solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

Half Nelson is just starting to get some exposure on this side of the Atlantic, but in the states it's already being touted for Oscar nominations. Originally shot as a short 'Gowanus Brooklyn' and now turned into a full length feature, 'Half Nelson' is the debut feature from director Ryan Fleck and his writing partner (and real life partner) Anna Boden. Check out the trailer here

Half Nelson is the story of a High School teacher (Ryan Gosling) who forms an unlikely friendship with one of his students, at the same time attempting to juggle his job, his drug habit and his love life.

I met up with them at the London Film Festival to discuss (briefly) their film, and tell them some (bad) jokes… i'm not sure the PR people were expecting that. Apologies for the sound quality of the interview, but I was in a hotel bar recording it on my mp3 player. Also I was so nervous I dropped my load right before the interview.

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Severance could be set to be the biggest british horror-comedy since 'Shaun of the Dead', writer James Moran was kind enough to lend us his time to chat about the writing of his first feature film, the process of carrying the script through to the screen and his favourite bits from John Carpenter's 'The Thing'.

This is the first original interview we've done here on Solace, let us know what you think in the comments section.

There is a charity screening of 'Severance' this thursday in Leicester Square as the unofficial opening to this years 'Frightfest' (that we will be covering on this site in detail), tickets are still available.

SIC - It's an obvious question, but how did you come up with the idea for Severance? did the idea spawn from anything specifically or did it just pour out of your mind?

JM - I'd been trying to think of a good horror idea, and one day had a really bad commute home - yuppies in pinstripe suits were everywhere, pushing past me, jumping the queue, and generally being the ignorant scumbags that they are. So, in a flash of temper, I decided to kill off some yuppies in a horror - take them to a cabin, and pick them off one by one. Once I'd calmed down, I thought that was a pretty good idea - take some standard, British office types, and throw them into a cabin-in-the-woods horror, see how they react. And it developed from there.

SIC - Hah hah that’s great, so for you it’s less ‘write about what you know’ and more ‘write about what you fantasise’?

JM - Exactly. The office politics part was what I knew, and the yuppie death was what I fantasised about. Take what you know, and give it the old "what if" scenario. If you can come up with something universal that everyone will be able to relate to, then you're on a winner.

SIC - So had you already decided you wanted to write a horror film? Or was it one of many ideas you were throwing around? I mean I've read (and I've no idea if it's true) that a lot of writers and directors often do a horror as their first film, as it's a lot easier to be recognised, than say churning out a low budget drama, plus distributors know the quality tolerance of an audience for horror films is a lot higher, than many other genres