In my review of Simon Rumley’s latest film, Red White & Blue, I described it as “phenomenal and a must see film of 2010.” It really is that good and it has been garnering critical praise as it sweeps film festivals around the world.
Last night the film received its UK premiere at FrightFest in London and will hopefully be receiving a UK release soon.
We were lucky enough to speak to Simon Rumley and you can read our exclusive interview below.
HeyUGuys
What was the starting point for the script? Did you have the whole film mapped out when you began or was it something that grew as you wrote it?
Simon Rumley
With my last film The Living And The Dead I travelled to a lot of festivals in a lot of different countries, spoke to a lot of people and read a lot of articles about the film and pretty everyone seems to agree that it was more horrific than any horror film they’d ever seen but it wasn’t actually a horror film and I liked this contradiction. So when I started to consider my next script I decided I wanted to keep this contradiction in motion so I started to dissect what a horror film is made of and what makes it a horror film and for most films it’s about survival and you’ve usually got one person chasing another with a knife or a gun or a chainsaw with the intention of killing them. I took this as my basic premise and tried to work out a more interesting way of achieving this.
I actually started writing the script quite a while ago but felt that it wasn’t working so I shelved the idea for a while. When I came back to it in September 2008 I knew that I wanted to or needed to make the first third of the film a character study about a young girl – the Erica character. I also knew that I wanted to write about a guy she’d slept with so that became the second third. After that, I knew I wanted the film to have a genre element so then the Nate chatacter came into play. I did the script in thirds therefore with a vague idea where it was going but not an exact one.
HeyUGuys
Although popular with horror audiences Red White & Blue is certainly not simply a horror film and the human drama and intimate relationships seem more important than the horror elements. How did you approach making the film in relation to the horror genre and transcending the genre conventions?
Simon Rumley
Yes you’re right. I’ve always been a bit disappointed in how little the characters in horror films are usually developed. There’s a short-hand that is often used that establishes our, usually, teenage characters in about two scenes and the rest is about the horror. I remember watching Jeepers Creepers and starting to think that there was an impressive amount of characterisation and then I thought, well hang on, they’ve only been talking in a car for about 5 minutes so it’s not that impressive by usual character development standards.
I wanted to see a film therefore which has a genre element to it but in which you really cared for the characters, thereby making the terrible things that happen to them ten times more horrific than if you didn’t care for them. It’s not rocket science to work out that the more you care for someone on screen the more intensely disturbing it is to watch them suffer.
By deliberately painting the characters neither as the obvious good guys or the obvious bad guys, by concentrating on the terror that the threat of violence induces, rather than the actual violence itself, by using the cross-temporal method of editing seen more in films by Peckinpah or Roeg and by scoring the music in a fairly non-traditional way are all other methods, I’d say, that help the film transcend the genre!
HeyUGuys
Whilst watching Red White & Blue (and The Living and the Dead) there were moments when I found the film hard to watch and wanted to look away, a feeling I rarely get. In both films this is tied to an emotional engagement and both are incredibly emotionally draining. Is cinema that disturbs and affects in this way something that has always interested you and something you aim for?
Simon Rumley
Thanks for the comments and yes, certainly in these two films, that exact emotion is what I’ve aimed for. Doing that in The Living And The Dead came from me watching my mother die of cancer over a 3 month period and wanting to recreate the emotions I went through during this period on screen. I liked the effect it had on people and felt that a big part of The Living And The Dead’s success was the fact that it really did disturb people on an emotional level. I’ve always liked emotionally draining films and remember seeing some early John Woo films or, say Fight Club, and thinking how great it was to have had such an emotion through the medium of cinema; I like the intensity that cinema can bring to you and, generally I’d prefer to experience this intensity than other emotions in my films.
Personally, I’d prefer to be disturbed by a film rather than scared by it since I think you grow out of being scared once you understand the formula of most genre films but there are still idea and scenes that can brutally disturb…
HeyUGuys
Can you talk a little about the production of the film and the involvement of Tim League.
Simon Rumley
Sure. Well Tim is someone I met when The Living and The Dead played at his festival in Austin, FantasticFest. I stayed at him and his wife’s house so became friends with them and then kept bumping into them in Cannes or Berlin or Puchon so at some point during this period I asked if Tim would help me out if I ever made a film in Austin and he said sure.
So at some point some time later, I ended up writing Red White & Blue and sending it to him and he was still happy to help out. Due to his owning the Alamo Drafthouse chain of cinemas, he’s one of the main men in Austin and knows everyone so if we needed something for production, whether it be a location or some extras or some transport or a basement (we used his!), we’d ask Tim and actually, thinking about it, I don’t think there was anything he wasn’t able to sort out for us so it was a great boon having him on board and realistically we couldn’t have done it so efficiently and easily without him.
The production was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and everyone in Austin did a great job and was a pleasure to work with which certainly isn’t something I usually say. In the end we shot for 3 incredibly intense weeks in 27 different locations…
HeyUGuys
The film looks absolutely stunning and I understand it was shot entirely on the Red camera. Why did you choose the Red and what were your experiences shooting on digital rather than on film?
Simon Rumley
Thanks and yeah we shot on the Red for a few different reasons. One of the main ones was that I’d never shot on digital before and wanted to try it out and Milton the DP felt the same way. Also there’s a budgetary and time thing with Red that makes it easier and cheaper and arguably quicker to shoot a movie on rather than film or the ‘higher’ end digital cameras. When Red came out everyone got very excited because the quality was such that you could shoot a low budget movie but have the quality of 35mm for, essentially, a fraction of the price and I think this is true.
My experience of shooting on the Red was a thoroughly good one. We lost a couple of small scenes or set ups which we had to shoot again because we lost some of the footage but that was about it. Due to the excessive Austin heat (up to 110degrees at one point, we had to have an ice bag on the camera for pretty much the whole shoot.
HeyUGuys
The cast of Red White & Blue are fantastic and the performance by Amanda Fuller is particularly impressive. How did you come to cast Red White & Blue and were there any techniques you used to help get the performances we see from your cast?
Simon Rumley
Thanks – for the three main characters, each person was cast differently. Noah we went to whilst I was still in the UK, thinking he was a bit of a long shot because he lived in Australia but in fact he lives in the South of England. I met up with him after he read the script and his main concern was that it wasn’t going to turn into Saw or Hostel; I told him it wasn’t and a few days later he came on board. Sometimes the greatest things happen and they’re so easy…
With Marc, I’d seen him in a film called The Lost where he played this great serial killer who was somehow charming but a terrifying maniac at the same time. I thought the sensibility that he brought to that role would work well for Red White and Blue where we needed to mix an everyday reality and normality with some kind of nascent/burgeoning pathology. He read the script and loved it and came on board straight away.
Amanda came from having a bunch of open-casting sessions in Los Angeles and thinking she did by far and away the best audition and then meeting her and seeing how instinctively she understood the role. Although this is the first time most people will have seen Amanda she’s actually been acting since she was 8 so she’s more than paid her dues and got a hell of a lot of experience behind her and that absolutely shows.
In terms of working with the actors, there’s nothing I do especially apart from make sure they understand the script in the way that I want them to understand it and then making sure that when they’re on set, they retain a believability through their performance.
HeyUGuys
At the heart of the film is a tragic love story. How difficult was it to develop this in the script and generate sympathy in the audience without letting go of the darker more violent aspects?
Simon Rumley
Well I guess it was in the third draft of the script that all this stuff clicked, esp since as mentioned above, I was making the script up very much as I went along. At some point I read a a long interview with a disillusioned interrogator who just returned from his tour of duty in Iraq and when I read this, I felt this what the perfect psychological make-up for the Nate character. Previous to this he’d been more of a generic violent type which I was never 100% happy with. Once I made him an interrogator with sociopathic tendencies, the whole love thing really clicked and it really became the film that you’ve seen and yes, the whole thing is a dark love story that ends in tragedy and more than anything, it’s actually a very sad tale of love lost…
HeyUGuys
What were your reasons for including the final epilogue-like sequence and did you ever consider answering more or less questions that are raised in the film about Nate?
Simon Rumley
Well I guess there’s a few different reasons for this. A lot of the film up until that point has been intense and there’s been quite a few close-ups and emotionally wrought music has carried through. The last few scenes are mainly very wide and they’re all on sticks as opposed to handheld so it seemed like it was a good way to ease the audience back into reality, to let them breathe a little bit.
I guess I also wanted this to feel like a naturalistic and ‘real’ film where things don’t always resolve themselves in a way you’d like them too; the remaining character is pretty devastated by what he’s done and what’s happened generally but he’s a pragmatist and knows life must go on – and I liked the idea that he goes to see his sister and his two nieces; something very mundane and familial.
Well I think the questions are more or less answered about Nate – you still don’t really know his exact his background or his exact pathological tendency but his conversation at the end with Marty confirms, in my mind, his background.
HeyUGuys
Although there are other ways of reading the title, Red White & Blue of course brings to mind the American flag and the film features a lot of elements specific to American culture and there appears to be a subtext relating to recent world events. Would you say Red White & Blue is in part a commentary on America?
Simon Rumley
Yes indeed; I’ve always thought of the film as political with a small ‘p.’ It’s not the most important thing about the film; it is first and foremost a character study of two people in love. That said, by titling the film such, I felt it gave the film a resonant subtext and thus expands the intellectual enjoyment of it – although again, I’d prefer it to work primarily on a guttural, visceral level.
HeyUGuys
As a British filmmaker did you have any concerns about making such a dark American film and what made you decide to make the move to make a film in America?
Simon Rumley
Interesting question but actually now you mention it, it’s not something that ever crossed my mind…
I went to America to make a film because, having made 4 film in the UK previously, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s incredibly hard to get your film seen outside the UK. Although our industry has a very high opinion of itself, I’m not convinced the rest of the world shares the same opinion of our self-worth, and in my opinion when it comes to English language films, we are, more often than not, second class citizens after America. So really, I wanted to do some travelling in business class, not economy!
HeyUGuys
What do you think of the current state of British film and what the future could hold? Do you intend to make another film in the UK?
Simon Rumley
In all my 14 years of making films, I’m not really sure our industry has changed that much and in the next 14 years, I suspect it won’t change much more. It’s full of a small amount of people shouting loudly how great we are but really, I don’t see that we’ve progressed beyond our supposed love of period dramas or gangster films or social realist films and usually not very original ones at that. I like Danny Boyle as a director and I like Ian Softley but beyond these two I can’t say anyone’s really done anything of any great note Nicholas Roeg or Ken Russell in their heyday. For my liking, there’s a distinct lack of anyone trying to do anything different, both from a film-maker’s perspective or a writer or producer’s perspective and I think that’s a sad thing. In terms of younger film-makers, two examples of interesting directors are Chris Nolan and Tom Clay (not so well known but who’s first two features premiered in Cannes) and they now both make films outside of the UK so I think that says it all really…
I did actually shoot a segment called Bitch of a psycho sexual horror anthology called Little Deaths in London in February. There’s been several problems with the anthology as a whole so it’s hard to say (because I don’t know) exactly what’s happening with that at the moment.
Of course I’d be very happy to make another film in the UK but I have no plans to write another script based here (I have one in China, a couple in the US and am hoping to do one in India) so I’d imagine the reality of making another one here for a while is pretty slim…
HeyUGuys
Is there anything else you’re currently working on or have plans for that you can tell us about?
Simon Rumley
Well my Chinese film is the closest to happening but that’s slightly under wraps at the moment. Apart from that there’s one film I’m attached in the US to direct called Crime Scenes which is about a bunch of people who’ve all been victims of violent crimes and how they come together to sort their lives out. It’s a fantastic script by a guy called TS Faul who wrote Grim Love and I’ve been developing it with him for the last year and I think we’re just about to send it out. If you imagine Paul Haggis’ Crash written by Chuck Palahniuk you’ll have a vague idea about it and in my opinion it will be in the same kind of cult classic territory as Usual Suspects, Fight Club, Memento, Pulp Fiction etc. So yeah, pretty excited about this!
