"Why should I let some guy in a suit tell me what's good and what's not..." As well as rounding on "the system"Marc Price, writer/director and producer of the 2008 zombie movie Colin discusses the rise of his passion project from script to cinema, his new film Thunderchild, his passion for extraordinary circumstances and his love for populist cinema. It’s barely a year since the world got its first glimpse inside the mind of Marc Price. His debut is a surprisingly heartfelt tale about a man who transforms into a zombie and pursues a trail across London during the onset of a probable apocalypse. The film screened well at the Abertoir Horror Film Festival and continued on to festivals such as Cannes and Raindance, receiving critical praise throughout the process.
The film is an interesting juxtaposition of ambient panic and subtle, nuanced and intimate hand-held camera work. Colin is arguably a sympathetic soul despite his revenant status and is most easily recognised as homage to “Bub” in Romero’s Day of the Dead. Produced with none of the typical sources of funding available in the UK, Price self-financed the film. “Why should I wait for some guy in a suit to tell me whether my story is worth telling, you know... phrases like bring in the monster earlier, change this, do that...I’ve always resented the idea of somebody looking at something I’ve written. The script isn’t a film, it’s a springboard. It’s the structure. It’s really important to get that structure out because you can’t play around with that as much as you can with the characters you choose to populate it”.
Two years ago, Marc was making short films with friends whilst working a full-time job with a courier firm. We discuss how I now find him nestled in a cosy flat in the corner of Tooting cradling a mug of coffee and sitting underneath a huge poster of the Spielberg classic “Jaws” with the look of a man who may just be living the dream. “I didn’t do anything anybody else couldn’t or hasn’t”.
“I always wanted to make film...”
Marc received little film production training, receiving a degree in a web-based design programme 2000-2003. There he focussed on some animation and three-dimensional technological training but what galvanised the passion we see today was an interview he read with Shane Meadows, with whom he now shares an arena and a talent agency in Casarotto Ramsay. Price quotes “no-one has got an excuse these days, anybody can get a camera and make a movie”.
The rise of DVD was a big help, especially with the inclusion of hours upon hours of bonus features which helped guide Marc through his learning curve. “The commentaries were invaluable”.
Marc had his first serious attempt at making a film with his comedy-drama hybrid short film Nowhere Fast. Nowhere Fast follows three young men as they fight to overcome some intense financial difficulties, resorting to ever desperate measures to survive. “One of the great things that came out of Nowhere Fast was that the cast said we have no idea if this is a screwball comedy or an intense drama... I think it fits in between”.
Eventually, Marc settled in London and went out of his way to start meeting actors and says he was amazed by their enthusiasm. “Everybody seemed willing to take days off work to do this stuff. From there I met Alistair, who plays Colin, and did a short film with him called Midnight, a sort of political thriller, about impending nuclear disaster”.
Does this mean that Marc is drawn to the apocalypse genre? No he says, “I just love the idea of ordinary people in extraordinary situations”; a theme he shares with Steven Spielberg, who’s films continually chart the rise of the average Joe and his quest to over-come both his external conflicts (aliens, sharks, dinosaurs, Nazi’s) and his internal ones. Jaws, which Marc considers a cornerstone of populist cinema, is a fine example; Brody is afraid of the water so let’s make him go in the water; “Look at this poster” he says, his eyes alight with an intense passion as he turns towards the lovingly framed poster above us, “that is all the audience knew before they went in, just that swimmer and the invisible shark below... the conflict is obvious”.
With Spielberg, even in the darkest of situations he continues to assert the power of the individual to reach the dawn. In Jurassic Park, for example, there is the idea that in becoming a more accommodating father figure, Alan Grant will be gifted escape from the heart of darkness. Is there hope for humanity in Colin? Or is Colin just another victim on the way to extinction? “With that house siege...there was a real sense of doom there, a sense of tragedy in the occasion and with the documentary for profit crew, “when it all blows over” content; I wanted to hint at that certainty that one day humanity would get itself together and there was some control that had been taken”. An idea that Price continues with in the climactic battle, where a group of humans wage small scale war on Colin... “the outside world probably isn’t the best place for Colin... he’s in constant danger of getting killed”
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview, where Marc discusses academia, film school and the future...
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