An interview with Bobcat Goldthwait and Joel Murray on their new film God Bless America

As Interviewer makes its way into the hotel suite, it is immediately clear the subjects are in good spirits. After a few minutes of quiet chatter between Bobcat Goldthwait and Joel Murray regarding a debate on whose water is whose, Joel silences the speculation and informs Bobcat the matter has been taken care of, and a roofie has been slipped into the appropriate glass.
    “Here’s looking up my ass,” said Bobcat, as Interviewer flicks on its dictaphone just in time to capture this unique exchange.
    Joel is looking a little fatigued as he reclines in the sofa he shares with Bobcat. His right arm seems drawn to the lower right side of the jaw. His already deadpan tone is made even more difficult to hear with the addition of the muffling hand. Between Bobcat and Joel the two seem rather excited to talk about their new film God Bless America.
    “Last night I was in a bar in Belfast and people kept coming up to me that just love the film and every one of them pirated the movie. I was like, ‘Well that’s great, I’m glad you enjoyed the mov---, buy me a fucking drink.’” In spite of this backhanded complement, Joel seems pretty happy about the audience reaction. He is quick to add that those who may be disappointed in the film because they were expecting a different should just go ahead and make the movie they wanted and stop griping.
    “I think some folks just wanted it to be a vigilante movie where we just kill reality stars for the 90 minutes and that’s it,” Bobcat said. This wouldn’t be a terrible movie but it would completely change the message the director is aiming to get across. “If you’re the kind of person who is uncomfortable with that idea or can’t even comprehend they may be part of the problem, you’re not going to enjoy the movie.”
    Beginning with a comically gruesome scene of obliterating a baby with a shotgun, the film bypasses the shock-and-awe approach to keep the audience’s focus on the message of the film.
    “I remember something Carl Reiner said,” Bobcat said, “’You can do anything in a movie, anything…as long as you establish it in the first five minutes.’”
Joel plays Frank, a man who is tired of all the reality shows on TV and moronic talk-show hosts spewing garbage out of his car’s speakers. If they’re not busy talking about someone humiliating themselves in front of a large audience they are helping the humiliation take place. Divorced and jobless, Frank learns there is an inoperable tumour inside his brain, which will eventually kill him. He contemplates suicide before making the decision to kill people who deserve to die, like people who talk in movie theatres. Frank teams up with a young girl, Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr) who is also fed up with her own generation’s lack of shame and decency, and the two set out to rid the world of assholes.
It quickly becomes apparent Bobcat is absolutely right about the people who might not enjoy the film. Following Frank and Roxy’s combined logic, each would be doomed to suffer the same fate as their victims. They too are human and occasionally cross the line of being apart of the problem in today’s culture rather than being apart of the solution.
“You know what’s funny? A lot of stuff was in the script. People who think I’m just sitting at home and I’m bitter about stuff…this wasn’t just a list… Some of it was in the script some it kept changing,” said Bobcat. He goes on to mention that if this had been a movie that was just about his list of people to die he wouldn’t have included reality television, he would have just taken a bomb to the MTV building and blown it up. One person who Bobcat seems to address outright is Diablo Cody who was saddened by the director’s jibes in the film and thought of her a Bobcat as “kindred spirits.” It seemed only fair to ask if Bobcat felt like a bully Frank and Roxy might go after.
“No, no, I’ve been manipulated by hot women my whole life. I knew what she was doing, and it was bullshit,” Bobcat said. “I don’t get notes on content but someone did ask me to remove that line and at the time it was only one line so I went back home and wrote an entire page about why Diablo Cody sucks.”
Through all the anger and aggression this fanaticised plot does seem to be something Bobcat and Joel are proud to have made. Interviewer cannot help but notice the twinkle in Bobcat’s eye when it seems to grasp the message and irony of the film’s final scene. When it first asked for an outright answer Bobcat and Joel were in agreement that it was meant to be thrown back in the audiences lap.
“I’m asking the audience, ‘Are you in or are you out?’ So I think, the movie doesn’t work if you’re not used to empathizing with characters. That’s the thing people always say about the last three movies I’ve made, “It’s a one joke premise” and it’s one joke if you lack empathy,” said Bobcat.
In the case of God Bless America this really is a movie with a one joke premise. Through all their conversations and philosophising Frank and Roxy add action to each scene the only way they can, by killing someone. One scene breaks up this repetition when the gun is turned around on them in the form of Russian roulette. After spinning the chamber the gun makes it through all six shots before delivering the deafening blow. And when asked what this scene means, Interviewer couldn’t help but be disappointed with the answer.
“It’s just good light,” Joel said. “The sun was setting one day and it was beautiful light, I said, ‘Models pay big money to be shot in this. We’re waiting for dark? Let’s shoot something.’”
The relationship between Bobcat and Joel added to the conformability on set. The two have known each other since 1985 when they worked on the film One Crazy Summer and have been friends every since. This led to Bobcat’s casting of the lesser known of the Murray brothers. Yes, Joel is the little brother of Bill and Brian Doyle-Murray.
“Having Joel meant that I had another set of eyes. You know Joel’s a director and a writer,” said Bobcat. “One of the good things about working with your friends and working with the right person for the job is that you’re not trying to get a performance out of someone, everybody agrees already.” Helping with Tara also because one of Joel’s jobs while on set since this was her first major role in a feature film.
And Joel seemed more than willing to help in anyway he could while still understanding this was Bobcat’s movie. Now and again he would help with deciding how a scene should play out while also taking what Bobcat has given him to go on. After his killing spree as Frank, it seems only natural that more lead roles will be coming in for this talented actor.
“Oh yea [sarcastically],” said Joel. “If I could stay away from the bacon and the blood sausage. I was with my brother the past couple days and he was giving me a hard time for gaining a bunch of weight from quitting smoking and being in Ireland. [His Bill Murray impression] ‘Charles Bronson wasn’t really a good looking man, so you should maybe get into really good shape because you could do this kind of action. So you should uh put that down.’ Just abusing me for days about I should loose some weight and I’ll get on that.”
Joel is content to have a laugh at the thought though he does mention a confident — perhaps slightly unrealistic — outlook for the future. “I haven’t heard anything yet. I thought there’d be this huge…I always have visions of grandeur that never come…maybe when I get back to LA and more people will have seen [God Bless America]. But now, no, it hasn’t been this whirlwind of offers.”
As Interviewer is told to begin packing up its belongings, it can no longer contain the question that has been dancing around its thoughts for the entirety of the interview. Bobcat has proven himself to be a very entertaining director who tackles different subjects with a unique style. This was not always the case as Bobcat rose to fame through his stand-up comedy and his nervous, off-the-wall voice. Will you do the voice?
“I’d be too embarrassed. Isn’t that weird? It’s like my porn past or something,” Bobcat said. Pleading with him does little more than coheres nervous laughter from him as Joel mentions the voice only coming out when he gets really nervous. As Interviewer shuffles out of the suite, it can’t be more pleased to have interviewed these two very funny individuals. Like walking away from a conversation too early, there seems like so many other things that could have been talked about in the careers of these men.

God Bless America is out now on DVD&Blu-ray, Read our DVD Review

Trishna - Riz Ahmed Interview

This Monday 9th July will see the release of Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna on DVD and Blu Ray which is a modern adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic Tess of the d’Ubervilles moving from bleak 19th Century Industrial England to modern day Rajahstan, India. To promote the film’s release on July 9th on DVD & Blu-Ray our good friends at Artificial Eye have sent a very interesting in depth interview with the British Actor. Yesterday was Frieda Pinto and you can read her interview here, fancy winning the film on DVD? We have 5 copies of the film to give away enter here!

Q: How did you get involved in the project? We know you’ve worked with Michael before, take us through the process and tell us why you wanted to be a part of it?
A: Michael randomly got in touch and invited me for lunch and a catch up and told me he had adapted ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ and that he wanted to set it in modern India, crossing classes and cultures. In his usual informal relaxed way, he offered me the role and I said yes of course!

Q: Who is Jay? What sort of background does he come from? What motivates him? Is his privilege and lack of ‘hunger’ his curse?
A: He’s the youngest son of a rich Indian businessman. He’s in his mid-20s and he hasn’t managed to step out of his father’s shadow and really make his own way or make a success of his life on his own terms. He suffers from the lost rich kid syndrome. He’s on this trip to India from Britain with his friends as a last kind of blow out before he stays on in India to run some of his father’s newly acquired hotels in Rajasthan. He’s frustrated because he has to slot into that role rather than have his own projects and that both haunts and drives him as a character and ultimately the project he finds and latches onto is Trishna herself. He seeks her out and tries to develop her, to satisfy his own needs and make something his own.

In some ways you could say his privilege is a curse in the sense that he’s got a lot to live up to. But in other ways, he does try to break away in his own direction when he goes to Bombay. He’s only able to do that and have that financial independence because of his wealth. It’s more that he fails in that and it’s more about the family and where he’s coming from being bigger than him. I feel a major theme in the film is about where you’re coming from. It explores that magnetic and gravitational pull and the momentum you can try and drum up of your own accord. Trishna’s background is something she can never really get away from. Similarly for Jay, his position of minor heir to the business means that he gets sucked back into it and responsibility comes knocking at his door. That’s the start of his decline and when he realizes he’s failed to strike out in his own direction, Trishna becomes this kind of toy and symbol of his failure every time he sees her.

Q: Does he really fall in love with Trishna?
A: Yes, but I guess we’ve been talking from the point of view of the macro themes and where he’s coming from means there’s a tragic outcome to the relationship. But, on a personal level, there is something there and he’s completely bewitched by Trishna. She represents the ideal of an innocent woman for him – the virgin maid and it is a kind of love. When they’re in Bombay they are in love, but the limitations in the relationship come from the gap between them being so vast.

There’s only so much they can talk about – their world views only overlap to a certain extent. At the point where they’re talking about the abortion that’s something that really frustrates Jay, because Trishna didn’t make her own mind up about that and she kept it from him. I guess honour trumps honestly and openness for Trishna. There is love between them but as with every relationship, what makes up that love is lots of different things. Maybe for Jay at the beginning, he almost over-idealizes her, he sees her as a way of re-connecting with his ethnic background and to reconnect with something pure and innocent and something that’s his own. The limitations of all those things in the relationship start emerging and he feels he’s failed in his own life.

Q: Did you read Tess of the D’Urbervilles before embarking on this film?
A: After Michael told me about the film, that was when I read the book but I hadn’t read it previous to that. At first I thought it was kind of daunting to try and combine two great characters from literature but what became clear was that it wasn’t going to be a literal adaptation of Hardy’s novel. Angel’s love for Tess is pure whilst Alec’s is a more selfish love. In the novel they’re never really on the scene at the same time so that meant we could take on the spirit or psychology of one character and then at different stages in the story, introduce the other. To begin with, Jay idealizes Trishna in the same way that Angel idealizes Tess. He sees her as a pure woman and views the experience as a return to a natural way and all that is good and pure. When Jay is at the hotel with his friends, he spots this girl from the village and this real obsessive but full-blooded love emerges and at this point we see Angel’s spirit of his affection for her, but what we start to get is a gradual decline into Alec. Having a novel to base the characters and ideas on gives you a rich armoury for you to draw on. If we’d have been too faithful to the novel, we’d have all gone mad!

Q: There are strong similarities between Hardy’s England and what’s happening in India right now. Can we explore that?
A: Yes, that’s a very interesting thing to draw on. India is changing at break- neck speed with modernization, industrialization and mass migration from the countryside into more urban centres and we explore how the old world and new world are rubbing up against each other. The idea of morality is very pertinent because it’s very important to point out that some western audiences may find themselves slightly confused as to why Trishna feels embarrassed about sleeping with Jay and why she feels she needs to run away and why she feels mortified at having had the abortion. This is all a big deal for her. The issue is about traditional morality and that’s what it’s like in large swathes of the world to this day, where sex before marriage and having children out of wedlock is still a huge deal and that shame can destroy a family in terms of their public standing. Maybe people need to realize that’s a reality when they’re watching the film.

Q: You filmed in India with a small crew, on real locations and there was a lot of improvisation. What were the challenges and what were the joys of that?
A: Working with Michael, there’s always a very small crew, it’s a very intimate and very informal experience. Michael never calls action or cut. It’s a very relaxed, gentle, natural process in term of the atmosphere created for the actors. For the production crew I guess it’s not so relaxed – it’s crazy that’s because there’s so much that’s being achieved and Michael has very high standards and he’s a real stickler for authenticity. The burden of that kind of pressure probably falls on the production but for the actors it’s a really unique experience. There’s no right or wrong – you just have to embrace the fact that you don’t know what the hell’s going happen because there isn’t really a script and you’ve got a very basic idea and you just jump into it and that’s the whole nature of improvising and the nature of working with Michael.

Q: What was it like taking on your first romantic lead?
A: I guess I’d never really thought about it being a romantic lead. It’s a romantic story but also a tragedy and a drama. From my point of view I try to make the characters I play as complicated for myself as possible so I don’t have to have a very clear grip on who they are day-to-day on set, so you get a fuller picture of them at the end of the film. That’s also part of how it is working with Michael – not having a rigid, fixed view of the characters. We had a lot of long conversations and you can build up this very intricate back story to the character – what books he might read, what music he’d like to listen to, how growing up was for him and you concoct this back story but in terms of how the character would be at the end of the journey you can’t really control that kind of thing. So, I guess that’s a very long way of saying I never really thought of it as a romantic lead!

Q: What was it like working with Freida?
A: A lot of fun – she’s a very cool girl. I think she’s an incredibly instinctive and natural actress. She’s very generous and there’s minimal fuss with her. Working with her is one of the easiest processes because she’s incredibly self-sufficient. She’s generous about giving you space and time to develop your character. For me it’s ideal to work with someone like that, particularly when you’re working with Michael and the process is one where things change and evolve and everything’s very flexible. Michael wants you to be natural and that creates a really nice atmosphere on set.

Q: Trishna is more complex than Jay gives her credit for. How does he view her?
A: Yeah, it’s not that he judges her but it’s almost like at certain points he feels that he has to give up. Because of the different cultures they’re coming from, he feels that her mind is unknowable. If he presses her on why she didn’t tell him about certain things or why certain things happened, she won’t speak her mind in an articulate way to allow him to understand her. There’s an extent to which Jay feels really frustrated with that – especially how passive she can be. I don’t think Jay thinks Trishna is simple-minded, he just feels she’s hard to get to grips with and it’s hard to know what’s really going on in her head. He gets more and more frustrated at how passive she is and how she won’t complain and won’t stand her ground. She won’t challenge him on why he left her in Bombay and she won’t say why she didn’t tell him about the abortion. On a personal level he’s frustrated with how passive she is so he tries to provoke her out of her passivity. He wants to know what she really thinks. On another level he’s just really frustrated at how things have turned out for him and he’s deeply wounded by that. He’s had this lifestyle of entitlement but he starts lashing out at her. Ultimately he does provoke her and it destroys both of them – he takes it too far and I don’t think that’s what he had in mind.

Trishna - Frieda Pinto Interview

The last twelve months have been very eventful for young Indian Actress Frieda Pinto who hasn't really looked back since her acting debut in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. Last year the actress made a bigger name for herself mainstream with  Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Tarsem Singh’s Immortals this year she has taken a step back into more independent films. This Monday 9th July will see the release of Michael Winterbottom's Trishna on DVD and Blu Ray which is a modern adaptation of Thomas Hardy's classic Tess of the d’Ubervilles moving from bleak 19th Century Industrial  England to modern day Rajahstan, India.

To promote the film's release on July 9th on DVD & Blu-Ray our good friends at Artificial Eye have sent a very interesting in depth interview with the actress. Of course these questions were not prepared by ourselves however the interview is very informative and worth a look. Stay tuned tomorrow for another interview this time with co-star Riz Ahmed, also watch out for a competition to win the film on DVD we're co-hosting with The Peoples Movies.

Q: Take us through the process of how you became involved in the project. What attracted you to it and to the role of Trishna?
A: When I was told that Michael Winterbottom would like to meet me to discuss his new film project, I obviously jumped on the opportunity. He is one of those rare directors who makes films by boldly attempting and embracing any given genre. I was already familiar with Thomas Hardy’s 19th century novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles and the idea of having it set in contemporary India was absolutely brilliant and apt. I was pining to sink my teeth into a hardcore independent project and Trishna came along.

Q: Who is Trishna?
A: According to our story, Trishna is the nineteen year-old daughter of a rickshaw driver. Since she’s had a taste of a little education, she doesn't entirely conform or fit into the traditional mould of thinking that her parents belong to. She leaves school and works at a hotel near her hometown of Ossian in Rajasthan to bring more money into the household. She is, however, determined to ensure that her younger siblings are given a good English middle school education. That’s something that she wishes she could have continued as well. She meets Jay while working at the hotel and falls in love with him and has a sometimes blissful, but mostly tumultuous relationship with him, which eventually leads us into their tragedy.

Q: Tell us about Trishna’s personal journey
A: Trishna for me, is the epitome of purity and suffering. Her journey can be divided into the three phases within the film. The first is her mundane family life in Ossian which starts changing only after she meets Jay. An unspoken passionate tension and subtle seduction rule this phase. The second phase is what I called "the Happy Phase" where both Jay and Trishna get temporary freedom from everything class-related, where they can just enjoy being together, uninhibited, in the city of Mumbai. They really discover each other during this time and are passionately in love. This is where Trishna, although she misses her family, is a lot more relaxed with Jay. The last phase is the most complex one of the story where Trishna has to face the inevitability of her fate with Jay and the fact that she would never be able to rise from her social class/status to be on the same level as him. In a way she would always have to submit to him in society. However, in their private moments while the love still exists, it slowly turns into sadistic torture especially for Trishna, which she swallows as a bitter pill. Finally, she is pushed over the edge and that’s when she decides she cannot take it anymore.

Trishna is constantly torn between her desire to adopt Jay's modernism and urbanity - which to some extent she does, and the traditional family values and rural roots that she finds hard to ignore. Therein lies her conflict. She does find it very liberating when Jay comes back looking for her and takes her to Mumbai. But there’s a certain sadness in the fact that she never fully fits into that setting but is nonetheless happy to try. When Jay finally takes her back to Rajasthan after finding out that she has been hiding a secret from him, she is in a way made to accept the unfairness that she has always been subjected to. To sum up her journey throughout the film in short, she’s almost there but never really there.

Q: Tell us about her relationship with Jay
A: Jay in our film is the embodiment of both Angel and Alec in Hardy’s novel. Trishna's purity is alluring to Jay but it’s that very quality he ends up exploiting in his Alec phase. It’s a very passionate relationship filled with sexual tension, awe and a certain admiration for each other. But they are almost like each other's forbidden fruit. Trishna would probably only dream of falling in love with someone like Jay and only in her wildest dreams would she ever imagine it to be a reciprocal feeling. There is a lot of shyness and passivity in the way she handles her side of the relationship with him never knowing how much she could actually open up. So when she finally does tell him about the pregnancy, his image of her being a symbol of "ultimate purity" comes down like a house of cards and they move into a very sadistic phase of their relationship where she continues to be even more passive which irks Jay further and in turn he keeps provoking her to get her to react. It’s a doomed romance.

Q: How different was the shooting experience and working with Michael, compared to your other films?
A: Michael has a very distinctive style of filming. He is not afraid of getting his hands dirty in a way that he can be fully involved in the story and encourages and expects us to do the same. He also has an optimism that is absolutely admirable but also quite intense. He knew I didn't speak Marvadi at all but somehow thought since I spoke Hindi I would be able to speak and improvise in Marvadi as well. It obviously scared the living delights out of me and forced me to find a method to pick up the language in less than 20 days! I didn’t have a dialect coach on set so I had to prepare myself fully for whatever could be thrown at me. I think in that sense, he expected our homework to be thorough and for us to be as prepared as he always is. That quality made me think a lot more independently as an actor and to be able to make the set more organic rather than contrived. He likes working with a very intimate set - very few people where you don't feel like it’s a movie set. He is very flexible and invites the actors to come up with their own ideas to enhance the scenes. Every film has had its own unique and wonderful experience but this is what is unique about Michael.

Q: What sort of preparation and research did you do and what other skills did you have to learn? You do a lot of dancing...
A: Oh yes - the dancing! I accompanied one of the crew members on a recce a month before we started filming to get a better sense of the culture I was going to dive into. It’s obviously not enough to just be an Indian to play this character. Rajasthan is vastly different from Mumbai. I met a lot of families, young girls working at hotels, recorded videos and audio tapes, went to local schools, spoke to students there and got interesting insights on their dreams and aspirations and the hurdles they come across in accomplishing those dreams. For me, my research consisted of studying people. I was not playing Tess in England or Mumbai, so I had to keep it as authentic to the Rajasthani setting as possible. In terms of skills, I learnt to speak a bit of Marvadi and of course learning the traditional Rajasthani dance moves was fun. Can milking cows and goats also be considered a skill? I think yes!

Q: The role of Trishna is huge and required flexibility and versatility, which you excelled at. What were the biggest challenges and biggest joys of the shoot?
A: It has been by far my biggest and most demanding role and I couldn't have enjoyed it more. The biggest challenge was adopting Trishna's passivity which is not necessarily her strength or weakness, it is both. Many times Michael had to remind me during certain scenes not to respond and join in every conversation but rather be the observer and absorber. That’s very difficult for a chatty girl like me who is always ready with a response! But through the course of the filming process it started falling into place - the frustration, the internalisation of the pain she feels that ultimately pushes her over the edge. For me it was almost like her passivity was a must to understanding her suffering. Working with a team that introduced a guerilla style of filmmaking to me was a complete joy and I cannot say I wasn't ready for it. I was more than happy to embrace it. The simplicity of our living conditions in Ossian made it easier for me to feel closer to Trishna. I found it very interesting that we didn't just work with professional actors. The family playing Trishna's family in the film were a real Rajasthani family from Ossian (except for those playing my mother and father). It was like the saying "go with the flow" for most part but with an obvious direction.

Q: How was it working with Riz?
A: There is something absolutely earthy and raw about the way he performs. He takes every moment as it is given to him; he feels it inside out and delivers with impact. He can be very hard on himself sometimes but that’s the way he functions. I believe that’s his way of pushing himself to do better and excel. His ability to communicate his ideas and at the same time be open to debate made it very easy and a memorable experience to work with him.

Q: Michael has compared the England of the 19th Century during Tess’ time with the new India that’s emerging (industrialization, urbanization, education). Do you agree? How have you seen India change in recent years and how in particular, has it changed for women like Trishna?
A: It is quite true and I never really paid attention to that comparison, till I had to justify to myself why TRISHNA would be the perfect Indian Rajasthani adaptation. It definitely is. India has changed in a lot of ways and in some ways there is still the need for more change. Education is slowly trickling into most remote villages of India and the importance of educating the girl-child is also coming to the forefront. There are still a few rigid ways and blind faith beliefs, social class system and casteism - that serve as hindrances in a few small towns and villages in the interiors of the country but despite that conscious efforts are being made to ensure that the need for basic education to children – male and female is met and adequate support to see it through is provided for. The Thar English Medium Primary School in Ossian that lent their support in the pre-production process of the film is one such example of the educational change in rural areas.

As far as cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore etc go, there is an incredibly distinctive change. Technology and modernisation has improved the quality of life, and education has become on a par with the international standards if not better. The manner in which India's economy has seen an unprecedented boom in the last one and half decades and particularly in the last four to five years has a lot in common to the industrial revolution of England.

There is also considerable growth and development of “home grown MNCs” in India. Besides the open door policy that allows foreign investment in India, we also have our own corporate giants like the Tata group, the Birla group, the Ambani group that have made a mark in the business and entertainment world not just in India but also overseas And of course as far as changing role of woman in society goes , the fact that the current President of India is a woman is quite a shining example.

Q: Trishna’s journey is portrayed in a very raw way. How did it feel to play that? How emotional was it?
A: It was very challenging but liberating. Michael did not tamper with or clean up the natural setting to make it seem conventionally perfect. It was easier to play with everything that I was surrounded by. That also helped me immerse myself in my character for the 9 to 11 hour filming days without feeling the need to let myself get in the way. Mistakes were the best part of the filming process. They were not corrected and fixed every second of the day. The fact that the camera never stopped rolling and we never had a script was my favourite part. I had to live every minute of the scene as my character. At times, a lot of things we would say were so real and this is where you think about how much life's experiences prove beneficial in films like these. It was exhausting and draining at times but became kind of like an addiction to push one step further to see what else could possibly be in store. In that sense it was definitely an emotional journey as it did require every thinking, feeling muscle to be engaged while performing.

Q: Trishna is more complex than Jay gives her credit for. What finally pushes her over the edge?
A: As far as I’m concerned, unfortunately what drives the entire relationship over the edge is Jay and Trishna's inability to understand each other's complexities in the first place and address them. But a problem lies within that very thought as Trishna's shyness and passivity almost makes it impossible for her to partake in a confrontation. The vast difference between the social classes that Jay and Trishna come from also contributes to the breakdown of their relationship as they share very little in common. Trishna finds a beautiful new life with Jay in her Mumbai days and for fear of losing it and his love, she hides the fact that she was once pregnant with his child and underwent an abortion. She obviously came from a place where her family's decision to end the pregnancy was final and one that she had to agree to as she would disgrace her entire family otherwise. It’s much like how Hardy's Tess, talks about sexual double standards wherein a girl losing her virginity before marriage was frowned upon by society.

Jay's reaction to her secret is too harsh for Trishna but she takes it upon herself as something she must live with, that she must endure some more suffering. However, this also makes her retreat further into her shell and become more passive. So in the final Nagaur phase, there is an almost stubborn and egoistic battle between the two of them. She craves for the Angel in Jay to be revived but the setting/circumstances in which they live in now almost reduces her to more of a concubine than the lover. So while she suffers and he becomes increasingly aggressive in the way he treats her, their relationship degenerates into something almost vile. Finally, Jay's demeaning act towards her momentarily changes something in Trishna. She’s can’t take it anymore and she is overtaken by a silent but murderous rage and kills him. I viewed this as the killing of Alec in Jay rather than Angel but the way our story is woven means she loses Jay entirely.

Q: Michael has drawn similarities between Thomas Hardy’s storytelling and Bollywood films (melodrama, love, poor girl falling in love with rich man and being carried away). Can you see that?
A: Absolutely. Essentially it can be viewed as a typical Bollywood story – the themes and the definite melodrama in it. Even some of Hardy's lines can find a direct parallel to some of the Bollywood films, especially when Angel returns from Brazil to find her as a mistress to Alec and Tess tells him "It’s too late, it’s too late". It’s reality that is heightened with tools like melodrama.

Interview with Drew Cullingham - director of UMBRAGE: THE FIRST VAMPIRE

The Horror Channel Movie Of The Month is Drew Cullingham's bloody brilliant Umbrage: The First Vampire, which is broadcast on Friday 22 June.

The film stars legendary British actor Doug Bradley and concerns an unscrupulous antique dealer's ancient mirror that serves as a portal for shadowy beings to be unleashed into the night with a thirst for blood.

Drew talks about his outstanding directorial debut and his plans for the future.

Q: How did you start in the movie business?

DC: Slowly! There was a time when all the things I take for granted now, all the people (actors and crew) and all the facilities and so on, were a faraway dream. I worked a little in TV, mostly filming food related VTs for live shows, and I cut my teeth bit by bit on a few short films. Of course even then I was begging, borrowing and stealing in terms of kit and so on. Well, not stealing, obviously! It was a useful testing ground though, as both in the TV jobs and in the short films I was almost doing the directing by default, because I was doing everything else! I believe a director should know one end of a camera from the other, and understand how sound works, how long make-up can take to do, basic editing etc. Of course I would say that, because I've worked most aspects of filming! The biggest step was to become a proper producer, and to actually decide to helm a feature. That was scary, because it meant going out looking for real money, and actually employing a full crew. It was pretty much a leap of faith really. I scraped together a little budget for Umbrage, and the rest just followed on, sometimes easily and sometimes not!

Q: Have you always been a big fan of horror movies?

DC: Absolutely. Not just movies either. I was a voracious reader when I was younger, and my parents were actually quite strict in terms of how much TV I could watch, so I used to hide beneath the covers at night with a torch and a pilfered James Herbert novel or something similar. Before long I was an avid fan of Clive Barker and Edgar Allen Poe. I also was 'of age' in the mid 1980s. When I say 'of age' I mean that age when you are very impressionable and watch things you are far too young to watch! And as we all know, the 80s were chock full of what are now absolute classic horror films. Freddie Krueger, Jason, Mike Myers, Chucky, Pinhead (of course) - the list goes on of the nasties that stalked my boyhood dreams. Jaws was for me, as for so many people, a seminal work too. Fear has always fascinated me, as a potent force, not even just in terms of horror movies, but generally as a governor of our lives. A lot of horror movies just plug straight into that primal emotion, which is something I think should be faced and conquered.

Q: Where did the idea for Umbrage: The First Vampire come from? Were you inspired by any other vampire movies?

DC: I've always been a vampire fanatic. At one point I think there were hardly any vampire films I hadn't seen, until Twilight probably! One of my other great teenage romances was with Hammer films, and the vampire ones were always the best. Granted, there may have been an adolescent yearning for those heaving bosoms and a teenage boy's desire to have the same command over them as Christopher Lee's Dracula. But it's no secret - there is something unashamedly sexy about vampires. The main birth of Umbrage though, was the cowboy-vampire figure, Phelan. I had for some time been carrying this character around in my head. We're like big kids, us filmmakers, really: it's like I had these two favourite toys, horror and western, and I just wanted to mash them together. It's not completely original, I know, but I just wanted to cross a cowboy with a vampire. Vampires can sometimes be a little effete, but add a gruff cowboy veneer to that and you have a whole different kettle of fish.

Of course when you have an (anti)hero like that - you need some kind of adversary. I kind of stumbled across the whole Lilith thing through a number of sources, and always like the idea of strong females in stories, so the rest just fell into place. And while you're being playful like that, what more obvious scenario to have as a backdrop than a dysfunctional family in the middle of nowhere?! Oddly enough though, despite my love of vampire films and mythology, I kind of ignore a lot of conventions in this film. The word 'vampire' is never used, though it comes playfully close at one point. There are no crosses, no garlic, no bats, and no traditional way of killing them.

Q: Doug Bradley has won rave reviews for his role in the movie, how did you go about casting him?

DC: Doug was such an obvious choice to top the wish-list really. In terms of horror icons, he and Robert Englund are the only people to have played the same character eight times! As a homegrown talent, that makes Doug the UK's most iconic horror actor. Add to that my own love of Clive Barker's work, and it became a no brainer really. Pinhead was, to me, one of the most genuinely fearsome creations ever to walk the screen. There was just something so damn relentless about Hellraiser. It was true horror. As to how he ended up being cast... mercifully it was fairly straightforward. I contacted his agent, he read the script, expressed an interest, and we met up. We went for a pint at Victoria station, and I had to get the whole fanboy thing out of the way quickly. After that we just got on. Whatever I said, it must have given him enough confidence in me that he agreed to do the film. And boy, was I thrilled.

Q: Was the rest of the movie easy to cast?

DC: Jonnie Hurn (Phelan) had been cast from an early stage. I pretty much knew he would play Phelan just from talking to him, which is odd, since he's not Irish, nor a vampire or a cowboy. It was just one of those moments where you see something with complete clarity. I also met Grace Vallorani that same and was impressed with her, so she became a fairly obvious choice for Lauren. I already knew James Fisher and Scott Thomas, and they just kind of clicked with me as a double act. Rita actually answered a casting call for Lilith, but when I'd spoken to her for a while I had to tell her I just didn't see her as being right for that part, but would she be interested in auditioning for the lead, Rachel. That was the toughest part to cast, and I made poor Rita read three times I think. Rachel has a pretty nasty backstory that isn't fully explored in the film, but I wanted it to be in the character. Rita nailed it too. Even when she was freezing cold (boy, was it cold - and her costume wasn-t the warmest!) she did a great job.

Q: Did you have much of a budget to play with?

DC: Not at all. And if it hadn't been for the generosity of so many people, we would never have made what we made. For example, James Friend, the DOP, brought his own RED Camera and shot the film for free. We had to spend some money, obviously, on locations, lights, the 35mm camera that we used for a couple of days for the wild west stuff etc. But so much came for free or ridiculously cheap. Fuji did us seriously proud with film stock, all the cast and crew worked for little or nothing, even Movietech and Panalux gave us spectacular deals on grip and lighting kit. Of course, it helped shooting in winter, but still - there's a lot of people I will be grateful to for as long as I live! Not least the folks invested what budget we did have. The film was entirely funded by private investment, so do these folks a favour and go out and buy the DVD as well as watch it on the Horror Channel!

Q: The movie is the Horror Channel's Film Of The Month, you must be pleased about that?

DC: Of course I am. I am thrilled to bits about it! Umbrage was my first full length feature film as a director, and any feature film is an ordeal to make, from the conception of the idea through the filming and the ardours of post-production. I am a cinephile, and a lover of horror films, so in any way being able to contribute to the canon is a thrill to me. And recognition from a channel dedicated to the genre is something that gives me great pleasure indeed.

Q: Who in your opinion was the greatest on-screen vampire?

DC: You'd think I'd have an answer to that one all ready... My background is as literary as it is filmic, so I'd have to rephrase the question and ask myself who is the greatest vampire. Then it becomes easier, because undoubtedly it is Stoker's historically inspired creation, Dracula. I'm pretty certain that no horror character has been portrayed by more actors than Dracula, so that only narrows it down a little bit! Lugosi of course was great, and I really rate Gary Oldman (hard not to!) in Coppola's film, but I really have to go back to my informative years and my Hammer adolescence and say the mighty Christopher Lee. Happy 90th Birthday, by the way!

Q: So, what other projects are you working on?

DC: I've got a few things at different stages actually. I shot a fairly experimental micro-budget containment thriller called Monk3ys last year, which I could describe as Big Brother meets Saw! It's very much a riff on reality TV, reality in general, and the film industry, and I'm very proud that it picked up an award at last year's Raindance Film Festival. I'm hoping to announce sales/distribution on that very soon. Currently in post-production, I have a film called Black Smoke Rising which is another micro-budget tale, but very different to either Monk3ys or Umbrage. It is a poignant and personal portrayal of grief, told in gorgeous black and white! I'm also in the advanced stages of developing a WW2 psychological thriller about a pair of airmen stranded behind enemy lines. It's kind of 127 Hours meets Buried meets Jacob's Ladder. We've got some fantastic talent lined up for it, both in front of and behind the camera, so watch this space...

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