The Living and The Dead

Simon's Notes

The germ of the idea that became The Living and The Dead comes from the trauma of having to watch my mother die of cancer. She was diagnosed in the December of 2001 and by March 2002 was dead (somewhat perversely she died on Mother's Day). It came completely out of the blue and happened 3 months after my father died of a heart attack so it was a tough time; not least because for the first couple of months there always seemed hope that she might make a recovery. Specifically I remember looking at my aunt who was also caring for my mum but looked severely ill aswell (she had sciatica - a backbone disorder) and thinking I was the living in the home of the dead.

In true authorial fashion I immediately thought The LIving in The Home of The Dead was a great title for a film and started writing something to try to distract me from the horrific reality of my life at that point. I failed dismally to do this, lacking the concentration and the will, but almost 6 months after my mum's death, felt it would be a good thing to focus on and so tried writing it again. As it was it still took me 4 months to complete the first draft which is way longer than anything else I've ever written but by the end of December I at least had a script.

I'd originally written the piece as a nightmare; absurdist and surreal, disturbing and at times willfully illogical. I wanted to visually recreate the horror and the uncertainty, the living hell that it was that I'd stumbled through, the unreality, the trauma, the confusion, so many different things at so many different times. The script was part Lynchian, part Beckettian, part accessible and part inaccessible.

Nick O'Hagan was someone I met at a Bafta networking session and only introduced myself because another friend was talking to him. Anyway, we shared similar goals in film-making (more films, lower budgets, edgier content) and got on well so I showed him a copy of the script and he came on board immediately. At one stage the investors of my previous 2 features were keen to finance but they'd just sunk a pile of money into an Indian film that wasn't going as well as they'd hoped so that never came through.

In February 2003 I participated in the inaugural Berlinale Talent Campus and ended up being introduced at a British Council party in a disused swimming pool by the head of the Berlin-based Britspotting Festival (who'd screened my last two features) to London based German producer Carl Schoenfeld. Carl, who'd actually seen all my previous work and was a big fan, was in the throes of setting up a fund with Elliot Grove of Raindance fame, read the script, liked it and pretty soon Raindance/Carl/Elliot were on board and it looked like we were going to get the money by the turn of summer.

In typical film industry fashion, this turned out not to be the case although we did source some development money and spent the whole of that period in loose pre-production, checking out locations, talking to cameramen, production designers, line producers and actors (including Leo Bill). Although at the end of that summer it felt like we'd wasted a 3 months of our life, when the money did finally turn up more than 2 years later we'd done a lot of the groundwork which made life slightly more leisurely than the usual kickbollockscrambleFUCKwe'reshootinginsixweeks! mentallity.

It's hard to say exactly what I did over the next 18months! Club Le Monde was released theatrically and on dvd and got lost in the ether of both, I shot a pilot for the Film Council which came to nothing, I wrote another script, I re-wrote LHD as we'd come to call it, I spent 6 weeks in LA having various meetings, finally bagging myself a manager and I guess I also shot the Handyman - so keeping relatively busy. And thinking about it, we were offered £50,000 to shoot the film which we decided to accept! Nick and I both figured it's better to keep making films than not at all and neither of us had made something for a few years by then and were itching to get back on set. We planned to shoot the microbudget film on DV - in the end however legal problems prevented us from taking this offer up which at the time was incredibly frustrating but in retrospect was a blessing in disguise.

We'd not bothered showing the script to hardly anyone because it was extreme and contrary to everything that was happening within the narrow confines of the industry norm but the few people who did read it reacted very positively. By early 2005 Elliot felt confident that he'd met a potential investor and sure enough by March we got a call through saying we'd definitely got some money. This took about 4 months to materialise and we were starting to think it was another scam but we signed the contracts with Inspired Movies in June and started the ball rolling, choosing to shoot in September.

Joyce Nettles who's worked with th e Dogma gang a good few time had come on board 2 years earlier as our casting agent. We discussed all the usual young pretenders for the James part but no-one really jumped out at me; it's such a tough role and such a fine line between getting it right and wrong. Most the actors we discussed seemed too good looking or too bland or just lacking in the emotional depth that was so important for this role. Given that we weren't looking for a 'name' Joyce mentionned Leo Bill who'd recently graduated from RADA. I loved his quirky looks and so we met up when the film almost got off the ground the first time around. I thought he had a great energy and he was really keen to play the part so I offered him the role on the spot and then the next day discovered there was no production money! I felt bad for Leo cos I hate telling people something's going to happen and then discovering that it isn't; nonetheless I kept Leo in the back of my mind over the years and watched him in a couple of films where he shone, I thought - you can always tell a really good actor when they make rubbish dialogue sound convincing! When we finally got the green light I went straight back to Leo and he came on board immediately.

With Roger Lloyd Pack I remember sitting in front of his mugshot for half a day reading the script and seeing whether I could imagine him as Donald. Best known for his turn in Only Fools and Horses, Roger's a great character actor rarely out of work so I was confident he'd work in the role and with a great face I felt he had both the haunted but stentorian/patriarchal quality that is so important for the character. The production made an offer, Roger jumped, we met up over lunch and that was it, we had our Donald. Casting Nancy was a tougher proposition altogether; it's an absolutely thankless role in which the actress is ill, has to sit in a cold bath, be force fed pills, go naked, be operated on and just when things seem to starting improving, she gets stabbed to death by her mentally challenged son! When I first started thinking about Kate Fahy, I mentionned it to Roger and he got very excited because they'd been friends on and off for about 16 years, something I thought would work well in our favour - that they'd immediately have an on screen chemistry. Kate and I spoke on the phone and Kate was happy to do whatever needed to be done and had a great attitude. My only concern was that she was in the South of France and had been there for the previous 3 weeks and would look v.healthy and tanned! This was true to an extent but make-up goes a long way and so we went with Kate who was a trooper throughout and never complained once even when she had to sit in a puddle of sticky 'blood' for 2 hours!

The location, Savernake House, Wiltshire belongs to the Cardigan family and when we first saw it a few years previously it had been a drug rehab centre for urban teenagers. It had since closed down and left the location completely empty which for us was a Godsend. We'd originally hoped to shoot at Luton Hoo (better known as the location for Gosford Park) but that had been closed to film shoots for a while so Savernake was the perfect replacement. I wanted somewhere which was austere and grand but completely run down and had seen better days. It also needed to be a massive location so that when we kick in with the 5 frames per second footage there was actually enough time for James' character to walk from, say his room to the kitchen, whilst building up the visual and musical style. In the end we probably only used about 8 of 250 or so rooms but everything that you see in the film apart from the stags heads around the central staircase we brought in - from wheelchairs to suit of arms to wall paper with run down look. Before it had been a drug rehab centre, it was a boys boarding school and just before we started filming Lord Cardigan had sold a lease to an American company who are planning on turning it into a luxury hotel with 18 hole golf course.

Given that we were shooting the film over an 18 day schedule, Nick and I wanted a quality crew who'd worked on features before, who we knew would pull together and not allow egos and petty concerns get in the way of what was inevitably going to be a gruelling 3 weeks. This proved harder than we thought, especially given the relatively low pay but between Nick and I and Barry Leonti (line-producer) and Helene Oosthuizen (script supervisor) I think the only key person no-one had worked with was the production designer Will Field who'd recently graduated from the National and thankfully he did a great job. In the end we had the most international crew I'd worked with - as well as flying Milton (who's Surinamese) in from New York, we had Swedish, Canadian, South African, German, Greek, American and 2 girl sparks which was a v.popular move! Given the tough subject matter and the tight schedule the shoot was pretty smooth and having editor Benjamin Putland on set was a great move, enabling us to spot any duff takes that might need to be re-shot as we were going along.

Editing in Kilburn from October-December we'd gone through a handful of different cuts and were just starting to calm down and look forward to Christmas when Rotterdam informed us that they wanted to screen the film at their festival. Being one of the most cutting edge and established festivals in the world, this was great news but it did mean we had to finish the film within about 5 weeks which with Christmas and New Year was a tough order but one which we, of course, rose to. Nick and I saw the print of the film at about 3am in Bucks Lab near Heathrow. We both drove back to our respective homes, packed our cases, and headed back to Heathrow where we caught a 10.00 clock flight which got us into Amsterdam by about 11.30 where we were picked up and driven to Rotterdam, dropping off the print for a 1.00 press screening! In the end we used a temp sound mix and a grade which was also temporary. Rotterdam was an excellent festival and everyone who went out with the film had a great time. From the strength of the screenings here, we've been invited to Buenos Aires, Durban, Stockholm, Frightfest and Sitges (in competition) with about another 15 festivals pending. At time of writing I'm heading out to Buenos Aires next week...