Keeping Rosy
Keeping Rosy has hit the big screen this weekend and marks the feature film directorial debut for British filmmaker Steve Reeves.
We caught up with the director to chat about the film, the inspiration behind the story, and working with Maxine Peake and Blake Harrison.
- Keeping Rosy hits the big screen this week, so can you tell me a bit about the film?
Keeping Rosy is a thriller and follows a woman to works in advertising, who has given up anything to be a success in her job. She then gets some bad news at work, and because of this, she then has a terrible day, before taking her anger out on her cleaner when she gets home. Thos actions have some pretty dire consequences for her.
- The movie sees you in the director's chair and pen the screenplay, so where did this project start for you? And what inspired the story?
It started along time ago. Something happened to me a few years ago: I nearly had an accident and was nearly killed. I can’t say too much about it, because it will spoil the story.
Something happened to me five or six years ago, and I spoke to Mike Oughton - who is the co-writer - about it, and we thought it would make a good short film. Then we turned it from a short film into a full-length film. So, it was all kicked off by a small incident that happened to me a few years ago.
- I was going to ask you about Mike Oughton, how did that collaboration come about? And how did you find writing with him?
It was great. This is the second script that we have written together: the first script was a comedy but we are struggling to get funding for that. We thought we would try to write something very simple, tighter, and much more low budget: which is how Keeping Rosy came about.
We know each other through advertising - I use to be a writer in advertising and he still is a writer in advertising. I have directed some of the commercials that he has written and we have got to know each other over the years. We are both very keen in working in a longer format.
- Can you talk a bit about your writing process? Do you start with the seed for an idea? Do you develop the characters first? How does your process work?
On this script, we set out with a very tight, simple and small idea. We then thought very long and hard about how to build some great characters into it: we were very lucky to get Maxine Peake and Blake Harrison to appear in the film.
I suppose, you start with the premise, make sure that it has the proper three acts of beginning, middle and end, and that it is a good structured piece of film. Mike and I have actually been on a couple of writing courses, because writing commercials is obviously very different from writing film. It was quite interesting to realise that the structure of film is a very very rigid structure.
- Keeping Rosy marks your feature film directorial debut, so how did you find tackling a feature project for the first time?
I found it really enjoyable. When you work in advertising, there are many clients and people around whom all have an opinion, but with film, it is very different. It was down to me at the director: I made the decisions.
I am sure that it is different in the big American studios, but on a low budget independent film, there was a lot more freedom than you get in advertising. So that aspect of it I found to be a really fantastic experience.
- You have mentioned you advertising background and you have also done some work in shorts, so how did that prepare you for the leap into feature film?
I think being a commercials director is a fantastic training ground, as you get to work on so many different things and so many disciplines. I was always a busy commercials director, and have done about four hundred commercials. Therefore, I have spent a lot of time on film sets: probably a lot more time than many film directors.
You are shooting a lot of the time and in many different places, so it does give you a good foundation. Saying that, there are different things about being on a commercial film set and being on a movie set: the actors are far more powerful on a film set than they are on a commercial film set. It is much more of a creative process when working with the actors on a film set.
- Maxine Peake, Blake Harrison, and Elisa Lasowski are all on board, so can you talk a bit about the casting process?
That is quite a strange thing in films as you have to send the script to an actor, then you have to wait to see if she likes it. Because she is an actress with such a great reputation, you cannot just say ‘come in and do a read’. It is very much a case of her deciding to do it.
Maxine is such a great and down to earth actress that she did come down and meet me. We were able to have a chat about it, and I just thought ‘gosh, she is just so good for this’.
We were looking for a gangster… not really a gangster, we were looking for a seedy character: a seedy London character who is a quite a threatening person. The casting agent sent us a list of the sort of people that I imagined would be this character: there were some really good actors, but they were your typical London tough guy actors.
I just happened to be watching The Inbetweeners with my son, and I just thought ‘Blake would be really good.’ Physically he is quite a big guy and he comes from the right part of London.
We sent him the script - I didn’t expect to hear anything - but he was in L.A. at the time, and he sent over this casting video of himself and it was unbelievable; it was just such a transformation from this gormless guy from The Inbetweeners to this really dark and nasty character. He is a really amazing actor.
Everyone knows how great an actress Maxine it, but people are going to be really shocked at the acting ability of Blake; he is a really serious actor. He was just fantastic to work with.
- Charlotte is the central character, so what were you looking for when you were casting this role? And what did you see in Maxine Peake?
The thing that I loved Maxine in was See No Evil: The Moors Murders in which she played Myra Hindley: she was just so fantastic in there. She is so understated and the way that she acts is just so minimal. There are just tiny little things that she does that, to me, convey so much.
Because both Mike and I come from advertising, Charlotte is a character that we both know really well: there are quite a lot of women in our business who have had to be quite tough to get to the situation that they are in, as it is still a male dominated business.
For anyone to achieve in any field you really do have to push and we were looking for someone who could carry that off brilliantly. We really wanted that inner strength that Maxine has.
- How did you find working with Maxine & Blake is still making a name for himself? And how collaborative a process was it between yourself and the actors in creating these two central characters?
There wasn’t much time between the go-ahead of the film and when we started shooting: we didn’t really have time to rehearse or anything. Maxine is just brilliant to work with, as she is not one of those actors who on set gets into character, she was laughing and joking with us: particularly when Christine Bottomley was on set.
Christine takes on the role of Charlotte’s sister in the film, and the two of them were laughing, joking, and being very relaxed. Then I would say ‘I need to shoot you’ and they would go straight into it and become these characters: it was fantastic getting to watch that transformation. They already knew each other as well, so that really helped the fact that they were playing sisters.
Blake comes from South East London - that was something that really helped - he knew exactly what I was looking for. I come from Essex and Mike comes from Greenwich, so we knew the character really well. We all knew what we were looking for in the character of Roger the security guard.
- A big chunk of the film is shot in Charlotte's apartment - which really does give a claustrophobic feel to the film - so what were the challenges of shooting in a restricted space?
It is a hard… if we had had the money, we would have built the set in the studio; but we just didn’t have the budget to be able to do that. Equally, that apartment really did have the right vibe to it.
I don’t know if you have spent much time in the Docklands, but there is a soullessness to it - it has got a lot better than it was five years ago - but there is an emptiness and bleakness there.
I think that was something that was captured, that you can go about your life there without ever seeing your neighbours or getting to meet anyone. It really can be a very isolated existence.
- We are always hearing about how difficult it is to make a movie in the UK at the moment, so how hard was it getting the film off the ground and ultimately made?
It has been really really hard. This is our second script; we are no closer to making the first script than we were five years ago. I was just relentless with Keeping Rosy as I kept phoning people up and sending the script out.
We made the short film as a selling point for the movie, which really did help. Ultimately, we were very lucky to find a backer who really got the character of Charlotte and liked that element of it. That is how it finally came about.
- How have you been finding the response to the film?
We did a preview screening up in Manchester - we did it in a pop-up thing where we put a cinema on the top floor of a tower block, so people could see what it was like to be up high and above the city. That was done with headphones, so you could listen to the soundtrack though an i-Pad and watch it on the big screen in the office block.
It was the first time that I had seen the film with people who had paid to see it. There were lots of gasps and lots of reactions to the twists and plot changes: it was great to see people reacting to it. I went down very very well indeed. The responses after and on Twitter were very positive.
- Finally, what's next for you? Now you have made the leap into feature film, is there where you want to stay?
I love shooting adverts and I love shooting film, and it is very much about the opportunities that come along really. Mike and I have that first script, which we would love to get made someday.
Mike has just written another really good script, which we are hoping to sell. We are going to keep going and it is great that we have had the chance to make something. It is so hard to get something made and it is so brilliant that we have actually done it. I just hope people like it (laughs).
Keeping Rosy is out now.