THE DEADBOLT: I've heard two people mention Rushmore when talking about the film. Does that surprise you?

JENNINGS: The thing with Rushmore is it has those wonderful amateur dramatics, so no. That spectacular play at the end - that is just wonderful. Actually, Rushmore, I think, is one of my top ten favorite films. It's glorious.

THE DEADBOLT: So maybe it subconsciously inspired the movie.

JENNINGS: Well, no, I think we started writing Son of Rambow before Rushmore. Eight years ago. Maybe Rushmore had been out by then. I don't know.

THE DEADBOLT: It's '99.

JENNINGS: Oh, so it was out then. We started in 2000.

THE DEADBOLT: So, this has been a project for a LONG time. Why was it on hold for so long? Just because Hitchhiker's came along?

JENNINGS: Well, it took us a while to write the script initially. We started by just wanting to capture that feeling rather than having a plot. We were constantly trying to whittle away a plot that would give us "that thing".

GOLDSMITH: Well, we're not THAT slow. We weren't getting paid to write the script, so we'd make music videos and TV commercials, spend two or three months doing that, and make enough money where we could spend two months working on the script. And then you ran out of money, so you had to go and do a job. There was a lot of that going on.

JENNINGS: And then we got it ready and the script was in the form of 99.9% of what we ended up shooting and we were starting to get the financing together and even began early casting and that's when we were offered Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We questioned it to start because we were so committed to Son of Rambow but we felt as passionately about that as we did Son of Rambow, so we just did it. And that took two years. And then another year, after we came back, was spent trying to get the financing together, which was a nightmare. We thought it would be easy because Hitchhiker's had done well, but it was the opposite. It was really difficult.

THE DEADBOLT: Why is that?

JENNINGS: There's a couple things. One, it wasn't another sci-fi movie. People like to invest in things that they've seen you've already done. And, also, Son of Rambow frightened a lot of people because, when it came to marketing, people weren't sure how to sell a film that was meant for everyone. We'd say it was pretty much for everyone. We'd mention Stand by Me, where kids and adults loved it equally. And they'd go "Mmmmmm, we don't know how to do that. We like the script, but if it were more like a kids' adventure. Or if it were more like an adult tragedy, we're fine. Adults won't go see a movie with kids in it." And we'd be like "What if it's good? Will adults go see a film if it's good?" That's the problem we had.

THE DEADBOLT: What kind of financing are we talking about? The budget couldn't have been that high.

GOLDSMITH: Just over 4 million pounds, at the time 6.5 million dollars.

THE DEADBOLT: You would think that's a no-brainer in terms of making money back.

GOLDSMITH: Yeah, although you have to step back and go "Hold on, it IS 6.5 million dollars I'm asking for." I don't have 6.5 million dollars to give anyone and if I did I'd have to think quite seriously about giving it to you.

JENNINGS: However, you're right, but you also have to remember that every single one of these people we went to see - that's what they do. They invest in movies. And they'd always give you reasons why it wasn't going to work and, to be honest, no one really knows what they're doing and it was a good test of our mettle, really. That's why I'm so glad we're a team. It would be very hard to have that many rejections and not start to take it personally. So we have each other to fall back on.

THE DEADBOLT: It's 99.9% of the same script but do you think it's the same movie it would have been if Hitchhiker's didn't happen?

JENNINGS: It was more behind-the-scenes stuff that we learned on Hitchhiker's like "having less is more." Having a smaller crew and a more individually empowered unit, like we're used to working with on our music videos, is far more effective. You get a bigger result, a better result with this.

GOLDSMITH: I like to think that it would be, because we had written it beforehand and because the things we learned on Hitchhiker's were more "we DO know what we're doing", I'd like to think that the film would be exactly the same if we'd have made it before Hitchhiker's but you never know.

JENNINGS: There wasn't anything creatively where we came out and thought "We must do this" or "We must do that" with Son of Rambow. It was very much a confirmation that we were right to be going the way we were.

Inspiration and Mayhem with Hammer and Tongs Page 2