Anthony Head in conversation with Richard Johns
RJ: How did you get involved with AMELIA AND MICHAEL?
AH: The screenplay came completely out of the blue via my agent and I just fell in love with it. It is so unusual to get such a subtle, restrained and elegant screenplay. Short films tend to use the limited timeframe available for shock value or they just feel far too compressed. AMELIA AND
MICHAEL was very simple and economical, but you could instantly see how it would work.
RJ: What was it like working with first time film director Daniel Cormack?
AH: He seemed very assured – in fact, I didn’t realise that this was his first film. That was never mentioned [laughs]. He had a very clear idea of how the film should play, but managed to stay open to other people’s input, which is really important.
RJ: Tell us a bit about your character, ‘Michael’?
AH: Michael is man who materially seems to have everything and yet inside he is empty and unfulfilled. His journey in the film is the discovery of that fact. The screenplay has quite a kaleidoscopic approach to him – as it does to Amelia – by presenting different facets of his life and personality. We – the director Daniel Cormack and I – talked a great deal about whether he is a sympathetic character, both overall and at different stages of the film.
RJ: How does working on a low budget short film compare to other acting work, for example, acting on the West End stage or in feature films?
AH: Naturally, there a far fewer resources available to short filmmakers working with a low budget, but this can actually be an advantage. The lack of a commercial imperative and the artistic freedom that directors have means that there’s a great spirit of adventure and experimentation and I found that to be especially true on AMELIA AND MICHAEL.
Daniel Cormack in conversation with Richard Johns
RJ: What made you chose to direct AMELIA AND MICHAEL as your first film?
DC: I watched hundreds of short films at the Edinburgh Film Festival videotheque, which is a pretty good panorama of what’s being made in the UK and elsewhere. Both the form and the subject matter made the screenplay distinctive; in particular, I liked the way it reframed a relationship drama with a sense of mystery and suspense more common in other genres such as thrillers.
RJ: And yet your background – and the fact that you’re a young man making a film about a middle-aged couple – makes AMELIA AND MICHAEL seem like a surprising choice?
DC: I don’t think so. Cinema is a dramatic art, not a lyrical art. As an audience, we relate to characters on a screen, not ‘the director’. For me, watching a film and making a film are both processes of empathy and the imagination.
RJ: You keep coming back to cinema and the cinematic. Why are these so important to you?
DC: I have photosensitive epilepsy and as a child, I couldn’t watch television at all, so I became very passionate about going to the cinema. Beyond that, I think watching a film in the Cinema combines the best aspects of theatre – ie. that it is a communal experience – and of television, which reaches a mass audience. Very few short films these days feel genuinely Cinematic – not from a poverty of means, but from a poverty of ambition.