I meet up with Jim Groom and David Read, Director and Director of Photography respectively, on the occasion of the first day's screening of their film Room 36 in London's West End. It's a day that they barely thought that they'd see although, as it soon transpires, not for want of trying. A low-budget British film battling against the odds, Room 36 has had a turbulent history fighting fire and flood. Since its release the reviews have continued the roller coaster ride ranging from ecstatic to damning with little in between. If the film has divided critics then Jim and David are hoping that the public approval will be more unanimous, particularly because they are relying upon good ticket sales in the West End to obtain a wider cinema release.
'We really fought the odds believe me' says Read settling back into his chair with the air of someone about to embark on a good story, one that he can finally contemplate with some objectivity having reached the home straight. 'It was planned to be turned around in a year' says Groom, 'which would be fine for most films of a 90 minute length but things went terribly wrong quite early on.' The fact is that Room 36 took an incredible eleven years to complete. 'Many, many times I thought shall I just leave it alone?' continues Groom, 'But every time I thought about the forty or fifty people who'd worked on the film over the years and I thought, 'if I do ditch it then everyone's efforts - not just mine - are going to go to waste. I can't have that.'
Groom and Read have been friends since school ('your punishment was to sit next to Jim in class if you'd done something wrong' says Read). They're part of an older generation of filmmakers who began working prior to the video and DVD revolutions of the 80s & 90s, which changed the industry irrevocably. After school Groom went on to become an editor prior to setting up his own company and Read arrived at the BBC via a spell as a cameraman for the National Coal Board, immediately prior to the big miners' strike. Still friends they both harboured the ambition to make a feature film. Room 36 was their second attempt after low-budget horror 'Revenge of Billy the Kid' that performed well on DVD. 'That took three years and we thought 'We're never going to make a film that drags on that long again!'
The first stumbling block with Room 36 was the decision to shoot in black and white. Although hardly a commercial choice it suited the film's noir-ish story. The problem was that their chosen film stock could only be processed at two laboratories in the entire country. A week before shooting was to commence they received a call to tell them that the lab had burnt down. As if that wasn't enough there were further problems once they'd transferred to another. 'Our second problem came because that stock was so specialized that they weren't manufacturing it anymore. I said to Dave 'how are we doing on stock?' and he said 'We're running low but I've put the second order in'. So we did that and we got a call from them saying 'What do you mean another order? That's impossible. We haven't manufactured any more. You've had the last of it.' You don't need that halfway through your production. We had two day's worth of stock left.'
Fortunately more stock was found in Los Angeles and flown over that night to ensure that the film could continue. The initial edit of the film was 84 minutes long and considered to be unsatisfactory. So the producer took the footage away with a view to putting it on TV in curtailed form and nothing more happened for a few years. Enter Frank Scantori co-investor in the film, and actor, who wanted to regain his money. Groom again: 'I said to Frank 'At this moment in time I can't put any more money into the film but what is needed is more shooting and another edit.' So Frank convinced the producer to give the footage back and then I put it back to the 84 minutes. It was then a matter of re-writing the script to fit in new material and that's when we put the reception and the pub scenes in.' In fact the film was completely remodeled and finance had to be raised to shoot the new scenes.
'I get this call from Jim saying 'I'm doing Room 36. I'm starting it up again' says Read, 'and I said 'what? What are you doing that for?' We sat and talked and decided that there was a way of putting stuff in without looking like you're putting stuff in. Then it gradually evolved and we thought that just maybe we could do this. It was a bizarre thing. I thought 'am I doing this again? Lo and behold, I was'. Predictably the actors took more convincing than David. 'The leads were very concerned' says Groom, 'by then there was a good seven or eight years since the first shoot. They realized that they'd put on a little bit of extra weight, a few bags under the eyes, some extra wrinkles here and there. I said 'it'll look all right. Don't worry about it.' I managed to sweet talk them although we did need weeks to do it.' The greatest difficulty came with the late actor Norman Mitchell who had grown a beard to play Father Christmas and refused to shave. Groom's ingenious solution was to set the required scene at a peep show where only Mitchell's eyes would be visible.
Now Room 36 is finally finished and has toured festivals. 'We had screenings in Cannes and we had two festivals in Germany where they loved us. They were sitting in the aisles and asking 'When's it coming out in Germany?' says Read. Groom called in a few favours to get cinema chains to consider the film for exhibition and one of them agreed. At the time of this interview Room 36 was to be screened over a weekend in the West End with further screenings a possibility if ticket sales were high. Since then the film has performed extremely well. Ticket sales were the highest for that weekend and the cinema is screening the film for at least another week, with the possibility of screenings at other cinemas if the film continues to perform well. After that who knows? A nationwide release and the finance for another film perhaps. One thing's for sure though, after the experience of Room 36 Jim and David are not complacent.
Peter Fraser
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