worked up. And upset about it, like
Speaker 2: the idea that you're going to have it as like
Speaker 2: a cinema release in this country or in America, and
Speaker 2: then it's already out on TV in Spain. You just
Speaker 2: have to go right. But it's so out of my
Speaker 2: hands by that point though, it's almost surreal. I don't
Speaker 2: know where it's shown. It has definitely shown its subplaces
Speaker 2: around the world, and it will show it a lot
Speaker 2: what we sold quite a lot of territories on it,
Speaker 2: apart from America. I have no idea what's going on
Speaker 2: with America. But all this stuff that's happening with the
Speaker 2: streatments right now is deffecting mid level, mid budget stuff.
Speaker 2: The middle is getting squeezed and they're still making it
Speaker 2: committed to these very expensive shows, and lord knows, if
Speaker 2: you're prepared to make a true crime documentary for twenty bucks,
Speaker 2: they will buy it. But everyone in the middle is
Speaker 2: really excluded at the moment. So I had no idea
Speaker 2: when it'll be ah in the States. It's really weird
Speaker 2: to say that, but yeah, but I've got no idea.
Speaker 2: Will we be able to buy it on Blu Rain
Speaker 2: when that's available. You can buy it right now, on
Speaker 2: Blu Ray. It will come out of December, but you
Speaker 2: can pre order it on the Kickstarle website. So if
Speaker 2: you just search Kicked out of Shirt Bristal Lee, Life
Speaker 2: and Death of Bristal Lee, it's got a pre orderble
Speaker 2: link and you can order it now and we'll send
Speaker 2: it in December anywhere in the world. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: the actual film meets will still get a chance to
Speaker 2: get hold of it.
Speaker 3: What kind of projects are you working on now?
Speaker 2: So this year has been the strangest year of my
Speaker 2: career because we are usually making something, We're usually at
Speaker 2: some level of production, and we just aren't right now.
Speaker 2: We have been pitch for a year and stuff keeps
Speaker 2: getting very close and not happening. So that's been interesting itself.
Speaker 2: We actually had a big project that we really thought
Speaker 2: was about to go ahead and at the last minute
Speaker 2: it fell through. All this stuff could still happen once
Speaker 2: you've all the pitch together and you've made a deck.
Speaker 2: It's still there and the sales agent has it ready
Speaker 2: to take people, So all this stuff could still happen,
Speaker 2: but I've think we'll step back from it because of that.
Speaker 2: And I am now we're talking about my our first
Speaker 2: drama basically, which has a Christopher Lee Link. I started
Speaker 2: my career as a screenwriter in my twenties on a
Speaker 2: very bad science fiction TV show called Links.
Speaker 3: I remember, like I watched quite a few episodes of that,
Speaker 3: the Canadian soft core science fiction show.
Speaker 2: It is great. It already was a great show. Like
Speaker 2: it was bad, but it was good. So I haven't
Speaker 2: done screenwriting for a long time. But then I realized,
Speaker 2: actually writing this film, the whole film is at screenplay.
Speaker 2: It was written, it was authored, and it was a
Speaker 2: character as well as right for a character who. Yeah,
Speaker 2: me and Hack been talking for a long time about
Speaker 2: making a move it to drama, or at least trying
Speaker 2: to make some drum and it's a really fun idea
Speaker 2: that we've got and so that's what i'm doing. About
Speaker 2: three weeks away from the first draftings finished happy with that,
Speaker 2: so I'm hoping that will happened. I'm writing a book,
Speaker 2: which I'm always writing books, although it's my first fiction book.
Speaker 2: That writes his first novel that I'm writing. So I'm
Speaker 2: keeping busy and it's quite liberating because it's not it's
Speaker 2: stuff that's almost you know, you work, you have to
Speaker 2: work to live. But I've given up on the fact
Speaker 2: that this year I'm not going to make my usual
Speaker 2: kind of salary from making a film. The good thing
Speaker 2: about making films is that once you've made a few,
Speaker 2: royalties kick in territorish new things. So it's always like
Speaker 2: little bits of money just when you're absolutely almost at
Speaker 2: the door kind of thing. But it's been really fun
Speaker 2: so far this year actually to be to the grindstone
Speaker 2: working on something with the deadline and just being a
Speaker 2: bit more creative and doing kind of following the news
Speaker 2: a little bit. To sound very pretentious, that's pretty much
Speaker 2: how my year is shaping up. But if at any
Speaker 2: moment one of our pictures actually gets picked up, we
Speaker 2: were going to production.
Speaker 3: Rid of My wife and I always talk about how
Speaker 3: Max Fancio dies and so many of the movies said
Speaker 3: He's saying, and the spectacular deaths, especially you think about
Speaker 3: ming The Merciless, right, but other great deaths as well.
Speaker 3: Can I pitch you the life and deaths of Max
Speaker 3: fancy Now?
Speaker 2: The problem with that is you definitely could, But I
Speaker 2: feel like I've just made that film, do you know
Speaker 2: what I mean? This was the first sible I've made
Speaker 2: them is just about one person. All my documentaries has
Speaker 2: been about groups of people, communities and stuff. It's really
Speaker 2: interesting to do one about one person. I feel like
Speaker 2: my response to how I would do it a film
Speaker 2: about maximums would probably be quite similar to how I
Speaker 2: just relate. So yeah, probably not, but that's a film
Speaker 2: for somebody to make. Maybe I will say on the
Speaker 2: Max Loancy that thing or the flash good most of
Speaker 2: this thing. Before he died, I make good friends with
Speaker 2: my colleges, obviously through the morals fast his connection, and
Speaker 2: he and I were working on a book when he died,
Speaker 2: and we'd actually finished it, which is a book of
Speaker 2: correspondence basically, and because we were sending each other a
Speaker 2: lot of emails, we thought it would be really interesting
Speaker 2: for me to interview him by email, but for him
Speaker 2: to be more conversational in the idea that I was
Speaker 2: a filmmaker who was essentially near the beginning of my
Speaker 2: career and he was at the end of his career.
Speaker 2: So it's very interesting compare experiences and just see what
Speaker 2: a conversation went, and also really to interview him substantially
Speaker 2: and to find out about it. Because one thing about
Speaker 2: filmmakers that people don't realize is the most interesting thing
Speaker 2: is to talk to me about the projects that didn't
Speaker 2: get made. No one ever introduced people about the projects
Speaker 2: that did John Roski's June. It's probably the great exception,
Speaker 2: but nobody interviews people about the films that didn't get made,
Speaker 2: and usually filmmakers are more passionate about those and those
Speaker 2: stories more exciting. So that reminds me that's the book,
Speaker 2: which at some point I have to put together and
Speaker 2: actually format to the shape of the book and find
Speaker 2: a way to get that in the world. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that reminded me about that.
Speaker 3: We've started to put another thing on your to do list.
Speaker 2: Well, it's fine, I'm like, I like doing things, John.
Speaker 3: It is always such a pleasure talking with you. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much for this.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mike. I was so excited that we were
Speaker 2: going to have another conversation and hit me up for
Speaker 2: other filmy things. Okay, we'll do There's many other films
Speaker 2: that we should have very in depth discussions about.
Speaker 3: I would love that. I'm working on the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five schedule, so I can stand that your way and
Speaker 3: see if anything appeals.
Speaker 2: Look, if you liked just for me, I would love
Speaker 2: to talk about return of Captain and Vincibor. Great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had Phelip Mora on the show and I
Speaker 3: be game for doing that.
Speaker 2: And I missed that one episode was that.
Speaker 3: That was communion.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's what I'll be listening to you tonight.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed, sir, Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you John, always great talking with you. Take care now.
Speaker 1: Had old cowpul Whin ride in a one, dark and
Speaker 1: windy upon a wrench. He arrested as he went along
Speaker 1: his way when all of them when somebody heard of
Speaker 1: red eyed cows. He saw a powing throw out, ragged
Speaker 1: skies and a cloudy drawl, yippy yippile.
Speaker 2: The goals.
Speaker 1: The skin, their brains were still on fire, and their
Speaker 1: horse was made of steam. Their house was black and shiny,
Speaker 1: and their hot already could feel.
Speaker 2: About.
Speaker 1: The fear went through him as they funded through the sky,
Speaker 1: for he saw the riders coming on and he heard
Speaker 1: their wrong rides. Hippie eppie ile ugos riders and the sky.
Speaker 1: Their faces got their eyes but blurred, and shirts also swie.
Speaker 1: They're riding hard to catch that herd, but they ain't
Speaker 1: cought and yet because They've got to ride forever on
Speaker 1: that range of in the sky, on horses starting fire
Speaker 1: as they ride on. Here their cry Hippie, I Yippi,
Speaker 1: I O her strives.
Speaker 2: The scar.
Speaker 1: That's the riders lop. Don't buy him. He heard one
Speaker 1: of car own name. If you want to save your
Speaker 1: soul from hell and ride no now, ray the conboy.
Speaker 2: Change your ways today or when us you will.
Speaker 1: Ride a time to can the devil's her.
Speaker 2: Across.
Speaker 1: He's at the shayf be iim be, I'll go turn
Speaker 1: name the sky all stand are skin was scar