Gary reflects on the movie

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Gary on Ashley

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Gary on Steven

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Gary on Hoodwink

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Gary on Sugarhouse

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Rooftop Chase

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Bombing The Set

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

From pristine to derelict in 48 short hours -
the CGO crew lent a hand to create the Sugarhouse.

Interview with Gary Love

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0000

What drew you to this script?

Initially I was sent it quite a long time ago and I thought it had a great vibe, it was a great story. Because I knew the budgetary constraints I liked the fact that it was self-contained, which meant that it was relatively achievable.

I liked the idea of something happening to somebody in that one minute where if they’d walked left or if they’d walked right, this thing could have happened to them. Also this film is about London and about a place in London that one guy happens to go to on this one day. I also loved the fact that this film was based on just 90 minutes of real time.

This is your debut feature, had you been looking at scripts for quite a while?

Yeah I’d been looking for a good script for a long time and I’d been attached to varying other types of scripts. Some of them were very close to shooting and others were never going to go anywhere, but you never really know when you first start working on something. Of course, the ones that looked like they were going to go somewhere were the ones you least wanted to do. So this was a little bit different when it came along.

How did you develop the script?

We worked with a fantastic script editor who works with Ken Loach on all his films, a chap called Roger Smith, and we worked, Arvind, the executive producer, put us together in a lab, where we all sat down for a week, went through the script, pulled it apart, then pieced it back together, and on and on.

So how did you and slingshot first come meet?

I acted in a French film with Matt Justice called Russian Dolls, directed by Cedric Klapisch in Paris and in London. We got on really well and he knew my directing agent. We talked at the time about stuff that I was interested in, and suddenly this came up. He sent me a copy and asked me what my thoughts were. I said I think it needed to go this way, that way, and the other way and months later it came back.

How closely did you work with Dominic Leyton on the development of the play to a feature film?

Dom and I worked together for a bit but then we starting working with Roger Smith in the lab. As an actor, obviously you come to directing from a different point of view and this film is very much performance driven.
It’s a tricky one because it is performance driven – originally it was a stage play – but obviously part of my job has been to stop it being a stage play. This means we’ve cut those five page scenes where actors can really get their teeth in and fly. Now the characters go out, we go here, we go there, we go to cafe’s or whatever, and it’s to make sure that those ones sit as the heart of the piece as easily as the stuff that has been there since day one and that’s taken some time.

The other thing for me is about working with the actors. I started directing because I was working on loads of TV where actors were sent to a corner and told to learn their lines and then come on and just do it. I thought that was crap. When I was working with actors I realised how much more they can give and how much more they love to give when given the option. So that’s why I started doing it, it made sense. I feel it’s part of my job to give them as much as possible a forum around them which makes them feel confident and loved. This is even when you’re absurdly under budget, which basically means you don’t have enough time to shoot the film you want to make. That’s a problem with the budget, and we all know that, so the point of it is, not to turn it into another form of TV which is rushed.
That’s the director’s fight with the money. Not with the exec’s, because you know the parameters of the job before you take it on board.

Sugarhouse | Sugarhouse | Feed

Gary reflects on the movie

Gary on Ashley

Gary on Steven

Gary on Hoodwink

Gary on Sugarhouse

Rooftop Chase

Bombing The Set

Interview with Gary Love