Trevor Hogg chats with James Rouse, Richard Lumsden and Jeremy Swift about walking across the UK to make a road movie…
James Rouse“My father was an accountant,” remarks British filmmaker James Rouse. “My mother makes very good flapjacks but I’m not sure if that counts. Looking back perhaps they were both more artistic than their backgrounds allowed them to be though. It was much more difficult for their generation to follow a creative career.” Richard Lumsden (Sense and Sensibility) grew up in a similar situation. “I have no theatrical background at all. No one in my family had ever done as stupid as trying to act as a living. They all took much more sensible sorts of jobs. From that point of view I was walking into the unknown when I was 21 and started working. I still have a naïve enjoyment of it all but that’s help by the fact that you can do something and then do something different.” Jeremy Swift (Jupiter Ascending) had a different experience. “In so much that my parents were both musicians and music teachers. My Mum sang in choirs and in Gilbert and Sullivan am-dram. Dad played organ in church and had played it as a teenager during silent films at the local ABC cinema in Stockton-on-Tees.”
“I used to want to manage hotels, something that thankfully I never got to realise as I’d have been a terrible hotel manager,” reveals James Rouse. “By an extraordinary chance I sort of fell into directing about 10 years ago and never looked back. It’s such a fantastic career, one that completely consumes me; I can’t quite believe how lucky I was. As for cinematic impression, I can still remember when my father showed me, aged about 10, Some Like It Hot [1959] and The Apartment [1960] two of his favourite films [and now mine].” A British icon had Richard Lumsden contemplate a career in acting. “I was brought up in Northern England and had never encountered actors before. I suppose that moment would be watching James Bond and thinking I’d like to be a baddie in one.” Other cinematic experiences made a lasting impression upon Lumsden. “I can remember stunning films over the course of time that had a real affect on me. Delicatessen [1991] had a huge affect on me with the quality of the filmmaking and the vision that went into it; the same thing with Terry Gilliam’s Brazil [1985].” When he was eight years old Jeremy Swift wondered how the actor got chosen to portray James Bond. “I certainly haven’t followed that particular performance path,” notes Swift. “When I was about nine I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] with my Dad, who said nothing all the way home in the car afterwards. I was stunned and Dad was baffled. Actually, I was baffled too. I recently talked to Lana Wachowski [Cloud Atlas] about it who had a similar experience on seeing it at a young age too.”
“Shooting commercials is fantastic fun and it’s influenced me enormously,” states James Rouse. “I started by directing viral films 10 years ago, when viral films were a novelty rather than completely omnipresent like they are now [my first ones were a rather risqué set of films for Trojan Condoms – the sex Olympics!]. Making viral films taught me to look after the audience first and the brand second, because without a receptive audience it doesn’t matter what the brand says. I’ve definitely taken this into my filmmaking. My ambition for Downhill [2014] was primarily to entertain people, without agendas. I want people to leave the cinema feeling good about life.”
Richard LumsdenRichard Lumsden academically pursued becoming a thespian at the age of 18. “You make a lot of mistakes during those three years. There are tutors and directors I was in contact with at drama school who still to this day have a huge effect.” Like Rouse, Jeremy Swift gained a lot of experience doing commercials. I didn’t really do any telly till I was about 31 but before that I did scores of ads, over 90; that taught me to be as accurate as possible, to have patience, to ask questions about frame size and setups, and to distil some of the conflicting notes I would be given into something that actually worked.”
Jeremy Swift“We wanted to make an English road movie, but because England isn’t really big enough, we decided to make it ‘a road movie on foot,’” explains James Rouse who decided to make his feature directorial debut with Downhill. “The four old friends set out to tackle the famous, spectacular and gruelling 192 mile Coast-to-Coast walk from St. Bees in the West to Robin Hood’s Bay in the East.” As for the attraction of producing a road movie, Rouse remarks, “I love the fact that it puts my characters into a pressure cooker environment; one that’s going to explore the best and worst parts of their characters. The line we have on our poster sums it up rather nicely, ‘Four men, 192 miles, what could possibly go wrong?’ The results are both funny and heart-breaking in equal measure.” Richard Lumsden states, “Alfred Wainwright was an eccentric writer who loved hiking. He would put his boots on and wrote books about the best walks in the UK. Coast To Coast is his most famous book and it’s a trek that attracts people from all over the world.” The cast and crew of film crew were not alone in making the journey. “When we were shooting we would past the same crowds. As we were travelling along they would catch up and overtake us. Then a couple days later we would see them again.”
“The casting process was incredibly rewarding and we were lucky to end up with such a brilliant cast,” states James Rouse. “Although we had a fantastic script by Torben Betts [a highly accomplished playwright], our team ambition was always to use it as a framework rather than something set in stone; we improvised around it. This is something we explored heavily in the rehearsal process, both working on character back stories, as well as playing though specific scenes to work out where the opportunities lay.” Music played a role in the fictional relationships. “We established that Steve [Jeremy Swift], Gordon [Richard Lumsden] and Keith [Karl Theobald], for example, had been in a band as teenagers,” explains Jeremy Swift. “But Steve left because he felt that Gordon was too controlling and formed an electro duo called ‘The Cupboard People’ with a girl called Carol.” The physical journey also contributed to the chemistry between the cast members. “The nature of the film was something quite unusual,” observes Richard Lumsden. “We knew that we were effectively covering the walk, the 190 miles. We knew that there were going to be no luxuries in the film. We carried our own costumes all the time. We worked with the costume designer [Lindsey McLean] before we started shooting rehearsals and worked out the sort of things we would wear. We packed them and carried our rucksacks ourselves. If you wanted to iron them you did, if not which some of us did you rolled everything up, put it on the next day, washed them at night, and put them on the radiator. There were no trailers or hanging around in warm rooms. We did the walk as a unit. The 14 of us covered the distance. For a lot of people that wouldn’t have appealed to but for the four of us it did.”
“We wanted to make a low budget film that wasn’t compromised by the lack of budget, so we made one of the characters, Luke [Rupert Simonian], a film student documenting his parents’ holiday,” reveals James Rouse. “That was our creative solution to a practical problem! It was actually liberating to shoot like this. Every single scene is shot from Luke’s viewpoint, with absolutely no coverage. Not only did this allow us to shoot incredibly quickly it gave the actors space and freedom to be exactly who they wanted to be, something that’s translated into some beautifully natural performances.” Richard Lumsden observes, “Because at that point we had done so much work on our character histories no one was going to say, ‘I can’t remember my words here.’ You keep on going forward because we had the freedom to improvise. You might not have hit a certain moment you wanted but you would certainly hit other ones. It would fire other things off. It was an organic process. But I had never experienced that before where every scene had to be shot from one perspective in order to make the belief that these four guys were out with 19 year old young filmmaker shooting everything.”
“So often a scene that looks really funny on paper feels oddly flat or forced when played for real,” states James Rouse. “It’s just one of those things. But as soon as the actors can play the comic thought rather than the actual words, suddenly it can take on a whole new life. It’s incredibly exciting working like this as you’re never quite sure what’s going to happen next!” Richard Lumsden adds, “With normal filming the camera will wait for the action to arrive in front of it and it will know to look where the action happens next. It was crucial to have this improvised feel to the story because of the nature of Luke making his own documentary and he would not know what was going to happen in a scene. Therefore when the improvising is happening Alex who is operating the camera doesn’t really know what happens next and that helps to convince the audience because it’s genuine. The camera is following the action rather than the other way around. That’s a crucial part of what makes this film work because you believe the premise. You believe that there’s a fifth person in those scenes who is shooting it as it happens.”
“Maybe because I’m a sensitive soul with a mischievous sense of humour, finding a balance between humour and pathos has always been something that I’ve been keen to explore,” reflects James Rouse. “One of the aspects of Downhill that I’m most proud about is that viewers can be a bit teary one minute and be laughing the next; it feels like it’s a good reflection on life.” Richard Lumsden agrees. “James knew that he wanted this film to be funny but it had to be truthful funny. It was funny because these characters enjoy relating to each other; they were making each other laugh. Equally there are moments in the film where we find out why they’re doing the walk or what’s going on in their lives and it has the ability to break your heart as well.” The experience was different than what occurs on British television shows that tend to be either serious dramas or upfront comedies. “A few years ago I played a Detective Inspector. It was a dark murder story but the character was written with a great sense of humour. I have friends who are in the police. I know how funny they are and how they use humour to get through the bad times. They resisted the lines of humour because it didn’t work with drama and my point was it does. If it pulls you one way and then turns you around to give you the alternative, it’s a dramatic and real way to tell a story.” Jeremy Swift admits, “If it had been left to me it would have been too silly. Obviously, you had to listen to the other characters and check how they were and not patronise them. We were following Torben’s script at the end of the day.”
“It was a conscious decision to shoot chronologically as we wanted our cast to really experience the journey that their characters go through,” remarks James Rouse. “It was an interesting and intense experience for both cast and crew, as life began to imitate art, as we all travelled across the UK together. The final scene of the film, shot in Robin Hood’s Bay was incredibly emotional for everyone. We were all exhausted. As for locations we were lucky enough to be welcomed by many of the genuine coast-to-coast hostelries along the coast to coast walk.” Not all of the sequences were shot in order. “One was a scene with a field of cows where the cows have to chase us up a field and the cows had been trained for 12 weeks but unfortunately, they weren’t method cows!” recalls Richard Lumsden. “They didn’t do what they were supposed to do on the day. It was quite the struggle. I don’t think that scene made the cut of the film.”
“Working with actors has always been one of my favourite parts of the job,” remarks James Rouse. “We quickly developed a shorthand as working under such intense circumstances together for such long periods of time meant that actors and characters started to blend together quickly. The crew, small as they were, worked incredibly hard to keep the whole show moving; I don’t think Steve, our lovely production manager, slept for the entire shoot!” Richard Lumsden enjoyed working with the man behind the camera. “James knew how to push you to the limit of what he wanted. James would not settle for anything less even when we weren’t coming up with it. We took a lot of takes over some things until it was right. Rather it being a case of us helping each other out we all knew it was crucial that we caught the elements that were in the story. James has a fantastic understanding of human nature. Given that it is a story about four middle aged men there has to be universal telling to that as well. It has to appeal to other people so it required an honest insight and James demanded that the performances were as honest as they should be.” Jeremy Swift was equally impressed by Rouse and his ability to articulate what he wanted. “Excellently and as we went on it got even better,” states Swift. “James wanted nuance and didn’t want me to play the comedy too highly, but sometimes gave us all a long leash. I’ve had some of the best notes I’ve ever been given from him.”
“There’s an awful lot of Gordon in me,” reveals Richard Lumsden. “That’s why when I read the script originally and was supposed to read for one of the other parts I was shocked as to how similar I was. I would pour over maps. I would look at the routes beforehand. I had a lot of sympathy for Gordon and his issues. I got to like him and his moustache. I knew he would have a moustache. I grew a proud handlebar so it would be much like a 1970s moustache. I knew how he would look. Gordon was written in the 1970s for me, which in terms of back story there’s an issue in the film where I felt Gordon was trapped as a kid initially with his father and never shifted from that point onward and was locked into the 1970s, in particular, with the music he would still be listening to. Gordon was close to me. When I went on to the thing I did afterwards it was difficult to remember it wasn’t Gordon doing it. I had to let him go gently but he was never too far away.” Jeremy Swift describes his character of Steve as being, “Annoying and weird. He’s a bit old womany. Alright, he’s me!”
Mother Nature provided the biggest challenge to the production which was shot entirely on-location. “The rain!” exclaims James Rouse. “It’s not easy, directing with water pouring down your face. We shot the film in June 2012, a June noted for being the wettest for several decades. We were shooting exteriors in the Lake District, a region as famed for its extraordinary beauty as it is for its leaden skies. I remember waking up every morning, pulling back the curtains, thinking that ‘maybe today’ there would be some sun. There almost never was. The solution was found in simply accepting and embracing it as part of the story. Interestingly the only time the sun came out was when the four guys meet up with and travel with some girls [Emma Pierson, Katie Lyons], almost as if the big man up there was sending us a message. As soon as the girls left the story, the heavens opened again. It was rather lovely. When I look back on it, the weather played such an important role in the story; I wouldn’t have swapped it for anything, and it has the lovely side effect of being cinematically spectacular!”
“This was something I knew had the chance to be special,” states Richard Lumsden. “I wanted to give it its full value. The biggest challenge was honouring that and never wanting to let the story and people down.” Jeremy Swift remarks, “My biggest challenge, which frankly I never found a solution for, was dealing with the costumes I had. We had no script supervisor or wardrobe with us and I had to carry all of Steve’s clothes, which were a lot. We stayed in 17 different hotels and bed and breakfast over three weeks so were nearly always on the move. I would have to put on my character clothing at six in the morning [I had a massive squaddie-like bag, which I had to pull all of the clothes out of to find Steve’s clobber for that day] as we would go off and film after brekky. Ned Dennehy [who plays Julian] cleverly decided that his character wore the same clothes every day. After two weeks they were quite mingling. Usually by about 6.15 a.m., I was already quite cross.”
“I had a scene when Gordon was on the phone to one of kids and there’s another scene where he’s on the phone with his agent trying to find out if there is any work going on which there isn’t,” remembers Richard Lumsden. “They’re both beautiful scenes. They took the voice of one scene and applied it over the other one despite they’re being two different phone calls but in terms of a long shot it absolutely works. You never quite know the trickery that is going to make it work. There’s a brawl in the film where Gordon and one of the other characters have a falling out. That was quite difficult to do. We shot it about seven or eight times, and when editing the story James wanted to place that scene at a different part of the walk so we had to record it again. I was pleased when we got that one done. Each scene felt important. A fraction of them are used in the film.” Jeremy Swift was pleasantly surprised by the homemade movie footage. “Seeing the cine film shots that they did of the kids who were the younger versions of us was amazing to see for the first time. The casting is incredible and really smart. I think they did it all in one day. It’s so touching.”
“One of my personal favourites is when Steve and Julian get stoned, much to Gordon’s despair,” states James Rouse. “It’s just so incredibly well executed by the actors and was completely improvised. The constant stream of gibberish that they spout whilst under the influence still makes me laugh every time.” Rouse observes, “It’s very, very difficult to get a small British independent movie into the cinema, which is something I’ve learnt the hard way in the process of making Downhill. It’s a David and Goliath struggle against Hollywood blockbusters that can often outspend you at a rate of about 100 to 1. We’re incredibly appreciative to everyone who has supported us along the way to get us to this point, including Flickering Myth!”
Many thanks to James Rouse, Richard Lumsden and Jeremy Swift for taking the time to be interviewed.
To learn more visit the official website for Downhill.
Downhill will be at the Empire Leicester Square and other selected cinemas around the UK from May 30, 2014 and available digitally and on DVD from June 16, 2014.
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.
