ComingSoon.net already had a great interview with Hammer & Tongs, the video and commercial production team of director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith, when Garthâs movie Son of Rambow premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, so we had to find some way to make our second interview with them new, different and special. (You can read our previous interview with the duo here.)
The interviewer decided to shave his beard (itâs true!) before realizing that the second time around would probably be more relaxed since it wasnât taking place at a film festival where weâd been watching literally dozens of movies in the days before, plus the guys had some time to recover from their Sundance partying after having made the biggest sale at the festival when Paramount Vantage bought their little coming-of-age film for $7.5 million.
Itâs a pretty amazing feat for a quirky and hilarious Anglocentric story set in the â80s about two boys from different backgrounds, Will Proudfoot of the Quaker-like Plymouth Brethren and Lee Carter, a troublemaker living with his older brother, as they become unlikely friends while making their own home-grown sequel to the popular âFirst Blood.â The fact that the movie is carried by two young actors, Bill Milner and Will Poulter, neither whom had been in a movie up until to that point, is also pretty amazing.
This time around, we discussed what had changed (if anything) since Sundance, how the movie has been playing for audiences, how they feel about test screenings, and how at least Nick has little fear of their movie finding an audience despite a number of back-to-back summer blockbusters opening in the next few weeks (Watch out, Iron Man and Indy!)
ComingSoon.net: When we last spoke, you had just finished the movie six days before and were going through the Sundance experience and sold the movie. Now that itâs 15 months later, are you sick of talking about it yet?
Garth Jennings: Actually, we havenât been talking about it all that time. Itâs only been the last couple months really where weâve been doing press, mainly in the UK and obviously, in the last two weeks, weâve been here in the United States.
Nick Goldsmith: Itâs actually quite easy talking about this one, because weâre really proud of it. Luckily?and who knows? Weâre off to L.A. tomorrow and maybe the end of three days in L.A., weâll start to get bored of it?but right now, itâs still good. Weâre finding out a lot about each other in this process.
Jennings: Itâs true, because the funny thing is, weâve worked together for 17 years. You know how you donât talk with your brother or sister? You just take it for granted that you are what you are and thatâs the relationship. Everyone keeps asking, âSo how do you work?â And weâre like (gives blank stare) and then they say, âWho does this?â
Goldsmith: Itâs like therapy.
Jennings: Yeah, weâre going to go home and change.
Goldsmith: Weâre never going to work together again.
Jennings: Too much skin has been removed.
CS: So âRambowâ might be your swan song? Youâve been bringing the movie to a lot of festivals, too, so how has the reaction been to it? Sundance is a fairly singular experience.
Goldsmith: The festivals have been amazing. For us, itâs great, because itâs been an opportunity to see the film with an audience who havenât been sold a lot of advertising and posters before coming to it. Theyâre obviously cinema lovers, but theyâre seeing something with a very untainted view, and pretty much with all of them, weâve been doing Q ânâ As afterwards, and itâs just been amazing. One, how many people stay behind afterwards for the Q ânâ A, but also the response weâve been getting from people. They genuinely really seem to like the film.
CS: Have you watched the movie a lot of times with the audiences since last year?
Jennings: No, we always catch the end, like the last five minutes, just so weâre going into the Q ânâ A knowingâŚ
CS: The last five minutes?
Jennings: Yeah, but really, the lovely thing for us was the problem getting this film made was that people couldnât understand⌠we promised that weâd make a film for everyone, this was our premise, this was our whole pitch. And people struggled with that idea because they thought, âHow could you make a film for everyone? We donât know how to make a poster for our film for everyone.â When we go to these screenings, weâve had kids from the age of 5 through the oldest people Iâve ever seen, and seeing that and seeing them there and seeing them all respond with the same level of enthusiasmâwell, they all get something different from it?is the greatest reward after all this work. Itâs really nice.
CS: Has the film changed at all since Sundance, bearing in mind that you had just finished the film and had time to see it with audiences since then?
Jennings: Oh, we did actually. Paramount asked us if there was anything we wanted to do, and because that Sundance screening was really the first ever public screening weâd done, we wanted to go back and just do a slight tweak on the mix in some areas. There were a couple lines of dialogue that just needed lifting. It was an afternoon tweak, thatâs all we did.
CS: There were some worries about Vantage wanting to release a PG movie and change it to be more of a family-friendly or kids-type film, but it seemed like pretty much the same movie I saw at Sundance.
Jennings: Well, it hasnât changed, not one frame different, and really no oneâs noticed the difference. Itâs just an EQ thing, thatâs really all we did.
Goldsmith: The amazing thing is that kids are enjoying it. In the screenings, thereâs been many times where there have been kids as young as five, and they ask questions at the end, and theyâre actually the most intelligent questions of all the questions you get, âcause theyâre real questions. We had this one girl ask, âWhen the Mum has the flashback and sheâs a young girl, how did she get the money to buy the record player?â Thatâs a good question!
Jennings: Youâre amazing, you eight-year-old genius.
CS: Then you have to go back and do rewrites and reshoots to answer those questions?
Jennings: I hate that whole tradition of reshoots thatâs become a custom now. That itâs acceptable, that itâs okay to go into a movie not having a finished script âcause youâre going to reshoot it. How depressing!
CS: Thereâs a whole test screening process that studios are famous for doing. I guess youâre doing most of your testing at the festivals in some ways, but did Paramount say, âLetâs test it before an audience?â
Jennings: We did test itâŚ
Goldsmith: âŚbut the testing was for the marketing departments to work out how to market the film, rather than how to change the film. We did testing in Pasadena⌠because everyone seems to do their test screenings in Pasadena, so itâs sort of like, âHow could it really be a very good place to test?â because everybody going to the screenings, theyâre used to going to test screenings.
Jennings: And then in their focus group at the end of the screening, theyâre going, âIâm not sure about the cinematography in Reel 5,â and you go, âBollocks!â Itâs really funny⌠I hate those bloody things. But also, I swear to you, no test screening Iâve ever been to, and I think the studio found this when they screened âSon of Rambow,â you know whatâs working and what isnât by the time the movieâs ended. In terms of informing the marketing people, they should just be getting on with it and making decisions themselves. They want confirmation, sure, but thereâs too much emphasis put on those things, and very often, the information can be taken from those things and read the wrong way.
Goldsmith: Also, audiences donât want to decide themselves what they are meant to be watching. People donât give audiences enough credit. Audiences are clever. It seems like these days, weâre too quick to go, âWell, letâs check with the audience what they want first,â and weâre adapting to that. What you end up with is mediocre, because youâre trying to please all opinions, when actually, audiences want to be surprised.
CS: And yet you guys succeeded at finding something that all audiences might like without having to go through that process.
Jennings: Yeah, we were happy, and it was great, because at one of the test screenings we were at, it was like, âWell, there you go. Told ya!â I donât mean that in any way arrogant, because the studio were wonderfully supportive and thatâs what they wanted to get from the screening, but it was very interesting to just sit there and listen.
Goldsmith: I think the only thing we got from the screening was the thing that⌠actually, putting the âwâ at the end of âRambowâ is a good idea, because there was one guy who went to the screening and on his test report, it was like, âHow dare you trick me? I thought I was coming to see a sequel to Rambo! Where was the guns?â
CS: âWhere was his son?â
Jennings: âI wanted a ninja boy! Whereâs my ninja boy?â
Goldsmith: So hopefully, the âWâ goes a little bit to saying, âItâs not a sequel to Rambo!â
CS: I canât remember if we discussed it last time, but way back in the â80s, there were these guys who remade âRaiders of the Lost Ark.â I know you did some home movies of your own when you were kids, but were you aware of those guys when you were making this or at any point beforehand?
Jennings: Not until when we started because we started right near eight years ago, and there was nothing around at the time as far as we knew. Obviously, that film had been made but it hadnât been brought to our attention. We started working on this in England?
Goldsmith: We knew about it after the âVanity Fairâ piece, well that was the first time I heard about it.
Jennings: That was before we shot it, but all it was was an account of their story, and we thought, âYeah, we could relate to thatâ and we knew when we were writing this as well that we were not the only kids who had similar experiences. It was a collective experience, whether youâd actually picked up a camera or not, you knew the value of movies and it had the impact of watching something and have it blow your mind. So yeah, those things came out and then in the time weâve had, âBe Kind Rewindâ?which we hadnât seen yet?and then another âRamboâ movie!
CS: Well, the âRamboâ movie you knew about because we discussed it last time.
Jennings: But we didnât know when we started working on it. If you told me thereâd be another one, I would have laughed you out of the room.
CS: And another âIndiana Jonesâ movie, too. Nothing dies forever. You mentioned âBe Kind Rewindâ and when I saw that, I immediately thought that everyone is going to see âRambowâ and think you were imitating.
Goldsmith: I havenât seen âBe Kind Rewindâ either but theyâre very different. Itâs just the fact that itâs on a VHS really, isnât it? Itâs the entire town filmingâŚ
CS: Yeah, itâs a completely different premise, but I think Michel Gondry was influenced by the Raiders DIY thing, but Iâve never asked him directly, so I canât prove it.
Goldsmith: I want to see the âRaidersâ thing âcause Iâm just curious about this whole thing that it happened over seven years⌠theyâre getting older through the film!
CS: Itâs absolutely hilarious and itâs one of those âmust seeâ movies. I know you had the script for a long time before you decided to make the movie, but did you do a lot of storyboarding?
Jennings: Yeah, itâs great fun doing that, because weâre big on planning. We work on the whole thing upfront. Itâs all about the prep for us, and I spent three months storyboarding the entire film. I think it was somewhere in the region of 1500 frames, and that finger (shows pinky) has never quite been the same, but itâs brilliant because I love drawing anyway. I love it. Itâs just the nicest thing to do, but I love the idea of planning it with Nick and with the editor, and we took my storyboards and we would go through it as if we were watching the film. We made some brilliant deletions and simplifications during that process. You donât just storyboard it and thatâs it. You then use that as something to then go, âOkay, now hereâs our movie.â You go through it like a slide show and go, âWell we wonât need this now.â Seeing it on the move with other people, you start to recognizeâŚ
Goldsmith: And itâs great for all the other departments as well, because everyone knows what you have to achieve. Itâs all there, thereâs a very clear map, and for us and the way we work, itâs brilliant and our crews love it, because everyone knows, âOkay, this is what weâve gotta do.â
CS: Does that allow for any surprises or happy accidents on the set or does that limit what you can do? What do you do when you have something on set thatâs better than what you planned or envisioned?
Jennings: The whole film has come out as good⌠itâs what we wanted but even better than that, maybe because of the kids though. We always say, âThis is the line and weâve written it for this reason, and thatâs how weâd like it please,â but you always get something slightly different, whether itâs that the sunâs come out or the rainâs coming and we have to do something in a different way, thereâs always something slightly different, but if you go into it with a very clear plan, you feel incredible relaxed. You can suddenly go, âYou know what? That doesnât work quite so well, does it? Try doing it this way.â
CS: You can change things on the fly.
Jennings: Yeah, because you knew what you were after in the first place. The problem for us would be if we turned up on set and not know what we were trying to here.
Goldsmith: It works for some people. It just doesnât work for others.
Jennings: I mean, weâve done that approach. In commercials, Iâve done it more like overcovering something and I realize now that I didnât know how it was going to play, or rather, none of us knew, the entire agency had no idea, so you just get everything and you work out in the edit, and itâs the most cripplingly boring process ever. Film by committee, it just doesnât work.
CS: We talked about showing the movie to different audiences, so how has this movie been marketed differently in England then here? Obviously, American audiences view British films very differently here.
Goldsmith: Optimum Releasing released it in the UK, opened three weeks ago.
CS: I heard it did very well.
Goldsmith: Yeah, it was #2 the first two weeks and weâre still there. Itâs dropped off 20% over three weeks, which is great, but they took a gamble, and they opened large in the UK, it was up to 300 screens, which for the UK is a big release. I mean, 450 is likeâŚ
Jennings: Harry Potter.
Goldsmith: Like the absolute top.
Jennings: And thatâs like two on each screen.
Goldsmith: So we went really big and it seems to have paid off, so they had lots of big posters, there were billboards everywhere, they pushed it as a big movie, and itâs done well. Whereas over here itâs a platform release, which I think is right too. America is so much bigger anyway, but it will open in New York and L.A. first and then build on that, and hopefully, word of mouth will keep it going. But just that thing about itâs so difficult to stay in the cinema for longer than a couple of weeks.
CS: Especially at the time in which the movie is opening.
Goldsmith: Well, âIron Manâ doesnât stand a chance. Itâs not going to stand a chance at all. Even though itâs a Paramount film, we donât care.
CS: Maybe theyâre releasing âRambowâ as a back-up plan in case âIron Manâ fails.
Goldsmith: And the same goes for that Indiana someone bloke? Doesnât stand a chance.
CS: It probably wonât even be able to get into theaters since âRambowâ will have them all by then.
Jennings: (laughs) Just the idea that weâre this bizarre little overspill unit, weâre like the⌠âWhat do you mean thereâs no more tickets to Iron Man? Aw, sh*t! Whatâs this âSon of Rambowâ thing?â
Goldsmith: The only thing weâre worried about is Cameron and Kutcher⌠no, not really.
Jennings: I think we should be worried about them though, but you know what? You asked about whatâs the difference in how theyâve been marketing it and Iâm not really sure, but I remember one of the things they were doing in the UK, which is very interesting, was just in terms of the graphics, the poster, the tone of it, they were saying that they were trying to soften it. The film âRamboâ brings such a violent image into peopleâs heads and the trouble was that kids were loving this thing and they didnât want families to feel like we canât go and see that, itâll all be blood and guts. Especially with the most recent âRambo,â all you ever read was how many people blew up, so they tried to put a friendly face on it a bit more.
CS: And here theyâre trying to make your movie even more violent to match Americaâs bloodlust?
Jennings: You know what? Here, they kept the poster that we made and we kept it really like âThis is an interesting filmâ approach.
CS: I could definitely see the poster getting people on the curiosity factor if tickets for âIron Manâ are sold out.
Jennings: It works, yeah.
CS: Youâve obviously been doing a bunch of music videos since I last saw you. Are you going to get into doing another film soon?
Jennings: Yeah.
Goldsmith: We started writing, so I hope itâs not going to take as long. Itâs an animated film, which weâre at the outline-treatment stage at the moment, so thereâs not really a lot to tell except that at the moment, weâre going into it thinking itâs going to be animated. What style of animation, weâre going to sort of let the story dictate it, but we did a deal with Illumination, thatâs part of Universal, that did âIce Ageâ and âHorton Hears a Who,â that weâre trying to do something of a smaller sort of style where we can not create the animation ourselves, but try and really tailor something that would work towards the story.
CS: Your videos have always used a lot of mixed media techniques with puppets and different styles of animation, so do you think youâll go more in the route when making another movie?
Jennings: I think thatâs come about, all those different techniques have been used, because we never go into a project knowing how to do it. Itâs like Nick was saying earlier, that weâre always quite surprised when somebody says âYes, that sounds like a good idea, letâs do it.â And then youâve got that moment of, âRight, sh*t, we better think about this now.â Invariably, you havenât got the time or money to do the high-end David Fincher route?not that thereâs anything wrong with that?so you try to think of another way. Actually, thatâs not entirely true, because we also do enjoy having things in front of the camera rather than relying on post-production facilities.
Goldsmith: (dryly) Which is why weâre doing an animated film.
Jennings: Yeah. (laughs)
CS: Itâs something that a lot of directors have said, that they like doing things in-camera, because you can have the control to do what you want rather than having to explain to the FX department what you want.
Jennings: Yeah, but youâre always having to explain what you want to someone else. You always have to explain it, to the actor, the DP, even the studio, everywhere along, itâs very rarely you actually doing the thing. In fact, if we get a chance to do anything for the film in the process, whether itâs like throwing the pine cone orâŚ
Goldsmith: We will be doing, not necessarily complete voices, but definitely some sort of audio stuff if we do the animated film, if it ever happens. Thereâll be us⌠âcause thatâs something you get a chance (to do) because youâre not drawing.
(The two of them give a brief sample of the silly voices they might do in this animated project which would not translate into print even if described in great detail.)
CS: I just talked to Tarsem and I asked him why he doesnât do music videos anymore, after winning an MTV award for one of his two videos, and he said he didnât necessarily like the music. Are you guys very selective of which bands you work with?
Jennings: Oh, yeah, âcause itâs too hard to do anything if you donât like it, it really is. In the early days, we were just trying to build up a show reel. We were less choosy, but even then we were quite spoiled because it was a good time for independent music, but then as we went on, no, weâve only ever done stuff we liked, even if it means⌠we pick it because of the music, not just because of the budget. We just did a video for a band called Vampire Weekend and that was pretty much for free, but itâs come out great and we love them and itâs lovely.
CS: Is there some sort of new British arts movement going on in the film and music scenes? I know youâre friends with Edgar Wright and producer Nigel Godrich.
Jennings: I love the ideaâŚ
Goldsmith: Weâre called âThe Squiggle Piesâ andâŚ
Jennings: Itâs always so funny because weâre all from England, thereâs the instant thing of like, âThere must be a movementâ but no, I love the idea of there being a movement. Weâre all doing our own thing and weâre all desperately trying to get ahead, and every now and then we crop up in each otherâs projects. I havenât seen Edgar since he left England to start promoting âHot Fuzzââheâs been in L.A. this whole time, working on his next two movies and all that sort of stuff. Itâs just Nick and I. We just do our thing and then he goes surfing and I go and take the kids to the park.
Goldsmith: Iâm just trying to think of a new good word that can be a good name for it.
CS: âSquiggle Piesâ is pretty good. Or you can just start a movement with a bunch of others who donât realize theyâre in the movement.
Jennings: You know, we could do a lot worse than create a movement âcause that might give us a little more clout, you know, like the Manchester scene. I know what you mean.
Goldsmith: Well, âCool Brittaniaâ has been used.
Jennings: âFilm People from Britainâ⌠no that doesnât work.
Goldsmith: âSquiggle Piesâ for the moment is what weâre going with.
Jennings: Well, youâll have to let us know and then from there on, theyâre our ideas, okay? Thatâs the deal, thatâs how it goes.
Son of Rambow will open in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, May 2, and will hopefully expand so that it will be in 4,000 theaters or more by the end of the summer, and yes, the movie is just as funny (actually funnier) than this interview.