Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here. I had a little bit of an e-mail back-and-forth with Garth Jennings back when HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE was still test-screening, and he seemed like a decent sort then. And Edgar Wright swears by these two... says they are the real deal, film fans with their hearts in the right place. As if SON OF RAMBOW wasn’t proof enough. I know the film’s only in limited release this weekend, but now that many of you have seen IRON MAN, make it your job to track this one down. It is a huge love letter to movies and the influence they hold over every single film fan from the moment they are bit by the bug, and it’s a great comedy about kids but for adults. When I went to Paramount to interview them recently, we were in the Marathon building in a giant conference room. A fairly antiseptic setting. I showed up while Devin from CHUD was still talking to them, and despite my best efforts to ruin their interview with him, it seemed to go well. Devin looked a little annoyed when we traded places, though, and talking to him afterwards, we both had the same complaint. These two guys are so engaging, so easy to talk to, and so untouched by the usual publicity fake-speak that 15 minutes barely seemed like enough time to chat. That’s a pretty good complain to have, and after you read this interview, maybe you’ll agree that we were just revving up when things ended:
GARTH: Here we go. The showdown.
MORIARTY: Nice to finally put faces to the, uh…
GARTH: Here it is. We’ve got this nice cozy room to just curl up and have a chat.
MORIARTY: Could this be any more corporate and formal? I feel like I’m trying to get hired for something.
NICK: Perfect for SON OF RAMBOW, innit? GARTH: It’s like a ghastly U.N. summit that no one wants to attend. Anyways, here we are.
MORIARTY: Guys, I love the movie. I think it’s awesome.
GARTH: Thank you.
MORIARTY: There are some really great kid performances about to open. Your film... Tarsem’s film...
GARTH: Oooh, what’s that like?
MORIARTY: The work he does with that little girl is just beautiful.
GARTH: Right. His first one was that one about the serial killer? What was that called? NICK: THE CELL. That’s it.
MORIARTY: That was just a rotten script. This time out, he’s made a lovely film about storytelling, and it seems like often times, filmmakers find their voice when they start really picking apart the very nature of creating and story. That’s what SON OF RAMBOW feels like, as well...
GARTH: Good point.
MORIARTY: How much of this was a response to your experience on THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY?
GARTH: It wasn’t really a response, because we’d already written it. Pretty much the film that we made was already written before we were offered HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE. We’d started, you know, casting and financing when we were offered that movie, so we stopped doing it to do HITCHHIKER’S... which we had a blast doing... and then when we came back to SON OF RAMBOW, all we really took from that experience in terms of... ummmm... experience, I suppose, was the fact that we were happier working with a smaller crew. Getting big results doesn’t always mean you have to have more people. That’s a false idea. We were told we needed a lot of things that we realized we didn’t. That’s more a behind-the-scenes thing. In terms of in front of the camera, on both movies, we were allowed to do whatever we liked. NICK: I do think... all the way through HITCHHIKER’S, we knew we were going to come back and make SON OF RAMBOW. That was very clear. And I think sometimes in this world, people wonder once you’ve made a big studio film why you would go back and make a small...
MORIARTY: I think it makes perfect sense.
NICK: You’re the only one. (laughs)
MORIARTY: The filmmakers who do that well, like Guillermo Del Toro... I think that’s what feeds him...
NICK: Right.
MORIARTY: ... that ability to move back and forth and tell each story in the right way.
GARTH: True, but the logic would be, “Okay, you’ve done a big studio thing, keep moving forward. Do something else with robots or puppets.” NICK: The way we approached it wasn’t that SON OF RAMBOW was a small film or that we were going backwards in any way. We’ve always seen SON OF RAMBOW as a great big huge epic family story about filmmaking. We’ve never seen it as a small English film. It’s as big or bigger than HITCHHIKER’S in our minds.
MORIARTY: Well, some of the things I love most about it aren’t the parts about the filmmaking, which absolutely speak to my personal experience as a kid. I think anybody who loves movies, especially growing up in the video age... we were fortunate...
GARTH: Yeah.
MORIARTY: ... because we had cameras that we could put in our hands. They empowered us. But I love the specificity of the French exchange student storyline.
GARTH: Yes.
MORIARTY: And I love the moment in time that you captured. This is one of the best of the ‘80s period films. You didn’t make it a joke. It’s just... the ‘80s.
NICK: Yes, exactly. GARTH: And the thing of it is that I’d say our script was even less dependent on ‘80s paraphernalia and, and, and nostalgia. It was only when we got to set and the set was dressed and the people came out in their wardrobe, we were sort of like, “Oh my god.” It’s always... it’s an extra 80% of ‘80s razzle-dazzle from the script to the set. Just by dressing it to be period, it was... for example, a nice little scene in the script. He’s on the phone to his mother. The boy’s in the car. And when he puts the phone to his ear, it’s this giant block. And the audience starts laughing, and they’re thinking, “Yeeeeah,” and we never intended that at all. NICK: The problem is just that we grew up in the ‘80s. It wasn’t a great decade. I mean, there were some great things in it, but it wasn’t very stylish. It was pretty garish most of the time. It’s the decade with no style. GARTH: I think so, too, because you look at the ‘70s and everyone would laugh at the hippies and the disco, but at least they didn’t take themselves seriously. The ‘80s was all sort of like this arched eyebrow and these plucked faces...
MORIARTY: It’s all very Human League.
NICK: And like you said, we weren’t trying to make THE WEDDING SINGER. We weren’t trying to make... GARTH: That’s a totally different thing, yeah. NICK: It just so happens that’s when the story was set.
MORIARTY: It felt more to me like you made the film in the ‘80s instead of making a film about the ‘80s. And that’s always sort of the tell in these films… the way people can’t help but go overboard and ladle on the period stuff that makes them laugh. And you get that sort of playacting like “Oh, look, I’m a hippie!”
NICK: Yes, yes, yes... that’s very true.
MORIARTY: I think our generation may be film literate in a different way because we grew up in the ‘80s. We were the first generation that had video stores and cable, and I think we got really spoiled really quickly because for the first time, we could easily soak up whatever part of film history interested us most. If you saw a film you liked by a certain filmmaker, you could just rent his other movies. That never happened before.
GARTH: Yes, you’re quite right. You’d really have to go to film school to get that sort of experience, because they’d have all the old movies and the imported stuff, and there was no other way of getting that kind of experience, really, was there? So, yeah, we were the... and I don’t think we realized at the time, but we were the generation that grew up on all those Lucas/Spielberg movies. That was our beginning. Surely it doesn’t get any better than that. Every generation thinks they had it better than the current one, and I... I think we genuinely did. NICK: They ended up... they entered out houses...
MORIARTY: We just got lucky in terms of timing as far as when those movies came out and being the exact right age for them when they happened...
NICK: They entered our houses. It was like you could... we had a guy... used to come around to all the houses... uh, with a suitcase. He’d come by, ring the doorbells, every Friday night, and he’d come in, come into the lounge, open up the suitcase, and in it was VHS copies of all the films. Uh, and it wasn’t to buy. They were rentals. And he’d come around with each film, leave the film, and the next day, he come back to pick it up. It was a great system, and everything was that much more accessible for us. You could have it in your front room, so you could watch E.T. again and again and again and again. You’d still go see it in the cinema, but there was something else you could now... I think... I think it helped, like, push even further the whole make-believe thing, because...
MORIARTY: You’re right. We did still go to the cinema over and over. And now, films don’t get to have that sort of shelf life and be in a theater for, you know... a whole year...
GARTH: Yeah.
MORIARTY: I loved going to see RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK... you know... 37 times over the course of a year...
GARTH: Yes! Yes!
MORIARTY: It was just one of the constants in your life.
GARTH: “Do you want to go to the park? How about the arcade? Or do you want to see STAR WARS?”
MORIARTY: It felt like they’d always be in the theater.
GARTH: Yeah, that for us was... that was really the mark of success. I mean, box-office is great, and it’s nice that people get paid and get their money, but for us, the real triumph will be if SON OF RAMBOW can stick around. That’s the ultimate goal for Nick and I. NICK: I know you’ve got certain cinemas... for us, the real cinema is the one in the film, a real cinema called the Rex, and it’s one of these independent cinemas where they do their programming for a whole month, and they do things like... you could have a film that would play there for a whole year. And, fingers crossed, SON OF RAMBOW will play there... and I love the sort of idea that even now, there are certain cinemas in certain cities in certain places where you’re able to do that.
MORIARTY: It’s got to be a theater that’s privately owned, though, and it has to be run by someone who really loves movies. Because not a lot of people are in the theatrical exhibition business because they love movies. You know, bringing it back to your film and the ‘80s, that was the moment where film culture got apeshit crazy because of the money. And suddenly, it wasn’t about bringing the art to the people anymore. It was about playing the biggest blockbusters and making the most money.
GARTH: Yes, and I think one of our really... one of our most wonderful blessings in disguise for Nick and I during this whole process came when we got the sort of crushing news that there were more legalities to consider once we sold the rights to Paramount, and this was going to put the release back a full year. But what happened to us out of that was that we were able to go to the film festivals with the film, and in the meantime, we did this sort of tour, and it was glorious! PARAMOUNT VANTAGE PUBLICIST: Sorry. Last question, guys. GARTH: Because it felt very much like... the audiences got to have that sense of discovery that we all used to have. It felt like tapping into this community of people that still like to find stuff and not just watch the stuff that they’re sold, that they’re told to go and see. Do you know what I mean?
MORIARTY: Oh, yeah. Definitely.
GARTH: It was just glorious. We’d never done it before. I’m sure you’ve done loads of screenings and things like that...
MORIARTY: The festival scene can be really important for a film fan because it takes you out of that mindset of paying attention to a release schedule...
GARTH: Yeah!
MORIARTY: Because in this age of day-and-date releases, everyone’s seeing the same big films at the same time...
GARTH: Right. NICK: We keep on talking during this press tour... and we talk about loads of things during our downtime... we’ve been joking about wouldn’t it be nice to take the film on tour, like you’ve got a band? You get a tour bus and you project the film in different places or you go to cinemas...
MORIARTY: Have you heard of the Rolling Roadshow?
GARTH: No... what’s that?
MORIARTY: It’s this thing created by Tim League, who runs the Alamo Drafthouse...
GARTH: Oh, yes! We met Tim! NICK: We met him, and it was one of our best screenings.
MORIARTY: Tim’s a genius at exhibition. He has this giant beautiful inflatable screen, and during the summer, he does this tour where he drives around the US and, for example, goes to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, where he shows CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.
GARTH: Nice!
MORIARTY: Or he’ll go to Monument Valley and show ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Or the cornfield in Iowa for FIELD OF DREAMS or Coney Island for THE WARRIORS.
GARTH: Brilliant.
MORIARTY: I think this summer he’s going to Spain to show Sergio Leone movies on the locations where they were filmed...
GARTH: Oh, wow. I think that is an idea to be cherished, and Nick and I really love the idea that you do these things to re-establish your connection to cinema. NICK: It feels like going all the way back to the days of the early studios, where they were pure showmen who would just roll into town... GARTH: “Come to the show!” And you’ve got a klaxon going. “We’re going to show a movie over there tonight!” Seriously. We’ve seriously thought that one day, we must make a film like that. No theatrical release. We just hit the road with it, and it’s up to us.
MORIARTY: I think we keep getting closer to that day that Coppola predicted where some 12-year-old fat girl in Kansas makes STAR WARS in her garage...
GARTH: Yes.
MORIARTY: I like what you said about stripping down the size of a crew and actually feeling like you can accomplish more.
GARTH: Absolutely. NICK: Yes. Absolutely.
MORIARTY: And you guys made the movie you wanted to make with no concessions...
GARTH: Absolutely the opposite. It’s been one of the richest and most satisfying moments in our careers. NICK: What we keep coming back to is this: it doesn’t matter how you do it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got loads of money or no money. It’s always got to be a good story. And that’s the problem. It’s too easy to get something moving at a studio before the script is ready. People just have to make stuff.
MORIARTY: Like where you start with the release date but no script?
GARTH: It also goes for the opposite. For all the no-budget stuff. Because people suddenly have the ability to do things on their computer and make them look slick, and they can do loads and loads and loads of special effects by themselves. And again... NICK: ... you can do all of the tricks you want, but if you haven’t got a good story, it won’t be any good.
MORIARTY: Final Draft does not make you a screenwriter.
GARTH: No. No. It’s really good at formatting. That’s really true.
MORIARTY: Guys, I could talk to you for another hour easily, but Paramount’s giving me the stink-eye.
GARTH: Same here. NICK: Great to meet you.
As always, my thanks to the folks who put me in the room with Nick and Garth, and to the filmmakers for putting up with me for a few minutes. I hope this is just the start of a long and interesting career for these two as a feature team.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
