The Gigolos Watch a scene from The Gigolos, introduced by director Richard Bracewell.

Richard Bracewell makes his directorial debut on The Gigolos, an improvised comedy-drama set in the world of male escorts in London's Mayfair district. "The script was a collaboration between myself, Sacha Tarter and Trevor Sather," Richard explains. "The idea came from the three of us independently. I was walking down the street in Mayfair and passed a car which was playing the song Just A Gigolo. I instinctively thought this was a great idea for a film.

"Sacha was on holiday in the south of France with his parents and some friends of his mother's. Sacha was in his late 20s, the ladies in their late 50s, and they were rather more interested in Sacha than he wanted them to be. They were lonely, single women in need of younger, single male company. Trevor had been in Japan and had become fascinated with the phenomenon of the host bar, a slightly unusual take on the hostess bar. The host bar was a venue for hard-working, single, middle-aged women to come and meet lovely young men for the evening. He thought this concept was worth exploring. We put all the ideas into the melting pot and here was our film."

With Sacha and Trevor set to play the gigolos, the film scored some impressive clients - Anna Massey, Siân Phillips, Susannah York, and Angela Pleasence - all of whom improvised their lines from a 60-70 page script outline.

The finished movie is a charming and disarming look at the relationship between two men living a strange nocturnal existence. "We showed the film to a lot of distributors, who all liked it," Richard notes. "Their first sentence was: 'Good film... what are you doing next?' Well, we didn't want to answer that question because we wanted to know what we were doing now. Having produced it in a punk way, in a way which allowed us to keep control of the story, keep control of the whole production process, we drew the obvious conclusion that we had to distribute it ourselves."

In the video above Richard takes you around some of the film's Mayfair haunts and talks about the making of The Gigolos.

The Gigolos is released in UK cinemas on Friday 23rd March 2007.

Adrian Hennigan | Published 15 March 07

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