Case Study: Garth Jennings

Jaws dropped in 2003 when it was announced that Garth Jennings would direct the movie version of Douglas Adams' beloved sci-fi novel The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. The opportunity came after years of making music videos with friend and cohort Nick Goldsmith under their London-based production banner Hammer & Tongs. Jennings has since gone on to direct coming-of-age yarn Son Of Rambow which inspired a bidding war at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

Jennings talks about making the transition from cheap-as-chips music vids to big budget sci-fi adventure...

First interest in filmmaking...

"My dad got given a video camera by his friend who was emigrating, so by default we inherited this bloody huge camera. But my dad was crap at using it so I sort of took it over. I loved films - the first film I saw was Star Wars [1977] when I was five and it had the same effect on me as it did for countless other people. Then around the same time as we got this video camera, a friend of mine's brother got hold of this pirate copy of Rambo: First Blood [1982]. My friends and I lived near the forest - we were always playing in the forest - then suddenly here's this guy who can bend the forest into traps and catch 200 men all on his own with a bit of stick! We honestly thought, no joke, this guy was so amazing that we started making our own Rambo films with my dad's video camera. Our latest film, Son Of Rambow, is based on that period."

Moving into music videos...

"I was at art school with the guys I set up Hammer & Tongs with [including Nick Goldsmith]. While there I was doing lots of short films and animation stuff, and my other friends were commissioned by a tiny record label - actually it was XL Recordings who are now very successful - to make a music video. At that time they were just kicking off and they gave Nick £500 to go and make a quick video for a band. Nick got me and everyone else to help him out, and we just went from there. It was so exciting because we made this cheap-as-chips video but it was on MTV the following week. I think we all realised that this could be great fun to go and make things and they'll get on telly.

"At the time I thought that £500 was a ton of money because when you're at college, that's a mega budget film! My two-minute animations would cost me £78 or something and I used to think that was a fortune. I remember when we got our first £2,000 budget we thought, 'Well, we won't know how to spend it. That's just ridiculous!' Of course we did spend it all. As the budgets got bigger though, the problems got bigger. That's when it got interesting."

Moving into features...

"We just worked a lot and started writing our own scripts. One in particular was the film I've just finished [Son Of Rambow]. We were just about to start making it and then we got offered Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. We never thought we would do a big studio picture, and certainly not as the first film. It seemed like there would be too many people involved and you wouldn't really be the director, just this guy who sat behind the monitor terrified. But it turned out that they really did need someone to come on and just 'do their stuff', so Nick and I came onboard. When we realised we could do our thing with it, we couldn't resist. "It's funny, you know, because I thought it would be a culture shock moving into big budget features but it's all abstract. Instead of a three-day shoot it's a three-month shoot and instead of two weeks working on it, it's two years, but it's all relative. The actual day-to-day work is very similar, but it's far more rewarding because you're going into everything in far greater detail than you would do with a music video. It was absolutely lovely. The idea of $60million is terrifying when you talk about it, but the day-to-day job isn't about looking into a suitcase with all that money in it. You're actually looking at, 'Oh God, I've got to get this scene finished by 12 o'clock and then I've got a meeting with the casting director.' You know it's far more down-to-earth - it quickly becomes a normal job. It's only when you come to release it that you become aware of this gargantuan company that you're working for. I was honestly in a bubble for two years just happily getting on with it."

One funding in the UK...

"It took a long time to get Son Of Rambow made because no one would finance it. Originally FilmFour, in its old form, were very quick to come on board and help us. But then they started downsizing and they got rid of their distribution [arm] and the people who commissioned us to write the script all went their separate ways and were commissioned to write other movies. So we bought it back off them and started developing it ourselves. Then we spent years and years trying to find somebody to back us. Even after Hitchhiker's it was very difficult to find the money. In the end it came from a French company and a tiny little bit from Japan and Germany. Certainly there's nothing from the UK. Of course when it came out at Sundance it was great because there were a lot of people who we'd gone to in the first place who were then trying to buy it.

"The thing with Son Of Rambow is, although it's about these two little kids, it's not really a kids' film. It's an all-ages thing really, but they swear and they smoke and they do a lot of extremely dangerous things which aren't PG. So then people go, 'Oh, hang on. What's this? We don't know how to sell that.' And there are no stars in it - although I think Eric Sykes is a star but maybe that's a personal thing? In many ways it's tricky to market this film, but you sort of hope that since we're just in it to make great films, the marketing department will find a way to sell it. Instead it's a case of the marketing department not knowing how to sell it, so asking us, 'Can you change it please?' But if you know exactly what you're aiming for, you just have to hang in there really."

Inspirational filmmakers...

"In the early days the people that got me excited about filmmaking were the Spielbergs and the Lucases, and then as I got older it was more the Hal Ashbys and Wes Andersons who've made some amazing films. If I had to say one director in particular - even though I haven't shown any reference to him in my work - it would be Billy Wilder. He must be the greatest director for me. I grew up watching a lot of his films. They're like these perfect little clocks that function perfectly, yet it's effortless and you care about everybody. The Apartment [1960], surely a top ten film. That level of writing... As a visual director, he was never interested in doing anything too fancy, but they were just the best films. That's something I aspire to, but I'm nowhere near it yet."

Stella Papamichael | Published 26 Apr 07