Britflicks Interview – Luke Moss ‘Between The Silence’
Writer-Director Luke Moss has boldly stepped onto the film scene with his first British low budget feature film Between the Silence taking on difficult, complex ideas of the human need to feel something within a multi-layered story. Moss takes us through the origins of his script, the process and his future direction.
So, how did you start?
Well, it started off as the play in 2009 but I started writing a year before that; but I originally wrote it as a film. So that’s the point where I didn’t have any equipment, didn’t have anything to make the film so I was like ‘the best thing I can do is make as a play’. We got a rehearsed reading at the Brockley Jack Theatre and that went really well. I’m one of those people where if I set my mind to something and I really want it – I always said I want to have it at the Soho Theatre and then we just worked and worked and worked and worked and got it in at the Soho Theatre. Then after that I just always had the need to make that into a film. The script has so many different pieces of imagery and locations that it just lends itself to be a film. So again I turned around and said after the play ‘I’m going to make it into a film’
Rumour has it that you made the film on a zero budget – a budget of £1000 and this is a feature by the way.
The actual making of it – we had nothing. It was literally all the actors and everyone involved just gave up all of their own time.
It was the same cast from the original play?
Yeah, it was the same cast except the guy who played Mark, was a new actor (Cameron Brown) because the original guy was a bit too young and not chubby enough. So we changed him. We got this new guy who I’ve worked with before. So making the film actually we had nothing. To get it on, I had sponsors from a couple of producer friends whom I’ve worked with before and owed me favours so they gave like, a couple of hundred each and eventually it paid for the venue. Also on top of that I had to just work my arse off to pay the rest of it.
From beginning to end, it was pretty much your name on everything. Where did you come up with the original concept?
Well, I started off with – I always write on bits of scrap paper. I started the whole thing off when I was in a pub and I was meeting a friend and they were late and I a scrap bit of paper so I just started writing bits of dialogue down and it turned into the mother’s (Imogen Smith) scenes with Bea (Genevieve Berkeley – Steele) on the beach. It was really repetitive and I had to edit it
And everything but eventually it just grew and I started filling their scenes and working on next scenes.
Also, Alex’s character was based on a lot of people I know in the gay scene and also personal stuff as well; like the first scene with Mark is more or less – I could take it from a part of my life – like it is a scene I’ve took from my life and re-written it in film.
There are lots of touches of you in Alex’s character. Which parts of the film were autobiographical?
Well Alex is like an extreme version of a part of me. It’s like he’s at times quite cold and quite direct and so sexually driven and self protective. The only reason he is all those things is because he doesn’t want to deal with his real feelings – his insecurities, his vulnerabilities and I can relate to that as well. So he kind of just grew from those little bits of things and bits of me and it just all came together. I love films which have different stories, link together and weave together in and out – films like Crash and Magnolia. I love those films so whenever I write I do take inspiration from them. Also just because, when you have a film or a play that has so many different characters, you have a huge dichotomy of different areas of life, different aspects. It’s not always just ‘these people live in this bit’ it’s about their culture.
All the characters are connected and disconnected in some way. They are human beings and you were fearless to go into new areas as a director.
I prefer to do something – where people talk about it. I’ve seen stuff and said ‘That’s good’ then you move on, carry on and they are easily forgettable. Whereas, I had a lot of people afterwards say it was quite thought-provoking, you did think about different things and tried to put yourself in different situations and what else could a Writer ask for. That’s ‘well you’re relating it to your life’. That’s what a piece of theatre should be.
You got some of the audience (my additional guests at the premiere) arguing with each other over the film’s particular issues.
Well when we did the play; a lot of people asked ‘what do you want to get out of it?’ Then on the second night, we had this man – he and wife came from just outside of Sussex and he was very typical old fashioned – he’s a Farmer, works on a farm and he didn’t know what it was about and his wife dragged him along. He watched it and he came out and his wife told my friend who is a friend of her’s that he couldn’t stand the gay characters, he was like ‘It’s wrong, I don’t like it, blah. Blah’ and she said he just wouldn’t shut up. He kept going on and on and on.
The morning, he got up and he was still talking about and she turned around she was like ‘Look, can you just stop talking about it?’ and he went to work, got home from work and he turned around and he was like ‘You know I’ve been thinking about it and if that’s how people are living their lives nowadays and that’s the relationships they have, then good for them’ and that was it. So he obviously had it stuck in his head – that whole 24 hours and came to the conclusion that people do it and it’s fine and it’s love and that’s what I said to the people who asked me what did I want to get out of it. Well, for me, even having that one response from a guy who doesn’t see the theatre, lives in his own little world and he turns around and that changes his mind about it. That’s great. I didn’t ask for that, I never wrote it to change people’s minds but that’s brilliant, that’s affected someone’s life.
To get people with a set mindset to change is a minor miracle.
Yeah, another reason I wanted to do it was with all the cuts with funding and the BFI and all British filming has been cut dramatically and theatre as well – all the arts. My thing is that if you really want to do something, you can do it. It’s like, I’ve probably spent so much money on travel this year that I could’ve spent on nights out and clothes- nice things – I haven’t had nice things this year but this is – doing this – is my nice thing. Luckily I had people – the cast and the crew who believed in the script and also were of the same mind where even though it’s so hard to get funding nowadays, if you really have the passion to make film then you’ll do it. You’ll get up at five o’ clock in the morning so we can get into London for seven o’ clock or Brighton and swim in the sea for 2 hours. I did this film for another reason – to show that if you can make a film on nothing, imagine what people can do who have funding and are passionate can do.
Is there anything you wanted to do or would do differently?
Well I’m never satisfied with what I do ever. A lot of artists aren’t. They do something and think ‘Oh, but I could’ve coloured that in differently or ‘I could’ve made this person –‘ and I would – even my own performance, I’ve done it twice, the film and the play and I did things differently in the film that I wanted to do differently in the play and if there was anything after this then I would. There were certain shots, certain bits of sound that, yeah, they needed work and if I had another year and another £10,000 worth of funding then I would do it but it gets to the point where I’ve lived with it for over 2 years so I’ve got to just be able to go ‘there it is, that’s as far as I’m going to go and if I come back to it, I come back to it’ There are things I would change.
Favourite football team?
I don’t really follow football. My family are massive Aston Villa fans.
What’s the response/feedback been about the film?
The main thing was people were talking about it and asking questions about what would happen, the parts they really liked and what they really wanted to see more of. You have to put a full stop on things and I’m not a ‘happy ending’ kind of guy, I’m not the kind of guy who writes ‘they all rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after’ kind of stuff. There aren’t completely sad endings. There’s hope.
We enter into relationships hoping – maybe we will last, maybe we won’t. You are left thinking ‘well what’s going to happen to these people?’ You can watch over again and ask questions and that’s great.
Something they all have in common is that they are searching for a release. They’re all stuck in this kind of numbness of living this life that they are not comfortable with and they are all searching for something. Whether it’s love or happiness or a family or to be a father or whatever it is, they all want a release where they can say ‘this is who I am’. A purpose, which is something we all kind of search for in life anyway and Alex is stuck, a sexually driven man who can’t deal with his insecurities and vulnerabilities to open up to someone and in a horrible way, that(spoiler)scene is a release. People do it because they have an anger issue or whatever’s wrong with them and that is a form of release for them and they do it not so they are better but it self-medicates.
What’s in the future? What’s the next step?
I start a new film in February and I’m producing that one, not directing and it’s a Comedy called Dream On, set in Wales in the eighties and it’s a coming of age story about a young gay man who goes on a camping trip to Wales with his mother and meets a guy. We’re working with Stonewall (The national gay, lesbian and bisexual equality and justice programme) and working with kids who are dealing with that. It was written by the director and he’s asked me to produce it so I’ve had this big experience now. Then after that I start my own film in May which I have written and will direct again. It is another drama with several storylines, a lot bigger and will need more funding and a lot longer – it’s like, 2 hours but it has a more basic premise. It’s based on a mother who’s lost her child and the next six years she revisits the place she last saw him, meeting different characters and each has a different story within the film but they unknowingly give her a clue as to where her son is so eventually by the end she puts all the clues together but it’s not the way you think it’s going to turn out. It’s called Traces of Me.
This is the beginning, a lot of people told me that I could relax now but I’m like ‘No’. Here’s a start and I’m going off with it, doing more and more and getting better and better.
It was very stressful but really worth it.
This film marks raw potential from Moss who displays a positive unrelenting passion for film and interwoven stories showing human nature as is.
Joanna Ebuwa
joannaversion1@hotmail.com