Snowtown Live - Q&A

On Thursday night, Revolver Entertainment marked the release of Snowtown with a screening of the film, a live Tweet-along and a Q&A with its director Justin Kurzel. Snowtown is a depiction of the real life murders that happened in the nineties in the town close to Adelaide. The film is told from the point of view of Jamie (Lucas Pittaway), an abused teen that becomes embroiled into the world of John Bunting (Daniel Henshall), an outwardly personable man who also happens to be a sadistic murderer.

The film is relentlessly tense (aided by Jed Kurzel’s outstanding score) and oppressively bleak. It is at times almost impressionistic and its use of oversaturated imagery adds to the near-dreamlike quality of the film. Whilst much of the violence is left unseen, what we do witness is so gut-wrenchingly inhumane it’s physically difficult to watch. I had to duck out for a quick breather after a particularly nasty bit involving a toenail and some pliers.

The cast of Snowtown are universally excellent and Pittaway and Henshall particularly so. Pittaway doesn’t seem to really domuch, but it’s his character’s curious passivity from which we must decide how culpable he is in the crimes the film depicts. It’s a reasonably complex performance. Henshall is perfect as the monstrous Bunting, a man able to worm his way into the lives of those he abuses and of those he would have join him in abuse with his veneer of charm.

After the screening, we were given a few moments to recover before Justin Kurzel took our questions. You can listen to the recording of the Q&A at this location. Listen out for questions from Midnight Video’s (a podcast you really should be listening to) Phil Walsh and HeyUGuys’ Adam Lowes.

You can read a Storify of my tweets from the event here.

Shawn Levy Interview

Shawn Levy may not be the biggest name in directing yet – titles under his belt include Cheaper by the Dozen, Date Night and the Night at the Museum franchise – but that could all be about to change with the release of Real Steel this autumn. An underdog sports movie (is there any other kind?) with its focus on a father-son relationship, not to mention some good old fashioned robot-on-robot fighting action, Real Steel is set to entertain the bejesus out of you. Levy was in old London town recently performing promotional duties at Empire’s Big Screen event. Being the very special internet website that we are, Blogomatic3000 was one of the lucky few granted a one-on-one interview with Levy. Here we discuss Spielberg, robots and punching bulls.

So tell us where the concept for Real Steel came from. It’s based on a Richard Matheson short story is it not?

It was a Matheson story that became a Twilight Zone episode that Matheson wrote himself. Spielberg and Dreamworks had been developing a movie version for like, seven years and they never quite cracked it and brought it to life. But they sent it to me and I felt like I had a take on how to make it and things moved very quickly from that point.

You’ve got Hugh Jackman playing a real bastard in your film. How did you get that performance out of one of the nicest men in Hollywood?

I really, really pushed him to play that asshole! I told him what I believe which is that he has such audience goodwill as an actor – I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love the guy. He gives off such inherent likability that I felt strongly that he could play it as a hard-edged bastard and not risk alienating the audience. I think that it certainly works and it’s why the third act where his character really has a catharsis works to the extent that it does, because he’s earned, he’s spent so much of his life and so much of the movie playing hard and remote and angry so when we see the softening of that, it’s very satisfying.

In the film you create the robots using not only CGI, but animatronics which was fantastic to see – how was it working with that on set?

It was really interesting, I mean really almost with incident. I have to tell you, the first time I saw Atom, the first time Dakota saw Atom, it’s like you kind of fall in love with this thing because on the one hand he’s this hulking machine but there’s a simplicity and an innocence to his design. Those inscrutable LEDs for eyes behind the mesh of his face – he was really evocative and expressive. I felt that bringing those practical machines into the movie added a lot.

Speaking of Dakota, he plays a precocious young man in the film – is he as precocious and as much of a livewire in real life?

He’s definitely not at all lippy. In the movie he is a smartass, a punk kid with a lot of attitude. In real life he is a well-raised, super polite little Canadian boy. I fear that the fame that this movie will bring to him will forever corrupt him, but I certainly hope not!

Early on in the film, one of the robots fights a bull. Now obviously it’s not real, but the fight is very visceral – I was wondering if you anticipate upsetting anyone over animal cruelty?

I can tell you that we did not have robot punch a bull in the face!

I was hoping not!

We did have a real bull for a lot of the charging shots, we had animal treatment people on set, so the bulls were treated very very kindly and any violence for fun’s sake was absolutely only done to digital creations. So far we’ve had no one offended by the bull sequence.

Obviously the scene is there to demonstrate the brutality of robot boxing and I think the scene works in that way.

That’s right. I’m sure there’ll be some backlash somewhere!

Tell us about the design of the robots. Atom has a lot of charm, but the other robots are a lot more elaborate.

We spent about four months just designing the robots and we did eighteen, nineteen of them. And the mains ones, Ambush, Atom, Zeus, Metro, Midas and Noisy Boy, we wanted each to have distinct designs and colours and personalities. And Tom Meyer, the designer, oversaw different design teams of men and women working on one robot from one another so that the whole visual approach to them would feel individuated.

I really liked Noisy Boy, I was sorry to see him get merked so early on!

I know, Noisy Boy with his shogun helmet and his striated torso – it’s a great looking bot. Little known trivia fact – the LEDs on his fists say things in Japanese like ‘pain’, ‘oblivion’, ‘the end’ ‘doom’!

One film series I’m sure Real Steel will be compared to is the Transformers franchise. Personally, I don’t like them and one of the criticisms they get is that they’re just about a load of robots hitting each other. Now your film has a load of robots hitting each other, but I really liked it! It had charm and character… Did you have Transformers in your mind when making the film?

If you live in… the world, you’re aware of Transformers! Look, I would be grateful to have fifty per cent of the success that Michael Bay’s had with his franchise so I say this with respect to that, but our movie is really, thirty per cent robot action, the rest is a straightforward father-son sports drama, so I think the balance is very different. The other thing is that you only care about the outcome of the robot fights in Real Steel because you care about the people in the corners and that’s something that’s quite different I think from the Transformers movies.

There’s the Steven Spielberg connection there as well, how was working with him?

It was a dream mentorship. The truth is, when you’re super successful, you can be selflessly generous in your advice and support. I think when you’re in the earlier years of your career and you’re scraping it trying to make it, you’re running your own race in your head and you’re worried about getting where you want to get. Steven has gotten to where no one has ever gotten and I found him to be an incredibly available, forthcoming mentor.

The film is not going to be in 3D – was this a creative decision from day one?

Yes. I knew that Transformers was going to be in 3D and we wanted to distinguish. I think that choosing to do the movie in 2D sends a message, and this was important to Steven and I, that this was a father-son action-drama, not a robot fighting movie. It certainly has qualities of robot action, but we wanted the focus to be on the people.

Finally, what’s next on your plate?

Well I’m producing a movie right now called Neighbourhood Watch with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, so that’s got me quite busy. I’ve also been working for about six months on a movie called Fantastic Voyage with James Cameron which I’m going to produce and direct and Jim will be producing that’s going to be this crazy, immersive sci-fi action movie. As such, it’s really complex and really pricey but we’ll make that if and when we get the right star.

Attack the Block Premiere Report

On Wednesday night, Joe Cornish’s aliens versus yoofs action comedy extravaganza Attack the Block had its Leicester Square Premiere. In attendance was much of the cast and crew, as well as a few of their high profile friends and collaborators. Blogomatic 3000 was at the red carpet to chat to the great and the good and to take some barely publishable photographs. First to talk to the press was Cornish’s school yard chum and weird-weekender, Louis Theroux, who was happy to talk about his old cohort. “He had a lot more direction than I did,” Theroux said. “He always knew he wanted to be a director and be in show business and he and [long-time creative partner] Adam Buxton formed a company called Joe-Ads in which they were going to release a number of films and Joe had a plan of about five films he was going to make. I loved hanging out with them and I enjoyed their company. I didn’t really have the same… I didn’t know what I was going to do. I never imagined I’d be a director or a journalist or work in documentaries. Joe had the vision though. We’re forty now, so it’s taken him more than twenty years. It’s quite surreal.”

The line of questioning led onto the content of the film itself, which for those who don’t know, involves a gang of South London teen muggers knocking the stuffing out of some extra-terrestrial terrors. Theroux was asked about his thoughts on the unlikely heroes of the film. “I always believed in taking the demonised and taking the people who were viewed as controversial and finding the humanity in them,” explained Theroux. “That’s what I like to think I’ve done as a documentary film maker. I haven’t seen Joe’s film yet, but that’s what I believe the ethos of what he’s done is. He’s a very sensitive, right-thinking kind of a person. He’s a principled and decent person who has a social conscious. He’s not a cynical person.” Theroux went on to explain the importance of the film’s setting to both himself and Cornish. “We grew up in South London. He was in Stockwell and I was in Wandsworth. Now it’s considered quite posh but it wasn’t in the seventies. We used to wander around and hang out and smoke things we weren’t supposed to smoke. It was part of our lives. I wouldn’t say we were gang members or anything like that, but we were part of the South London scene.”

Theroux then shared some of his thoughts about the controversial (to say the least) Westboro Baptist Church’s plans to picket the royal wedding. The church had been a subject of more than one of Theroux’s documentaries but Theroux was baffled by the reports. “It was surprising in so much as they said they were going to come when they know they’re not allowed to… they’re banned from entering the country so I was a bit confused by it! I don’t keep in touch with them, but my director occasionally emails them to let them know when the show is going out… They love the shows. You see an outrageous, scary, hurtful family; they see that and they’re thrilled. They feel like, ‘yeah, you try to make us look stupid and that’s great. You demonise us and try to make us look like idiots because you’re an evil person – great, thank God for that!’”

Louis then retreated back to the bar, but next-big-thing Luke Treadaway, an actor in the film and previously a star of Heartless, Clash of the Titans and Killing Bono, filled his place for a quick chat. He described the filming process and working with a host of newcomers as, “Fantastic. It was like going on set and it being the first time you’ve been on set yourself. It was fresh and exciting and like being on a playground with them but our playground was a tower block with aliens and big weed plants.” When asked whether the film was wholly scripted or part-improvised, Treadaway responded with acclaim for his director. “Joe was great, he had written an incredible script which didn’t really need any [additional improvised material] which was fantastic and so tight. We did tweak a few little things on the way, but he’d written an amazing script to begin with. I loved the experience. Coming up next I have a film I’ve just finished with Felicity Jones called Cheerful Weather for the Wedding which will be coming out at the end of the year and You Instead which comes out on the ninth of September.”

Next to talk to us was one of the film’s young stars, Leeon Jones, who plays Jerome, a member of lead character Moses’s gang in the film. Enthusiastic and clearly thrilled to be in attendance at his first premiere, Jones was a little thrown aback when asked ‘how he found’ his first filming experience: “I was at uh… say that again, how did I find it, or how was it? Oh yeah it was great! Amazing actually. I’ve seen everything in a different light, what everyone is doing [on set], a lot of work goes into it. It was amazing.” Jones then explained how he got his break. “I was on a workshop with Mayhem Company and the casting director Lucy Pardee came down. She auditioned a couple of us, then there were nine more auditions after that. It was a long process.” He was also quick to complement his director. “Working with Joe is like working with your brother. He’s one of us. He’s so fun to be around as well. He understands us and he’s so funny, so many jokes. Really good man.”

Finally, the man himself, of whom everyone has been so full of praise, arrived in for his final interview of the evening. Joe Cornish was dressed in dapper brown suit and was very pleased to talk about his film. I too can attest to his good character; though being harried by his minders, Cornish made sure everyone in our little gaggle of online reporters got to ask a question. He was first asked to what extent is Attack the Block a film version of David Cameron’s ‘hug a hoody’ catchphrase? “To no extent at all!” he responded, in droll tones familiar to any of the legion of listeners he and Adam Buxton attract on the 6 Music radio show. “My film is very empathic towards the characters in it, even though they start out doing a bad thing, it’s a movie and the story we’re telling is that that kid who started out doing a bad thing is also capable of doing a heroic thing. So if that’s his message then I agree but my movie has its own, very specific thing to say. It’s not really a political film, it’s a film about people, human beings and character, so I wouldn’t really want to get political on its arse. I would hope the film[’s message is clear]. If I could say [it myself], I wouldn’t have made the film.” Like Theroux before him, Cornish was happy to divulge his memories of South London. “I think South London is wonderful,” he said. “It’s improved massively since I was a kid. I loved it then, I love it now. I love London generally. It’s not a very exciting answer, but it’s true. It’s improved a lot. There’s less corrugated iron. Less fly posting. More restaurants and shops. I think it’s a fantastic community, not just South London, but all of London and every city in Britain where people of different walks of life live close together. When it works, I think it’s wonderful. I think the kids in Lewisham are going to enjoy the film.”

Cornish was then asked what Adam and Joe Show character and film director Ken Korda would think of Attack the Block. “I think Ken would be angry and probably confused but then that’s just another day in the life of Ken Korda!” When asked about whether he enjoyed writing for female characters in the film, Cornish paused to think. “Hmmm, that’s a provocative question. I didn’t really think about it like that. The way I approach character, gender isn’t central to my thinking. But it was wonderful working with Jodie [Whittaker], she’s a terrific actress. So yeah, it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind, I have to say.” One of the few things Cornish was unwilling to be drawn on was the design of the aliens in the film, which he wished to be left somewhat mysterious for viewers. Cornish finally managed to squeeze in my own question before he was swept away from the red carpet. I had read coverage of the film’s debut at the SXSW Festival, where there had been (thankfully unfounded) concerns that an American audience would struggle to understand the South London slang used throughout the film and wanted to know how true the rumours were that the production company was considering subtitling the film. “I don’t think it was serious. It was a rumour that went around after the screening. We’re pretty confident that English-speaking international audiences understand what’s going on in the film. We made a real effort to make the glossary of words that the kids use quite small so that even if your ear isn’t tuned to it, you can pick it up as you go along. We’re pretty confident that it’s all going to be cool.”

And cool his film certainly is. As Cornish is escorted away, my only regret, as an Adam and Joe show fan, is that I wasn’t able to ask him one final question: why wasn’t the film’s hero called Stephen?

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost Interview

Through a set of rather surreal circumstances, I find myself and three other bloggers interviewing Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, not within the plush rooms of Claridge’s Hotel, but rather inside an RV parked on the street behind it. Pegg and Frost are here to talk about Paul, their latest film, which sees them embarking on a road trip across the USA with a foul-mouthed alien in tow. Pegg and Frost were genuinely lovely people and were great interviewees, more than willing to tell us everything they could and also very, very funny.

Was Paul named after any Paul in particular?

Pegg: No. The idea was – we were just spit-balling, it was literally like, ‘What are we going to do today? The weather’s nice’ and we were like, ‘Okay, yeah, he’s an alien and what if his name’s Paul?’ and, you know, it was the most human name we could think of. There was no real rhyme or reason for it – we just wanted him to sound very naturalised. The idea was that he’d been on earth for a long time and was more human than the human protagonists

Frost: It was the first name we came up with. We never changed it, never thought about changing it.

Pegg: We were big fans of Paul Danan from Hollyoaks at the time.

Frost: And Paul Rudd.

Would you say they’re your favourite Pauls?

Pegg: My favourite Paul is Paul McCartney.

How did working with Greg Mottola differ from working with your usual collaborator Edgar Wright?

Frost: It was just different, you know? It’s like having two different wives, they’re both nice…

Pegg: They’ve got old tricks that’ll keep you happy.

Frost: Exactly.

Pegg: More hair on Edgar’s side.

Frost: Greg’s a more generous lover than Edgar, but Edgar’s a lot rougher, so it depends how drunk I am and what mood I’m in.

Pegg: They’ve both got different dynamics on set. Edgar becomes quite insular and intense when he’s on set. He’s also still fun, but Greg, I would say, is more laid back in terms of approach. We picked Greg because we wanted to make what felt like an American indie movie, with a very sophisticated special effect in it and we wanted Greg to bring what he brought to Daytrippers in particular actually, but also with Superbad, which was a comedy director directing comedy but also giving it some directorial heft behind the camera. Some directors when they’re doing comedy just point the camera at the funny people and that’s not enough. You watch a film like Raising Arizonaand you see how the camera can be funny.
There can be comedic intent behind the camera and Greg has that.

It was great to see Kristen Wiig in the film; can you tell us how she got involved?

Pegg: The Wiigles.

Frost: She’s probably the funniest person we’ve ever worked with. She has that kind of charm where she’s not sure if she’s that funny. You kind of want to hold her and have her make you laugh endlessly. That’s what she does.

Pegg: She reminded me of Julia Davis – of our own Julia Davis – because she has that – she’s supremely funny but not entirely aware of it as well, which is almost, in a way, as important, because it means that she never relaxes, she’s always striving to achieve the funny. And on set she was just – I mean we were just in love with her, you know. She’s amazing. And I’m so glad that she played Ruth because it helped us develop that character. It’s hard for guys to write women because they’re not women, so she was an extraordinary asset. And I think at the very beginning of what will be mega-stardom. If Hollywood could make sense of her, she would rule it, you know? She’d be the next Tina Fey or whatever.

Frost: Whenever she was doing her stuff and we weren’t in it, there would always be a lot of people around the monitor, watching what she does. Because sometimes it’s so small and subtle that you don’t really appreciate it till you see it on the big screen as well, so watching Paul – we’ve watched it a couple of times now on a massive screen and it kind of upscales her looks [in the sense of glances, not appearance] and her acting – it’s amazing. It’s amazing to watch.

Obviously, there’s a lot of CGI –

Pegg: No, there was none (laughter).

How did you find interacting with the CGI character, coming from a background where there’s a lot of ensemble playing?

Pegg: That’s what we wanted to make sure we retained, you know. It was like, when we set off to make this and we set ourselves this challenge, we had to figure out how to do it, it was like, we’re going to make a bigger, broader – for a start we had to adapt our writing style a little bit because we wouldn’t be allowed to make a film that was – I don’t like the word niche but a Shaun of the Dead for this amount of money. We had to make it more appealing so that Universal would be confident that they would get their money back, you know? And also, how would we adapt our comedic style to a character that isn’t going to be there on the day? So we had to wing it and what we did was we worked with Seth [Rogen] in LA intensively before we started shooting – we shot the movie on video, with Seth in it, in motion-capture. We went to set, we shot it with Joe Lo Truglio, who plays Agent O’Reilly as our sounding board, so we had a funny actor who could carry the movie comedically, even though nothing he did in the film would ever be seen, as far as his Paul was concerned.

Frost: He got to keep his knee-pads though.

Pegg: He kept his knee-pads. And then after Joe had – because we wanted it to be very conversational, to be like he was there, like we were riffing with him, like you had that Apatow feel where people are almost making it up as they go along, but it’s a CG character. You know, the problem with Jar-Jar [Binks, ‘comedy’ Rastafarian frog man from the Star Wars prequels] was never really that he was animated – even though that was in its infancy and there are holes in it, it’s still an achievement to put a CG character in a film. The fact that he was overshadowed by his dreadfulness says something about how dreadful he was.

Frost: And lack of eye-line continuity. We tried really hard to avoid that.

Pegg: Yeah, that was hard. But it was all about characterisation and getting that right, so after we’d shot the movie we went back to Seth, played him all of Joe’s stuff so he could listen to the little tics that Joe picked up, play with that a little bit and then integrate himself, as Paul, into the movie so it felt more like he was there. And I’m so thrilled with what Seth did. And Seth is a very recognisable voice – part of the reason we hired him is because he sounds like an old man, even though he’s a young guy. But he listened to a lot of Neil Young, speaking, before he did it. And when I watched the film, it is minutes and you buy that he’s there, you buy that he’s with you and that was what we wanted to do.

Frost: And we were always saying as well that we could write the best script in the world but if Paul was rubbish in any way then it’s done, you’re done.

Pegg: You pop out of it. Like a stray bollock.

Frost: What? Yeah. The stray bollock thing threw me.

Would you like Paul to come back? Or if you were to do another one, would you rather go to him next time?

Pegg: Like Crocodile Dundee 2, when it all swaps round?

Frost: The cost of one Paul means that if we went to his planet, he would be the only person on it.

Pegg: laughs) Yeah. We’d have to be given a lot of money for the next one.

Frost: I think, you know, we have talked about a Pauls, potentially.

Pegg: That’s what the sequel would be called – Pauls.

Frost: With a Z on the end, maybe, like Antz. But it would have to be a great story and we’re not just going to do it because it’s expected of us.

Pegg: This is the first film we’ve done that I think warrants a sequel. I think Shaun of the Dead – we often get asked about a Shaun of the Dead sequel but only because people want to go back and see those characters again. Narratively speaking there’s no point – I mean, Nick’s character was dead. It’s like, why do another one?

Frost: What? I don’t think you get that from the film…

Pegg: That story ends. And Hot Fuzz is all about them becoming those characters. The minute you start acting like Hot Fuzz it’s less interesting. You see Danny and Angel being like supercops, it’s not as funny, whereas Paul I feel there is an opportunity to bring him back and we have had ideas. It’s just a question, like Nick said, of if we can write something that’s worthy of it.

At this point, a member of the PR team attempts to wrap things up, but Pegg and Frost, like the gents that they are, insist we all get another question each.

[Nick Frost: Ten more minutes each...]

Sigourney Weaver was a real casting coup. How did you approach her?

Pegg: Usual channels. We finished the script and sent it to her.

Frost: I think with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz though it meant that the script wasn’t immediately binned when it came to her agent – which I’m sure happens, you know, it just never gets to the person you want it to get to. And we were fortunate enough that she read it and then we got a phone call to say, ‘Will you come and meet Sigourney in LA?’ and we did it and we talked to her and she liked the script and she’d seen Shaun of the Dead.

Pegg: She’d liked Superbad as well, because Greg was on by that point. It’s nice to have a bit of weight behind you when you go to someone so they know you’re not just some punk kid.

Frost: And she did it, she said yes. We did a dance, obviously. You know, it is an amazing coup – she’s an amazing woman.

Pegg: And such a team player as well, you know? She really pitched in on the movie and on the promo, so…

Frost: She didn’t have to do any of it [the promo] at all, you know.

Pegg: And I wrote a poem about her when I was 19. I used to do a thing in my stand-up about being in love with her and she found out about this and demanded that I recite it to her. And I’ve been unable to, because I just blush so much that my eyes bleed.

Are you concerned at all about how the religious jokes will play in America, in terms of reviews and so on?

Pegg: Not concerned. I mean reviews are reviews – what’s important is that people go and see the film. It’s not an attack on Christianity – what we were interested in was what would happen if you had a very rigid belief system which was whipped away from you in a single second of empirical proof. It could be any religion. And the very fact is that any movie that has an alien in immediately contradicts certain notions of organised faith. Suddenly you’re not the centre of the universe, which is where most religion places us. It’s just – it’s a comedy about an alien.

Frost: We’re not saying God doesn’t exist, we’re just saying God doesn’t exist in this film.

Pegg: Or that God doesn’t exist.

Frost: And I think if your faith is rocked by a comedy with an alien on a road trip then maybe your faith wasn’t as firm to begin with, you know what I mean?

Pegg: And why shouldn’t we be allowed to say these things? Nobody picketed The Ten Commandments and that was pretty pro-religious, so it’s just another way of looking at things. And we’d hate people to get really offended by it.

Frost: If you were a true Christian and believed in God you should have that weird smugness where you think, “Oh ho ho ho – no, no, no”. You should be sorry for us, not angry for us.

Pegg: And also, as Bill Hicks said: “Forgive us.”

When you’re filming abroad, what’s the thing you miss most about London?

Frost: West Ham and PG Tips.

Pegg: I would say probably family.

Frost: Oh, now I seem shallow.

Pegg: Well, just London life then. Just the vibe and feeling like you’re at home and all that sort of stuff. When we live in LA, we live in Santa Monica and Venice and there are shops down there where you can buy HP Sauce and Jaffa Cakes and you can buy OK and Heat and shit like that.

Frost: They show football at 6am. You can have a pint and watch the football at 6am.

Pegg: There are pubs called The King’s Head. But just the feeling of being at home, you know.

Frost: Right, hang on, let me do another one then. I just like sometimes to hire a bicycle and drive through the city and –

Pegg: The Thames, I’d say the Thames. (Laughs) No.

With thanks to Neil Davey (@DineHard), Matthew Turner (@FilmFan1971) and Alan Simmons (@v_for_vienetta) for additional questions and Matthew Turner for additional transcription!