Arrow Video Frightfest returns for its twentieth year of frightful delights later this month. Running from Thursday 22nd August to Monday 26th August, the film festival showcases the best and brightest in films that embrace the darker side of cinema. In the run-up to the festival, we at THN are bringing you a series of interviews with some of the filmmakers presenting the fruits of their labour to the Frightfest audiences.
Tales From the Lodge
Abigail Blackmore began her career in the industry as an actor before shifting over into the realm of both writing and directing. It was a great decision as her film, Tales From the Lodge which screens at this year’s Frightfest, is destined to be a festival favourite. Starring, amongst others, Mackenzie Crook and Johnny Vegas, Tales From the Lodge offers a fresh spin on the anthology set-up. In fact, if we’re completely honest, it’s only an anthology in a very loose way. Five old university friends, plus the new girlfriend of one of the group, gather together to scatter the ashes of their departed friend Jonesy at his old cabin in the woods. Whilst there, they try to scare one another with tales of the macabre, before the events of their trip take an even more sinister turn.
Her work on the film has also earned Blackmore a nomination for the festival’s Genre Rising Star award. We caught up with her in the run-up to Frightfest to see how she was taking the news of her nomination, talk all about the production of her film, and everybody’s favourite noodle eating vampire – Kiefer Sutherland.
You started out as an actor, how did you transition to behind the camera?
Well acting is horrible as a job. I wouldn’t call it a job actually because I rarely got any work. I think I just became really disillusioned…you just feel so helpless all the time. If you’re lucky enough to get an audition then it’s quite often that you get auditions for things that you actually don’t really want to get, because they’re badly written, or they’re an advert for colostomy bags, or whatever.
I got involved in an improv company, actually it was The Guilty Feminist‘s Deborah Frances-White’s, she was my teacher. She was instrumental at encouraging me to take it up. Then that brought me back to my love of writing. When you’re improvising, you are essentially writing on the spot, it taught me a lot.
From there I got into sketch writing and I took a show to the Edinburgh Fringe called Goodbye, Goodbye. That got a really good reaction, and then through improv I met someone whom got me an audition for Sharon Horgan’s sitcom Pulling. I got a little job on that and met someone called Cavan Clerkin who’s a fantastic actor. He started-up a film club, a short film club, where he got a load of mates from the industry whom wanted to branch out and learn new skills. There were certain rules we had to follow, we basically made a short film every month, but you couldn’t do the same job two months in a row. Through that I made a short film called Blind Date and that got me my agent and led to me getting a TV commission as a writer.
I realised getting back into writing that it’s a lot more satisfying creatively than acting. You get to play God. You get to make all the decisions, and I also got to cast myself, so I was giving myself the acting work I never got before. Much more interesting roles. That’s what I tell anyone whom asks my advice about going into acting, I always say get into writing as well. Write your own work.
I always thought I’d just be an actor, that was always my ambition, but I think why I wanted to be an actor was all about playing. Playing different characters. I think you can get that same feeling from writing, in fact more so because I get to play every character I write because I have to put myself in their shoes.
Given that you did have a background in acting, do you think that that helps you when it comes to directing?
I think so and I hope so. I thought that when I made Tales From the Lodge that it might be a bit like a pyjama party with me and the actors. We’d all live together and we’d all share secrets and make food together, and it wasn’t like that at all. These people have very busy lives. There was no time to really bond before we shot. That was a real surprise, I thought I’d spend a lot more time working with the actors, but actually as a director you can’t. You have to be with the crew, you have to be talking to your DoP all the time and dealing with producers. There was less of that [cast interaction] than I wanted, because it’s such a low budget film as well, we just didn’t have the time to rehearse. I mean Johnny Vegas turned up the morning of his first shot. He basically got off the train, got into costume and was on the set. We didn’t even have a read through.
I do like working with actors, but because there were six of them always there, I suppose they were there for each other. All they needed from me was to know if they were on the right path as far as the tone, and what I was expecting. There were a lot of tweaks, but other than that, I wanted them to just do whatever they felt with the character and then I could help pull them back or adjust. That’s why I always wanted to cast very experienced actors, because they don’t need hand-holding.
Tales From the Lodge
Tales From the Lodge offers a really interesting take on the traditional ‘anthology’ structure. Usually it’s just a series of shorts strung together by, a lot of the time, a fairly weak connecting story. Here it’s much more about the overarching story, with the collection of shorts scattered within like camp fire ghost stories. What made you create the film in this fashion?
It was never on purpose, I just think that main story got out of hand. I think it’s because I felt that the characters were really well-defined from the beginning. Three couples – this one has three young kids and they just want a weekend away to relax and get drunk, swear and hang out with their mates. This couple have the heart issue and she’s struggling looking after her husband. Then you’ve got the bachelor type character with his new girlfriend. As soon as I’d set up these characters, it made everything a lot easier. I could figure out what their relationships and histories were. I think that story just was what it was. Originally there were only three short stories, instead of five. Then when my producer optioned it, he suggested we add two more. I added the first one with Paul, and then Joe’s nightmare. The main story is about seventy percent of the movie.
I think I wanted the stories to flow naturally out of the main story, is it Tales from the Darkside with Debbie Harry? I love that one in particular because there’s a reason he’s telling those stories. He’s trying to save his life / put off his inevitable death. My reason isn’t as strong as that one, but this was more about ‘let’s celebrate Jonesy’s death’. Jonesy always told stories, he was crazy, so the film is really the main story. I’ve been calling it a portmanteau because of the framework element. An anthology to me I’ve always thought of as being story, story, story, just a series of stories. I think the characters made the story really, it wasn’t a conscious decision.
The characters in themselves are really interesting. Typically in a cabin in the woods film, or a horror film in general, it’s teenagers. But this time they’re more middle-aged, they’ve got families, they’re in marriages. It’s definitely an area that’s lacking. Was it the case that you could identify with these characters more?
Definitely, I mean I’m in my forties, and I wanted it to be characters that you wouldn’t normally find in a horror film. Especially this cabin in the woods type thing. We’ve seen too many of those teenagers or twenty-somethings going off to a cabin – and why is it always two couples and a single bloke? I don’t know why that is, why? Why is he there?! But that was it literally because I wanted to see different characters, to see how these characters behaved. Obviously they don’t know they’re in a horror film, although Laura Fraser’s character Martha, I love that when she hears that sound and goes upstairs into the room and she’s creeping in. That to me is very much a horror type scene. I was delighted to watch Laura really know what genre she was playing in. I think that Martha… her character is probably a big horror fan.
Well there’s a couple of references, ‘well I was expecting somebody to be there’…
Exactly, so I think she’s the horror fan of the group. I think I just loved the characters. It’s funny because writing is so hard; I’m working on a script at the moment and the hardest bit is figuring out who these people are that you’re writing. Who they are, what they want, how can you get them. One of the Stranger Things guys actually said that they started off with cliches, started off with stereotypes, and I think that’s a really interesting way to start. You can always change it, but it’s quite an interesting tip. I think something I did subconsciously is go, ‘these are parents,’ ‘these are childless’, ‘this guy’s a player’, and then go from there. They are these people, but they are also very British. I wanted it to have a very, very British feel, and not be slick. Not be cool.
Your actors also serve as directors for their own character’s ghost story. When did that idea come together and how was it working with them all?
Originally I was thinking I’d have different directors for the stories because traditionally that’s how it works for these types of film. I thought it would be people like Ben Wheatley. Then I wrote Joe with Mackenzie Crook in mind and he’s a director as well, so I think the producer and I were talking about maybe asking Mackenzie if he wanted to direct one of the stories. We just took it from there really.
Because it’s very low budget, and we wanted a fantastic cast, and we wanted names then we thought it would give us a much better chance to get great actors in if we offered them the chance to direct something as well. Johnny Vegas, after I told him this, said ‘yeah, that’s true actually, I might not have done it’. It wasn’t that cynical because I think it works really well. I don’t think it’s been done before – getting the actors to direct their own short stories – but it also made the actors be much more creatively invested in the film. Well that was the aim anyway. It worked out really well. Some of them took more persuading than others; Kelly [Wenham] was unsure. Laura had never directed anything before, and Dustin [Demri-Burns] did actually go to film school, but he hasn’t really done any directing. Johnny was very keen to direct, in fact he had always wanted to direct a zombie, so that was really good. Mackenzie has got a couple of BAFTAs.
I was on hand and worked very closely with all of them, just to make sure we were all on the same page. That we were all working from the same script. That nobody was going crazy in one way or another, and I could just reign them in and keep consistency throughout the film. They were never on their own, it was great actually, as soon as they had their headphones on and their monitor, they were just in [the zone]. It was amazing to watch. What we had to do, because we were on such a tight schedule, was we shot in the lodge for three weeks and then in the fourth week we shot the shorts. One day we had three different directors shooting. It was a little bit crazy, but it worked. Props to our first AD for scheduling that.
I have to ask… in Johnny’s story he assumes the look of David in The Lost Boys, was it always written in the script for Russel to tackle that iconic Kiefer Sutherland role?
Well, in the script it was Kiefer Sutherland. We thought maybe we can get Kiefer Sutherland to play this part, but the he got Designated Survivor so we realised we couldn’t get him. So we thought, let’s try and get someone similar to Kiefer Sutherland (laughs) and we didn’t cast it until quite late, and then I had the idea that if the worst came to the worst, I think Johnny should play the role. It would be hilarious, it would make sense for Russell to cast himself as Kiefer Sutherland or similar. In his head, he’s an action hero. It just made sense in the end, and it was lucky that we couldn’t find anyone else to play the role. It was perfect. The reason he’s playing David is literally because I had written Kiefer Sutherland in the script and I think Johnny was the one who said, ‘let’s have him as he is in The Lost Boys’. It’s brilliant, even though it’s a vampire rather than zombie film. Gosh that wig was quite a piece of work.
We’re hoping that Kiefer Sutherland might watch it, I spent an evening with him and a few other people once. We got drunk in the Phoenix weirdly when he was over here shooting 24. I was out with some friends who were working on the show, and he heard about this lunch thing that me and a few friends from the business have where we would go out on a Friday and get incredibly drunk. He heard about this and said, ‘can I come?’ So yeah, he came with the director and Benjamin Bratt, and we ended-up in the Phoenix and got incredibly drunk.
Tales From the Lodge
When I was doing some research, I stumbled across an interview with yourself from SXSW where you said if you could screen Tales from the Lodge anywhere it would be ‘in the IMAX London Leicester Square’. Well that’s about to happen now, how are you feeling?
I don’t remember saying that, that’s amazing. I didn’t think we’d play at Frightfest, but I’m so thrilled. I love Frightfest, I go anyway. Being in the main screen is just… I’m so excited and it’s the twentieth year. It’s going to be amazing.
It also screens in the middle of a triple bill of female directors.
I know, isn’t that cool?
There’s not that many other festivals that would do that.
Especially at that time of day, we’re in a fantastic position. It’s absolutely perfect although the sad thing is I won’t be able to watch either Satanic Panic or Rabid, and I was hoping to see both. Because Satanic Panic is just before us, I’ll be busy prepping with the cast, and then Rabid...we have been very fortunate to be nominated for the Screen International Rising Star Award, and the award presentation is during Rabid. I will see both of them as soon as possible. But placement-wise, it’s amazing. Banana Splits [another female directed film] is up against us as well, but what I like about where we are position-wise in the schedule is that there’s nothing on when Tales From the Lodge begins. So even if you’re planning on seeing Banana Splits, or The Perished, or The Barge People, you can start Tales From the Lodge, and if you wanna leave, you can leave and go into one of the others. We have no competition at the beginning of our film, which I quite like. I just hope not too many people leave.
My next question is about that nomination – how did you feel when you found out?
Blown away. Really shocked. Really, really surprised and delighted.
Two years ago Danny Morgan won the award for Double Date, which also starred Kelly Wenham. Are you hoping that she’ll bring you the same luck she bought him?
Definitely! I was in that film too, but I got cut. I hope I’m going to end up on the DVD special features. If not, I’m going to try and get them to put my scene on You Tube. Double Date is a fantastic film, and that’s why I wanted to cast Kelly because of that film, and begged her to do Tales From the Lodge. But it’s just lovely to be nominated, and it’s true. I’d love the award, but it’s just really nice to be recognised and acknowledged and seen.
Once Tales From the Lodge is properly out in the world, what’s next? You mentioned earlier that you’re writing something at the moment, can you say anything about that?
I can’t really say anything about that. It’s just another film, another horror comedy, probably low budget and not a portmanteau this time. I’m still ripping my hair out over the script at the moment. It keeps changing. I’m the sort of writer who will get to like page seventy-five and then go, ‘no, this isn’t working’ and scrap the whole thing and start again. I’ve done that a few times with this script. I’ve got another couple of scripts floating around, one is a TV thing so hopefully I’ll be able to make some money soon because I’m so poor (laughs).
Tales From the Lodge screens at Arrow Video Frightfest on Monday 26th August 2019.
