45 Years

Forty-five years is a long time to be married. It’s a long time for anything. If you consider the implications of living with someone for that amount of time then, by the very nature of us as human beings, there’s bound to be as many things said as there are unsaid.

Marriage is a sacred vow, but sadly we are prone to keeping secrets in order to spare the other person’s feelings, for better or for worse. It’s these secrets that can fester when hidden, uncoiling themselves into the cold light of day when you least expect them to.

Such a secret is kept by Geoff Mercer (Tom Courtenay) from his wife Kate (Charlotte Rampling), a middle-class couple whose 45-year wedding anniversary is but a week away. When a letter arrives for Geoff explaining that the body of an ex-lover from nearly 50 years previous has been found frozen in the ice of the Swiss Alps (yep, you read that right), there’s an instant expectation that the film could switch into Fortitude mode – Courtenay scouring snow-swept mountains and perilous glaciers for his long-lost love. But no. Events stay much more low-key, and 45 Years plays out all the better for it.

This is a film about repression, guilt, heartache and loneliness between two people who should, to all intents and purposes, know each other inside out. But to sum it up in such a way does a disservice to what’s on offer. There are many moments of black comedy in the naturalistic dialogue between the two leads that show they really are two old pros absolutely at the top of their game; the film’s muted, unfussy camerawork and non-existent soundtrack amplifying all that’s said (and unsaid) between them.

In the hands of Lars von Trier or Michael Haneke, 45 Years could have been an exercise in emotional button-pushing – seeing how much pain and heartbreak the audience could take before calling it quits. But director Andrew Haigh laces the mood with all the warmth and genuine love you’d expect from a couple who have spent their entire lives together. For all the cracks that start to show, there’s a glue that (just about) keeps the Mercers in each other’s arms – even after dark secrets have been aired.

It’s not a stretch to compare 45 Years to von Trier’s avant-garde Dogme 95 movement in so much as it doesn’t once stray into genre fiction. There are no smashed plates and no blazing arguments, just two pensioners facing a difficult time in their lives, trying their best to keep the status quo. If that sounds in any way boring, trust me – it ain’t. The sound of a slide carousel may never be the same again.

First published on Northern Soul, Aug 8th 2015

Marshland

“What’s it like, True Detective in Spain?” – Sarah Leech, digital content producer 

This is a quote from a colleague of mine who, when I told her I’d watched Marshland the night before, asked me what it was like. I swear to you, that was the very tagline I’d created in my head about half an hour in. Even Wikipedia references the comparisons in an online article for HoyCinema.

Great minds and all that.

And while it’s no detriment to the Goya-winning police procedural to be compared to such a series (the first one, at least), there’s a somewhat pedestrian air to said police proceedings that casts a long, frowning shadow over its relatively brisk 106 minutes.

The story is fine, the acting is fine, the visuals are fine – special mention going to several knockout aerial shots of brief criminal encounters and sun-parched crime scenes. These alone could justify the entrance fee, but only really if the film was a feature-length version of Andrew Marr’s Britain From Above. Which it isn’t. It’s a perfectly serviceable crime thriller, with plenty of character ambiguity and serious faces to tick all the relevant boxes. It’s such a shame it doesn’t do more than it says on the tin.

Suárez (Raúl Arévalo) and Robles (Javier Gutiérrez) are two cops in Spain, circa 1980 – one young and grizzled, the other slightly older (and slightly more grizzled). Packed off almost immediately after the credits roll to investigate the murder of two teenage girls in the backwater locale of the Guadalquivir Marshes (hence the title), it soon becomes apparent that there’s more to this crime than the townsfolk are letting on. Add to that the rather abrasive methods Robles uses on his suspects – murky deals made with individuals who may have something to gain from the investigation – and an all-round sense that no-one wants to quite tell the truth no matter which side they’re on, and you have a soup-thick plot which could give Broadchurch a run for its money.

However, unlike Broadchurch, there’s very little page-turning tension to be chewed on. There’s nothing wrong with the ingredients, but the resulting meal never fully satisfies. Let me be contentious: if this film had been released as an English language American production, you can bet it wouldn’t have received half the plaudits. It’s a solid three-starrer, nothing more.

With that in mind, I do feel there’s a bigger discussion to be had around the idea that a film being ‘foreign’ (excuse the colloquialism) automatically grants it a free pass to be given more credit and kudos than its English language counterparts. Case in point being Schwarzenegger’s latest outing, Maggie. It’s not bad, the script and style suitably muted in tone, a zombie film with an emotional pulse. And yes, even the acting isn’t terrible, Schwarzenegger making a half-decent fist of ‘real’ emotions; he fairs no worse than any other Austrian former bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-State Governor. It’s ‘alright’. But were it to have been Korean/French/Guatemalan? I fear the red carpet may have been rolled out.

Food for thought? Maybe, maybe not. Watch this space – I’ll be back. (to argue my case a little better, that is.)

First published on Northern Soul, Aug 8th 2015

Inside Out

Ah, Pixar. How we've missed you. For a period you were lost in the wilderness, scared and alone, the rest of us wondering where the creative spark and effortless simplicity had been mislaid. For every thrillingly original Up, there was a Disney-centric Brave. For every tear-jerking sequel (Toy Story 3) there was a shoulder-shrugging misfire (Monsters University). Don't even get me started on Cars 2.

Still, a dozen or so five-star films isn't bad going - if Kubrick would have lived beyond his 12-film canon, maybe he'd have knocked out a few duds too. (and before you ask, yes, I quite liked Eyes Wide Shut.) But when Disney bought Pixar out, the glut of aforementioned sequels seemed to announce the new parent company's arrival as a reason for dismay rather than cause for celebration. Already iffy franchises were capitalised on for no good reason (Planes, Planes: Fire & Rescue), the wellspring of originality apparently dried up now The Mouse House had taken charge.

Then along comes Inside Out, riding an absolute barrage of press coverage touting it as a return to form for the studio. If anything could topple the domination of minion-flavoured animation, it was this. But with clips on chat shows showcasing nothing more than routine kid-friendly hijinks, it felt like another shrug of the shoulders was going to be in order.

How pleasant it is to be proven wrong.

Inside Out feels like a spiritual sequel to Monsters Inc. - indeed it's directed and co-wrote by the same helmsman, Pete Docter, following the misadventures of diverse characters tasked with looking after a young girl. However where Monsters Inc. dealt with the psychology of children in a somewhat straightforward manner, Inside Out takes an altogether more ambitious route.

The aforementioned Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is first seen as a newborn baby, our protagonist Joy (Amy Poehler) coming into being in her head shortly after her birth. Joy is an unbridled representation of pure happiness, figuring out that the solitary button on her control desk puts her in charge of Riley's emotional state (a quick press invokes laughter). However things quickly escalate when Riley cries. Cue several other physical manifestations of Riley's emotional palette appearing out of nowhere to take charge of the expanding control desk: Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling).

Whizzing through the first ten years of Riley's life, we are given a whistlestop tour of significant events that come to form her 'core' memories, represented as glowing coloured marbles. These in turn create parts of her personality, represented as floating islands (Family, Friendship, Goofball - Joy's favourite). All seems to be going well until Riley's family decide to move to San Francisco on her eleventh birthday, to a house that has frankly seen better days. Sadness feels an urge to start meddling with the core memories, turning them from happy to sad with a simple touch.

Things come to a head when Riley, introducing herself to her new classmates, breaks down in tears as she recalls all the things she's missing about her hometown. It's a heartbreaking scene, offset by the chaotic goings-on in her head (Sadness is all fingers and thumbs at the control desk). In a vain attempt to keep things on an even, frown-free keel, Joy and Sadness are accidentally ejected from the control tower along with the core memories; back in the real world, Riley suddenly falls silent and sits back down in her chair. In her head, she's left with Fear, Anger and Disgust at the controls, with their adventure just beginning - but on the outside, Riley is going through what any eleven-year old goes through; the pains of growing up, her confused emotional state no doubt familiar to anyone who's ever been a kid (so, that's all of us) or raised one.

As with the best Pixar films, it deals with serious and complex issues in a way that appeals to all ages. But Inside Out has the benefit (or indeed the burden) of being able to explain emotions and states of mind in a none-more-literal way. This is a film where the concept of abstract thought is discussed in significant detail, Riley's imaginary friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind) leading Sadness and Joy into a room dedicated to its four stages: non-objective fragmentation, deconstruction, two-dimensional and non-figurative. These oblique terms are actually used by the characters to describe what's happening to them as they morph into Picasso-esque shapes, fall apart into component pieces, become flattened and finally turn into rudimentary single-colour abstractions. Visually it's fun, silly even; plenty of laughs were heard from the kids in the audience. But it's also a pretty advanced lesson in psychology. For a U-certificate film to even attempt such a move is bold. To actually pull it off is frankly taking the piss.

No mental stone is left unturned: Dream Productions is a giant studio lot dedicated to creating Riley's nightly thought patterns; older, unnecessary memories 'fade away' and as such are vacuumed up by a two-man clean-up team. Even those annoying songs that pop up in your head for no reason are, in fact, reasoned - sent up to the control tower by the clean-up team to plague your consciousness, purely for the hell of it.

But for all its clever humour and multicoloured vibrancy, Inside Out is a film that thrives on dark, upsetting themes. Riley's journey takes in losing friends, dishonesty, disillusionment and regret. Even in her mind we witness the death of a major character, played out with such selfless poignancy that only the coldest of hearts won't be moved. Docter knows the big themes can be tackled without having to resort to cloying sentimentality, yet he provides all the major players (both inside and out) with such warmth and depth that the emotional beats seem almost effortless.

It's easy to get swept up in a film that had me crying about halfway in, the waterworks being turned off and on again repeatedly until the end credits. But Inside Out is what a Pixar film should be - funny, silly, yet layered and complex. Not unlike Riley, really. Not unlike any of us.

Ah, Pixar. How we've missed you.

Terminator Genisys

Take a look at the image you see before you, taken from a scene in the new Terminator film. Take a good look. I mean really - soak it in, realise what it means. This is what the Terminator has become. It's not a joke; not an alternate universe where dreams are crushed and audiences made to suffer a decades-long drawn-out death of their once all-conquering anti-hero. No. This is 2015, for real, and Terminator Genisys exists.

I could end this review right here; the image, horrifyingly, speaks for itself. But I'm too incensed at the state of what can pass for a hundred and fifty-five million dollar movie these days. I'm not adverse to a bit of daft expensive fun; take Jurassic World, another franchise rebirth that could have gone horribly wrong - for some nit-pickers it did, but I along with a great deal of other people enjoyed it immensely. I went to see it twice in one weekend. Sue me. No, big silly blockbusters aren't dead. But Genisys feels at best like fan fiction - uninspired time travel lunacy that uses Back to the Future II's 'go back into the first film' gambit as a jumping-off point, then slowly hurtles to its death over the course of two hours. To say it's tripe is being too kind.

So utterly bonkers is the story (if you can call it a story) that it pains me to even begin to explain it. When you struggle to follow what's going on pretty much from the get-go, you know you're in a world of shit. The basic idea being Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) is sent back in time as usual, but ends up in an alternate past. There's good Terminators (Arnie is referred to as 'Pops'), bad Terminators (just in case you'd forgotten about the liquid metal one from T2), and a bad-ass Sarah Connor (Game of Thrones' Khaleesi, Emilia Clarke) knocking about in 1984, all much to the surprise of Reese.

Things get worse when it turns out that John Connor has become a Terminator himself, somehow infected by Skynet in 2029 then sent back to 2014 to make sure Skynet still exists, in the form of Genisys (an all-seeing eye of an operating system that everyone in the world is waiting to download). All this apparently negates the 1997 Judgement Day timeline, Reese and Sarah sending themselves forward in a makeshift time machine (I'm not kidding) to 2017 to meet up with the older Pops, in order to destroy Cyberdyne Systems by blowing up the new time machine that John Connor is helping to build.

It also turns out Skynet is actually the Matt Smith version of Doctor Who.

None of this is made up.

It is utter fucking nonsense.

Throw in a pointless turn from recent Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons, recycled lines from the first two films to please rabid fanboys, and THAT mugshot scene (soundtracked by Inner Circle's Bad Boys - no really, it is) and you have what some people are calling the true sequel to the first two films, erasing the memory of the tepid third and fourth outings. Well, those people are idiots. Terminator 3 is pretty poor, and Terminator Salvation is far too po-faced for its own good, but by god they at least tried to be narratively cohesive. Genisys ties itself in so many knots it's laughable; by the end I neither cared about nor wished to know the fate of anyone involved. For characters as beautifully complex as Sarah Connor, it's a sad indictment of franchise dead-horse-flogging when you realise you no longer give a shit what happens to her. Ever.

Maybe, perhaps, in the infinite cosmos of possibilities and outcomes that life unfurls for us, there's an alternate universe where Terminator Genisys doesn't exist. Maybe, perhaps, the people in that universe go about their days never knowing two beloved genre films have been massacred by jobbing directors and money-hungry studios, keen to exploit Schwarzenegger's signature role beyond any reasonable stopping point. "Give the people what they want" James Bond once said (no really, he did - Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997. Check it if you like). Well the people don't have a fucking clue what they want half the time. Look at Indiana Jones. Look at John McClane. And now look, once again, at the Terminator. Go on, that photo at the start of this review. Look at it long and hard.

What a fucking disgrace.

Jurassic World

Let's begin with a reality check: when the first Jurassic World trailer appeared online last November, I was apprehensive. Excited yes, but the rather cheap look to certain proceedings didn't fill me with hope for what had already become a franchise with 'generic' written all over it. I may have a minor soft spot for the B-movie charms of Jurassic Park III, but only a lunatic would hold it in high regard.

Much like JJ Abrams' toe-dip into the Star Wars universe brings with it a weight of expectation to right the wrongs of George Lucas's lukewarm prequel trilogy, the unveiling of a new Jurassic film was, if nothing else, a chance for the virtually unknown Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed) to offer up the sequel that Speilberg's masterpiece (and it is a masterpiece) has long deserved.

But sequels can be tricky at the best of times. By his own admission, Speilberg's The Lost World is inferior in almost every way. That's not to say there's no fun to be had with what's on offer - the clifftop truck-dangle is a masterclass in Hitchcockian suspense, with its single pane of slowly cracking glass - but taken as a whole, it's a messy beast. The elegant simplicity of 1993's Jurassic Park was a tough act to follow: a touchstone of 90s action cinema with effects that truly were revolutionary (the dinosaurs were originally planned to be stop-motion, until at the 11th hour advances in CGI changed filmmaking forever). The Lost World wraps interesting ideas in a somewhat darker-hued husk, with largely by-the-numbers action replacing the original's jaw-dropping set pieces; a noble misfire from Spielberg's usually on-target canon.

By the time the third picture came around, the excitement may well have been still there - but replacing Spielberg at the helm was Joe Johnston. With only the Pteranodon adding a sense of 'new dino' excitement to proceedings (the rather pitiful Spinosaurus proving you just can't beat a good old T-Rex) it again had moments of fun but largely felt like a cash-in vehicle, both for its stars (William H. Macy readily admits he did it for the money) and for the brand as a whole. In the same way that The Godfather Part III sullied a critically spectacular legacy (though I've never liked any of them - go on, sue me), Johnston's third entry placed a headstone on top of the grave the second film had started to dig for the franchise.

Risky shoes to fill? Definitely. But Trevorrow may well have pulled off some astoundingly deft cinematic sleight-of-hand; 14 years after the trilogy's ungainly demise, he's both reinvigorated all things Jurassic whilst - in many ways - remaking the first film. I know, I know - bear with me. To rebuild something that has become beloved for a generation in the same way that Star Wars and Raiders were for their respective audiences could be tantamount to sacrilege. But it's testament to Trevorrow's decision to focus on story and character - no matter how thinly-scripted - with the dinosaur action filling in the gaps, that Jurassic World stands on its own two feet while doffing a Hammond-shaped panama hat to the 22yr-old original.

The teaser and subsequent trailers have actually been red herrings, to this reviewers' eyes at least. Some poorly-rendered CGI and dino-attack money shots are entirely different in the finished film (as Trevorrow had promised), giving rise to the passing thought "did they deliberately make the trailers a bit shonky to lower expectations?". No matter, because Jurassic World delivers solid action, comedy asides, stock characters with neat twists and a whole new raft of dinosaur chaos that works on both a nostalgic level (for those of a certain age) and for an entirely new audience. Put it this way, you don't have to get a kick from seeing the remnants of the 'When Dionsaurs Ruled the Earth' banner to enjoy this film. But your heart may sink a little when one of the characters sets it alight to use as a makeshift torch. He'd have made a fortune with it on eBay, the fool.

To take us back to Isla Nublar, we follow brothers Zach and Gray Mitchell (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins, elder and younger respectively) as they visit the now functioning theme park to see their aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), operations manager at the park, who has a nice line in immaculate white clothing you KNOW is going to be John McClane'd come the film's conclusion. Claire Dearing is no John Hammond, but two nephews visiting a park to see a rich relation dressed in white? Definitely familiar. As is Chris Pratt as Owen Grady, a kind of younger, spunkier Robert Muldoon, who has upgraded his skillset from velociraptor handling to velociraptor training (not so daft when you consider the wealth of trained ferocious animals that populate zoos and circuses the world over). Hand-picked by the park's owner to inspect a new enclosure built to contain a genetically-modified hybrid dinosaur known as Indominous Rex (basically a big bastard with too many teeth), it's not long before the beast shows off some hitherto unknown capabilities they seemingly didn't notice when it was growing up; it escapes, and shit hits fans at gale force.

Cue a few familiar tropes: InGen are still around (this time headed up by a distasteful Vincent D'Onofrio), a company ever-ready to fuck things up at the point you think things can't get any more fuck-up-able; the two kids survive scenarios that would have resulted in death for 99% of other peeps their age; a fraught romance between the two leads simmers without boiling over.

The action is big and bombastic without being absurd, carefully running the 'darker, scarier' route of a family film that The Lost World struggled with (a stunningly-staged death-by-Pterodactyl/Mosasaurus attack is a welcome blast of real terror). The stirring John Williams themes are also present and correct, but not free to run rampant. It's a film that respects its origins and is reverent to them, without being slavish or overbearing (you'll find no Alan Grant or Ian Malcolm here, except maybe on the back of a book if your eyes are quick enough).

Making this fourth film seem fresh was seemingly the impossible task that saw it languish in development hell for over ten years. Hence Trevorrow's decision to basically rewrite the first film as an open operational park, as opposed to one with a giant 'opening soon' banner strapped across its gates. Whether that translates into 'fresh' or not is up for debate, but it undeniably injects a sense of spirit and wonder into a franchise that had become a shadow of its former roaring self.

It's far from a film that reinvents the wheel - though in some ways you could say that's exactly what it is doing, reinterpreting a classic for a whole new audience without alienating those who made it a success in the first place. In a world of safe bets - often Marvel-shaped these days, Ant-Man and Fantastic Four looking about as safe and factory-churned as cinema can get - it's nice to see a blockbuster handled with due care and attention; doing nothing out of the ordinary, but neatly sidestepping the one-size-fits-all approach that Marvel appear to have constructed for themselves in their endless quest for multiplex domination.

Final thought: I never thought a Jurassic Park film would make me want to cuddle a raptor come the final scenes. For that feat alone, Jurassic World is worth the price of admission.

Griffin Dunne on making An American Werewolf in London

First published on Northern Soul, Feb 2015

For better or worse, horror films are a dietary staple for many kids. Whether you’ve been scarred for life by Jaws or so enamoured with The Exorcist that you’ve clamoured for more, they trigger a response in a viewer unlike any other genre. 

But some directors follow a different path. When director John Landis unleashed An American Werewolf in London in 1981, its carefully blended mixture of horror and comedy was unprecedented. Critics and audiences alike had become accustomed to genres more or less keeping themselves to themselves, save for such films as Young Frankenstein and Carry On Screaming! – more parodies than genre-benders. The response to Werewolf was lukewarm at best. As Roger Ebert put it, “the laughs and the blood coexist very uneasily in this film”. Well, time is a great healer. 

Werewolf is now rightfully revered as a cult classic, not least because of the performances of its two leads – David Naughton (as his namesake’s lycanthrope attack survivor) and Griffin Dunne as Jack, David’s best friend who is clawed to shreds at the hands of East Proctor’s fevered beast, returning at key moments in various stages of physical decay urging David to take his own life. Morbid? Yes. Funny? Most definitely. Dunne, long since an established filmmaker in his own right, believes that Landis created something unique.

“I think John was really the first to bring humour and horror together,” he told Northern Soul. “It’s something that was done on a much bigger scale by Ghostbusters, but it’s part of the diet of just about every horror movie that it’ll have a grim macabre joke in it somewhere, and I give John credit for that. When it came out that technique wasn’t hailed as ground-breaking, the majority of comments were actually pretty negative. You know, ‘pick a genre, you can’t be funny when somebody’s being mauled to death’. Well, it turns out you can. Many filmmakers have gone on to prove just that.”

Dunne was a sprightly 25 when he got the part of Jack, flying into a then recession-battered Britain via Concorde.

“It was an odd time to be so ecstatic about being in a movie, England was going through a very difficult time economically.”

The way he landed the part was far from straightforward.

“I met with John in an audition room with many other actors, and we talked for about ten minutes,” Dunne recalls. “Nothing particularly leapt out at me about the conversation. I thought because I didn’t read or audition he didn’t want me, and I was kind of relieved. I’ve always been terrible at auditioning, I’ve got dyslexia and it’s difficult to read off the page cold. So I was completely surprised when he called me.

“He said he was sending by a guy with the script to my apartment, and if I was interested in doing it I had to read the script while the guy stood in my hallway, then hand back the script. I like all that cloak and dagger stuff, and I found the script hilarious. The only thing he asked me when we met, and he asked me several times, was if I was claustrophobic.”

The role proved to be a baptism of fire for what was Dunne’s first major feature film.

“It [the make-up] took over five hours every morning. I’d have to get up and sit in the chair at four o’clock in the morning to be on the set. My head was [first] encased in a plaster cast, just breathing through two little straws in my nose. Your life depends on these two little pieces of straw as it’s being put on, inch by inch, millimetre by millimetre. It’s very painstaking, but having it taken off was just as torturous as having it put on. It was like being nibbled to death by ducks.”

Those 4am make-up calls – not to mention the resultant ‘undead’ appearances for which special effects artist Rick Baker won an Academy Award – had a profound effect on Dunne’s emotional state.

“It was a realistic depiction of how I would look if I was dead and rotting. Which is interesting as an audience member, but when you’re looking at your own mortality, it affects your mood.”
Combined with the realisation that his final scenes were to be ‘acted’ by an animatronic puppet to realistically depict his disintegrating corpse, Dunne felt the need to step in and take control of his performance.

“I was threatened by man and machine, it’s an age-old conflict,” he says. “I wasn’t prepared for it. I saw somebody manipulating the hands and I said ‘that’s not even like how I move’, so they said ‘well, you do it’, so I did. It made me feel part of it.”

However, when it came to Oscar night, Dunne couldn’t have been happier for Baker, whose award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling was the first of its kind to be recognised by the Academy (to date, Baker has received the most awards and the most nominations for this category).

“I was thrilled he won, but even more thrilled to hear my name mentioned. It was a heady moment by association. When something happens on a global event like that, just by sheer association with your name being mentioned, your phone rings off the hook as if you won the award.” 

Regardless of any acclaim it may have sidestepped back in 1981, Werewolf has gone on to be regarded as a flat-out boundary-pusher within the horror canon. Rather than tread water and trot out what was expected of him, Landis gave the audience a different kind of animal to chew on. Dunne acknowledges that such critical thinking wasn’t really part of the horror genre at the time of Werewolf’s release.

“I don’t think there was the thinking of horror as a genre as worthy as all the others and having an intense fan-base who are not only horror fans but cinephiles, who recognise every reference to every movie and can draw these critical anthropological charts of how people look at movies. If that world existed when I was making Werewolf or when it came out, I certainly wasn’t aware of it. I think it’s grown and grown and grown.”

As positive critical opinion of the genre has blossomed along with the film’s acclaim, so has Dunne’s appreciation for it. With many actors often dismissive of their work once it’s committed to film (Johnny Depp revealed to David Letterman in 2009 that “once my job is done on a film, it’s really none of my business. I stay as far away as I possibly can”), it’s refreshing to know that’s not the case for Dunne.

“I see why it deserves the attention and holds up in people’s memories 35 years later. I think for its innovation, not technologically but story-wise, it’s something you appreciate even more with the passage of time. Any time you get to be part of something that is culturally iconic that’s going to go on for years and years, that’s a big deal in anyone’s life. I’m very lucky and proud of that movie.”

Having worked his way through the ranks of Hollywood as an actor via the likes of Martin Scorsese (After Hours), James Foley (Who’s That Girl) and Robert Redford (Quiz Show), all the while producing features of his own, Dunne made the move into directing.

“Both Landis and Marty are very energetic people, and that energy is very contagious,” he says. “There’s no lagging, you’re not aware of time, you’re not aware of worry and neuroses; it’s an atmosphere of trust between director and actor. It’s an environment [as a director] I always try to find. I remember as an actor always doing my best work for directors who took that on.”

After toying with big budgets (Practical Magic), independents (Fierce People) and anthologies (Movie 43), Dunne is now on course to make a personal documentary about his aunt, acclaimed writer Joan Didion. Suitably encouraged by a Kickstarter fundraising campaign, it’s a long-gestating passion project that he’s hoping will speak for itself.

“I’ve been very fortunate to have gotten so much positive response as well as money from the Kickstarter that right now I’m just focusing on making the best movie that I can, both for my aunt and all of her fans. I think that rather than talk about it I’m gonna do it.”

As for crowdfunding, Dunne is clearly grateful but cautious about how it could change the way films are produced.

“You’ll never get an offer like you will from a big studio, but it’s something that’ll apply to certain projects. Even for a documentary about a prominent literary figure, as much money as we did get, it’s still not enough to make an entire movie. But you have proof for the people you’re going to for the next chunk of money that there’s without a doubt an audience for your film.”

For more information about Griffin Dunne’s Joan Didion documentary, go to didiondoc.com