Oh, folks, it's showtime.
People say, good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Don it off.
That's what's so interesting about monsters. Most monsters are victims.
How do you do? I'm Christopher Lee.
Tool, handsome, erogant, im, curious, powerful.
Oh he must be scary to meet.
He went from.
Tiny parts in swashbuckler movies in their early fifties to working with George Lucas and working with Jackson, I mean, the most respected directors in the world.
He put that in perspective with his wartime experiences and so what.
It was for intise it marked him.
There is some mystery attached to his work during the war and immediately after it.
He was involved with a lot of sabotage and targeted assassinations.
Which of course the British government doesn't know anything about it.
The British film industry was in its tenith, particularly after the war, there was a great hunger to create new stars.
Everyone that will always remember him is Dracula.
Great things are expected of him and here he was playing monsters.
It had got him recognition, but it also was the sort of thing that he could never leave behind and that so many people thought was all he could do. He said to me that he pinioned me because I had seen so many of his movies. He wanted to move on from that.
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
I'm your host Mike White.
On this episode, I'm talking with John Spira. He is the director and writer of the new film The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee. You've heard John on the show before. Most recently he was on the Morons from Outer Space episode. You can pre order the blu ray of the Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee over at Kickstarter. I will provide a link in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed
this interview. John Spira, how did you get involved in this project around Christopher Late?
I generate to the project. It was my idea to do the project. Original kind of conception, righty, right from the get go, from the kind of the earliest genesis of an idea came from me in a weird way. I always work with marcro Gusa Hanks stars talk about fifty to fifty on everything really, which it's so fair. The director always gets the credit the stuff, although they also get the blame, so it's all right. Bat Hank is always there from day one as well, and he's
my kind of closest creative confidant as well. So we would never do a project that both of us weren't excited about. So we had just finished our last project, which was our first TV series, which was called Real Britannia, which was the modern history of British cinema in four hour long episodes. We had to do that in some about eight months. It was really ridiculous. Everything from researching, writing,
the whole thing had to be done really quickly. I'm really happy with it, but we ran ourselves into the ground doing it. We were exhausted. So when it finished, he went off to the Bahamas or somewhere and I just took to the Sofia basically, and I just decided that for two weeks I was going to do absolutely nothing, like nothing. I wasn't going to look at my computer and do no work. I was just going to just exist and sleep, or I wanted to sleep and that
kind of thing. I hit the sofa and I got really addicted to watching old episodes of This Is Your Life on YouTube, which that you had that in the States, Oh yeah, you definitely have it, like the fifties and kind of sixties, and in this country it carried on
right into the kind of nineties, maybe even further. So I was just watching the episodes of that, which I found really interesting because I'm interested in biography, I'm interested in an interview, I'm interested in cultural figures, and This is Your Life for such a weird way of doing it, there's nothing quite like it. We over here we have a great radio show called Desert Island Discs, which is a great way of getting into somebody's life in a
non traditional way. And I think that's what This Is Your Life does because it's not the person who it's about doesn't really get to speak the whole way through the show. It's just stuff being presented to them, and you see them put into these kind of situations where they, I don't know what's going to quite happen. So it's great.
It's a really good shot. But you've probably seen the Laurel and Hardy Boris Karloff episodes really wonderful things, and the British version is hilarious because in the ages we had such bad celebrities, so plowing through those and then it came up next video Christopher Lee, and I was like, I'm on board for this. I would love to see this. And I'd read his autobiography a couple of years earlier,
and I'd really enjoyed that. It's a really well written book, and the thing that's surprising about it is that it's written in a very self deprecating man. Now anyway, so I'd enjoyed this book, and I was very excited to see that this is your life, and it was a really kind of shocking thing to watch because actually like he was having a horrible He really was having horrible time. Actually, and when you watch it, and it's worth watching he's on YouTube. If you really look at his face, he
is absolutely panic from beginning to end. He does not like it. And in fact, if you've read his book, one point they bring out like his old army friends. But actually if the researcher had done their job, they would have realized that these men bullied he was in the army, and even they come to his wife at
one point, who looks furious at these men. And what really struck me was it was such a strange episode, and what was particularly strange about it was that he clearly is someone who was used to controlling his own narratives and to not be in control was deeply upsetting to him. And if you actually listen to it, there are parts where people are clapping or people are laughing,
or his microphones down. But if you listen to him, like there's a bit where they bring Oliver Read out, God, you wouldn't want Oliver reed Brown this is your life, and especially eighties Oliver Read and you actually hear him telling a story. If you listen Christopher, he's kind of correcting him while he's talking. It was really weird, and I just thought, what an interesting and what a fascinating
There's just something there that I was immediately structed. I watched it twice by the idea that there's something there and I'm not sure what it is, but there's something there.
And very quickly after that, we were in a situation where one of the people whose funds I work or funded I worked before, basically said they were looking for a documentary about an iconic British person, and so I was immediately I was just like committed christfully and it panned out, and then when I started doing the research into it, it was all all there. He's such a heat.
There are so many legends about Christophiley, and the thing that's fun about it is that the most unlikely ones are true, and the ones that people most boundy about aren't true. But he didn't ever disavow people's notions because he liked having this kind of mystique around him, this kind of air of legend around him. And as soon as you start thinking christa Lene, you actually look at the facts, look at the career. It's amazing that nobody's
made a proper documentary about it before. It's ridiculous because he holds the world record for the most appearances in a film, Like he's more acting roles than anybody else, and he as the film goes into hew he had this ridiculous life before he even got into film, And then he had a film career that spanned eight decades, which started with him in uncredited roles fighting Errol Flynn and the En, died with him in Alder the Rings. No one like that.
Where did the idea for the style come from? Because you do it in such an interesting way. You've got animation, computer graphics, the puppetry of course, so many different styles, but it all comes together so beautifully.
I knew from the get go that he's the thing that's so fascinating when you think at Chrisopher Lee. I was the other day. I was reading something about that that condition Cymastivia, where people hear sounds and sea colors, and I was thinking about that a lot, and I was thinking that when you think about people, you almost think about them in a constant You could assign color or a feeling or a tongue, like the whole career. But actually, if you look at Christopher Lee's career and
his life, it's madly the fun. There's a lot of people who just go, oh, he was dragged him in the Hammer films. And now there's a lot of people who go, oh, he was the guy in Star Wars, or he was the guy in Lord of the Rings. But the truth is he had all of these amazing
periods of work where he was in there. There's great British awful nineteen forties what are called quota quickies, which is that in this country for a while, cinema was subsidized, so all these film companies were making bean movies just to make money and there no care attention I into. They were just churning them out. He was in those, then he was in the Hammer films. He went to Europe and was in those crazy Mario Bava and Jess Franco films, and then in the seventies he was in
Ala and Bollywood. And actually, when you look at his career, it feels more like a kind of crazy patchwork quilt. I was always going to do it so that each section felt completely distinct, and it almost felt like kind of chapters and was a very different style of a very different feeling. Because his career was so mad, I wanted the film to feel Matt and the character that people know as Christopher Lee, which I think it was interesting and we had to focus in on it when
we were getting the puppet bye. It was like what Christopher le is he going to be? He was in the public eye for eight decades, and I think that the crystally that people actually most think about it is not really the dragcular one. I think it's the kind of the nineteen seventies one. Maybe he was just making more films then, or maybe it's like the scar manga kind of thing. But when you think less fully, I think you do think gray hair, dark at the sides,
that kind of age. And so it was I never wanted to be straightforward ever, because I just thought it'd be boring. He's not alive, so there couldn't be a central interview in that kind of way. So my original idea for the Narration was always for it to be very strange, and I always wanted him to be back from the grave. And I always wanted to script the Narration if I was very upset, and it's a good film.
But I was very upset when Mark Cousins came out with that Hitchcock film where he did the same thing. He got an impersonator and he wrote a script and I thought, oh, I'm doing that. My original kind of inspiration for how the Narration is going to be was this fantastic advert on TV here probably twenty years ago.
You can see it on YouTube, and it was a very famous British comedian called Bob Munkhouse, who was a legendary comedian, you know, the old start kind of suits and kind of punchlines, and the advert comes on and it's Bob Munkhouse, but it's three years after he's died. And the advert starts he's in a graveyard and he's, hey, Bob Munkhouse here, I died three years ago. And it was really even I watched it when we started making film.
Even now it really stands up. It was very early, kind of could gu CGI, kind of manipulation, and they used clips of him and they put him into the graveyard and they used an impersonator and they manipulative lips and stuff, and it was an advert about prostate cancer, about checking because that's what he died of. And he tells jokes the whole way through it, and it's really well done. And I thought that that is really what
I want to do. I want that Christopher Lee from the nineteen seventies, who we know, the kind of very authoritatives, kind of slightly wry. I want him narrating his story from the grave. It was a very long process to get to the puppet because we did try i CGI and all of that deep fake stuff was really happening at that point, and we did some tests. We got to go in and we did some tests, but firstly it looked creepy. There's something weird about it that just
didn't quite sit right. Maybe we could have iron the kinks out, but it just it didn't feel right. And then secondly, John Laddis screamed at me and just was like, you can't do that. It's disrespectful to Chris. You can't do that. And at the end of it, I was just like, okay, fight, what are our other options? And Hank was the person who suggested puppets and we looked
at all kinds of different things. There's a guy here who makes these amazing paper puppets that are kind of like, very satirical looking, and he can animate animate If not animation, he puppets them live. But I made a paper might
look amazing. We tried some of that, but eventually with incredible company Arch Models Studios, who do all of Wes Anderson's They did all the Isle of Dogs and that's the Fox, and they did Frank and Weeney for Tim Burton, and they are lovely people, brilliant and they love old horror films. They came on board just made that amazing marionette. I wanted it to be a patchworker styles. I wanted it to always be surprising, to always be strange, to have a very weird tone to it, and I wanted
it to feel quite irreverent. I just it's just about it not being boring and as a filmmaker, but the biggest princesson I get for all of my films is how much talking heads footage I use, because I really love talking heads. It's just my favorite thing. But if I've left my own devices, usually I would make something show Up which is nine hours long talking heads of people in different languages and stuff. But I've learned over the years what the audience is like, and I've got
into that and become more adventurous. And on this film where it was just like, let's pull all the stops out and let's make it really fun, and I think it is.
Did you always have Peter Surf and a Wents in mind for the voice or he was my first choice?
And the funny thing is that I'd never seen him doing Yeah, I didn't know if he could do it or not. I assume he wouldn't have taken the show if he didn't think he could, So we didn't know until he sat down and recorded with on the first day. We didn't know what the voice was going to be and made him worked on it a little bit, but
it's amazing he was. Yeah, he was always always first choice, but not just because he's a great impersonator, but he also he has that voice, and he's got a deep, sonorous voice, so it just it made immediate sense to me that he would be the guy to do it. But also the thing was important actually in the film, because there's so much of the narration, was what Peter does is so different. It's not impersonations are very different
and performances. He does a performance. And it's funny reading the reviews that are starting to come out now, because some people are like, it's a spot on thing. I forgot that it was if in origin it just sounded like Christopher Lee. But the truth is it's not about being technically bang on the money because impersonations always have a level of exaggeration to them. Anyone could do a Crystophery impersonation. It's not a part, but it's a joke.
It's not how he actually talked. You exaggerate yourself to sound like his kind of manner. But what Peter did really was. He got the spirit of him and he got the tone right, which meant that in the more serious moments, it doesn't feel joky at all, and he's able to be funny at times, serious at times, and everything the whole spectrum in between. He was just amazing. He really was amazing, and it was fascinating like watching
him work and watching him sustaining performance. I think we did four sessions with him to get it, but it's amazing. He's a hilarious as you would expect as well, like he's I don't know if you've seen his show, like you can see most of his full up on YouTube, but he's just one of the funniest people in this country any great.
I know you have some of Chris h Lee's relatives in the movie. How do they feel about this documentary and maybe some of the ones that didn't appear.
It's really weird making documentaries because you work really hard to get people into the studio and then you do the interviews, and the interview you form you obviously you have experienced this bit. Over the course of even just an hour, you form a relationship with somebody and it can feel like friendship as well. And it can still really deep. How are one in the film? We've not before us. I know we've actually heard back from either of them, so we sented them to watch. We don't
know if they've watched it. We don't know. But that happens. That genuinely happens a lot. It's really weird, but it does the whole of real Britannia. We insued all these legendary filmmakers and they were great and I all came in and they oppened these fantastic interviews, and then when it was done, we shut the screens out to everybody. Hey, we got a couple of replies, but that was it. So I don't know. Yeah, we have just I would
love to know. It'd be interesting to find out, but yeah, I just don't know yet.
You talked about the Hitchcock Hitchcock documentary, which I remember seeing theatrically years and years ago. How many years have you been working on this Lee.
Project that was the new the Mark Cousins one.
Oh, because there was one a few years ago where they had an impersonator telling stories with Hitchcock's voice quote unquote.
Oh okay, maybe I missed that. That wasn't the Hitchcock tree fo one.
Now I'll have to look up the title for you, but yeah, I remember the Hitchcock impersonator was just dead eyes sounded so good.
Oh I don't if it's the same film there, because the Mark Cousins one only came out. It couldn't have even been more than eighteen months at the most. But it's worth sing. It's interesting. My mother scared me when I was three months old.
She said, boot.
Name hit Karma. Alfred height five for six. Wait, prisoner refuses to make a statement. Here's his record nineteen forty picked up on Suspicion nineteen forty four, Notorious nineteen thirty five, Were Window nineteen fifty six, The Man who Knew too Much. Well, I ain't a good record, but I'll try to do better.
Better appearing on television.
I'm sorry, sir, but my family was hungry. Take him away.
Wait a minute, sir, you've got the wrong man, and now for for his contestant.
Good evening, ladies and Jaelchum, Welcome to the Alfred Hitchcock look alike conton.
Yeah, because this movie you announced that Kickstarter. It feels like just a few months ago, and then boom, that in my inboxs and like, this is crazy how fast this came together.
When we did the kickstarter, it was already finished. The kickstarter was to raise money put the Blu ray together because the industry is in a really weird state right now. I don't know how much you know about all the prop that's going on, but the industry has never been in as bad as state as it is this year. Everyone is suffering. I don't know anyone who's doing it right now, and us included, even if we were doing okay. The problem with him on this film is that we
lost US deal quite early on. We had a US deal, it wasn't finalized and it fell through. But we'd already started making a film. We'd already sold to other territories, so we would commit it to a different film, and that has made things incredibly difficult. But we finished, the film is done. These days, it's quite hard to sell the rights to things, even though we've got physical media kind of being I don't know if it's just documentary, but there's not a lot of interest in putting stuff out.
And when you do get office from companies who do Blu rays, they're usually so low that it's up. I don't want to say it's offensive, but you're not going to make any money out of it because creative accounting and all of that kind of stuff. In this industry, if you don't get money up front, you're never going to get money. That's just how it works. And that's depressing. And I knew that there was a big audience of people who would want to own this film on physical media.
And I've put stuff out. I put my first time out by myself. I sell public, self released that on DVD. Yeah, me and Hanks just decided, you know what, we'll hold on to the Blu Ray rays. I want to do it ourselves. So the kickstart was about raising enough money to put together a really great Blue ray. And it's awesome. We're I think we deliver in December. But it's beautiful. It's you get a kind of coffin. It comes in a wooden coffin, but you get all kinds of all
the things are starting to kind of come in. Now we just go up. It's just really to see that. Oh that's nice. I like that. Wow. Really, we've had so so much cool stuff. When we got blowing the dark sticker sheet.
Holy cow Oh, that's awesome. The wicker Man one with the hair everywhere, I love it.
Wow. And then we've got heavy metal.
Yeah, and that kind of Batman thing with the cave that wow.
If you get you can still pre order it on kicks down there, and yeah, if you get the box that you get you get boiled pourings and stickers, badgers, postcards and we the art cards the David Keene section, which we should do like the animation and yeah, all kinds of extra fun. You actually, in fact, arch Modal Studios who made the puppet, they're making a bust. You get a bust of christ Rehy based on the puppet design, and it's the only way you're going to get I
think they already making pretty hundred of them. So it's a really cool book set. So that's what the Kickstars was about, was about making like a really great physical media thing for people who are like real fans rially to it. Yeah.
That's the thing I love about your work, John, is there are some people where the packaging is fantastic and everything looks great, and then you watch the movie and you're like eh, And then there are some people where they make fantastic movies and you watch those and the package is just a plain thing with maybe a postcard inside, and you're on both sides. You're making fantastic films that always I've never seen anything of yours that doesn't look
incredibly professional, and then the packaging that you do. We talked about Morons from Outer Space with the film can and the book, and I mean, every time you put out something, it's like a big deal in I love it.
I really appreciate that it's As a filmmaker, it amuses me. Event but I fall between two camps, which is financially probably a shade, which is that I'm in two separate camps. I'm a film geek, and I love all of the trappings of film geekdo, but I'm also quite a serious filmmaker in terms of actually when I make films, I take it seriously and I want the intelligence and I
want to have depth. The problem is that I get lumped in because I make films generally about films or about pop culture subjects, and because they're not low budget, about media budget. But I get lumped into that whole fan documentary movement. I don't want to criticize them, but
they are what they are, but I'm not that. So what has happened is that the people who desperately want to see my films are a different type of film geek, and they're very disappointed because they expect to see things which are going to be very standard documentaries and which are going to be lots of anecdotes about the thing
that they love. Particularly. This very much goes back to Lactually Night, sixth film I did nominally about Star Wars, and then the people who I've really made the documentary for, who are a much more traditional documentary audience, they all completely annoyed it because it looks like a fan film. The fans who are excited about it, and they watch it and they go, it's just people being really emotional
and deep. And then I've got the people who would really enjoy that aspect of it, going, why would I be interested in a documentary of a Christopher Ley. I've got this very niche audience, which is basically, you like intelligent, cultured film ten really more market.
Than eye length of one, and I love it.
It's pretty much. The great thing actually is is that when I get to do the press, it is like people like you and people like Heath from Syria at midnight, and people who are just so act to be passionate about film beyond Woking, Star Wars, Marvel films. It's so great to talk to people like you who are into it, are bashing about it, who get it, and who have frames of reference drengthing that I'm doing. The good thing about the modern age is that the streamers need a
lot of content and they don't care about reviews. They just care about hits. They just care about how many people actually click on these things. Myself does. It makes money for people, and it means that I get commissioned to make more stuff. But I don't think I have profile.
But yeah, yeah, I am excited about eky stuff. So when I retain the rights to things, or when I self published books and things like that, I will always go out of my way to do just a ridiculous package and to work with great people to make great products, because that's what I want on my shelf, Like I know what a film geek wants on that shell. And this, honestly, this bluere is going to be killed. It's so much fun designing the coffin boxes and stuff with the stuff
that were coming up with he is ridiculous. But it's so much.
You mentioned Dave McKean before, but tell me more about some of these artists that you worked with to come up with these different sections.
And so Dave mckey's the most famous figured he was the guy who worked with and he's most famous for working with Neil Gaiman on Sadman. He did all the covers so that for the whole run of sad Man. And he has that kind of photo realistic, air brushy kind of mad style. And he's also a filmmaker in his own right. He did Mirror Maask, which was incredible but nobody saw I don't think Luna. And he's done great album covers. He did that Counting Crows, this Desert Life,
and he's just this great artist and illustrator. Well, I did my Melias book. I did Forgot Jewge Melias. I still published this kind of stuff all the time. And he bought a copy and I saw it as his name, and I was just like, oh my god, David Keina's is buying this. I sent him a message. I actually said it out loadus extra stuff. Because one of my old friends I had been and just obsessed with King and forced me to look at all the David mckein's work,
and he was he sounding. He took his life, his own life, and it was a kind of a very sad thing. But I basically wrote to Dave when I had his email and just said, look, I'm sending you some extra stuff, and I'm doing this because of my friend Olie, who was obsessed with you, and I just I wanted to put his Ollie's name in front of him and do something for Olie because and Dave wrote about this, loved the email, and he basically said, if I'd known you were doing a book about Malias, I
would have loved to have been involved. And if you ever have a project, which you think, I'd be interested in getting touch So with this one, I thought he might be interested in this. So we got into bunch and he was like, I am interested, but I'm really busy, and it was like, hey, don't worry, that's fine, and he said, look, I want to do something, so send
me the script. Let me know all the sections are going to be animated, and I'll find something like I did, no problem whatsoever, So send him the script and basically our dream came true, which is that he loved the script and he chose the biggest animated section because he just wanted to do it in his a section about Tolkien. And he said, what are your thoughts? And I said, I have no thoughts. Do exactly what you want. You've got the script. We at least had the guide track
recorded at that point. We certainly supplied in repeater's voice before he was finished, and I just said, do whatever you want. You're day fifteen. I'm not going to tell you what to do. And halfway through he sent an animatic through and we were like, we could already put the animatic in the film. It's really good. And then we saw the finished piece and it was just so incredible.
And he we had no expectations. I didn't know what he would deliver, but like he went off and he did a whole studio for it, and he animated it and he filmed it and he wrote his own score for it, and it's amazing, and it uses all different starts. Just his section uses all different styles of animation, and it's probably one of one of the two big emotional
moments in whole film. I don't want to give too much away, but it's about his kind of connection to Tolkien, but it's also about ill health and he just delivered disgorgeous thing, so that was amazing. The opening sequence is animated by a stop motion animated called Astrod Goldsmith periods amazing. I've known her for years. I've always wanted to work with her, so it's great to be able to just give us some work and see what she could do.
I knew I wanted that in the start of Terry Gilliam and our co producer Plovie Hancock is just she's incredibly well connected with artists in general, and she found a whole load of recent graduates from Goldsmith from other art schools who are like graduates in animation. So we
looked through their show reals. They're incredible because animation is moving along digital the way there's the technology is moving and with AI as well to some degree, like animation is moving so fast, and actually the younger people are the most connected to it, so even though they're not
established names, the work they're turning out was stunning. Yeah, Actually were loads of people and we looked through their show reels and we chose who they were and decided what would be appropriate sections for them gave them a little bit more good so I think, but generally, if you're working with good people, at least for the first shot, you should just let let them go and show you
what they can do. So, yeah, loads of different animations, loads of different little sections, and I'm just yeah, blown away by it. Really.
Yeah, it all looked so good, and even though it is a lot of different artists, it all feels other piece and like you said, quilt that makes up his life.
It's just incredible. Yeah, it was very important to me because the sectionally, his military section in particular, was going to be difficult because there's not a lot of photos even of him from that time, and it's such a significant part of his life, and this is a big important section. I grew up reading those kind of weird war comics. I'm sure you've got them versions of them in the States in this country. They were all based on World War Two. It was all kind of ego,
commando and stuff. And there's this great two thousand eight artists who we've used before for a few things called Simon Colby. I just said to him, you've got to turn this story into a full comic. The fact we're going to put the comic in the box as well. Now, but we had to literally frame by frame work out how we were going to tell this entire story. He
did a beautiful job with that. And then we've got this great animator called Pair who also did our title sequence where where all the crystal is getting killed in
different ways. He took the comic cart and he made the whole thing kind of three D and dynamic, and that just turned out so well, because it's really scary when you're doing these edits that you have three minutes of dialogue to cover that you have to find something to feel that that could be the hardest when you've made a documentary when you know how the sausage is made.
Whenever you watch documentaries on TV, you can see when filmmakers are being lazy and stuff, and you can see when they just have a random photo and they go, oh god, lest you are really slow zoom into it because we've got thirty seconds of dialogue that's got we cover it up. And it's the hardest part of documentaries. So yeah, with the animations, there was always it's always a bit scary because there was so much stuff that had to be covered. But it just turned out so well.
And I'm not saying that in an arrogant when I have saying that because we hired people who just did an amazing job. It's beautiful.
As someone who chases down interview subjects all the time, I have to compliment you, and just the caliber of interviews you were able to get for this just incredible. And to hear these stories, to hear Lander is talking about can you keep a secret?
John? Like?
Those kind of things just wonderful. I don't have a question. I'm just giving you a compliment.
That compliment is to Hank. Hank gets the interview. That's not me at all. I knew land this anyway, so I did get Land this. But everyone else is down to Hank, and he's just really good at getting people. But we've also got at this point, we've got a body of work where even if people haven't heard of us, when we list the people who've been in our other films,
people get that we're serious about it. And the other thing that we do, which a lot of lower media budget productions don't do, is we always pay people, which even if they're very rich, wealthy people, they take you seriously. If you say that is a fee, they go, okay, it's more professional. And we also we very rarely go to people's houses like it's it can be very invasive. Some people want you to go to the house, and then it's okay, fine if you're actually asking us to.
But I think quite often if a low budget or load to medium budget documentary gets in touch with people, there's a kind of oh god, I don't know who these people are. I don't know if they're professional. They want to come to my house, right, So Hank is incredibly professional. He's also called Tanks Does, which he thinks is the child because people just want to talk to
someone called Hanks Does and thanks a great name. People like saying Hank, so when they find out, they go, hey, Hank, And I think that's all kind of part of it. But we've also we've got a really great crew. We shoot in a really good studio which is called Studio Complex, so there are problem makeup rooms of green rooms at technical and stuff, and as soon as someone comes into
one of our productions. We have a small team, but we have a friendly and professional team and they really respond it's okay, they feel comfortable if they come bit nervous. We also have a lovely female team as well, so it's not an oppressive situation for kind of women coming in as well. And my style of interviewing is very it's just not it's not aggressive. It's more kind of based on listening and responding and seeing where the interview goes.
With the films, I don't I'm very open to how the film presents itself and what comes out of it. So with the interviews, I never go in with an expectation. I never go with an agenda. I have a clipboard with questions John I very rarely have to ask those questions. It's it's usually just making them comfortable enough to speak about what they want to speak about on and around the subject, and then at the end of that, you edit and you pull out, you find out what you've
got to put out of that. I think we've got a good reputation within the industry and if people are nervous, we can send them copies of our films and they go, okay, it's serious for me, really, Britannia was the one I could believe when Hank that the caliber of filmmakers that were coming in every day was insane. And as a kind of a kind of film, GA kind of British film in particular, I really have to check my head because some days you're doing three interviews and you're just okay,
here comes Stephen free Is, here comes Ken Loach. Oh, and we've got Terry Gillian at the end of the day, and you just have to go okay. I said, I need to put my entire personality in a box, and I need to be just professional and just engage with a professional level. But so at this point we're we're quite comfortable with that kind of thing.
When it was so nice too to not hear the same stories that you hear all the time. I love the stories.
I love the.
Story of Peter Jack talking about how Christopher Lee was like, oh no, this is how it sounds like when you stab a man.
When wormtungue rises up and comes up behind Sarimon to stab him. Of course, it was my job as director to talk to Christopher Lee and to explain to him what I wanted. So I started to go into this long explanation about what sort of sound he should make when he got stabbed.
It seemed to recall that I did say to Peter have you any idea of what kind of noise happens when somebody disturbed in the back.
And I said, because I do. Yeah, it's not a it's because the breath is driven out of your body.
He proceeded to sort of talk about some very clandestine part of World War Two.
He used to be in the British Secret Service whatever they would call the OLSS.
He seemed to have expert knowledge of exactly the sort of noise that they make, and so I just sort of didn't push the subject any further. I just said, well, you obviously know what to do, Christopher, so I'm sure you'll do it great, and he did.
Those are great stories, but you're getting so much more out of these folks with these tales that they're telling, and just the connection that sorry to Harbin Jackson, but the connection between Jackson and Lee just you can feel that genuineness and just how important that role was to him.
Yeah, there's a couple of things going on there. I this is pro about eight years ago. I used to work at the BFI Bridge Filnesstry interviewing people and the thing that I realized really quickly is that thirsty most people have a handful of stories that they're comfortable telling, and it's very well rehearsed, and if they're in a press cycle, they also have bits that they just a lot of being interviewed with people is going onto autopilot,
and I'm sure you find bad times. And the other thing I found is that at the bfi IS, I'd have to research the interviews quite quickly, and literally you watch three YouTube interviews and you go, oh, they've told the exact same stories. Yeah, which is something I'm going to you of as well, because when you're publicizing something, that's what you do. So I've always had this policy of going if the story is out there and it's on YouTube, it's still going to go in my film.
There's no point at being out there because the fans who are the main people who watch it already have access to that. So I will always if they try and give me the kind of reverse stuff, I let them talk themselves out and then I just stay quiet and encouraging. And Hank always describes it as there's a moment in my interviews about half an hour here people have told all of their rehearsed stuff and they look at me as what do you want from me, well,
I think they're a similaryer of sweat develops. And actually my technique is based on my experience of therapy, which is that if you give someone a comfortable, welcoming environment where they feel safe, eventually they'll get off autopilot and they'll get to a place of intimacy and I'll get to a place of something they care about, and they become much more real. And that's always what I'm trying
to do in every interview. Peter Jackson one blew my mind because I firstly, I wasn't sure that there were stories that had been told, because the Lord of the Rings has been so documented, and like you say, that story about stabbing someone is that's the one that always comes out. I had the story about a canal sport.
The film People, A lot of the film actually is about, if you want like thematically, what the film is about is the idea that Crystal is the ultimate kind of authoritative figure and the projection that he's given through all of his films and through his personal life is this tall, imposing, errordite, clever, confident, wealthy, prominent man. And actually the truth is when you talk
to people who knew him really well. He was deeply secure and fragile, and he was also driven by a kind of unexplainable like his work ethic is something that people didn't really understand because he made a lot of really shit films, really bad. I'm not being a dick about it, like I've watched them and almost half of I think Joe Dante in the film says, almost half of Chrystal Lee's arms are completely forgetten, a complete rubbish.
He was always amazing in them. He never gave a bad performance in a film ever, but he was in a lot of really bad films. And to me, that was what was always interesting, was this notion of kind of frigidity, and we got that in all of the interviews.
We got to the point where they would talk about his frigidity and his insecurities, and I think Peter Jackson's were almost more surprising than anyone else's because at the point he was That's what I love is he talks about it about how he was surprised because you're bringing Christopher Lee in and you're thinking, here is this guy who is a genuine legend the cinema. We're all nervous around him, and yet he finds out very quickly that Chrystal Lee is more nervous that he was. I love it.
I'll tell you a little story. In the film. We interview why Anairos, who was Crystal Lee's son. We had contacted the family early on and thanks book to Geita, to Christian's widow, and she basically said, look, we've agreed before he died. He basically said he didn't want to do interviews about him, So it's not something we're going to get involved with. But I wish you really well with it. I could tell that you guys are serious.
I can tell you and make a great film. Certainly not going to tell us not to make the film. We promised not to speak to people, so we can't be involved in that way. And at one point I decided that I really wanted to cover his heavy metal face,
which is something which people find it very funny. And then the film it has its funny moments, but the truth is he took it very seriously and he made a couple of very rectable albums and also appeared on a bunch of other heavy mapple artists stuff, which was really in a really good way. So I said to Hank, can you track down anyone who worked with him? And let's say we're going to introduce some people about heavy metal. And when it turned out had been he played a
prominent role in his personal heavy metal projects. So Hank got in touch with him and he was like, yeah, I'll be happy to come over and do an interview and I'll bring a couple of the musicians and that will be great. And two days before he came over, we were talking to our consultants, Jonathan Rigby, who's Lee's biogras and he said, how's it going, what are you
up to you? What's happening? And we said we're interesting this life from his heavy metal project Wan and Ross and Rigby, well, that's his sudden look and we were like what and he was like yeah, that's specifically sound and I was like, oh, he didn't tell us that, And we've paid for a flight and he's coming over. Okay,
that's weird. So the night before he went for a drink with Hank and he admitted to me, so I am, but I'm here to talk about the heavy metal project, not to talk as he which and that's completely fine. So I met him the next day when we were getting ready to do the interview, I said, don't worry or just at Cavin metal stuff. So we did the interview. He was absolutely great, and in the interview he did say a few things which were not about the heavy
Metal project, which will be a bit more personally. And when we finished the interview, the other two guys last and he said, listen, I really trust you, and I've talked to Christine iHome was Christaly's daughter, and we agreed that if I trusted you, I would offer you an it to you as a sonate law. So if your sound a lot, I'll do that. And I was like,
that would be amazing. He said great. So we did a secondary with him and actually, when you see it in the film, the bit where I don't want to for the ending at all, but he's got tears in his eyes and in fact, everyone in the director of photography sobbing behind the camera at one point of it. And it was very emotional and he was very raw and very open, and at the end of the interview everyone had wet eyes and we gave each other a hunt.
It was really nice and I said to him, listen, I'm not going to put anything in the film that you don't want me to put in the show. I'll never do that. So anything you want to just know that you can talk to us. We won't put stuff in that you don't and who was like, that is completely fine. I think everything I said I stand by it, so I think it'll be fine. And as he was leaving,
he goes, got something for you. Okay, he said before I left Spain being Christina or watching videos if you on YouTube of interviews that you've done, and we were saying you look a lot like Peter Jackson was just like, okay, thanks you I've heard that before. And he said, I want to give you something, and he opens up his bag and he gives me Peter Jackson's original crew jacket from Lord of the Rings and he was like, Peter gave this to Christopher. Obviously it wouldn't fit Christopher, but
we feel it would fit you. We feel like if I had a good time, I would give it to you. So he's given me that. It's just like amazing. I don't know what to do with this. Obviously we're going to get a frame at some point and hang it somewhere in our house. But it was you really if you take this stuff seriously and you know this because you're a great interviewer, If you take it seriously and you treat people like human beings, you can really build
relationships with them. And even if I've never spoken to him since, but if I saw him in the street, I would give him a hug. And I think that's true of life. I think there are people who will be your friends for life, who maybe you just spent one great night with, I had one great conversation with, but you made that connection and because of that, you will always trust those people and you always care about those people. And I think that's what I'm always striving
for in every interview I do. I'm striving to make a connection which is really real and really honest and really trusting. And like I say, all the films I've made, there are people who I interviewed for one day fifteen years ago who in my first film, I interviews my friend Jamie. I had never met him before. He had
been in a band. My first film was about the music scene, Nots and radio Head at super Brass, and there'd been a band that I'd love growing up called The Daisies, and they were a natural part of the story. So I've tracked down that lead singer and he said he'd give me an interview, and the interview was so good that he's now He played guitar at my wedding and he's done the music for all of my films.
He's the composer. He does the score for all of my films, and his score for the Christopher Liefel is wonderful, Like the opening title music, Oh I just I love it so much, And that came out of an interview that came out of sitting down in a room for an hour and a half and having an honest connection and conversation. It can be really meaningful if you were allowed.
So when did you actually like this picture?
We had to deliver it. I think we locked it in January. We were supposed to. It was supposed to go about in March because Sky are the broadcaster in the UK who Stunning and they were originally going to release it in March, so we definitely delivered it in time for March, and then they decided that they actually wanted to hold onto Halloween because they loved it. And they've now bought a hold of the Crystal Relief films, so they're programming like a whole kind of season around it.
So yeah, I think it's been locked since January. I think that's right.
And then you've done some theatrical screenings already.
But we had our premiere about two weeks ago here, which is amazing and the audience A Square, which is the biggest cinema in the UK, and we're about to do one at the BFI. So part of the thing that's been confusing about this film is the way that you sell films is really weird. You sell it in territories and I think there are eighty territories worldwide. If you sell a film to America, you make enough money to make the film with a really big sale, but if you send it to Hong Koret you get one
thousand pounds. So it's really weird that the kind of sizes stuff. And because we lost our America deal before we finalized it, we had already sold to I think it was Spain and yeah, did NAVYA. I think they had bought it quite early on because Sky were originally I release it in March. That was where the contracts went. And the thing that's really weird as filmmakers. Is this is all done by sales agents your point, it's quite
boring for your appoint a sales agents. They go out making sales, they take a commission, you go the rest of the money. But sometimes a distributor. I would have thought if I was a distributor, I would be in touch with the filmmakers. I would even for the publis policy, for interviews whatever, But some they really don't. I guess they just show it on TV or they just do what they do with it. Then you just they're not
contracted to tell you anything. Once they've bought it. You can specify in the contract hold back for when it's released. So it came out in Spain without even realizing it. It was really weird. It's just one day a review appeared and it was in Spanish. It was like, oh, it's on TV in Spain and it's not going to be out in this country for like months and months. So your house had screenings. I saw that one got happened in Helsinki the other day. But it's so weird. But
you just don't find out about these things. You really have to be able to let something go, but you could get really worked up. And upset about it, like the idea that you're going to have it as like a cinema release in this country or in America, and then it's already out on TV in Spain. You just have to go right. But it's so out of my hands by that point though, it's almost surreal. I don't
know where it's shown. It has definitely shown its subplaces around the world, and it will show it a lot what we sold quite a lot of territories on it, apart from America. I have no idea what's going on with America. But all this stuff that's happening with the streatments right now is deffecting mid level, mid budget stuff.
The middle is getting squeezed and they're still making it committed to these very expensive shows, and lord knows, if you're prepared to make a true crime documentary for twenty bucks, they will buy it. But everyone in the middle is really excluded at the moment. So I had no idea when it'll be ah in the States. It's really weird to say that, but yeah, but I've got no idea. Will we be able to buy it on Blu Rain when that's available. You can buy it right now, on
Blu Ray. It will come out of December, but you can pre order it on the Kickstarle website. So if you just search Kicked out of Shirt Bristal Lee, Life and Death of Bristal Lee, it's got a pre orderble link and you can order it now and we'll send it in December anywhere in the world. So yeah, so the actual film meets will still get a chance to get hold of it.
What kind of projects are you working on now?
So this year has been the strangest year of my career because we are usually making something, We're usually at some level of production, and we just aren't right now. We have been pitch for a year and stuff keeps getting very close and not happening. So that's been interesting itself. We actually had a big project that we really thought was about to go ahead and at the last minute it fell through. All this stuff could still happen once you've all the pitch together and you've made a deck.
It's still there and the sales agent has it ready to take people, So all this stuff could still happen, but I've think we'll step back from it because of that. And I am now we're talking about my our first drama basically, which has a Christopher Lee Link. I started my career as a screenwriter in my twenties on a very bad science fiction TV show called Links.
I remember, like I watched quite a few episodes of that, the Canadian soft core science fiction show.
It is great. It already was a great show. Like it was bad, but it was good. So I haven't done screenwriting for a long time. But then I realized, actually writing this film, the whole film is at screenplay. It was written, it was authored, and it was a character as well as right for a character who. Yeah, me and Hack been talking for a long time about making a move it to drama, or at least trying to make some drum and it's a really fun idea
that we've got and so that's what i'm doing. About three weeks away from the first draftings finished happy with that, so I'm hoping that will happened. I'm writing a book, which I'm always writing books, although it's my first fiction book. That writes his first novel that I'm writing. So I'm keeping busy and it's quite liberating because it's not it's stuff that's almost you know, you work, you have to work to live. But I've given up on the fact that this year I'm not going to make my usual
kind of salary from making a film. The good thing about making films is that once you've made a few, royalties kick in territorish new things. So it's always like little bits of money just when you're absolutely almost at the door kind of thing. But it's been really fun so far this year actually to be to the grindstone working on something with the deadline and just being a bit more creative and doing kind of following the news a little bit. To sound very pretentious, that's pretty much
how my year is shaping up. But if at any moment one of our pictures actually gets picked up, we were going to production.
Rid of My wife and I always talk about how Max Fancio dies and so many of the movies said He's saying, and the spectacular deaths, especially you think about ming The Merciless, right, but other great deaths as well. Can I pitch you the life and deaths of Max fancy Now?
The problem with that is you definitely could, But I feel like I've just made that film, do you know what I mean? This was the first sible I've made them is just about one person. All my documentaries has been about groups of people, communities and stuff. It's really interesting to do one about one person. I feel like my response to how I would do it a film about maximums would probably be quite similar to how I just relate. So yeah, probably not, but that's a film
for somebody to make. Maybe I will say on the Max Loancy that thing or the flash good most of
this thing. Before he died, I make good friends with my colleges, obviously through the morals fast his connection, and he and I were working on a book when he died, and we'd actually finished it, which is a book of correspondence basically, and because we were sending each other a lot of emails, we thought it would be really interesting for me to interview him by email, but for him to be more conversational in the idea that I was a filmmaker who was essentially near the beginning of my
career and he was at the end of his career. So it's very interesting compare experiences and just see what a conversation went, and also really to interview him substantially and to find out about it. Because one thing about filmmakers that people don't realize is the most interesting thing is to talk to me about the projects that didn't get made. No one ever introduced people about the projects
that did John Roski's June. It's probably the great exception, but nobody interviews people about the films that didn't get made, and usually filmmakers are more passionate about those and those stories more exciting. So that reminds me that's the book, which at some point I have to put together and actually format to the shape of the book and find a way to get that in the world. So yeah, that reminded me about that.
We've started to put another thing on your to do list.
Well, it's fine, I'm like, I like doing things, John.
It is always such a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for this.
Thank you, Mike. I was so excited that we were going to have another conversation and hit me up for other filmy things. Okay, we'll do There's many other films that we should have very in depth discussions about.
I would love that. I'm working on the twenty twenty five schedule, so I can stand that your way and see if anything appeals.
Look, if you liked just for me, I would love to talk about return of Captain and Vincibor. Great.
Yeah, we had Phelip Mora on the show and I be game for doing that.
And I missed that one episode was that.
That was communion.
Oh my god, that's what I'll be listening to you tonight. I hope you enjoyed, sir, Thanks so much.
Thank you John, always great talking with you. Take care now.
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