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Garth Jennings Channels His Inner Rambow
Director Garth Jennings and his friend and producer Nick Goldsmith, who work under the moniker Hammer & Tongs, have been toying with video cameras for a while now. They got their start in music videos, breaking onto the scene with 1999’s award-winning video for Blur’s “Coffee and TV,” a semi-tragic story of a milk carton’s search for a missing person.
Now, after successfully helming one of the most anticipated film adaptations of all time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Hammer & Tongs have returned with Son of Rambow, a smaller, more personal story about the exploits of two kids in the 1980s making a movie and the highs and lows that come with even the smallest of productions. Shortly before the film’s theatrical release, Jennings sat down with MovieMaker to discuss the benefits of making things up as you go along and how an Academy Award-winning film with an NC-17 rating inspired his movie about two schoolboys.
Andrew Gnerre (MM): Son of Rambow perfectly captures the whole spirit of running around as a kid, making movies. Can I assume it’s at least somewhat autobiographical?
Garth Jennings (GJ): Well, a bit. Although my own life was far less interesting than the lives of the characters in the film. We realized that quite early on in writing it. It’s all very well to base your film on personal experiences, but you’d have to have a pretty good life story if you want to make a movie about it.
MM: What did you learn on Hitchiker’s that helped you with Rambow?
GJ: We were told, “It’s very different making films than music videos. You’ll need all these people.” We had loads of people we felt we didn’t need at the end of the day on Hitchhiker’s. You do a lot more with a lot less, essentially. So that gave us confidence to go back to the way we normally do things, which is a smaller, hands-on crew where everyone does everything. No video playbacks, no monitors. You just shoot it and if you missed it then it’s tough shit.
It just seems to work and it’s more fun. You haven’t got all that rewinding. It makes you a lot more focused on getting it right in front of the camera.
MM: One of the things that really captures the spirit of the movie and sets the tone are the special effects. They have that handmade look that you guys seem to gravitate toward.
GJ: It’s funny, people have asked us, “Why the handmade stuff?” And it’s because we really don’t know what we’re going to do before we start. When we pitch an idea we rarely think we’re going to get it because it’s a stupid idea or it’s crazy. Then when they turn around and say, “Yes,” we then have to think, ‘Well shit, how are we going to do that?’ I’m not kidding you—that’s how we’ve approached everything. We pitch it first and we work it out later.
It’s a combination of that and also just wanting to have fun when you’re making it. The more you put into the post-production house, the harder it is to enjoy it. We try to put as much in front of the camera as we possibly can because we prefer to see it. It’s like when you’re a kid I suppose.
MM: I read that one of your big inspirations for the film was Midnight Cowboy?
GJ: Well, yeah. We like those sort of unlikely friendships. Obviously, that’s a very different movie, but it’s really a love story. You’ve got a very innocent, naive man who comes through Manhattan and he’s all wide-eyed. And you’ve got this despicable rogue, Ratso Rizzo, who rips him off—the first thing he does is rip him off.
We realized, as we started the process, ‘Gosh, that’s quite interesting. There’s quite a lot of similarities here.’ And the only time we consciously thought, ‘Wasn’t that a lovely aspect of Midnight Cowboy?’ was when we had the scene in the common room where we wanted them to be tested. All the treats, all the distractions that come with success, are heaped upon our innocent hero. It was already written, but then we realized if it was more hedonistic like the party sequence in Midnight Cowboy, we could really make it have more of an impression on the audience. It’s this sort of candy teen version of hedonism.
MM: There’s a bit of that throughout the movie. That scene has got a bit of a different feel, like a different genre almost. And then the scene where the French exchange student, Didier, essentially auditions for the boys’ film feels almost like The Godfather.
GJ: Yes! So what are we doing here? Yes. That’s good. I’m glad that it feels different. You’re trying to make the film from their point of view. And I don’t know about you, but when I think back to my childhood, I remember it being a lot bigger and more exciting that it probably really was. So you’re trying to make this film this heightened memory of what it felt like to be that age. Meeting people and making friends were big deals back then, they meant something. You have to try to translate that into movie language. That’s what we were trying to do.
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