Exclusive Interview with Little Ashes Director Paul Morrison

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Little Ashes Screenings

FESTIVALS

Kansas City, Missouri Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
July 2, 2009

U.S. THEATRE RELEASE DATES

Monterey, California
May 22, 2009

Cambridge, Massachusetts
May 22, 2009

Sag Harbor, New York
May 22, 2009

Portland, Oregon
May 22, 2009

Millburn, New Jersey
May 29, 2009

Santa Barbara, California
May 29, 2009

Santa Cruz, California
May 29, 2009

San Francisco, California
May 29, 2009

St. Louis, Missouri
May 29, 2009

Washington, DC
May 29, 2009

San Diego, California
June 5, 2009

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
June 5, 2009

Atlanta, Georgia
June 5, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota
June 5, 2009

Wilmette, Illinois
June 5, 2009

Dallas, Texas
June 12, 2009

Palm Desert, California
June 12, 2009

Greenwich, Connecticut
June 12, 2009

Plano, Texas
June 12, 2009

St. Petersburg, Florida
June 12, 2009

Denver, Colorado
June 19, 2009

Boise, Idaho
June 19, 2009

Scottsdale, Arizona
June 26, 2009

New Haven, Connecticut
June 26, 2009

Detroit, Michigan
June 26, 2009

Philadephia, Pennsylvania
June 26, 2009

Kansas City, Kansas
July 3, 2009

Kansas City, Missouri
July 3, 2009

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
July 3, 2009

Nashville, Tennessee
July 3, 2009

Madison, Wisconsin
July 10, 2009

Tucson, Arizona
July 17, 2009

Baltimore, Maryland
July 17, 2009

Olympia, Washington
July, 25, 2009

Louisville, Kentucky
July 31, 2009

INTERNATIONAL RELEASE DATES

CANADA
Toronto, Ontario
May 22, 2009

Ottawa, Ontario
June 12, 2009

Waterloo, Ontario
June 26, 2009

PUERTO RICO
San Juan
July 9, 2009

SPAIN
May 8, 2009

UNITED KINGDOM
Apollo West End, London
May 8, 2009

Showcase Newham, Essex
May 8, 2009

Showcase Reading, Wokingham
May 8, 2009

Apollo, Piccadilly Circus
May 15-28, 2009*

*Extended Matinees

Cinema City, Norwich
Five Day Screening
May 22, 2009*

*Extended through June 11th

Prince Charles Cinema, London
May 27 & 28, 2009

The Cube, Bristol
One Day Screening
June 3, 2009

Glasglow Film Theatre, Glasglow
Three Day Screening
June 12, 2009

Queens Film Theatre, Belfast
One Week Screening
June 19, 2009

Belmont, Aberdeen
One Day Screening
June 20, 2009

Picturehouse, Clamham
One Day Screening
June 20, 2009

Picturehouse at FACT, Liverpool
One Day Screening
June 20, 2009

Harbour Lights, Southampton
One Day Screening
June 20, 2009

Picturehouse, York
One Day Screening
June 20, 2009

Phoenix Arts, Leicester
Two Day Screening
June 21, 2009

Festival, Corsham
One Day Screening
June 25, 2009

Dukes Cinema, Lancaster
June 26 & July 1, 2009

Electric Palace Cinema, Harwich
June 28, 2009

Eden Court Theatre, Inverness
Four Day Screening
July 3-6, 2009

Roses, Tewkesbury
One Day Screening
July 28, 2009 @ 7:30pm

Exciting New Features

We want you to feel at home here at LA Promotional Blitz site, so we're building a community that will allow members to send private messages, email the Admins for requests & inquiries, upload your own avatar, create your own blog, submit articles and much more! Stay tuned!

Exclusive Interview with Little Ashes Director Paul Morrison

Written by Sam Kerbey

Monday, 01 December 2008 00:00

With so many new and exciting clips (need we mention the trailer's premiere?) we are beginning a distribution of our own exclusives. A few weeks ago, we promised you more excitement from Raindance, the film festival where Little Ashes made its initial debut. Sam, an LA Administrative Team member who saw Little Ashes, twice, and who also had the amazing opportunity to meet and interview the filmmakers and actors at Raindance, first shared with us her review and her experience at Raindance, and now she shares her interviews.

With that, we now launch a series of exclusive interviews from the cast and crew of Little Ashes. First off, we establish the series with a Q & A from Little Ashes director, Paul Morrison. There's still more to come, so check back soon!

Can't wait for later and need your Little Ashes fix? Head over to the main tMF site for an in-depth, four-part series focusing specifically on Little Ashes, including more interviews!!

- - -

Can you tell us what you’re doing today?

Today we’ve had a little screening upstairs for UK distributors, I’m going to go meet and greet when they come out of the movie – and hopefully they will all have loved it and are going to be fighting one another for the right to distribute it in the UK (laughs).

What are your hopes for distribution? Independent cinemas? – or just as many as possible?

(laughs) As many as possible! It would be nice if it would cross over from being an art movie, because I think there is a lot in it for young people, so it could cross over – Robert will probably help with that! (laughs)

Yea the twilight thing will probably help…

Yea that would be great.

Did you know he was going to be in Twilight when you cast him?

Did I know? No, I kind of suspected he was going to be very big though.

[ More of the interview after the jump ]

- - -

So what else have you been up to today?

The other thing we’re doing today is filming and being interviewed for the DVD extras, the EPK (Electronic Press Kit).

OK so you’ve mentioned your love of the script when you received it again from Philippa, how it combined the intimate story with the themes of art and revolution…how did you try to convey that in your direction?

Gosh that’s a difficult question. I think your job as a director is to tell a really good story, so your job starts when you work with the writer to hone the script. To make sure every scene is working, make sure there is no dialogue that doesn’t belong. That the movie as a whole has a rhythm to it, with the highs and the lows, and that it is coherent. So that’s your first job. Then you have all kinds of arguments with the producers about what they want to cut out of the script because it’s too expensive, and we don’t have the money to shoot it! So you try and figure out other ways of maybe achieving the same thing, combining scenes for example and working with the writer as well. They really are your main jobs.

Were there any particular scenes you fought for? or lost?

No not really. Well, it would have been nice to see Salvador in a train going to Cadaques, and Lorca in a train going to Andalusia. You know the spiritual homes of the two main characters are at opposite ends of Spain and they actually have a lot of significance in the movie, on who they were, their identities and the landscape. So yea I would have liked to have a train (laughs). But we couldn’t afford one. As it is it’s probably fine because train shots just waste seconds in movies (laughs) might as well just get on with the film.

Did you do research into the characters, or did you leave more of that up to the actors?

Well in the period I described to you, when you’re honing the script, I don’t do too much research. I like my head to be clear, to think about the drama and the writing of the story. (I do more) afterward, when I’m going to be asked loads of questions by really smart actors (laughs) - particularly Robert, who’s very very smart. Every actor is different, some just work from the page some like to do a lot of research. For me it was important that the actors weren’t mimicking the characters, particularly with Dali where there is a lot of media and footage and people have an idea about him in their heads – a caricature of Dali. These were young guys and it was very important that they act from their hearts rather than their heads.

You have a background in documentaries, how does that affect you directing a film based on real events?

(laughs) yea it makes me feel over responsible to get the facts right having a documentary background, but also these are Spanish icons... its the same as (a non English actor) playing Shakespeare.

Ok so Dali, Lorca, and Bunuel…which is your favorite and why?

Oh God!

History rather than a portrayal if that makes it easier...

Well being a film maker Bunuel has always been a bit of a hero for me, I think they are all really creative in their own way. Because Lorca was very much working from the heart and the soul I feel closer to him. I feel more of an affinity for him than Dali who focused and explored more of the mind. Though I wouldn't want to talk in terms of favorites (laughs)

We’ve not been able to speak with anyone regarding how the locations are chosen and why… What can you tell us about the locations and why they were chosen?

Well partly we chose Barcelona because it's better preserved - the buildings from the period the movie is set- than Madrid. We also shot in Cadaques where the Dali family had their summer home. To me Cadaques, the landscape of Cadaques, was Dali's spiritual home. It has this weird volcanic rocks, well actually they're not volcanic but you see these rocks crop up in Dali's paintings and you think that they come from his imagination but actually they are this region. Some of the rocks look like strange birds and animals, which we see in the film.

Did you find any particular scenes difficult to film? Why the difficulty, and how did you over come this?

Well sex scenes are always difficult to shoot (laughs)

Uncomfortable difficult or technically? (laugh)

(laugh) uncomfortable and technically difficult!

Errr ok so do I want to know why they are technically difficult?

Because you're dealing with something that is very personal and intimate so you need that (feeling) but you also have to reduce it. You need to keep the spontaneity but at some level you have to reduce it to an exercise. You'll see when you see the movie, it'll answer the question.... (laughs) and we weren't paying the actors enough to reveal too much.

Can you share with us a favorite moment in the film? Or what scene(s) you are looking forward to viewer’s reactions of?

Well there's this scene where Dali and Lorca are swimming in Cadaques which is just un-utterably beautiful. Though it wasn't beautiful to shoot (laughs) we shot a lot of it in a smelly tank in Madrid but it looks absolutely beautiful in the film, so that's one of my favourite scenes. And actually the sex scene which I just described is one of my favourites - they have a rawness about them.

What was the rehearsal process like?

We had two weeks for rehearsal which wasn't bad for a movie. I have a house in the South of France and I took Rob and Javier down, and my family was there, and they began to relate to their characters and the story. And then we went back to Barcelona. I don't really expect the performance to come together in rehearsal. It's time for everyone to find out what each scene is about and look inside each character so when we get on the set the groundwork has been done for them to create the characters. I don't expect them to be finished.

What can you tell us about what you are working on currently?

I'm doing one, Charlotta, about a Jewish woman who was exiled to the South of France. It's about coming to terms with what happens to her. She falls in love, so it's a story about a young woman finding herself.