Dexter Fletcher has enjoyed a career that has spanned over thirty years taking him from child star to filmmaker.
His latest project Wild Bill sees him make his directorial debut and the movie is set to be screened at the BFI London Film Festival next week.
I caught up with him to talk about the movie, stepping behind the camera for the first time and what it means to be screened at his home film festival.
- Wild Bill is your latest movie project so can you tell me a little bit about the film?
The movie is Wild Bill I directed it and it is an original story by me - I spoke to the writer about it and wrote it - but it is essentially a father and son story.
The idea was to tell a story about a man who was a boy and a boy who was a man - and that happens a lot in life.
So yeah it is a father and son story of a man who learns to be a father after being away in prison for eight years.
- The movie marks your directorial debut so how did you find stepping behind the camera for the first time? How long has this been something that you wanted to do?
I have loved the experience of stepping behind the camera it was an extremely fulfilling, exciting, exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating and creative process.
It is something that I have wanted to do all my life really since I was a kid making movies with my brother with a little camera - that was thirty/forty years ago - and I have never really had the opportunity before.
So when this opportunity arose I sort of grabbed it with both hands. And I found that my forty years experience on film sets and being a child actor, made it a very comfortable environment for me - which is very lucky because there is a lot of responsibility first time around.
I very smartly surrounded myself with friends who were very capable and very supportive so when I had moments of crisis, which wasn't very often, they were there to support me.
- As you say when you step into the director's chair there is a lot more responsibility than just turning up doing your work and going home so how did you find all that?
I loved all of that - seeing the process through right from the very beginning. As I said the story came from me initially so it is coming up for two years in February that the whole project has been going on.
But I liked that at the end of the day the film is not done I had rushes to watch and there is stuff to think about for the next day.
But that is really exciting because you don't just turn up put your funny clothes on and do you lines and go home you are actively involved in the whole process; it's great and words can't really describe it.
I particularly enjoyed it and I loved being involved at that level because when you are acting you don't always get that opportunity - when you are directing you are at the centre of it all which is kind of fun (laughs).
- You were also behind the story penning the script with Danny King so where did the idea for the movie come from?
I wanted to tell a story of a man who was a boy and a boy who was a man and then I remember seeing something in a newspaper about a woman who had abandoned her kids and gone off to Greece. And that that kind of stuck with me as I thought it was an interesting dilemma and that struck me as a particularly irresponsible thing to do.
So ideas starting coming together from than and then Danny and I sat down and talked about it and then other elements started to come in such as the location and the younger brother; we had to find a reason for the older boy to be responsible and so we gave him a younger brother to look after.
So all the elements came together through various discussions and drafts - Danny wrote the first draft then I sent some notes and ideas back. But it came from that idea of a man who is not grown up; by being in prison is has sort of frozen in time and not grown up.
- The film has a great cast Charlie Creed-Miles, Will Poulter and Andy Serkis so can you talk me through the casting process?
Well for me it was fairly easy because a lot of these people I knew or had worked with before, in fact for 90% of them that is the case.
The guy who plays the building site manager is a lovely guy called Pete McCabe who is very funny in it - he is only in a couple of little scenes - but I worked with him on Band of Brothers.
So a lot of those things are very easy for me because I know exactly who I want and it's a case of picking up the phone and saying 'will you come and do this for a day?'
Andy(Serkis) was great we had worked together a few years back and I met him at event around the time it was all coming together and I just said 'you couldn't do the day for me Andy?' and he was like 'yeah course I can'.
The only people that I hadn't worked with before were Liz White, who played Roxy, and Will Poulter and they came and we sat and talked and read some scenes. Sean Pertwee is in it he is an old mate - he had terrible flu that day and claims that he can't remember what he did because he had such bad flu.
The casting process for me was just an absolute joy and very easy because all the people whose work I love I was able to ask them and many of them were free to do it - so I got my dream cast.
- Will Poulter and Sammy Williams are two young actors who are starting to make a name for themselves - having been a child actor yourself are these two that we should be keeping an eye on?
100% absolutely. That was another big element of it for me I wanted to work on a film that had young actors in it, having been one myself, to how that process worked from the other side as it were.
Once the film was up and running Will was someone who was out front and centre right from the very beginning and it was just a matter of him responding to the material.
But yeah they really are ones to watch. Sammy Williams is going to be a great actor and he is already a little heart breaker; Jamie Winstone fell in love with him immediately. He is a charmer, very talented young man and natural - which is the kind of acting that I like.
- The movie shot in East London and you got access to the Olympic building site so that must have been an exciting place to shoot?
What we did was opt for the Westfield building site so we could have the Olympic building site as a backdrop because what we realised was if we went onto the Olympic building site we were too close to really see it. But it's all part and parcel of the same construction site yeah.
But that was a really exciting element of the film because it is about renewal, taking something old regenerating it; Bill takes himself and improves himself for the better. So that came quite symbolic for the whole story and I think that everyone is interested in what is going on down there in East London.
- Wild Bill will be screened at the London Film Festival next week so you must be thrilled?
I'm over the moon it is the absolute dream scenario for me. When I was making this film I would sit and ponder and daydream in the quieter moments and that would have been part and parcel of it because this is a London film and the London Film Festival is my festival and to be part of it it's a dream realised.
Once you have made a film it goes on it's own journey - some people like it and some people won't and it has a life of it's own - but the one thing that I would have wished for for it would to be in the London Film Festival.
- London Film Festival that makes it so special and what sets it apart from the other festivals around the world?
It has become this huge international platform and I think those big studio pictures, and even films from around the world, see it as an opportunity to get their film out on a world stage by a very discerning audience and in a huge international city; London is a hub of international activity and people are drawn to if from all over the world.
The UK has a great film history and sure it peaks and troughs but we are always consistent and we are always there making good films - films that reinvent the wheel or have their own style and are inventive and I think that makes it interesting.
And the UK has not only turned out great actors but directors and films and cameramen we do produce really skilled and talented people. And so, it makes sense to me anyway, that London can be a hub of that because we are good at it.
You just have to look at all the Harry Potter movie, Four Weddings, Richard Curtis, Guy Richie, Matt Vaughn; the list just goes back... Hitchcock... we have just got great names and it makes sense to me that London Film Festival is an interested place to see and be seen.
- So now that you have made this directing debut how much is this something that you want to continue?
That is a good question... at the moment the film is getting into festival that I want to be in; I have to go to Chicago next week so I get to go there for three days.
What I have got to do is sit down and figure out what I am going to do next but should the opportunities arise than yeah I really enjoyed it. It's not a change of career it is just another expansion of the forty years that I have been acting - I don't think I am changing gear completely it's just a different direction.
- You have enjoyed a career that has spanned over thirty years so how has the way that you choose roles changed in that time?
Well I was a bit more random what I was younger and I was like 'Yeah, yeah, and yeah’ and jump at anything. I am fairly open to things and my general thought is 'can I do something good with this?' 'Can I do some good work?'
I am not overly fussy because I have the understanding that my career goes up and down in terms of being in the frame as it were - if I like material and I think I can do something good with it then I will go and do it; it doesn't matter if it's a BBC TV series or being D'Artagnan's dad in The Three Musketeers.
- I saw that on Monday
You have seen the movie? I haven't seen it yet. He is good that kid Logan Lerman. He is a great kid and really smart, he really knows his film as well.
I did that while I was casting Wild Bill so I would be out in Germany doing sword fights on a hill and then coming back and looking at monitors of people auditioning in London. But it was cool.
- Band of Brothers is ten years old this year so how would you sum up that experience when you look back on it now?
Blimey! I think life changing is too big a thing to say about a TV programme but there were elements of it that felt that way - really understanding that there are some heroes in life and it's just about how you define them.
But it was fantastic I met a load of good friends and met a lot of inspirational people - those veterans in America; the man I played died about five years ago now.
But I have said it before what you realise when you are acting in something like that is that these are real people's stories and there is a responsibility to portray them in a sympathetic and human light.
So I learnt a lot about people in a strange way and it was nine or ten months of being in the middle of something huge - it was a good good year and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
- Finally what's next for you?
Well I am doing the festival circuit at the moment with Wild Bill and that is going to take me into the new year - which is when I am hoping to sit down and see what options are on the table.
I need to see if there are other films that I can go and direct or I may go back to the day job for a while. There is stuff in the pipeline, as there always is, but I just don't have time to think about it at the moment. I might act I might direct - I am being very mysterious about it.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Dexter Fletcher has enjoyed a career that has spanned over thirty years taking him from child star to filmmaker.
His latest project Wild Bill sees him make his directorial debut and the movie is set to be screened at the BFI London Film Festival next week.
I caught up with him to talk about the movie, stepping behind the camera for the first time and what it means to be screened at his home film festival.
- Wild Bill is your latest movie project so can you tell me a little bit about the film?
The movie is Wild Bill I directed it and it is an original story by me - I spoke to the writer about it and wrote it - but it is essentially a father and son story.
The idea was to tell a story about a man who was a boy and a boy who was a man - and that happens a lot in life.
So yeah it is a father and son story of a man who learns to be a father after being away in prison for eight years.
- The movie marks your directorial debut so how did you find stepping behind the camera for the first time? How long has this been something that you wanted to do?
I have loved the experience of stepping behind the camera it was an extremely fulfilling, exciting, exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating and creative process.
It is something that I have wanted to do all my life really since I was a kid making movies with my brother with a little camera - that was thirty/forty years ago - and I have never really had the opportunity before.
So when this opportunity arose I sort of grabbed it with both hands. And I found that my forty years experience on film sets and being a child actor, made it a very comfortable environment for me - which is very lucky because there is a lot of responsibility first time around.
I very smartly surrounded myself with friends who were very capable and very supportive so when I had moments of crisis, which wasn't very often, they were there to support me.
- As you say when you step into the director's chair there is a lot more responsibility than just turning up doing your work and going home so how did you find all that?
I loved all of that - seeing the process through right from the very beginning. As I said the story came from me initially so it is coming up for two years in February that the whole project has been going on.
But I liked that at the end of the day the film is not done I had rushes to watch and there is stuff to think about for the next day.
But that is really exciting because you don't just turn up put your funny clothes on and do you lines and go home you are actively involved in the whole process; it's great and words can't really describe it.
I particularly enjoyed it and I loved being involved at that level because when you are acting you don't always get that opportunity - when you are directing you are at the centre of it all which is kind of fun (laughs).
- You were also behind the story penning the script with Danny King so where did the idea for the movie come from?
I wanted to tell a story of a man who was a boy and a boy who was a man and then I remember seeing something in a newspaper about a woman who had abandoned her kids and gone off to Greece. And that that kind of stuck with me as I thought it was an interesting dilemma and that struck me as a particularly irresponsible thing to do.
So ideas starting coming together from than and then Danny and I sat down and talked about it and then other elements started to come in such as the location and the younger brother; we had to find a reason for the older boy to be responsible and so we gave him a younger brother to look after.
So all the elements came together through various discussions and drafts - Danny wrote the first draft then I sent some notes and ideas back. But it came from that idea of a man who is not grown up; by being in prison is has sort of frozen in time and not grown up.
- The film has a great cast Charlie Creed-Miles, Will Poulter and Andy Serkis so can you talk me through the casting process?
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