Telling Lies Watch Simon's award-winning 2000 comedy

What About The Bodies Watch Simon's 2002 black comedy

"Simon is one of the most visually interesting directors out there. There's something quirky, leftfield and completely original about his approach to filmmaking. He can tell the most sensitive story (10 Again) or the most violent (What About The Bodies), and it's like you recognise his handwriting on it." That's the opinion of Chris Cooke, the Nottingham-based director of One For The Road and longtime acquaintance of writer-director Simon Ellis.

With the award-winning black comedies Telling Lies (2000), What About The Bodies (2002) and What The (2004), the 32-year-old Ellis has established himself as one of the UK's leading young directors. Yet despite having 15 shorts behind him and being on the verge of directing two feature films, Ellis himself is remarkably sanguine about his progress. "Film is just the format I'm playing with at the moment, but I haven't got any aspirations to be a big director. I'm more into my music than anything else but I'm a terrible musician... I'm a musician trapped in a filmmaker's body!" He laughs before adding, "Can you make sure you add 'he says sarcastically' there?"

Ellis' attitude to film stems from his background as a fine arts student. He graduated from Nottingham Trent University in the mid-90s, but it was stills photography that proved his initial love. Operating cameras got him work as a DOP on local productions, but it was after winning an award for his second short, Thicker Than Water, that he became truly inspired to make movies.

The audacious Telling Lies, in which we hear a man telling lies on the telephone whilst the truth is flashed up on a black screen, followed in 2000. "It was all about how to animate a word to keep it interesting," Ellis recalls. "The irony was that I got a bit of financial support to make it, and it was one of those films that didn't really need it. It enabled me to buy editing kit, though, and I've used that kit ever since to make all of my films, so that investment alone has kept me going. I don't know how many films I would have made if it weren't for Telling Lies."

The irony is that Ellis' other big festival success, What About The Bodies, almost curtailed his career. A black comedy about two murderers attempting to dispose of their victims in the countryside, the Coventry-born helmer says the film was a reaction to friendly banter. "The film I'd made before What About The Bodies was called Ten Again, which was a childhood drama. It was all about nostalgia and people being ten-years-old, and it was very warm and cuddly. Quite a few friends took the p***, basically, and were saying 'Oh you're going soft, you're doing films with kids and puppy-dogs.' So I just thought, OK, next time I'll just do something really different."

The film was shot in the wintry wilds of the Lake District in 2002, and Ellis admits to a nightmare shoot. "It was like a level up in terms of ambition - it had crane shots and we had to get a cherry-picker out to the middle of nowhere. The problem, of course, is that it takes so long to get those shots. My producer said to me, 'How long do you think you need to shoot it?' And I very stupidly said two days, because that's how long I'd usually spend on something. But because of problems with the light and weather, after the two days I'd only shot half the film! We just had to beg everyone to come back, and we basically did the shoot all over again. It was the most difficult film I've ever done, and I actually sort of retired after that! I stopped for a year and didn't make anything."

Paying the rent - just - with freelance graphic design work, it was stints as an editor and DOP that eventually encouraged him back into the director's chair. "I think working on other people's stuff made me realise that I couldn't get away from it," he reflects, "it was what I wanted to do. The film that I did make after that little hiatus - What The - was written to be made quickly, in a really easy location, with a very small group of people, in a small amount of days. The smallest margin for error, basically."

Simon will be able to draw on his What About The Bodies experience when he shoots his first feature this spring in and around Newcastle. "I received a script from Vertigo Films - who did The Business, It's All Gone Pete Tong, and The Football Factory - and they asked if I'd be interested in doing it. And the subject matter was very much up my street - it's a film about dogging. It's basically a story about a blossoming relationship in this really weird setting."

I find it really frustrating to sit and watch something and all I've got is two hours' older.

Ellis is also workshopping a more personal film, Soft, to star another alumnus of the Nottingham scene, Mark Devenport. Despite this move towards features, he still harbours reservations so large you could house a tepee on them. "I think it's asking a lot to ask someone to give up two hours to watch something," he believes. "I just find it really frustrating to sit and watch something and all I've got is two hours' older. It just makes me very angry, and that's one of the reasons I've struggled to move into features. I'm getting better as I learn how to structure films, but it's generally about not wanting to short-change people. That's also why my shorts are very short."

Ask him if he's graduated from shorts and you receive a firm rebuttal. "It's never going to be features full stop, no way! I'm always going to make shorts. The thing is, I've got no idea when I make them what's going to become of them. You make the best thing you can and just hope that people are going to find it interesting. That's the exciting thing about it, really. You don't know what's around the corner."

Adrian Hennigan | Published 06 January 06

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