INTERVIEW WITH JULIAN GILBEY, DIRECTOR OF A LONELY PLACE TO DIE
May 11th 2012 04:35
Melissa George stars as Alison, the brave central protaganist. Sean Kidd is the central antoganist, and a memorable villain indeed. It’s a ransom situation that goes awry, as most movie ransoms do. Stunning cinematography adds to the movie’s appeal. Performances are solid, although I’m not sure why Melissa George dons an American accent. Karel Roden as the young Serbian girl’s father, and Kate Magowan as Alison’s friend Jenny provide strong support.
I chatted with Julian about violence, casting, working with increasingly bigger budgets, and eventually about the prospect of directing a horror movie.
Julian Gilbey directing his cast
Horrorphile: Hi Julian, tell me a little about your background as a filmmaker. Reckoning Day was your first feature, which you wrote, directed, shot, edited, even acted in.
Julian: Oh God, yeah, going back a bit there.
H: Had you made any short films before then, or any kind of formal training?
J: I studied filmmaking when I was about fourteen. My school had a video camera and I never got my hands on it, but I wanted to. My first film was Jaws 5 -
H: [laughs]
J: That was shot on a VHS camcorder while I was on holiday in Portugal in 1989. My father and cousin would swim under the water with a fin. Yeah, I think it sold a hundred million … ha, yeah, only joking!
[Both laugh]
J: That got me into it. Then I went up to the University of Edinburgh. So, yeah, I’ve been filmmaking for a while. Reckoning Day is where I honed my skills. Reckoning Day is something you would never, ever, ever do now. Somebody now would just go out and shoot something with a Canon 5D or something and probably get way, way better results, and I had to do the Robert Rodriguez El Mariachi thing of shooting a completely post-synch film, so Reckoning Day we didn’t have any live sound. I think we recorded on a Dictaphone for a guide sound! Extraordinary! It was a long labour of love. It was fun and it was enjoyable. I wanted to try and do different bits and pieces since then, with varying success.
H: Three of your films deal with gangsters, is there a particular allure with the underworld?
J: Not really. It felt quite intriguing going into that world.
Melissa George as Alison
H: A Lonely Place to Die is your most accomplished movie. Is there anything in particular you felt that you learned in the four years between Rise of the Footsoldier and A Lonely Place To Die?
J: I really, really like Rise of the Footsoldier. A lot of British critics didn’t. But it’s one of those films that polarises people, and it was a very shocking brutal story, very sleazy story, cocaine, blood and guns, and all the rest drawing you into the world. That movie was very, very successful, especially in the UK, it sold a million units on DVD and Blu-ray. I just naturally wanted to make a departure. I didn’t put up my hand and say, hey, I’m the gangster guy. But I definitely didn’t want to do Rise of the Footsoldier 2, which I’ve been asked to do. I definitely wanted to do my own thing, a much simpler narrative, a film that dealt with ordinary, every day people as your protagonists, apart from the fact that they go climbing. I’m intrigued by ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations.
Holly Boyd as Anna and Kate Magowan as Jenny
H: What are the elements in a character that are the most important in driving a film narrative? What do you look for in an actor, male or female?
J: The lead in this film could have been a man or a woman, although it was quite nice to have this as a kind of maternal film. I’m a father and have a young boy myself. I guess a normal kind of natural emotion is to do right by a child in trouble. The more down to earth the characters are the more the audience identify, and go along with this ride, and say, yeah, well I’d definitely do what they did.
H: With Rise of the Footsoldier’s violence being particularly extreme and graphic and with A Lonely Place To Die, it’s a thriller and it has nightmare elements, yet it is more restrained with its use of violence, even suggested, how much of that was a conscious decision?
J: With Rise of the Footsoldier, especially in the UK, literally half of a review would be about the sickening levels of violence. I wasn’t turning a blind eye to the Essex gangland violence, it was a factual film, and it was quite hard with that subject matter, ‘cos its in your face the whole time, it’s quite hard to suggest it, do you know what I mean?
H: Yeah.
Sean Harris as Mr. Kidd
J: But with A Lonely Place To Die, I’m glad that you said the violence was quite restrained because again a lot of people have said that it’s a very violent film. I don’t know what your Australian ratings are, but over here in the UK we have a 15 certificate and we have an 18 certificate, and then you have your 12 and your PG. And my movie is only a 15 certificate, certainly not an 18. The only bit I was worried about was, there is one scene in the film where a person is shot by a high-powered rifle and it is quite bloody and it is in slow motion. But I wanted people to concentrate on the story, I wanted it to be horrifying enough without some hillbilly smashing somebody over the head and squealing “Little piggy!” it didn’t need that. There’s enough violence in the film, I think, to make the film pretty horrifying. I definitely didn’t want to be known as The Violence Guy. I definitely pulled back, just enough. The trick is not to include action sequences with violence, because action can be incredibly exciting and tense and all the rest of it in a PG or a 12 certificate film, like James Bond or The Dark Knight. So I definitely didn’t feel the nedd to bathe the mountains in blood.
: I think your casting was excellent, especially the villains, and they carry a lot of implicit violence so you don’t need to carry over into showing explicit violence because they are such strongly etched villains they exude a lot of menace anyway. So was it hard shooting on location in the Scottish highlands?
J: It is quite unforgiving terrain. It’s over a thousand miles further north than the Eurpoean Alps that is quite hostile terrain. With the Scottish highlands weather you roll a dice. We got pretty damn lucky with the weather. And if we hadn’t been lucky with the weather, on a movie costing two-and-a-half million pounds, you can do all the stuff the big guys do, but what you can’t do is sit waiting indefinitely for the weather to clear up. I needed some luck, and we got the luck, we got some good weather and we were able to get up into those high peaks and really show it off.
H: Your command of tension and suspense in A Lonely Place To Die is excellent, would you ever consider making an out-and-out horror movie, using your penchant for realism, and making something altogether darker, perhaps even supernatural?
J: Well, yeah. Actually horror encompasses so much, so yes, absolutely, if the project was right, definitely. One of my wife and I’s favourite films, which we cannot watch, is The Grudge. And I’m only talking about the American version.
H: The Japanese version is amazing.
J: With that film we have to hold each other, and we have to have two dogs in the room. That film, and Paranormal Activity. I don’t particularly believe in ghosts, and I know how all the tricks are done, because I’m a filmmaker, and a lot of people, say “Does that ruin it for you?” and I say, “Nah”. The first time I watch a movie, I’m like every other person. And it’s absolutely thrilling to watch a movie that scares the crap out of me. On a writing front, I wouldn’t do a horror, but if some thing came along.
H: So you’d be more inclined to do something if an adaptation came your way, rather than writing something original?
J: Quite possibly yeah.
H: I look forward to that.
J: Thanks!
H: Do you have any advice for first time feature filmmakers?
J: Yeah, my advice would be: make sure that your script is water tight, I wouldn’t make it much beyond 85-pages, don’t have something sprawling and long, and for God’s sake, cast really good actors. I know you think your friends are really funny, sitting around a table in a bar chatting after a few drinks and you can write characters like that, but remember they’re just being themselves, and if you turn a camera on them to recreate what they’re doing, they won’t do it, ‘cos they’re your mates. Use actors. Anything other than actors will not work. There are exceptions to every rule, I know, but …
H: Pearls of wisdom, Julian.
J: Oh, and one more thing, if you’re mucking around doing climbing sequences, for God’s sake, please surround yourself with professionals. Please.
H: Thank you Julian, all the best for the future, and I look forward to your next feature, maybe even a horror further down the track.
J: Thanks very much, a pleasure, cheers.
Here’s the trailer:
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