Latest / Half the Picture / #9 - JAMES MARQUAND

Transcript

#9 - JAMES MARQUAND · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  I suppose through having a dad who was a successful director, it made me, you know,
• 0:04
  because he's my dad, you know, it's like, well, if he can do it, it can't be that difficult.
• 0:08
  You know, I, so I kind of realized that if I was going to do it, if I was going to make films,
• 0:13
  I'd want to be a director. And then off the back of that, I started to write. I actually
• 0:19
  started to write fairly late because I'm dyslexic. And that wasn't so easy for me. I then realized
• 0:25
  if you really want to direct something that you want to direct, maybe if you write it,
• 0:31
  that might help you, you know.
• 0:41
  Hey, everyone. I'm Billy and welcome back to Half the Picture.
• 0:44
  Our guest this episode is writer-director James McQuand. His new World War II
• 0:49
  thriller The Partisan is out in cinemas today. The Partisan details the life and
• 0:53
  wartime exploits of Christina Scarbeck, the real-life spy who escaped Nazi-occupied Europe and
• 0:58
  began fighting for the British against the Axis. She's now remembered as Churchill's favorite spy,
• 1:02
  and was reportedly a big influence on Ian Fleming when he was writing the James Bond novels.
• 1:06
  Coming up, me and James dive deep into the making of the movie, including what it was like working
• 1:10
  with the amazing cast, which happens to include one of my all-time favorite actors Mark McDowell,
• 1:14
  and also we talked a bit about his experience working with his dad on his films,
• 1:18
  which just so happens to include a little-known film called Star Wars Return of the Jedi,
• 1:22
  maybe you've heard of it. You've got all that and more to look forward to.
• 1:24
  So without further ado, let's roll on my chat with James McQuand. Enjoy.
• 1:30
  Hi, James. Welcome to Half the Picture. How you doing?
• 1:32
  I'm good. How are you?
• 1:33
  I'm doing well. Thank you. Well, I'm from my, uh, my living room, as you can see.
• 1:37
  I'm nice from my dining room.
• 1:39
  Ah, very exciting.
• 1:41
  Cool. Well, let's just go straight into it then, I guess. So,
• 1:45
  so the story of, uh, behind your film The Partisan, which is a story of Christina Scarbeck,
• 1:50
  is pretty, it's quite an extraordinary story. I mean, if you dig into it, I mean,
• 1:54
  it can't, it's one of the stories, I guess, lens credence to the
• 1:57
  brace, truth or strange, and the fiction in a lot of ways. I mean, the stuff that she accomplished
• 2:01
  during the war is this, as you know, sort of Churchill's favorite spy is quite,
• 2:04
  it's pretty amazing. And I guess, uh, to kick off with, I just wanted to ask you, um,
• 2:09
  like, when did you first encounter a story, and at what point did you realize, oh,
• 2:13
  I want to make this into a film?
• 2:15
  Yeah, it was, it was interesting actually. I mean, I, I knew about her from my childhood.
• 2:20
  I had a, a Jewish grandmother who was, um, she, you know, she, she kind of, well, I was,
• 2:28
  when I was a kid, I was into James Bond, not that I'm, I mean, I still am, I suppose,
• 2:32
  and that kind of, you know, retro way. She wasn't so into James Bond, and she said, I,
• 2:37
  I can tell you who the real James Bond is. And she told me about Christina Scarbeck, which was,
• 2:42
  you know, I'm like, whatever, nine years old or something. And, you know, and I remember
• 2:47
  thinking it was interesting, but this is obviously pre the internet and being able to find all this
• 2:52
  information out, you know, and she explained to me about the female spies in World War II and all
• 2:57
  this kind of stuff. Um, so I had, so I, I did know about her, but actually to meet this film,
• 3:02
  I was approached by the producers. I, I, um, I've been writing another script, well, I'd written
• 3:08
  another script that they were interested in making. And then as happens with producers, I think,
• 3:13
  money came in for this one. Uh, they would polish British producers. So they had, they,
• 3:18
  they knew about her that the Polish guys knew about her through that. Um, so they sort of approach
• 3:24
  me to write it. Somebody else was going to direct it. Um, and when they said, you know, I'm like,
• 3:30
  they were like, it's a, you know, a Polish British World War II thing. Okay, great. And when they
• 3:35
  said it was her, I was like, Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. No, I'll definitely, I'd definitely be interested
• 3:39
  in doing that. So it started that way. And then I basically was writing for this other director.
• 3:48
  And following, I suppose I was doing most of the research, lots of conversations back and forth,
• 3:56
  but I was kind of writing his version, I suppose. And then as time went on COVID hit, um, he ended up
• 4:06
  not being able to do the film, um, by which point we had a fairly advanced draft. And the,
• 4:15
  the producers asked me whether I would direct it. Um, so I said, yes, but I'd like to rewrite it
• 4:23
  because I see things a little bit different if I'm, if I'm going to direct it. So they
• 4:27
  agreed to that. I kind of pitched them what I'd like to change, which was to make her a darker
• 4:33
  character more flawed and focus on that, you know, more than the kind of, um, romantic heroism kind
• 4:42
  of angle. Um, and surprise, surprise, they, they agreed and they thought that was a good idea too.
• 4:50
  So that's kind of how I, how I, uh, got the gig. That was your question. Yeah, yeah, that's
• 4:56
  right. That's interesting because Christina Scarlett, she was doing so much work, you know,
• 5:02
  for the British and for the allies during the war, you know, year spanning really the whole length
• 5:06
  breadth of it years. I mean, when you were writing that script for the, uh, for the previous
• 5:10
  director, and then you came on board, like, what were the factors in you deciding, okay, we'll
• 5:14
  focus on like these specific events? Because like, really, if you dive into her story, there's
• 5:18
  so much that, you know, it covers so much, you know, as she was, you know, in so many different
• 5:22
  territories across the, you know, the duration of the war. We had, we had drafts where it started
• 5:29
  in Egypt and, you know, um, all over the place. And then we had other ideas where, you know,
• 5:37
  we felt like we just had to focus on one aspect of her story. Um, you know, but then in the end,
• 5:44
  I think, I mean, what, what we finally have done is we, we, it's sort of act one is a origin story,
• 5:50
  I suppose. Um, this, you know, sort of crazy danger freak lady who is basically trying to get
• 6:02
  back who's out of Poland and she's trying to get back in because she wants to rescue her mother,
• 6:07
  which is actually even though this is a, you know, a dramatic interpretation is true,
• 6:13
  that was her mission. And then her mother didn't want to go, didn't see the,
• 6:17
  the mother didn't want to leave Poland. No, and that's true as well. We started to realize that
• 6:23
  it is a, if you make it a character study more than a kind of spy film, um, you obviously have
• 6:30
  to deal with the spy stuff, which is really, you know, um, complicated because it was so basic,
• 6:37
  you know, they had no technology, really, you know, a radio, and that's about it, um, which often
• 6:43
  didn't work. Um, so their, their methods were quite laborious and complicated, but we,
• 6:49
  we kind of realized if we, if we can focus on character, her character, and then, you know,
• 6:55
  all the supporting characters as well and, and try and understand motivations of the people,
• 7:02
  we can hopefully come up with something more interesting than just a kind of romantic hero,
• 7:08
  you know, classic war film, I suppose. So do something a little bit different with the material.
• 7:14
  So what we ended up doing was we, we, we have her origin story, which basically shapes her
• 7:20
  a motivator, um, for what she is to become, and then acts two and three are, are her, like, so,
• 7:29
  yeah, act one is her first mission that shapes her, acts two and three, uh, it's her last mission
• 7:34
  that kind of, uh, I suppose makes her sort of fulfill her destiny. Um, at the risk of
• 7:41
  sounding like a Marvel movie, it's not a Marvel movie at all. Uh, sure. I mean, something that you
• 7:48
  said there about how her sort of exploits and like her character talking about her character and
• 7:53
  trying to me a little bit sort of different, different from the sort of the visual formula of these
• 7:58
  kinds of stories and these kinds of films. I mean, when you diving into her story, I mean,
• 8:02
  it reminded me of so many of those great sort of wartime heroes, I guess that we've seen on screen
• 8:06
  and also not the ones that aren't celebrated on screen. And the sort of audacity that they have
• 8:12
  in terms of just like basically essentially sort of marching into the line's den and facing down
• 8:17
  in this case, you know, yeah, the access to nazis and I mean, which she did many times and basically
• 8:21
  lights staring them in the face and demanding demands and bluffing and bullshitting and all this
• 8:26
  and kind of basically all the interest of espionage and saving lives and it reminded me, you know,
• 8:31
  for a lot of those heroic stories we hear as well of people like, you know, even people like Oscar
• 8:35
  Schindler, you know, basically his audacity is kind of the shield and it kind of is what keeps him
• 8:39
  alive and keeps it makes him a success in his mission, you know, saving lives similar, you know,
• 8:45
  it's similar to humanitarian mission if you can say that. Yeah, and I was thinking like,
• 8:49
  I was once wanted to ask like, when you were making this film obviously, you just says you wanted
• 8:53
  to make it a bit, you didn't want to just go down the formulaic route that we've seen before,
• 8:56
  but also like what films and what stories and takes on this material were in the back of your mind
• 9:01
  when you were making this. That is an interesting question. I think it was more
• 9:05
  the route I took was more based upon reading a huge amount about her and finding that it just
• 9:18
  didn't add up. If you study it and you look at all the various things that have been written,
• 9:23
  her dark side is often sort of made into comedy, you know, and I started to realize I did some
• 9:34
  research not just about her, but then about people who, you know, who have whatever that quality
• 9:39
  is to go and do these crazy dangerous things. I suppose it's that it is like that danger freak,
• 9:45
  you know, that need to risk yourself, you know, be a skydiver or whatever it is.
• 9:55
  And then she definitely had that personality. You have to have a dark side to be able to,
• 10:00
  you know, this is obviously taking that, taking that even further, like kind of, as you say,
• 10:05
  going into the lion's den completely. And that kind of trying to understand that for myself,
• 10:14
  personally, what I'm interested in as characters, maybe I was, I was forcing it because that's
• 10:20
  the kind of character I'm interested in, you know, I suppose more than a hero and anti-hero
• 10:26
  interests me a lot more. And then just putting the pieces together of her life, you know,
• 10:32
  as you mentioned, her mother is a really important character in the film, but actually in
• 10:37
  if you read her history, her mom is kind of dismissed. She doesn't really get much attention. Her
• 10:42
  dad is a much more colorful character, you know, he's this kind of flandering playboy who blew all the
• 10:49
  money, you know, and was a kind of a larger than life person. The mom was just sort of fairly
• 10:56
  nondescript, you know, a daughter of a Jewish banker with some money that helped the dad, you know,
• 11:03
  that's how it's depicted. But I started to just think about this thing. The mom, you know,
• 11:08
  she goes to rescue her mom. By the way, they didn't get on, you know, they, they, it's funny because
• 11:14
  Agatoculasha, the actress, who plays the mom, when we were discussing how this works,
• 11:19
  because she was kind of like, it's a very cruel scene the way they talk to each other. And it's like
• 11:23
  they love each other, but they don't like each other, you know, not exactly. That's your note
• 11:30
  when you think about how this works. Obviously, I think Christina had always dismissed her mother as being
• 11:36
  this person who's getting pushed around by the dad and never stood up for herself and all that
• 11:42
  kind of stuff. But what she realizes when she goes to rescue her is that her mother is not,
• 11:47
  her mother is actually very strong, you know, and is stoic. And in her little way is also fighting
• 11:54
  against, you know, oppression. She's teaching these classes in secret to kids and she's, you know,
• 12:01
  she's absolutely as a Jewish woman in the middle of Warsaw. She's completely risking her life
• 12:06
  and doing it, but she's not going to leave. And that's true, you know, that is, that really happened.
• 12:11
  So that ends up becoming in our story. That becomes Christina's motivation for going forward
• 12:19
  with what she does. And I suppose in a way, the character study as aspect of our story is her,
• 12:27
  is her learning to understand who she is, who are you as a question that's asked throughout the
• 12:32
  film by various people, you know, various fascists who are trying to cross question and she's
• 12:37
  got fake papers on my army. And what she realized, she's trying to learn herself what the answer
• 12:42
  to that question is, you know, is she a good person, is she a bad person, is she doing it because
• 12:49
  she's a hero and she's trying to help or is she doing it just because she loves the thrill of it?
• 12:55
  I hope that at least explains that I suppose the story is led by the motivation of Christina
• 13:01
  and that's how it works.
• 13:03
  Hmm, for sure. Yeah, you mentioned the word anti-hero there, which I think is interesting because
• 13:08
  I was thinking about the cast that you've got for this film, which is a pretty extraordinary cast.
• 13:11
  I mean, you've got such great people as Zigbaugh. I don't have a star, but the pronouncing is
• 13:16
  Cigasyn, yeah, he's done some incredible work. And obviously, Matt Maddow, who's just brilliant,
• 13:20
  I mean, one of the great cinematic anti-heroes played so many of those characters. I mean,
• 13:24
  I just wanted to ask about what was your experience work with the cast on this because, obviously,
• 13:28
  it was Big Down. I mean, I've met Matt Maddow and he's such a great presence, brilliant actor,
• 13:33
  but also an incredible rack on tour, and he's a lot of fun to be around. What was your experience
• 13:37
  like working with him in the rest of the cast? Yeah, I mean, he was a real coo. He's hilarious,
• 13:45
  so you met him. He has so many stories. I mean, I love him. We're great friends. I've actually
• 13:53
  done another film with him, which we're just editing now. It was a huge boost to the film,
• 13:58
  to get him, for everybody, obviously, for anybody acting with him, but also for all the crew,
• 14:05
  too, because he just brings so much energy and hilarity. I mean, it's ridiculous. He's not a
• 14:15
  method actor, you know? Never seen anybody who could switch it on and off like he can.
• 14:23
  I think he's probably his greatest passion is following Liverpool Football Club, which maybe
• 14:28
  one of the reasons why we also first hit it off pretty well, but he was just, yeah, it was
• 14:37
  absolute icing on the cake, and also interestingly, very, very wealth thought after in Poland,
• 14:45
  where Clockwork Orange was a huge film when it came out during communist times. It was like a
• 14:51
  subversive hidden film that they'd have to watch on private screenings and things like that.
• 14:57
  It was mega-gating him, and I've done a few things with him. He's a mate. I managed to get some
• 15:07
  friends, and also Steve Waddington, who plays in one of the scenes with Malcolm as the horrible
• 15:14
  interrogator. I've done stuff with him before. And then we also had some amazing polish actors
• 15:27
  who were just incredible to work with. We really did try to work hard on getting the
• 15:36
  right cast who kind of bore into this idea of giving all of these kind of central characters
• 15:43
  a backstory. Even if you don't see all of the backstory that you feel that they're not just there
• 15:50
  to kind of look pretty. There's more to it. For sure, yeah. It's funny, because you mentioned Malcolm's
• 15:58
  presence in Europe, because Clockwork Orange, but also O'Locky Man and all this,
• 16:03
  we're big in Russia and at least in Europe, and Evelenko as well. He's got a real pocket
• 16:09
  of people who love him over there and really support his work. And obviously, of course,
• 16:14
  your work with Morgane Polanski is as Kristina. What was that like as well bringing her in?
• 16:19
  It was amazing. It was hard to think who to play her. It was also made more complicated by having
• 16:30
  to do the film in English. What all of us wanted originally was to just have subtitles and have
• 16:38
  people talk their language, but the commercial reasons that was just laughed about was an idea.
• 16:46
  So finding Morgane off the back of the Vikings, where she plays in a way slightly,
• 16:56
  I mean, there's some similarities that her character in Vikings, probably less of an action,
• 17:02
  a woman of action than Kristina, but someone who has to navigate their way through a very difficult
• 17:12
  situation that if they get wrong, they're going to get killed. I thought she was great in that.
• 17:20
  Personally, I kind of lost the track of Vikings by the time she came into it, but then seeing her in
• 17:27
  it kind of got me back into the season that she was in again. You combine that with her background,
• 17:33
  you know, with a French mom and a Polish dad, and her dad's experience in the war.
• 17:42
  And she just has a, she just had her own, you know, dangerous, edgy quality to her,
• 17:52
  to me, she was the perfect person to play the part. It was also like incredibly physically
• 18:01
  and mentally demanding playing that part because she's in every scene. It follows her journey.
• 18:07
  So it was a real feat of physical and mental endurance, you know, to play that part,
• 18:18
  every scene she's in, and we had, we had a very packed schedule. It was like an absolute
• 18:24
  ultra marathon for her, you know. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, like so that's it. I mean,
• 18:28
  she's the backbone of the movie. She carries the movie on her back. So yeah, I mean, I can imagine
• 18:32
  that's demanding. And also, I guess like you say, having grown up with those stories of Poland and
• 18:37
  the war and like, you know, the Warsaw and the Jewish ghetto and all those experiences must have
• 18:42
  only informed what she was doing and how you guys communicated. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean,
• 18:49
  we spent a lot of time talking about, you know, she's also a movie maker herself.
• 18:56
  So, you know, we collaborated a lot on what we were doing, trying to figure out how she would
• 19:04
  behave and, you know, this situation or that. Obviously, I wrote the script, but then she would
• 19:09
  say something about a scene, but does it make sense that blah, blah, blah, it would be like,
• 19:13
  I see what you mean. So there was a lot of collaboration between us.
• 19:19
  Really, I mean, really good. Yeah.
• 19:22
  Yeah, it's something that I was, I've been curious to ask you about is, because my understanding of
• 19:26
  you as a filmmaker, you put your background away, you come from in terms of filmmaking,
• 19:30
  is like, so I believe you started in storyboarding and then moved into editing and then moved into
• 19:35
  directing. And that's someone who did editing, I mean, I studied editing at university.
• 19:39
  As I've always had a sort of keen interest in the post-production sort of process. I mean,
• 19:44
  yeah, I mean, and you obviously in storyboarding is an integral part of pre-production and then you say,
• 19:48
  you've worked in kind of every single animal in like area of filmmaking. I mean, even in a run-up
• 19:53
  to directing, I mean, how do you think that's informed you as a director, like having an urban
• 19:58
  understanding of editing and then visualizing? Well, I mean, I studied fine art at art school,
• 20:05
  you know, the most useless degree. So I had an art background and I still paint and draw
• 20:15
  and what have you. So I mean, I storyboard everything and I always had. I found that's my way,
• 20:22
  because it takes a bit of time. It's my way to think about how I'm going to shoot the scene.
• 20:28
  So that just as a method really, really works for me. And then being a bit of a lucky bogger,
• 20:40
  I had the opportunity to be a trainee editor on my dad's last film, which ended up not being so
• 20:47
  lucky, but I spent every summer watching him direct. I always loved films. I didn't particularly
• 20:54
  think I was going to be a director having seen the other side of the life of being a director,
• 20:59
  because it's, you know, there's a lot of reasons why something that involves that many people,
• 21:05
  that much money, you know, can be pretty complicated and difficult. But I suppose I went
• 21:13
  from storyboarding to being a trainee editor on his last film, which was a massive disaster,
• 21:22
  and he actually died before the film came out, which taught me some difficult lessons as well
• 21:30
  about the business and what really goes on on the ruthless business side of things. But I guess
• 21:39
  I then didn't do anything to do with film for quite a few years. Having been a huge film buff,
• 21:46
  I even stopped watching films, and I just focused on my art. And it was actually a friend of mine
• 21:53
  who got in touch with me and written a script and said, we have a read of it. I know you've read
• 21:57
  lots of scripts and stuff, and he kind of reinvigorated me. And I got back into it through that,
• 22:05
  and ended up, I was living in Liverpool at the time, and I ended up, this guy and I wrote a
• 22:11
  script together, a short film script. And Alan Blee's Del, who some people may remember,
• 22:18
  amazing writer, the Liverpool, read it and called me up and said, this is great, I want to help you
• 22:25
  make it. And he got us the money and we made this short film and kind of off I went again.
• 22:31
  So it was sort of weird, it was like, I kind of got lucky, I suppose, or unlucky, depending on how
• 22:37
  you look at it. I don't think I was the obviously ambitious person with a master plan.
• 22:47
  It just kind of weird things fell into place and I followed it. And since that time,
• 22:53
  there's been other times where I thought, I don't know if I want to do this anymore, it's
• 22:57
  pain in the ass. But then something comes off again and off you go, I suppose it's a bit of a
• 23:03
  drug, you know? It's only how I think a lot of filmmakers, you hear a lot of different stories
• 23:09
  of filmmakers who, it sounds like that story you just told is very similar to a lot of stories.
• 23:13
  I thought people kind of fall into directing. And which is very interesting, why people are Alex
• 23:18
  Garland, they start one area, then they're moving to another, then they're like, and then there
• 23:22
  was no master plan, it just happened. I mean, I have to say, I think my time as an editor was one
• 23:29
  film, most of the time, sinking film and rewinding it back in the old days, loading steam vex.
• 23:36
  I mean, I suppose through having a dad who was a successful director, it made me, you know,
• 23:41
  because he's my dad, you know, it's like, well, if he can do it, it can't be that difficult.
• 23:46
  You know, so I kind of realized that if I was going to do it, if I was going to make films,
• 23:51
  I'd want to be a director. And then off the back of that, I started to write. I actually started
• 23:57
  to write fairly late because I'm dyslexic. And that wasn't so easy for me. I then realized,
• 24:03
  if you really want to direct something that you want to direct, maybe if you write it,
• 24:09
  that might help you, you know. So that's come a bit later. But I think possibly through having
• 24:18
  confidence of seeing that my dad did it, made me just think, well, really, I just want to direct.
• 24:24
  To be honest, my first film, I, I'd liked it a lot, but, you know, I found it small things
• 24:31
  that I liked and, you know, I, I knew how I wanted to do it. And of course, because I could story
• 24:36
  board, I storyboarded everything. I had the whole thing like a comic book, you know. And then you,
• 24:43
  you, you realize when you're doing it, things change and things like that. But if you have, you've
• 24:47
  got this like brute blueprint, you can hang on to security blanket, then it's okay to kind of
• 24:55
  divert in some other direction. But this was a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for
• 25:00
  your time. And I can't wait for the film to come out. I can't wait to see it. We're doing all right.
• 25:05
  Thanks a lot.
• 25:15
  Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed my short and sweet chat with James Muckwan.
• 25:19
  I stay tuned for more exciting interviews and guests coming soon on half the picture.