Tom (Steven Mackintosh) is a middle-class city boy whose life has reached breaking point. D (Ashley Walters) is a young crack-head: smart, witty, desperate. Tom is completely out of his depth when he finds himself in D's abandoned warehouse attempting to do a "deal" with the energetic, volatile drug addict.
The two enter into an irrational, deadly game of cat and mouse.
The tense drama escalates when psychotic local crime-lord Hoodwink (Andy Serkis) wakes up to find his snub nose gun missing.

Featuring three outstanding performances, this urban thriller is director Gary Love's feature debut, based on screenwriter Dominic Leyton's critically-acclaimed stage play Collision.

Interview with Gary Love

What drew you to this script? 

Initially I was sent it quite a long time ago and I thought it had a great vibe, it was a great story. Because I knew the budgetary constraints I liked the fact that it was self-contained, which meant that it was relatively achievable.

I liked the idea of something happening to somebody in that one minute where if they’d walked left or if they’d walked right, this thing could have happened to them. Also this film is about London and about a place in London that one guy happens to go to on this one day. I also loved the fact that this film was based on just 90 minutes of real time.

This is your debut feature, had you been looking at scripts for quite a while?

Yeah I’d been looking for a good script for a long time and I’d been attached to varying other types of scripts. Some of them were very close to shooting and others were never going to go anywhere, but you never really know when you first start working on something. Of course, the ones that looked like they were going to go somewhere were the ones you least wanted to do. So this was a little bit different when it came along.

How did you develop the script?

We worked with a fantastic script editor who works with Ken Loach on all his films, a chap called Roger Smith, and we worked, Arvind, the executive producer, put us together in a lab, where we all sat down for a week, went through the script, pulled it apart, then pieced it back together, and on and on.

So how did you and slingshot first come meet?

I acted in a French film with Matt Justice called Russian Dolls, directed by Cedric Klapisch in Paris and in London. We got on really well and he knew my directing agent. We talked at the time about stuff that I was interested in, and suddenly this came up. He sent me a copy and asked me what my thoughts were. I said I think it needed to go this way, that way, and the other way and months later it came back.

How closely did you work with Dominic Leyton on the development of the play to a feature film?

Dom and I worked together for a bit but then we starting working with Roger Smith in the lab. As an actor, obviously you come to directing from a different point of view and this film is very much performance driven.

It’s a tricky one because it is performance driven - originally it was a stage play - but obviously part of my job has been to stop it being a stage play. This means we’ve cut those five page scenes where actors can really get their teeth in and fly. Now the characters go out, we go here, we go there, we go to cafe’s or whatever, and it’s to make sure that those ones sit as the heart of the piece as easily as the stuff that has been there since day one and that’s taken some time.

The other thing for me is about working with the actors. I started directing because I was working on loads of TV where actors were sent to a corner and told to learn their lines and then come on and just do it. I thought that was crap. When I was working with actors I realised how much more they can give and how much more they love to give when given the option. So that’s why I started doing it, it made sense. I feel it’s part of my job to give them as much as possible a forum around them which makes them feel confident and loved. This is even when you’re absurdly under budget, which basically means you don’t have enough time to shoot the film you want to make. That’s a problem with the budget, and we all know that, so the point of it is, not to turn it into another form of TV which is rushed.
That’s the director’s fight with the money. Not with the exec’s, because you know the parameters of the job before you take it on board.

Interview with Ashley Walters

How has your relationship formed with first time director, Gary Love?

He’s the first director I’ve worked with who’s had an acting background, so he’s very much an actors’ director. That means he cares a lot about the actors, more than the position of the sun or whether planes are flying overhead. Our focus is most important to him, because he understands how it is to be in that space and to be interrupted and then to have to find it again. So we’re very lucky really, he spends a lot of time with us, working on the scenes and the dialogue. The relationship’s been good, I mean obviously I don’t want to look like a fool when the film’s cut together and obviously Gary doesn’t want me to either, we’ve got that trust there. So when I go over the top, he’ll tell me to bring it down, and when its not enough, he’ll tell me to bring it up. I think its worked really well.

- - -

The Cast: Tolga, Steven, Ashley, Adam and Andy - AKA Sef, Tom, D, Gary and Hoodwink

- - -

And when you say ‘us’ you’re talking about Steve Mackintosh, how was working with Steven?

Mac is just a lovely guy man. I remember him from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and funnily enough we’ve got the same agent so its good to be working with him. The stuff I’ve seen him in is totally different from the character is plays here. He’s obviously a very good actor. I’m learning every day so I know that I’m with people who can teach me a lot and Steve’s very positive in that sense. He’s a very quiet guy, not shy, but quiet and he fits the part really well, he does the part really well.

And what are your thoughts on working with Andy Serkis?

To be fair, I haven’t really seen much of his work other than Lord of the Rings and King Kong and stuff like that, but I know he’s huge, he’s the man! He’s a brilliant actor, my mum and a lot of people have seen what he’s done and I know he’s good at playing a Hoodwink sort of role. It’ll be interesting to see how he tackles it and what he brings to the table.

What is it like working with slingshot?

It’s just a beautiful thing. We’re making a very low budget film, with a group of guys who are all passionate about the project, and its not about money and sales, its about making a good piece of art. To be honest, I prefer to be on sets where there is that intimacy, where everyone cares about it was much as I do. A lot of people are here for free, you know, a lot of people are literally working their butts off for nothing, for experience and for the love of the script or what they do. There doesn’t seem to be that much hierarchy and everyone is just working together and mucking in. The other day we had to move the ‘video village’ as they call it to another place for the shoot and you see all the actors, me, the director, moving stuff around. Everyone’s just putting their best in and that means a lot to me.

Who would you like to see Sugarhouse?

I think everyone can get something from this movie, so there’s no particular group of people that I would say come and see this movie to although I would encourage the youth and kids to come along and watch the movie, if not for anything else, just to take away from it the thing that everyone’s life is different and has bad times, but there’s always someone worse off than you. You can always put things into perspective, move forward, and make a negative into a positive. But I hope everyone comes to see this movie because it is about a side of life that people don’t really know a lot about.

Interview with Andy Serkis

What drew you towards playing this kind of monster, the character, Hoodwink.

Well I’ve got a little bit of a history playing monsters but this one particularly, Hoodwink, he is a great character. Although he is ultra violent and has a short temper, what appealed to me about him is that he is very much a human being. Although he is a trained fighter and can go off at any time, you do get to see a domestic side to him with his wife, Tanya. At the beginning of the story everything is going well, he runs the estate, its his manor, but he’s also just about to have a baby. So his life could go one of two ways at the moment. His wife is trying to bring out the ‘ying’ in him, taking him away from the alpha male that he is and trying to calm him down.

There are devices in the film that humanise Hoodwink, the Buddhism, having a pregnant girlfriend, how does this affect how you play the character?

The thing that Dominic has done brilliantly with these characters is the fact that your moral judgement of them switches from one second to another. You don’t really know who your allegiances are with, where you lie morally, I think that is the power of the piece, the most important thing about it. I think it would be very unbalanced if the villain didn’t have a window of humanity because then it would be too clear cut - very black and white - that’s not interesting drama. So right at the beginning of the story you actually see him at his most tender. Then when he’s put under pressure, when the turning point of the drama happens, he is incredibly driven. He’s just like a fury for the rest of the film, but you’ve been allowed to see that tiny little window into his domestic side first.

How did you come to the project?

My agent was sent the script and I read and loved it, but I was in down mode for the first time in a long time with my family so we had to work it around some dates I’d already booked for the holiday. I drove back from Italy, sixteen hours drive, and started a seven or eight hour tattoo session and costume fitting. Filming the following morning started at 6am!

It took me a bit by surprise, the first couple of days I was really tired because the whole thing takes an immense amount of energy. Hoodwink, he’s a pressure cooker, so from the first take you’re on adrenalin. Its pretty full on stuff, you can’t really fake it, you can’t pull back on it, you can’t really half do it, you have to really go for it every single time.

You knew Gary Love before this film came along?

Yes, we’ve known each other for a long time and I’ve respected Gary’s work as an actor for a long time. He’s got a reputation as being a good actors’ director and it made perfect sense when I got this script. It was a play first, transferred onto screen so it made great sense that it was going to be directed by an actor director as it is very much a character piece. And I’ve just been blown away by him. He’s a lovely man and he creates an amazing work environment. He’s so creative about everything, his choices, he is incredibly accomplished in the way he uses the camera, in all the aspects of the filmmaking. I’ve really, really been impressed by him and he’s just great to hang around with.

How did you find working in this kind of filmmaking environment with Gary’s direction?

Often on film sets you, as an actor, fulfil a function in the whole filmmaking process, but actors are not given the space on set to get into the head space of the character and play the scene properly. That is often neglected and Gary takes that very seriously. We would always just before a take, take a moment of concentration to create that magic moment for the actor to step into the creative atmosphere and that is something that a lot of directors don’t think about, because they are focused on the shot, the look. The DOP’s are concentrating on the lighting and the way it looks, and so on, so very often the actors aren’t included in the creative process so much, they are thrown in at the last minute as if they are not part of the creation, which I think is somehow ridiculous.

Interview with Steven Mackintosh

Your character plays in a number of very intense scenes, how have you found playing the role physically?

The last few days of the shoot were challenging. I spent a day smashing up the bathroom and I spent the next day soaked in blood, crying and breaking down. But it feels that the stuff we’ve done is good. It’s been quite intense, there has been a lot to do in a day, they’ve been long scenes. But for both Ashley and I, they’re great parts, there is a lot to get your teeth stuck into. Andy Serkis’ character ‘Hoodwink’ is interesting in terms of the energy of everything, his is such a psychotic character.

How have you found developing your character’s relationship with Ashley’s character?

I think the scenes between me and Ashley have been working really well, I mean we look totalling different, we are chalk and cheese, and I think that’s been really important. Our energies are completely different in character and it feels like it’s working really well.

What has been the highlight of working on this film in this role?

Smashing up the sinks, the bathroom, the loo, it was quite a odd day but strangely cathartic. People ask me about these kind of things before and I think its because in real life if you behaved like that you’d probably get locked away or something, but you get the chance in these work situations to kind of let rip and smash up some porcelain and people go that was fantastic, do that again! So it felt great, and the bathroom it looked completely wrecked, and I was swimming in water and in blood, and Gary was going, “more blood, more blood, more water, more water” and it was insane. It was one of those moments, where I was lying there in a pool of water and blood, thinking “ am I really doing this?! This is my job then, is it?!” So that was a particular moment but it has all been a good wheeze!

[ official movie website ] [ Lunar Films ] [ Sugarhouse Blog ]

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