Jonathan Zaurin's Derelict is a challenging and compelling look at lost sou;s and lost lives so we had to chat to him before its premiere at FrightFest 2024.
NYX: Did you know from a young age that you wanted to work in the film industry?
JZ: I did! I think I was around age 6 when I became aware that films weren’t just magical things that came out of nowhere, but that there were people behind them that made them. Of course the first job that came to mind was director, it’s only much later in life that I became aware of how a production actually functions, with all the different jobs and functions creating a unit to create a piece of work. I do remember though that I never wanted to be anything else, most kids want to be a fireman or a policeman then as they grow they learn about themselves and where they fit. It was always “I want to be making films, I want to be a director” for me, I remember being obsessed with recreating whatever I had just seen on TV with my action figures, closing one eye and positioning my head at different angles to recreate the shots and cuts of the different films that affected me.
NYX: How did you become involved with Derelict?
JZ: The odd thing about Derelict is that it has been in gestation in my mind for quite some time. I grew up in the east of France, in a small working-class region famous mostly for being the birthplace of Peugeot and having a huge factory there that employs most of the area. It’s not the most pleasant place, I grew up mostly in neighbourhoods that were as rough as it gets, but when I was 19 there was a particularly sordid murder that really shook the area.
It struck a note for me because I happened to go to school with one of the people who committed that horrendous crime and I couldn’t reconcile the guy I knew from school, the kind of kid who would literally step in and stand up to bullies, with what he had done. That kind of stayed with me for years and years and I became obsessed with reading everything I could about the case, watch documentaries, news reels, everything I could get my hands on.
In particular I became quite interested in how the family of the victim was doing and so the accumulation of the questions concerning one of the perpetrators and the absolute empathy I had for the victim’s family made me think it would, potentially, make for an interesting story. Years later, I found out my father had been having an affair with the brother of one of the two perpetrators, an affair that went on for years, and from that came this kind of idea that the victim could have been my dad, it just could have. That really set the film into motion. It gave me the drive to turn it into an actual filmable script.
Of course the result isn’t in any way a reflection of the actual events, it was inspired by it but most of it is fiction. Abi’s character is a kind of crystallisation, a sort of amalgamation of every person who had to live through this sort of loss and try to move on, she was never actually a real person. Likewise, the two brothers are a cinematic interpretation of the questions that haunted me rather than an accurate depiction of real people.
It is on the crime itself we tried to stay close to the facts, as much as possible.
I think the difficulty was that it also had to reflect a certain Britishness, the story had to be transposed from Rural France to Rural England, and you would be amazed by how difficult that is. These are similar cultures, but the small differences add up. So I wrote quite a few drafts of the script and then I felt it needed to go into actual British hands and British voices, that’s when my brilliant wife Sarah, who rarely gets the credit she deserves, stepped in and did some reworks, including a BRILLIANT prologue we, unfortunately, never got the chance to shoot because we ran out of money! Then the excellent Michael Mackenzie, who is a brilliant crime writer and producer at Arrow Video (that’s how we met) , came in and oiled up the plot whilst Kat Ellinger, one of the most insightful and talented writers to be currently writing about film, came in and ensured dialogue and working-class representations were realistic and layered.
I think this resulted in a film that really is quite emotionally complex, hopefully!
NYX: Was it a tough movie to cast?
JZ: It wasn’t tough so much as it was long. I always write for actors I know I want to work with. The roles are tailor made for them. Matt and Ewan’s roles for example, were both written respectively for Mike Coombes and Pete Bird. Both are actors I work with a lot. Pete is one of the most brilliantly understated actors I know. He does things that are barely perceptible but add incredible layers of humanity to his characters, no matter how despicable. He has a completely different method from Mike, he likes to prepare and live in his character’s skin, whereas Mike is a sensitive sponge, he feels it on the moment and delivers on instinct. Both are amazing in this film.
Likewise I knew I wanted to work with Ben Manning again and give Joe Nurse (who had been a killer man baby in my Christmas short horror Santa Baby) a proper acting role.
That left us with quite a few of the lead roles to fill. We cast Dean Kilbey pretty quickly, I had seen him in Manfish and thought he was brilliant, we were going to work together on another film called the Sunset Dogs but the funding fell through, so we kind of got an inkling that we would find a way to work with him on this one, and we did and never looked back, brilliant actor all round, professional and invested in his character, I have hours of improv that will never be seen from him and it’s brilliant every time. I knew having someone likeable to play his character Ben was essential. Dean has three different films playing at Frightfest! He’s also in Charlotte and Member’s Club, both look incredibly exciting!
Suzanne Fulton was a given, we did audition quite extensively for the role of Abi, we saw hundreds of tapes, but when we saw Su’s we knew we had found our lead. Her tape was infused with understanding for the character and that’s what I was looking for. The thing about self tapes is that they’re never great, it’s someone against a kitchen wall doing lines with close to no direction, so you’re not looking for a finalised performance, you’re looking for someone who understands what the character is, and Su delivered that to an extent I had never seen before.
After that, it was long because of the sheer amount of characters but it wasn’t particularly difficult and we ended up with, if I can say so myself, an incredible cast of actors who give amazing performances in this film, including Nick Cornwall, Corinne Strickett, Darren King, Stacey Coleman who all give genuinely human, beautiful performances in this.
We also try and pick from the pool of talent of Hereford always, and it is a small community, so whilst we took care of carefully selecting every little role to perfection we were also working with quite a few pre existing relationships with Hereford talent.
Ayvianna Snow was the last person to be cast, her scene changed at the last minute because we couldn’t secure a location, so there was a complete rewrite of her character at the last minute. It was also because, if we’re honest, I wanted Ayvianna to be able to do something completely different, play against type, and she really shined. One of my favourite performances in the film. I think people who know Ayvianna from other films will be blown away. Another one who has multiple films going this year as she’s also in Bogieville!
NYX: The movie is a raw look at lost souls and how they cope (or is some cases don’t cope) with life’s tragedies, how would you describe the film?
JZ: For me it’s a small-town Neo Noir with an emphasis on the noir. It’s a bleak little piece of work. Perhaps even bleaker than I anticipated.
NYX: The use of different colour tones for specific sequences is inspired, where did that idea come from?
Well, it’s actually a mix of things. The first is that I am a huge cinephile. I have a wide variety of influences from all sorts of films from all periods and all over the world. I wanted the rough, realistic approach of Mike Hodges for example but I also started thinking about the scope of the film, which takes place over quite a number of years. We started having conversations about how to differentiate past and present and the most obvious answer of course, was to use black and white for the past and colour for the present, it’s easy coding because it’s usual. It’s been done so many times you don’t need to explain it to audiences, they’ll immediately identify black and white as past and present as colour. So, in that respect that didn’t interest me that much. One thing that did interest me though, and that goes back to the idea of the film being a noir film and to the idea of empathy being the central mechanic of the storytelling, was that living through such a horrendous crime would probably leave you void of something, you would lose something in the process, whatever it is, maybe you shut off your emotions in order to survive, or you lose your taste for life, or your desire to build meaningful relationships with others. Whatever it is, I thought the best way to translate that on screen was to literally empty the frame of colour. Past a certain point in the story, which we won’t spoil, life drains from the image.
The main source of inspiration for that idea was Park Chan Wook’s Lady Vengeance. In the director’s cut he does something similar where the colour slowly drains out, but he does it much differently, you almost don’t realise the colour drains from his frames, it’s wonderful.
For us though, it was important to mark it, because we didn’t want any confusion as to what the colour/Black and white code meant in this film. So, we used specific techniques to introduce the concept, for example the opening credit is a mix of colour and black and white and should be a good indication of how it works. There are other moments that really emphasis the idea… but I won’t spoil them, but let’s just say the specific moments where the colour drains or reappears are quite significant.
NYX: It has a lot of social commentary within it especially of social intolerance, crime and drug abuse etc, was it hard to ensure that it didn’t become preachy?
JZ: Great question! The thing about that is that it was never about lecturing audiences about anything. It was just trying to paint an accurate picture of some behaviours, particularly centred around the perception of masculinity in working class environment, what it involves, the social pressures of behaving a certain way for a certain class of people and the long- or short-term repercussions this can have on innocent bystanders. Abi is a counterpoint of that, she’s not of that culture, but her obsession and her inability to move on threatens her with contamination.
The thing is, I was born in that culture, I grew up in French neighbourhoods that most people in the UK outside of major cities would find hard to believe, most of the horrendous things you see on screen are tacts that I have witnessed firsthand, been a part of one way or another at some point or another.
It was never about telling people what’s right or wrong, if anything it’s posing a moral question on how far our empathy can go, how far it should go, painting a set of circumstances that might lead someone to do something irreparable. It’s that
We’re not telling people “Drugs are bad” or “Bullying is not good man!”. These are people, not heroes nor villains, they have to move within social circles that have norms and modes of behaviour that sometimes make it harder to do the right thing.
It applies to both sides of the story, it applies to Abigail too, her circumstances make it hard for her to do the right thing, the question then isn’t about drugs or social intolerance or even crime any of that, the question is what would YOU do under the same set of circumstances? It circles back to this idea of being able to reconcile the perception you have of someone you know with their actions. It’s not that these guys are bad people, though sometimes they are, it is that they get dealt a hand and they have to play. We all get dealt a hand, I don’t know that I would play the right cards always and I think that’s what the film is hinting at. It’s easy to think we’d always do the right thing, but in reality it’s not quite as easy as that, there are a number of factors that come in to offset the balance, events that you might not have predicted. I think it’s kind of bourgeois this idea that not matter what you’ll end up doing right, I spent time in enough shit holes to know that’s not always true, I know that of myself. I didn’t always do right, sometimes it was the circumstances, sometimes… it was just me being an asshole. The point is you can only preach if you’re convinced of the absolute good and evil nature of whatever you are preaching for or against, and whilst there are clear turning points in the story where the characters clearly step in the area of inflicting evil, for the most part it’s a slow testing of water, a slow descent into something you can’t get back from, little moments, small decisions that lead to one unforgivable act. I don’t think you can preach from that standpoint.
NYX: It has some very bleak moments, what was the atmosphere like on set?
JZ: Funnily enough quite light-hearted and fun! We work on tiny budgets, I mean RIDICULOUSLY low budgets but the upside of that is that there’s very little financial pressures outside of “We need to get this thing finished!”.
So our way of dealing with that is to treat people as if we were a small family, we joke around a lot between takes, we serve good food, we have a good time and we make sure everyone is happy.
It doesn’t always work mind, like every family sometimes it is dysfunctional, but for the most part, it’s a fun friendly environment.
Having said that you also want to make sure your actors can get in the zone, particularly if they have to play something fairly intense or bleak. You find every actor has his own process, Pete and Su like to get in the zone and they’re not to be disturbed when they do for example. What you have to do is balance everyone’s needs with a friendly, fun atmosphere.
Making films is way too freaking hard not to have fun doing it. Especially at that level, when you’re working with £35k.
NYX: Where did you find such perfect locations?
JZ: We spent quite a lot of time scouting for them! But for the most part, again, I wanted it to feel real, and I don’t know a better way for anything to ring true than to be experienced by the person who is trying to transcribe it into an art form.
So most of the locations are from my immediate environment, places in my neighbourhood or around it which I have walked on many occasions.
I think this the thing, you can walk somewhere one day and it feels a certain way, then the next day it feels another way, sometimes it feels safe, sometimes mysterious, until you’ve seen a place under a million different lights I don’t know that you can really soak it in. In that respect quite a few of the places we used as filming locations are places that I have experienced myself in the day, at night, in the rain, in the fog, when they were empty, when they were packed, I know them like the back of my hand. I think it transpires in the film; those places become like projections of the character’s psyche, I think that’s what happens to places when you see them and walk them a million times, they become an extension of you and vice versa. I suppose that’s also, as I previously said, one of the themes of the film, how one’s environment factors in who they become.
NYX: Its already being talked about being a compelling entry into the British crime thriller genre, you must be happy with that?
JZ: Ha! I am an oddly conflicted person! On the one hand this is absolutely flattering, when someone tells you it’s in the same vein as Mike Hodges or Shane Meadows, I mean… Come on! On the other, my self-loathing is letting me know it’s entirely unjustified and that I have some work to do before I can pretend to be in the same league as some of these guys. The British Crime Thriller genre has a huge catalogue of mind-blowing films that I could absolutely quote as inspirations, you can go back as far as you want as well. It’s an insanely great legacy to be a part of, it’s intimidating.
I was lucky enough to film hours of interview with Mike Hodges before he sadly passed, for Arrow’s wonderful release of Croupier. That was the single most enlightening lesson of cinema I ever had. What a guy. I was in the middle of writing Derelict when it happened, and Mike Hodges became an even clearer influence when we worked on the multiple rewrites with our writing team. I will never forget that day, such a generous, humorous, wise character he was. So to be told your film is joining that kind of legacy, even at a tiny level, it’s huge.
NYX: Will you be nervous when the movie has its World Premiere at FrightFest 2024?
JZ: Haha I will be a wreck! If you can’t tell by the film itself, I need to tell you I am always a borderline nervous wreck. At the most important premiere of my career so far? Forget it. It will be a miracle if I can make a coherent sentence at the Q and A! Fortunately Andy Piper, my producer, and my wife and producer Sarah will both be present to sort me out if I make a donkey out of myself.
In all seriousness it’s also kind of nerve wracking because we are presenting it in what is essentially the most important genre and horror fest in the UK, the dark heart of cinema, and whilst it’s undoubtedly dark and bleak, it’s also, I think, just on the very edge of genre, so who knows how audiences will react? I hope they love it. I hope they fall in love with it!
NYX: So, what are you working on at the moment?
JZ: That is THE question… tricky! Here’s the thing, I can do what I can do on a budget of £35k for one reason only (outside of filling quite a few roles on set and post prod): I write for budget.
Being a true indie, with no major organisation backing us up, I always have a variety of projects at different budget points on the go, but it’s impossible to determine which one will really take all my attention for two years of my life until I have a precise idea of what I can work with.
The most likely candidate currently is another revenge drama in the same kind of vein as Derelict but inspired by the myth or Orpheus and Eurydice, in which a deaf ex-convict has to descend into the lower depths of the city to find the one person who reawakened her to life itself.
But that’s just one in a million directions we could be going, it all depends on what doors Derelict opens, what kind of money we can raise after that.
NYX: Jonathan Zaurin, thank you very much.
