QUESTIONS & ANSWERS At 22 Julian Richards penned the screenplay for Darklands unaware that it would take seven years before he got to direct the film. Why did it take so long?
JR: I had two things going against me; in an industry where the average age of a first time feature director was thirty two, I had a shortfall of ten years.
Darklands is a a horror film - first feature films in the UK were often funded by the BFI or television companies like the BBC or CH4 and they're just not interested in making a straight horror film - The only route that I could take was the private investment, micro-budget route, but this was also out of the question because Darklands was not four characters in a house, it was a £1.5 million production with a big cast, many locations and complicated set pieces.
So how did you eventually fund Darklands?
JR: It was in my bottom drawer and I was writing a new script Warlord - a micro-budget piece. I showed the script to Craig Fairbrass who had a three picture deal with Paul Brooks at Metrodome and he advised me to take it there. Paul was looking for an action, star vehicle to launch Craig in Hollywood and he asked me if I could set Warlord in America. Two weeks later I was back with a revised treatment - a story of shamanic time travel and re-incarnation which I pitched as Highlander meets Terminator. Paul loved it but with a budget of $20,000,000 he couldn't guarantee that I would direct it - unless I had something in my bottom drawer that we could make quick and cheap to demonstrate my talent. Metrodome films put up £250,000 which the Arts Council in Wales matched. Darklands was eventually produced for £500,000 which was still a million pounds short of what I had anticipated.
How did you cope with just a third of your budget?
JR: The first thing I did was agree to hold back my fee for writing and directing the film. It was more important to me that the money was on the screen than in my pocket. Then I had to fall out of love with some of my original casting ideas because they were either too expensive or wouldn't work on a non-equity contract. We couldn't afford a casting director, so during our six week pre-production schedule I spent most of my time auditioning actors. This mean't that I had little time to prepare my shooting script, but I knew that casting a film correctly was one of the most important aspects of the process - a film is only as good as its worst performance!
Also we followed the example set by Leaving Las Vegas and dropped from 35mm anarmorphic to Super 16mm. Unfortunately in the process we lost my first choice cinematographer Vernon Layton (Young Americans), so I turned to my National Film School colleague Zoran Djordjevic who had worked second unit to Andrej Sekula (Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction). I knew Zoran would be chomping at the bit to shoot his first feature and his classic approach to lighting lent itself to the problems of shooting super 16mm for blow up to 35mm.
Half way through the five week shoot we realised we didn't have time to get the coverage we needed to tell the basic story, so I phoned another film school colleague Ian Salvage and he worked as a second unit cameraman, getting the landscape shots and the close-ups while Zoran shot the mids.
Finally, production designer Hayden Pearce and I shared the job of location manager which added further demands on my pre-production schedule. We couldn't afford to build sets, so we found real locations, many of which were too far away from our home base, so we had to settle for third or fourth choice rather than lose valuable shooting time traveling.
Ultimately Darklands was an exercise in how to make compromise work.
So, if you didn't get paid, how did you survive?
JR: In 1993 I took my three, short film school films - Pirates, Queen Sacrifice and Bad Company to the AFI Film Festival. I ended up with a development deal with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment for horror project Calling All Monsters.
After twelve months my development executive moved to another company and the rights were returned along with a cheque for a six figure sum which I shared with the book's author, Chris Westwood. It amazes me to think that there are some people in LA who live a very comfortable lifestyle in development hell without ever getting a screenplay into production.
In 1995 I also directed twelve episodes of Brookside and found the experience invaluable. At film school I had become used to shooting a thirty minute film in two to three weeks, at a rate of three minutes a day. At Brookside we shot a thirty minute episode in two and a half days averaging fifteen minutes a day. Without this experience I may not have been able to handle the five week Darklands shooting schedule.
How did you become a film-maker?
JR: As a boy I was mad for war movies and horror movies and I had an uncle Rex Richards who played rugby for Wales and was nick-named Tarzan because of his athletic physique. In the 50's Rex went to Florida to become an actor and he auditioned for a colour re-make of Tarzan. He made it to the last five but didn't get the part. Another film was casting at the time - The Wild Women of Wongo - and they hired Rex to play King Wongo.
At the same time my father had a super 8 camera and we used to travel abroad every year and shoot holiday films. I remember the excitment as the postman delivered the developed film which my father would edit and project. It wasn't long before I put two and two together and started making my own super 8mm films using my school friends as actors.
It was about this time that Spielberg and Lucas were re-inventing the cinema queue with their blockbusters Jaws and Star Wars - and after seeing these films there was no turning back, I wanted to be a film director.
Despite advice from the school career's officer to seek work at the local steelworks I continued to make films on super 8 until I landed a place at Bournemouth Film School where I made two award winning shorts - Pirates and Queen Sacrifice. From there I went to the National Film school where I made another 16mm short Bad Company and graduated in 1993 as a writer and director.
Why make a horror film as your debut feature?
JR: To understand where I'm coming from as a film-maker it's worth noting that I was thirteen when I made my first super 8 film. By the time I was eighteen I had made eight horror films and was studying directors like Alfred Hitchcock, John Carpenter, George Romero, David Cronenburg, Brian De Palma and Dario Argento.
At film school I was told to 'get a life' and my horizon's were broadened to include an appreciation of world cinema. I was encouraged not to make films about other films but to turn the camera on myself, to discover my own voice. I was also encouraged to focus on the human side of the process, rather than the mechanical; to write stories that were character driven and to work with actors to get a good performance. I embraced this process and made three autobiographical shorts about my experiences growing up in South Wales. But I'm not one to leave an ambition unachieved and I knew that when I graduated I would return to the genre, bringing to it everything I had learnt.
I was aware that most horror films sold out to the lowest common denominator; that characters and performance played second fiddle to action and special effects and I felt short changed by this. On the other hand I remember being impressed by the performances in The Exorcist, especially the scenes between Linda Blair and Ellen Burnstien. They were so natural, so believable, that they made the horror aspect of the film even more terrifying.
Are you worried about being tagged as a horror film director?
JR: I'm currently developing five projects, all of them in the genre so it's inevitable that I'll be type-cast. But I've come prepared - if anybody thinks that I'm incapable of working outside the genre, I'll show them my film school shorts
What inspired you to write Darklands?
JR: After reading Dennis Wheatley's The Satanist and James Herbert's The Dark I became fascinated with religious cults and I wanted to write a screenplay in that milieu. Some of my favourite horror films had religious themes - The Exorcist, The Omen and I was particularly taken by Rosemary's Baby with its conspiracy and paranoia. Rosemary's Baby is a girls' worst nightmare, with Mia Farrow being chosen by a Satanic cult to conceive the devils' child - I wondered what this story would be like told from a male point of view; if a religious cult had to concieve a child with a male protagonist?
Obviously this would involve a love interest which would lead to betrayal and this touched upon other films I admired in the conspiracy genre, like Body Heat and Marathon Man. Because I am Welsh and I am interested in Celtic folklore it was natural to choose Paganism instead of Satanism, and that's when I found that I was treading a similar path to The Wicker Man. But rather than avoid the similarity I embraced it. Other influences on Darklands were Race with The Devil, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, Vampire Circus, Blue Velvet, Angel Heart and Blade Runner.
Are you scared of being criticised for borrowing from other films, especially The Wicker Man?
JR: Not at all. I'm such a film buff that I draw from many, many films. Darklands is a celebration of the genre, in the sense that if you're a cook, you might experience several different kinds of dishes, and there are elements to those dishes that you really like, and being experienced as a cook you can go; 'Well, I can put that and that together and come out with a completely different dish'. As a horror film buff and as a horror film maker this is what I've done. It's like Tarantino, he borrows from so many films, all the best bits and throws them into one. That's evolution.
But I draw from real life experience as much as I draw from other films and I've incorporated generic conventions into a highly personal vision. For example, the theme of conspiracy rang true to me in the sense that I am an english speaking Welsh person.
The opportunities in Wales, especially in media, were monopolised by Welsh speakers, who believe that the only way to preserve Welsh culture is through its language, and the only way to do that was to have a Welsh language television station. What that resulted in was something like £60 million per annum being spent on S4C, a Welsh language television station that serviced two hundred thousand people in a population of two and a half million. But those who don't speak the Welsh language, who are in the majority and in the south, found themselves in no-mans-land.
In Darklands our protagonist is not a Welsh speaker and there is a scene where he is attacked by a gang of gypsies who speak to each other in Welsh. This sense of helplessness and alienation is something that we've all experienced travelling abroad in a country where we don't speak the language - the irony is that our protagonist is made to feel an outsider in his own country.
However, it's worth noting that this sense of alienation has as much to do with paranoia as it does conspiracy, when you consider that the success of the Darklands application to the Arts Council Of Wales was due to the support given by Peter Edwards and his Welsh language film company, Lluniau Lliw.
Another sequence drawn from real life is the scene where Craig Fairbrass escapes the pagan conspiracy by catching a midnight postal train. When I was at film school in Bournemouth I would catch the train back to Wales and there was one occasion where I sat in a carriage with no lighting. As the train went through the severn tunnel it went pitch black until the lights inside the tunnel illuminated the carriage interior, casting an incredible display of dancing shadows. When the train arrived in Newport I couldn't get off because the doors had been locked and I had to shout for assistance. What I didn't realise is that I had caught a postal train and my carriage had been closed to passengers.
What research did you do for the screenplay?
JR: I was teaching film at Edinburgh University when I encountered the Beltane Society. A student on the course offered to show me a 'home movie' of the Beltane event . I was enthralled by the material and asked if I could attend their show.
A month later, I went to The Beltane Fire which is celebrated on April 30th by pagans throughout Britain. Beltane celebrates the coming of Spring and on a cold, rainy night I ventured into the hills of Edinburgh to witness the ceremony. What I experienced was both haunting and liberating. The ritual was a genuine reflection of our pre-christian, tribal selves, and for the first time I glimpsed the ancient man within us all. I experienced primeval fear and I decided that this emotion would be the most frightening aspect to Darklands.
The pagan ritual scenes that you see in Darklands are a very authentic portrayal of The Beltane Fire ceremony that I witnessed in Edinburgh, with the birth of The Green Man and The May Queen. I was determined to avoid the stereotypical depiction of religious cults that you see in every horror film - cloaks, hoods, chanting in latin etc.
Did you witness a sacrifice?
JR: No, there are many myths surrounding paganism because much of what has been written about the Celts has been destroyed. There is no devil or god, theirs is an agricultural faith based around the life source of the community - earth, sun, air, water. Historically, in the event of a bad harvest, animals were sacrificed to the land during a festival known as Samain, but there is no evidence of human sacrifice except as a myth created by Rome to discredit and suppress the culture that it vanquished. Contrary to popular belief, paganism is 'White Magic' and often confused to its detriment with Satanism and Witchcraft.
But in Darklands you depict a human sacrifice?
JR: Yes, the pagans are the bad guy's and that's not necessarily a true representation. In the context of the film I had to create my own faith and therefore fused paganism with satanism and fascism.
I had originally intended the Beltane pagans to perform in the film but when they read the script they withdrew, so we got a group of Welsh performance artists led by Phil Babot to re-enact the ceremony based upon the 'home movie' that the film student in Edinburgh had recorded.
Have you had any negative response to the way that you have depicted pagans or for that matter Welsh nationalists?
JR: After a screening at the Welsh International Film Festival in Aberystwyth, I was confronted outside the cinema by an angry group of nationalists who accused the film of being racist. In defence of the film, Berwyn Rowlands who organised the festival and who is a nationalist himself said that for a fantasy film, they were taking it all a bit too seriously. Besides, it was a sign of confidence when a nation could depict its bad side as well as its good.
How did you come up with the idea of making the paganism in Darklands industrial?
JR: The heavy industrialised landscape of South Wales has had a big impact on me - conciously and subconciously - I've used it for different reasons in all my films. I love it and hate it at the same time, it's beautifully ugly.
One of the challenges with Darklands was to set the story in a contemporary urban town, rather than the mid-west or some remote scottish isle, and in order to do this I had to make the paganism convince in a contemporary context. Historicaly paganism is an agricultural faith but in Darklands it has become industrial, because the life source of the communities in South Wales are the steelworks and coal mines, most of which have closed down.
When people find themselves in extreme situations they will often respond in extreme ways - look what happened to Germany after the first world war - so the idea of paganism and human sacrifice as a response to industrial decline was an interesting concept.
I got the idea from a documentary I watched about an African tribe who produced iron through a primitive form of smelting - Alchemy. The process was treated like a religious ceremony and the girls in the tribe performed ancient fertlity rites.
Furthermore, there is something very hellish about the steelworks and we really get a sense of this when Craig Fairbrass visits the blast furnace, with its smoke, soot and hot molten metal.
Also, there was a natural link with the politics of Wales, extreme nationalism and the maintenance of a unique cultural identity. The industrialisation of South Wales is seen by the nationalists as the anglicisation of Wales - the rape of the fair country. Now that most of these industries are dead, the communities in the South have lost their identity and are ripe for re-unification with the welsh speaking North. What interested me was how fundamental you could be with this kind of nationalism, how far can you turn the clocks back before you're truly representing the origin of your culture, and this gave a very real and contemporary resonance to the rational of the pagans.
These political and social and issues give method to the madness behind Darklands and for those who like a film to carry a message, Darklands can be interpreted as a metaphor for the cultural anxieties that exist in Wales.
What influenced the music?
JR: I watched a documentary entitled Notes From Underground about a group of industrial percussionists called Test Department who create music by banging bits of industrial waste with sledge-hammers. They did a performance with the radical welsh theatre group Brith Gof called Gododdin. The music they composed for this, a mixture of hardcore industrial percussion with soft welsh folk singing, fused the old with the new and became our reference point for Darklands.
I also found synergy with the anarchic french circus Archaos who did a show with brasilian tribal dancers inside the derelict Battersea power station. This gave me the idea for the circus scene in Darklands and for the chainsaw wielding pagan.
Another reference point was the score for Terminator which was also industrial and the 'techno-punk' music of The Prodigy which we used for the chase scene through the rave club.
Finally, for the scene where Rowena King is chased and murdered by Dave Duffy, composer's John Murphy & David Hughes used classic suspense music in the style of Bernard Hermann.
With the exception of Craig Fairbrass and Jon Finch Darklands has a cast of relative unknowns, where did you find them?
JR: Wales has a strong pool of talented actors that work consistantly in Welsh television and because Welsh television drama does not often go network, they are not known to the rest of Britain. William Thomas who plays Detective Jarvis, Beth Morris who plays Doctor Morgan, Roger Nott who plays the preacher and Grahame Fox who plays Detective Young all worked on my short film Bad Company so I already had a working relationship with them and I was glad to give them work because they helped me out as a student. There was no risk in casting them because, from previous experience, I knew they would deliver good performances.
What about Craig Fairbrass?
JR: Craig Fairbrass (Cliffhanger, Killing Time) was instrumental in getting Darklands made at Metrodome Films, he wanted to do the film because it offered him the opportunity to prove that he was more than just an action film actor, it would show his more vunerable side. I had to re-write the script to accomodate him because I'd imagined the reporter being Welsh and Craig has a strong cockney accent. So, I wrote a backstory in which Craig had been born in Wales but brought up in London.
Furthermore, when he returned to Wales to work as a newspaper reporter, he had become so anglicised that he was now a stranger in his own country, a fish out of water, and this heightens suspense.
Finally, Craig is a big muscular guy and you expect him to fight his way out at the end. When he doesn't survive, it comes as a shock.
And Rowena King?
JR: I first saw Rowena King (Hamlet, Romance & Rejection) in the television series Full Stretch where she played an icy chauffer. Then she played Clive Owen's girlfriend in The Turnaround.
What about the politician, David Keller - I thought Jon Finch was an inspired decision?
JR: Originally I wanted Anthony Hopkins to play David Keller. I'd met him at a party in 1989 and he'd given me his phone number with the promise that he would help me out by acting in one of my student films. Two years later he played Hannibal Lecter in Silence Of The Lambs, won the oscar and went super-nova. I called him to ask about Darklands but he had moved address. His mother lives twenty doors away from my parents in South Wales, so I went to visit her and gave her the script. Two hours later she called me back and told me that Tony would prefer if I approached him through his agent. I sent the script to his agent but received the usual rejection letter.
Jon Finch (Hitchcock's Frenzy and Polanski's Macbeth) came to mind because I'd seen him in a student film called Paradisio, and in an episode of South Of The Border. I thought that Jon had a patrician like quality that could work for Darklands.
What success has Darklands had on the film festival circuit?
JR: It has participated in over thirty international film festivals. At Fantasporto in Portugal Darklands beat out The Wachowski Brother's Bound, Peter Hyams' The Relic, Peter Jackson's Forgotten Silver, Brian Yuzna's The Dentist, Wes Craven's Scream and Clive Barker's Hellraiser IV to win The Critics Award for Best Film, The International Jury Award for Best Screenplay, and The International Jury Award for Originality.
We've also had success in America at Houston Worldfest where Darklands beat out over sixty independent American films to win The Silver Remi, and in the UK where Darklands was awarded Best Feature at Manchester's Festival of Fantastic Films.
Ultimately Darklands was awarded The Melies D'Argent for Best European Fantasy Film by the Federation of European Fantasy Film Festivals - Rome, Sitges, Porto and Brussells.
Why has Darklands never been released in North America and why is there no UK DVD?
In 2002 the sales company representing Darklands liquidated and international rights reverted to Metrodome which had since been sold by producer Paul Brooks. When the new Metrodome emerged as a distribution company, I approached them to request they grant me the rights to licence the film through my new sales company Jinga Films. Metrodome agreed and we have now taken the film back to the market as a directors cut. Hopefully, a North American distribution deal will follow shortly.
