“I’ve Built It, But Will They Come?!”

Debut Director Ed Blum, Writer Aschlin Ditta and some actors you may or may not have heard of give close-upfilm a master class in indie cinema UK style, with new Brit-flick Scenes of a Sexual Nature.

Filmmaking. It’s a hard business. Getting a script onto the big screen can take years and cost you your soul. From development hell, to studio interventions and the distribution company that spirits away any returns – yes, Hollywood is a harsh place. Unless, of course, you have a plan. Ed Blum, first-time director of this month’s Scenes of a Sexual Nature, had a plan. He was going to make damn sure his film was seen, and in record time; no more development nightmares, no reels of film lying on a shelf gathering dust. No, this film would be written, cast, shot, edited and distributed without even the faintest whiff of a studio; but first he needed a good script. Luckily for him, Catherine Tate co-scribe Aschlin Ditta is a very close friend, the pair having known each other since school. Ed threw down the gauntlet, and Asch responded with Scenes of a Sexual Nature.

Set on a gloriously sunny Hampstead Heath, the film observes seven couples, each at different points in their relationships. From a gay couple grappling with the realisation that they want children, to the successful professional who will pay for companionship but never sex, Scenes runs the length and breadth of the minefield we call relationships. A stunning British cast, a leafy suburban location, this has England written all over it; but not in that Richard Curtis way we have all come to revile. Writer Asch Ditta was keen to make sure that Scenes was British through and through: “It feels like where we’re from, literally, and that’s what we tried to do. I think the problem with the British is we think about the American market, but the Americans are really good at writing films too, so they should probably do that… we tried to keep it quite simple.”

Keeping things simple seems to have been a large part of Blum’s master plan. Shot for less than £300,000 with a minimal crew and the minimum of fuss, the whole shebang from conception to wrap took less than 8 months. “The whole thing was very quick” Blum enthuses, “when I first mentioned the idea to Asch, that was in January, and Asch came up with the title in 15 minutes. It was March when Asch started writing, and we didn’t have a first draft until June. We were planning to turn over on August 1st.” Ditta wasn’t quite so positive in the beginning. “We had another film which was in that whole development, normal, years of stuff…We had lunch the day before it [Scenes] was turning over, and I asked if we were actually going to make this film, and Ed was like ‘I think so, if they turn up at 6.30 tomorrow morning!’” Of course, making a film is always a gamble, especially for a first time director so frustrated with the industry that he decided to completely cut-out the usual bunch of money-men and finance and distribute Scenes…himself. But even he was surprised and a little disturbed by the fact that not only did they turn up that morning, they brought an A-list cast that would make any studio salivate with them. “I just suddenly thought ‘it’s a really good script, it’s a really good cast, there are only two people who can fuck this up – that’s the producer or the director – and I’m doing both!”

Potential fuck-ups aside, the one thing nobody was worried about was the script. Clearly the main attraction for the cast was a chance to get their teeth into some great dialogue; with a credits list that reads like a who’s-who of the best British actors working today, including Ewan McGregor, Adrian Lester, Gina Mckee, Mark Strong and the about to become ubiquitous Catherine Tate, all are agreed that Ditta had written something different. “It’s such a lovely piece of writing, and such a great scene to play” says the aforementioned Mr McGregor, who plays one half of gay couple Billy and Brian, struggling with the idea of having a family. Ewan, working on Guys and Dolls at the time, wasn’t phased by the speed of the shoot; being cast opposite the Nathan Detroit to his Sky Masterson, Douglas Hodge, allowed both actors to work together on the scene before they got anywhere near the location: “In our experience, 12 or 13 pages of dialogue in two days is quite a tall order; the best way to make that achievable was to have the whole thing down. Because we did some work on it we were able to start at the beginning of the scene and play it right the way through to the end – it was more like theatre in that respect than anything else.” Auntie’s favourite Catherine Tate agrees that the speed of the shoot added to the overall feel of the movie “When you’re in for a small amount of time, it’s very focused, it’s quite intense in that period, and it remains that way on screen.” Tate, a long time friend of both Blum and Ditta – “I was gonna make sure she was in it – it’s a no brainer” – plays a happily divorced mother of one, also believes the scripts the thing: “I think that’s why everyone’s done it really. It’s stripped of any artifice, and there’s no gimmick to it – what’s not to like?”

However, cutting out the studios does leave a director somewhat stranded when it comes to talent. Again, Blum had the solution. Winning the Cannes Pitching competition with another film entirely put him in touch with casting agent Emma Style. “When I came back from Cannes, Asch had written the first draft, and it was a really, really strong first draft. I handed Emma that script in the second week of June. I think the script is so good because so few people interfered with it. It was just two mates saying we’re gonna make a film, and whenever we were both happy with it, that was the script that was going to get made.” Blum hit the jackpot; having decided not to deal with any studios he, Ditta and Emma Style personally pitched the film to the agents of their dream cast, and lo and behold every one of them said yes, despite equity minimum wages and the time pressures on the actors, many of whom were only available for two days. “It was hilarious” says Ditta, “there were about 13 or 14 days where everyday another one would go ‘yeah, I’ll do it’. You can see in the film, there’s a real vibrancy in some of the scenes, because it had to get shot, they had to do it in one, it actually gave the film a really live feel.”

So far so good for Blum and his master plan: script: check. Incredible cast: check. But one vital ingredient was still sorely lacking – cold, hard cash. “It was about two weeks before (shooting) and I thought ‘God, I’d better raise some money’” quips Blum. “I arranged a financiers evening, I got my friends and family over, my Aunt’s there, you know, ‘I’ve got my cheque here!’”. Thanks to said rather generous friends and family, Blum was able to raise a third of the cash he needed to start shooting. Now all he needed was the other two thirds; enter businessman Suran Goonatilake. “I knew he was looking to get into the film business, and had just come back from holiday and was feeling very good; he came on board as executive producer and put in the remaining two thirds of the money. After that it was a mad rush to get the film done.” Was that luck, or just part of the plan? Having been determined to cut out the middlemen, Blum was equally as determined to make sure that if Scenes was a success any profit would go equally to the cast and crew, meaning any investors would see a return. Says Blum “We’re self-distributing the film, and what’s slightly different is that basically no money goes into our distributing company and I think that’s never been done before. It’s very open and it does create a situation that allows film-makers to go to private investors, who are worried that even if the film is a hit they will never see their money again, and say, ‘listen, if the film is successful, here’s your guarantee because we cannot siphon off any of the money.’” So, definitely part of the plan, then. In fact, so open is the distribution company that interested parties can log onto the company website and find out exactly how much money has been spent and on what. The cast and crew don’t have to fight for the money they were promised, handily sidestepping any disputes over where the cash has gone. For Ewan McGregor, Blum and Co’s independence was a big plus “Another draw for the film was the way he’d (Blum) set it up. He’d been so frustrated, trying to get films made in Britain, that he cut out all of the middlemen, these self-aggrandising arseholes, of which there are hundreds swanning around Soho, doing lunches, snorting an enormous amount of cocaine and not making any films at all, so it’s fantastic to be involved in this project just because of that. The only way to create a healthier British Film Industry is to make more films, and have them seen. We’ve too many films sitting on shelves that are never going to be seen.”

Not that Scenes of a Sexual Nature will have that problem. Thanks to Blum’s foresightedness and calculated approach, and with a little help from the British Film Council, a nationwide release has been planned for November, as well as Scenes being nominated for Best UK Feature at this years Raindance Festival, and premiering on the closing night of said festival. Could the tide of British Independents be turning? “I think there is a little revolution going on, there’s a number of films coming out which are low budget, there’s so much writing talent; the fact is that film is a really special medium and can provide a platform for a writer’s voice, which TV tends to smother… I think that there could be a slight revolution in the sense that good writers will look to express themselves in cinema, where up to now, it’s been a dead end.” Ditta is also enthusiastic about the future of British Film “Creatively, and I speak for the actors as well as myself, it is a really unique experience; everyone is having to do it for the right reasons, otherwise, why bother? It’s almost not a job in that sense.” Blum agrees, but is keen to point out that fun or not there is always the bottom line “It’s still a business, in the sense that you need (writing) talent in there, to get that acting quality.” With such an incredible cast, it’s clear that British actors, at least are crying out for good material, you almost wonder why no-one had ever tried that before. Did they succeed? Find out for yourself on Nov 3rd when Scenes goes on general release.