Lava

No compromise on hilarious, hard-hitting Britpic

by Joe Tucker | Published January 28, 2003

Through his “neophyte innocence” and dogged determination, moviemaker Joe Tucker was able to maintain total freedom on his feature debut, LAVA.

“Two men. One mission. Twice the mess.” That’s the tagline for my debut feature, Lava, not a summary for the process of making it. But during the seven years I spent making the film (one can train to be a doctor in the same amount of time) I sometimes felt like I was living that tagline.

Late last fall, i stepped onto the stage at Texas’s Paramount Theatre to introduce LAVA to its first American audience at the Austin Film Festival. I began by saying that I hoped LAVA would provide a cinematic antidote to the usual Brit fare—you know, the sort of films typified by culture gentrification born inside a safe, sanitized and predictable narrative. But then I realized I was sounding like a bit of a cunt. So I quickly explained that while a film like the Julia Roberts-Hugh Grant pleaser Notting Hill portrays the West London area as being exclusively populated by a wealthy, white, middle-class, good-looking, bookshop-browsing, dinner party-throwing, politically correct-chattering, cappuccino-sipping elite... that’s certainly not the Notting Hill that I know. That’s especially true during the annual two-day August Carnival in which LAVA is set, when the area becomes vibrant, vital and feverish; when it becomes engulfed by a nasty, twisted, drug-dealing, drugged-up, mugging, murderous, opportunistic and fucked-up underclass.

With LAVA being my first directorial feature, my greatest asset was my naivete, as I had no idea that what I was asking for was—and is—generally considered “unacceptable.” When meeting the usual financing bodies and outlining my “creative intentions” (read: non-negotiable fascist list of terms and conditions), which included directing, playing a lead role, having total control over casting and—of course—final cut—they all showed me their door with the request to never darken it again. Which, in my neophyte innocence, used to bemuse me (I thought my trifling requests were altogether reasonable). As such, LAVA was eventually produced independently through the funds of a canny private investor.

The Origins of LAVA

I’ve been going to the Notting Hill Carnival since the early ’90s. Each August Bank Holiday there are two million plus revelers crushed into a perimeter of two square miles—pockets of extreme characters (some with extreme agendas), all within extremely close proximity to each other. Suddenly it struck me how great it’d be to make a film that harnessed the event’s energy, unpredictability and danger. I’d been hatching an idea for a subversive, high-octane homicidal comedy of errors where outlandish plot twists could sit comfortably in and feed on the Carnival’s heightened sense of reality. Even the most outrageous happenings you can think of, when placed within the context of the Carnival, have the authentic ring of plausibility.

Spin on year one: I’d written the screenplay, sent it off to the usual suspects and started to receive the first batch of rejections, along with their readers’ reports. But by now, I’m getting really excited by the idea of mounting cinematic sequences amongst the frenzy of a real, live Notting Hill Carnival, capturing all its hyper-madness and raging Technicolor on film (think Mardi Gras in Easy Rider). I decide to shoot some test material to get a feel for the sheer scale of the logistical challenges to shooting footage under such overwhelmingly volatile and crowded conditions.

It was while filming amongst the mobs at the Rampage that I witnessed a lad stagger from the heaving fray and collapse. He’d been stabbed. Gregor Truter (one of LAVA’s producers) and I pulled off our T-shirts to help stem the flow of blood. Things suddenly felt very unstable. The victim’s friends were looking for retribution and panic was spreading throughout the crowd. We gathered up the equipment and sped off. I remember thinking about the script reports we’d gotten back—how the random acts of violence at the Carnival in LAVA seemed “unrealistic.”

The Shoot

Nicola Stapleton as Julie in LAVA.

LAVA’s budget was 1,000,000 GBP (approximately $1.6 million), with a shooting schedule of 36 days. I opted to work with a Super 16mm camera primarily for its portability. I planned to do a lot of handheld camerawork because of its ability to thrust the audience into the story. I wanted to effect an

intimacy by putting the viewer knee-deep into specific situations alongside the characters—an experience I anticipated might be achieved via the constantly moving frame of  a handheld (hopefully denying the audience the option to view the story with the detachment of empathy that I think a fixed static frame can encourage.)

To overcome the loss of picture clarity that usually occurs when blowing up Super16 to 35mm, we opted for an entirely digital post-production route. It’s a process that recently originated in Copenhagen’s Digital Film Lab,  whereby the master negative is digitally scanned into a very sophisticated computer - high resolution, absolutely picture faithful. You then use the computer to make all your grading choices as well as for creating titles, digital effects and speed changes before outputting straight onto 35mm film. The advantage is that the interpositive stage is avoided.
The resulting finished prints, when projected, make the film look as if originated on 35mm (even experienced film lab technicians cannot distinguish the difference). It’s a brilliant process and one I highly recommend it.

For the two days of Carnival, we had two film units running—one catching the hectic and heady atmosphere of the event itself, the other shooting the film’s dramatic sequences. With the memory of that try-out shoot still lingering, we took the precaution of hiring security personnel to guard both (which was a good thing, because we got plenty of hassle ranging from high-spirited revelers mobbing shots to more menacing warnings to stop filming from the gangs who felt a touch territorial about the areas we were filming in). There were some very tense moments, but also some lighter ones.

There’s a police rule that all vehicles, other than the designated floats, are not permitted inside the carnival perimeter. So it’s illegal to drive inside that area during the Carnival. But we had a shot where Claude, the lead, drives his BMW through the Carnival crowd. We thought we’d be clever and park his BMW at the location the night before the police barricades went up, so that the next day it’d be there waiting for us and we’d surreptitiously set up the shot, film it and that’d be that. But  when we arrived there was a policeman standing 50 yards away—his spot for the day! Guerrilla-style, we set up the shot and every time just before “action” Michael Riley (LAVA’s other producer) would engage the policeman in conversation so that he’d have his back to the filming. Every subsequent take, Mike had to think of yet another question to ask the policeman. This went on for about an hour—and I think the policeman just assumed Michael was an over-enthusiastic but harmless loon. But Michael made a friend. They probably still keep in touch.

We built a set for the inside of Julie’s Notting Hill apartment (LAVA’s foul-mouthed aggressor and sex vixen) in an indoor car park in South London because the film’s budget wouldn’t stretch to the unnecessary luxury of a proper studio hire in Shepperton or Ealing. The first weekend we shot there, we realized the car park didn’t provide adequate soundproofing from the aircraft noise that occurred every 20 seconds. Consequently, I don’t think you’ll find a shot lasting longer than, oh, 20 seconds inside Julie’s “apartment.” Another problem was the rain—the noise of it used to postpone shooting altogether, never mind it leaking onto the set. By the end of the shoot the set was actually beginning to rot, but we left it for the car park owner, who’d asked us not to dismantle it. His brother was a porn director who’d fancied using it for his own brand of movie entertainment. Somewhere there are various adult videos knocking about with their action set inside LAVA’s Day-Glo-decorated set. Anyone come across a copy?

Finding UK Distribution for LAVA

Okay, so I got to make the film I wanted to make and how I wanted to make it (within the constraints of time and budget). Because we’d gone the route of private equity investment funding, it obviously meant that there was no distributor or sales agent money attached and, therefore, no built-in distribution destiny. This meant we had to find a way to give our film a profile—an edge—to attract anyone willing to champion it in an overcrowded marketplace already swamped with other low-budget indies vying for release. We came up with a simple idea.

L to R: Johann Myers as Curtis, Stephen Callendar-Ferrier as Stefan and Dennis Titus as Claude in Joe Tucker’s LAVA.

We took out a one-page ad in the industry magazine Screen, which featured our own artwork comprised of film stills squeezed into a bold depiction of the word “LAVA” along with an early tagline: “It’s Notting Hill Carnival and Smiggy’s off to see a dog about a man... It’s not only stupid, it’s dangerous.” This coincided with mounting a string of private screenings to which we invited anyone and everyone who might be able to help. We continued to do this regularly, hiring out small theaters, inviting potential champions, chasing and persisting. Over many months positive word of mouth had spread to UK sales agents and distributors, aided by a great review on Ain’t-It-Cool-News (“Restores your faith in the Britpic”). We also got an enthusiastic, unprompted letter from film director Mike Leigh who after the film, felt compelled to write to the President of the Cannes Film Festival urging LAVA’s inclusion into the official selection (to which the reply was unfortunately “non!”).

Through all of this activity we struck gold and found a distributor in the form of Winchester Films. The film was brought to them after being picked up by its subsidiary Feature Film Company (responsible for the UK distribution of such diverse indie hits as Richard Linklater’s Slacker and the much-celebrated Lantana).

The next hurdle was to find exhibitors willing to screen LAVA over the glut of highly packaged, big-budget and star-heavy fare constantly available to their theaters. After all, LAVA is unapologetically profane and not for the squeamish. It’s a brutal comedy that is disturbing, irreverent and relentless—it’s absolutely unflinching in its depiction of a day at the Notting Hill Carnival that goes horribly, farcically and insanely off-course. With that in mind, it felt very rewarding when the film did find favor and affinity within the UK’s independent cinema network.

Tyler Garni as Jason in Joe Tucker’s LAVA.

We were more surprised (and thrilled) to find a broader support for the film in the shape of mainstream exhibitors Warner and Odeon, who both offered up screens for LAVA’s UK theatrical premiere.

Critical Response to LAVA

Having spent so many years banging on doors and sticking to the mantra of not compromising on any of the film’s aesthetic prerequisites, it felt enormously rewarding and totally vindicating to have the film receive almost unanimous critical acclaim in the UK press. It’s been a long journey of some seven years—five spent resisting pressure from interested funders to sanitize the story and seize  control. For me, it was only worth making if it was worth making. And that meant that the film had to be entirely true to itself and free from any compromise prompted by outside interference. It’s been a long haul, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

LAVA has been praised for having its own personality, its own strange outlook, its own peculiar voice. I put that down to having had complete freedom, the expanse of which I’ll try to retain on my next one, Waxers. Think Glengarry Glen Ross or Tin Men told in the vein of Goodfellas. Hey, there’s a thought: Goodsellas!

LAVA went down in a storm in Austin (if I immodestly say so myself). Amongst the festival crowd, it was a thrill to hear that familiar guttural yelp of shock and that universal ring of belly laughter as I witnessed the film’s anarchic sense of humor successfully cross over and strike a clear, resonant chord with an American audience.

I’m hoping that all this means it won’t be long before LAVA finds the appropriate U.S. distributor to explode it onto American screens and to bring the clarion call “Suck my spangle” into everyday common parlance. MM

For more information, visit www.lavamovie.com.

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