Howard J. Ford: From The Ledge to DarkGame - Crafting International Horror Thrillers

Good afternoon, good morning Screen Rats, and welcome to another episode of Television Times Podcast.

Now, today, my guest is Howard J.

Ford.

He is a English filmmaker, and he is the director of a film that I loved from a couple of years ago called The Ledge.

You probably saw it because it was trending as the number one movie for a while on Netflix.

Great film, brilliant film, right up my alley.

And he's got a new film out called Escape, which I've seen recently.

Howard sent me a screen.

Me and my wife sat down and enjoyed that a few weeks ago.

And he's got a new film coming out called The Dark Game as well in a couple of weeks.

And that co-stars a friend of mine, Andrew P.

Stephen, who's been on the podcast, friend of the podcast.

So because I had these tenuous connections to Howard, I sort of friended him on the socials, which invariably led to this chat.

And we had a great chat just before the summer.

I tried to get him on last year, but we were both very busy.

And obviously he's very busy.

He's making so many films at the same time.

And yeah, I wanted to get him on for a chat.

So I held on to this one.

This was recorded before I went to Edinburgh.

And because Escape has just come out a few days ago and DarkGame is coming out in a few weeks, I thought this might be a good time to drop it.

Now, at the time of recording, I had no idea there was any issues with the audio, but upon listening back, there was quite a lot of echo and reverb I had to deal with.

So, but we won't have that problem going forward because we're now using a completely different portal.

Anyway, what to say about this chat?

I really enjoyed my chat with Howard.

We got on really, really well and the conversation meanders all over the place.

But I think it's a good one.

I really do.

I haven't got much to say on personal matters this week.

I just want to get into this one because it's a great episode with a great director.

So here we go.

This is my chat with the filmmaker, Howard J.

Ford.

Hooray for Howard Ford, Howard J.

Ford.

Roll up, roll up and welcome to another edition of Television Times with your host me, Steve Otis Gunn, where I'll be talking to someone you do know or someone you don't.

It might be funny, but it might not be.

But it's always worth tuning in for.

So here we go with another episode of Television Times.

You know, I follow you.

I can see you are a very busy man.

Generally got three films on the go, it seems.

There is, there is three.

In fact, I know it's not a visual one, but I had to just remind myself.

So, you know, one of them being obviously Escape.

Yeah.

And then one of them being the Ed Westwick Dark Game.

These are the sort of cans or Berlin Ahly brochures.

We were on the front of that one, the River of Blood, the one we've just done in Thailand.

I thought, oh, I better quickly remind myself.

I've got so many films.

I have to quickly remind myself what I've done, you know.

I recently did see Dark Game.

So I know it's not out here yet.

No, it's not out here yet.

But I just found out, we thought it was coming out very, very soon.

I found out the other day that both Dark Game and Escape are more likely around September.

It's jumped ahead.

I thought we were imminently about to have them out.

It takes so long to get a film out.

You finish the thing and then you think, right, it's going to happen.

And then sometimes it takes another year until it's emerged.

By that time, you've done something else or the actors have done something else.

Everyone has to get their brain back and figure out what they're talking about.

Yeah, I don't mind that at all, but sometimes you've done so much in between that you're in danger of forgetting which film you're talking about.

Yeah, I mean, you've obviously been editing it in post-production for so long that you might not even actually have seen it before you have to start promoting it again.

Or do you actually sort of brush yourself up and watch it again?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I try to go to when they show it on the big screen, even that like a market screening.

I always try and be at those, even if it means me flying somewhere to catch it.

And then I try when I go into those types of first cinema screenings, because you're going through all the post-production and you're generally not seeing it on a big screen.

You know what I mean?

Nine times out of ten, you're doing your post on small screen.

So I always like to go to when they show it off the DCP, the prints.

It used to be a 35 mil print.

It was lovely, but not lovely at the same time.

But there was something about that.

But it's doing it on the final cinema print because it makes such a difference.

The quality of the sound must be great.

I say the sound is the thing.

The sound is the thing that you know, because when you watch a movie on a laptop or whatever, it's just bad.

It's bad.

It just doesn't do what the movie is doing.

I don't like it.

I don't like it.

I mean, I will do.

I mean, I'll admit this.

I guess I saw The Ledge on a television in a Premier Inn.

Well, thank you for watching it.

But I have the codes to change.

I have a special remote where I can make it sound cinema quality and stuff.

I can get it out of hotel mode.

So I made it sound as best I could.

Close the curtains, you know, all of that.

Made it as cinema-ish as I could.

Thank you.

Do you hear the rocks crumbling when you're on her feet and stuff?

Because this is the funny thing.

I showed that film as one of the actors, one of the main actors in Escape.

He'd seen The Ledge on digital and then he liked it.

He was very positive about it, you know, and there are bits I like, bits I would criticize.

You know what I mean?

It's a good movie.

But actually, it plays really well on the cinema.

So it's so much better.

You feel so much more plight.

Yeah, I would like to have heard a bit more sub.

So I guess that's the thing.

I used to be a musician.

I still am.

So I had so many arguments with people along the lines of, would you rather someone heard your songs perfectly in like, you know, in a really good sound system or say basically a select few people heard it the right way or millions of people heard it through a phone.

And I go, well, I'd rather have no one hear it through the phone.

No, I'd rather have less people listen to it than hear it properly.

So I understand that.

It must be very frustrating.

If anyone's watched it on a phone, they need to go back and watch it at least.

They haven't really seen it.

This is, they haven't.

I mean, look, you can have an amazing, amazing meal and if you eat that on a, on the toilet of a train, you know, it's not going to, you are not going to feel the experience, are you?

Whereas if you try to handle the environment with the nice piano music and someone dressed nicely, I'm not saying all meals have to be delivered that way.

They don't, but sometimes the presentation of it, the surroundings, you know, it's the vibration, isn't it?

It's the vibe, you know.

Exactly.

I make, I often about once a month, I make a vegetarian, um, shawarma meal for me, my wife and my eldest son.

And we always watch Taskmaster and it's, we've made a tradition out of it.

And it just all feels right.

Like almost like a Sunday dinner as a kid, it all sort of feels that all gels together.

If you took one element away, it'd be crap.

That it wouldn't work, wouldn't it?

You'd miss it.

And it just wouldn't work.

No, I agree.

Those things are these things, these life experience for us all are very important things, you know, and not just filmmaking in every, every moment of your life, just trying to give yourself the best experience.

And as a filmmaker, that's what I'm always trying to do.

Take people on a bit of a journey, give them an experience.

It might obviously, you know, sometimes my characters are pretty horrendous and doing horrendous things.

And but, you know, you want to take people to the edge of something, to take people to a place that is perhaps uncomfortable.

So that when they're back in their, you know, back in their lives, they're feeling, I don't know, feeling even better.

I felt that with The Ledge.

For me, I mean, I've watched a lot of horror now.

I'm quite a recent convert to it.

I'd say about five years ago, I started watching like Blumhouse movies and stuff like that.

I didn't like it before.

I know you watched it since the 80s, but it wasn't really my cup of tea.

And I don't know what happened.

I think it was probably around the Jordan Peele sort of stuff as well.

Yeah.

OK, I'm going to start watching because it was cleverer than.

It had some intellect.

They were telling bigger stories when there was sub-tea.

You know, there has been anyway in a lot of films, but not all of them.

So, you know, yeah, some of them are just dismembering young women.

And I think that's horrible.

So I've got to admit, when I first read the script for DarkGame, I got through the first two pages and I thought, OK, well, I'm not doing this film.

Now I just need to say, you know, because there's a girl tied to a chair.

Silence against women sort of thing.

Yeah.

That's it.

And I thought, well, I'm not going to do this film now.

I'll just I'll just now I need to say because I like the producer, Tom.

So how are we going to say no?

And then I and then I started to read further.

And I thought, OK, there is more to this.

This is not what it appears to be.

And I thought then, you know, so I was looking for something, whether I'm writing it myself, whether I'm reading a script that is someone else's work.

Is there some debt?

Is there something, you know, is there a layer that I can go a bit deeper on?

Otherwise, you got to love a film so much to make it.

It's so hard to make a film.

You've got to love it for a period of time.

You made a friend of mine who I've known for over 20 years, look very scary and I've never actually seen a film that basically sort of co-stars my friend.

Oh, which is this?

Andrew, Andrew P.

Stevens.

Oh, come on, Andrew.

Andrew is amazing.

I love Andrew.

I love him.

Andrew was so brilliant to work with.

I love that man.

That bit where you zoom in on his eye?

It's fucking creepy, man.

You know, that stuff is creepy.

I remember there, we were in, I remember being in the room doing that stuff thinking, I was sort of saying to him, this is going to be good.

You know, we had a lot to do on the day, you know, because we did all that control room stuff in like one day.

Yeah, he had so many lines to do, you know, to rehearse and he was just a gem.

I'd never seen him in a movie before.

And then all of a sudden, he's playing this horrific bad guy that really has got a lot of charisma and, you know, there's something about him.

He was amazing.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, he's fantastic.

Absolutely fantastic.

I guess that's one of the things, being a viewer like me, who can sort of rip it all apart, knows where the thing is filmed, know who's in it, that kind of stuff.

Know that person isn't American.

I sort of dissect it a bit more than the average viewer, I guess.

But you did a mad old job of making that seem like it was in Portland.

Thank you.

I mean, that is impressive.

Yeah.

How's he doing this?

He got a fire hydrant, stuck it in the street?

What's going on there?

We had a fire hydrant, we stuck it in the streets.

We didn't have enough fire hydrants.

That was one of the producer and I complaints, we need more fire hydrants to make it look as a, because we shot a dark game in Bristol.

So much stuff in Bristol now.

Yeah, nice studios there.

Although with the freezing though, we did that thing in winter and it was absolutely freezing.

It's like coat over your coat.

Really?

It was really dark and cold.

So it was a weird shoot.

It's not easy for the crew, but look, it's a dark movie and we were telling that kind of story, so we had to be in the right environment.

I normally like to go to a lot of my movies that take place in exotic locations.

Okay, DarkGame is not in an exotic location, but still wanted to give it a certain sort of feel.

I'm always amazed when a movie is set somewhere where it isn't filmed.

Like I recently watched Monkey Man.

I really want to see that.

Such a good film.

We love it.

But it's filmed in Indonesia because I spent a lot of time in India as a view, obviously filming The Dead 2.

I'm looking around again.

I don't know a city that looks like that.

I think it was Jakarta or something.

Yeah.

But it's always interesting to me when people can like, it's the eyes wide shut thing where you can somehow film that in the UK and it looks like America.

I don't understand how you guys do it.

It's actually, to be honest with you, it's actually not easy.

It's a bit of a pain.

I much prefer to go to the actual place.

But because so often you go, this angle would be great and you go, yeah, but we can't do that because that is so obviously from this place.

Or if we do that, we have to do VFX on it.

And then at some point you start to go, well, we've got so many VFX shots.

If we keep doing that, we're going to blow that buzzer.

You've got to have this crazy head and financial head all the time.

Those two things are always having to work together.

So it's much better to go to the actual place.

But it's a nice achievement when people believe.

Where was The Ledge filmed?

Well, actually, The Ledge, we've got some wide shots from the Dolomites in Italy.

But all the actors went to Serbia and myself, obviously.

Serbia.

They were just a super crew, really nice.

We didn't really have enough mountains, to be honest.

I've been on a location recce to the actual Dolomites where we have some shots from, but none of the actors were there.

But the locations were ultimately amazing, but we did have to extend them in visual effects as well.

The most horrific part of that movie for me is probably not one that you would pick, but it's when she hangs the tent underneath the ledge.

She just uses ropes or whatever, and there's nothing underneath.

There's a massive drop, and then she just goes to bed like she did.

Okay, I'll go to sleep now.

I'm like, what?

I discussed that.

By testing me with one of the things in the script, we knew it was a stretch, to be honest.

I remember chatting to Brittany about that, where we were about to film it, and we were chatting about that, and I was like, would you really?

I said, we've got to get you in there.

You've got to go in this thing.

People do sleep in these things.

It's quite unbelievable.

Yeah, you see all the really high arts.

And what I put with this clamp thing, one thing in the crevice of the rock, it's completely nuts.

Terrifying.

How could you ever get any sleep?

No, I know.

But I do believe she would sleep because she's absolutely exhausted.

So of course she would need to sleep.

I did believe it.

It's just for me, it was just, I couldn't do it.

I'd be awake for three days.

I mean, I flew to Australia.

I stayed awake the whole time because I can't sleep on a plane.

So, you know, some people can, some people can't.

Can't sleep on a tent suspended thousands of feet above.

I would not be able to do it.

I mean, I had, I don't know.

I mean, I won't go into the whole story, but I nearly died.

I had a snowboarding incident when I was stuck for seven hours, no food or water on the side of a mountain.

Over 700 foot sheer drop, a completely sheer drop.

Yeah.

I was off-piste with my brother in Bulgaria.

And we luckily it happened in the morning.

It had so many circumstances.

I really shouldn't have survived that one.

And I was, I didn't just think I was going to die.

I knew I was going to die.

I was a hundred percent.

I wasn't 99%.

I was literally, that was it.

I was basically, you came to terms with it.

Yeah.

Came to terms with it.

And I didn't like the fact it was going to happen, but I knew it was my whole being.

It was going to happen.

I know it didn't, but I absolutely thought I had no chance because it was complete sheer ice wall.

And I was, I had nothing to grip on to.

It was a miracle that I hadn't fallen back.

Anyway, I won't go to the whole thing, but basically I, you know, that was one of the reasons I was interested to do The Ledge.

It's not about me.

It's not about my stupid off piste.

You know, I was going off piste and then all of a a sudden the whole world disappeared because I just fell off a mountain basically.

But I had been in that situation and I was utterly terrified.

You know, there was no heroics going on.

I was absolutely terrified of dropping and all my bones sticking through my body and I knew I'd be a complete mess.

And anyway, I got out of that unbelievable circumstance.

That's another story.

But you know.

Sounds like that TV show in America.

Have you seen it?

I think it's called I Shouldn't Be Alive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've seen it.

They're all like that.

They're all exactly what happened to you.

Like some of them are simple.

It's like a woman goes for a run with her dog in Arizona.

She just trips a little bit and then she's stuck there for like two weeks.

Or someone goes for a walk in Iceland and they go the wrong way from their car.

And suddenly they're just lost in a volcano.

It's incredible what some people survive.

And you know, I always like with movies to try and find some sort of truth.

It kind of sounds a bit cheesy and like as actors do it with performances, you find some, because you're basically, you know, you really want to hook on to some sort of truth, some sort of basis of reality so people can start believing it.

So I like projects where I feel like I've got something, okay, I've got something to give to that.

Cause I have been on the side of a mountain and did nearly die.

I didn't have five guys trying to, you know, hammer me in the head or anything like that.

I wasn't, I wasn't the witness to a murder like The Ledge character, you know, but I had been in that scenario.

So I, I wanted to try and do some of those things, you know, with it.

Would you think that's why you're drawn to survival things?

Because I spoke to someone, I had quite a strange childhood in fact, that I shouldn't have probably survived.

And I've been told the reason I like survival films.

I love a survival film.

Yeah, I do.

I love a survival film.

It's not an awful, where some woman in the outback is being followed from a garage, go, oh, here we go, she's going to get him.

He thinks he's going to get her.

You know, I love all that.

But we're drawn to those things.

If we've been through something like that ourselves, I think.

Yeah, I'm sure that is right.

Because of course, with a movie, of course, we all know we're safe in our seat, but we want to go to these extreme places.

Like a disaster survived is an adventure, ultimately.

If you don't survive, it's a disaster.

But if you do, you've had an adventure.

You like jump scares, because Lockdown Hauntings is quite jump scary.

I don't like being scared like that.

No, well, I'm glad it made you jump.

It was a tricky one.

Unbelievably, this is the thing.

When I did, because the Lockdown Hauntings, of course, it was made during lockdown.

There was a loophole where I could go, and as long as I was not within two meters, you know what I mean?

So I drove around the country on my own.

Unbelievably, that film, we didn't make enough of that.

I literally shot that whole thing without any crew at all.

I just loaded my car with film equipment, drove around the country.

Now, the next movie I did after that was The Ledge, and we had 64 crew members before there was an actor on camera.

You know, so I'd gone from no crew at all.

So, you know, if I want to move the camera, I move it.

If I want to take a shot, I have to light it and do the sound.

It was a bit nuts, really.

So, if an actor, I filmed in all these actors' homes.

And Tony Todd, you know, Candyman actor, Tony Todd, his stuff was shot on Zoom.

So we did a couple of people via Zoom, because I couldn't fly to LA to film his stuff.

But other than that, I was in the actors' houses.

And yeah, we literally, there was no location scout.

The location was their house.

If it was no good, well, it's tough.

I'm already there.

And did you literally come up with that during lockdown?

Or did you have a premise that you changed to it?

No, I came up with that during lockdown.

And it was kind of a couple of weeks in.

Weirdly, I decided to make a film in lockdown before I even knew what the film was going to be.

It might have been a comedy, because I had made this movie, this family movie with my boys called Adventure Boys, which I'm in.

And that was like, you know, that was a super low budget, you know, made on a budget of heart.

And, you know, I mean, filmed here where I'm talking to you from in the same house, you know, so using all the stuff that I had access to.

So I've kind of done it before.

But, you know, I had a small bit of a crew there, not much.

Occasionally, I was filming just on my own.

So I'd had a little bit of experience of doing stuff where there was no crew.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that just happened in lockdown, just decided to do something.

And then I put on social media, you know, actors, if I was doing a movie in lockdown and I could film you in your home, no crew, you know, just me, would you want to be in this movie?

And I just put that on a Facebook post.

And I thought I'd probably get a bunch of people saying yes.

A few people saying no, I'd be too dodgy or whatever, because of COVID.

But there were hundreds of people, hundreds of people just like messaging me saying, yeah, I'd love to do this.

I really want to do something.

Here's the thing.

I feel when you're making a low budget movie, using what you have is the number one thing.

I occasionally used to teach at this film school in Brighton.

And we would make these, to get the students to make these little movies, there'd be a box of like props and they'd put their hands in, they'd pick out three props, pieces, string, a glass, a hammer.

And then you'd have to make a short film that featured the piece of string, the glass and the hammer or whatever it was, a tennis ball, I don't know, whatever.

And so there was a discipline of just using what you have.

I always thought it was quite interesting.

You get varying degrees of quality.

So, you know, what did I have in lockdown?

I had fear, isolation and anxiety.

And I thought to myself, can I make a film with fear, isolation and anxiety?

Just me.

And I suddenly thought, well, hang on.

I heard things about the streets.

Apparently plants were starting to grow through the streets.

You know, like where cars were not going by.

Oh, right.

When the animals started turning up and things like that.

That's right.

So I thought, well, hang on.

What if, how can I do this?

I thought, what if it wasn't just the animals coming back, it wasn't just the plants rising out.

What if it was the spirits, spirits of the dead who, because our human energies are no longer affecting that, whether it's a street, whether it's a home or whatever.

What if the spirits were rising out too?

And the ones that had bad intention, perhaps could have more energy because they feed on fear.

And I thought, hang on, this feels like there's a plot here.

Yeah.

And I thought, how can I do this movie?

Well, if I have a ghost, I don't need the actor.

You know what I mean?

I don't need the ghost.

The ghost is an unseen thing.

Yeah.

I could pull things on fishing wire and that's what I ended up doing.

And yeah, so it was a mad one that I just, and I hadn't written the script, so I was like, I'd book an actor for filming and I'd sort of send them roughly what we were going to say.

I said, roughly, I think you'll be like a person who's stuck at home.

Maybe you'll call your mom and you'll be worried that there's something weird is going on in the house.

So just an outline.

Yeah, an outline.

And then I give them a few bits of dialogue.

Can you flesh this out and add a few ad lib?

And so we did that.

Horror Kirby enthusiasm.

Yeah, lovely.

Angela Dixon ended up writing a load of dialogue and stuff and coming up with scenarios because she was someone I thought, well, she'd be great as a lead if she wants to do this lockdown movie.

And that'd be fantastic.

Heather Pease, a whole bunch of great actors that I were friends but also people I wanted to work with.

Just found a way of making it happen.

I mean, that was a very fast turnaround from idea to getting it made and getting it out then.

Do you know, I think I started shooting it within two weeks of getting the idea.

Wow.

I don't know how, I mean, how many times can you do that?

You know, you get the idea.

You are not a procrastinator, that is for certain.

No, I'm an impatient sod at the best of times.

And there's a few things I felt technical wise that I couldn't, I was like, oh, well, I know I wanted to do steady capture.

I didn't want to do a lockdown movie that's just a handheld thing or just a Zoom thing.

Yeah.

I wanted it to have camera moves.

I wanted it to look like a movie.

Zoom as an element, not the whole thing.

Because no one can watch those anymore.

No, no, no, I don't think so.

I ended up buying a little Gimbal steady cam thing.

I quickly bought things online because you could still do that.

I quickly kitted myself out with everything else I needed, so I wouldn't need to hire anyone at all.

It was an interesting experience and it's nice now.

Because if I'm doing a movie, I think, well, at least I know I can do all these jobs.

I'm not a sound engineer, but I do know a bit about getting the type of mic I need.

I don't want to be doing those things, but it's nice to be able to make a movie.

Unless you've made a movie, it's so much stuff and it's not just finishing the movie.

Then you go into this world of delivering the movie to the international territories and getting it ready for.

So many, what they call delivery, all this type of stuff you have to do after the film is made.

It's not over.

Do you have a buyer ready for your films or do you literally take them to CAM to be picked up by whoever or do you have deals with people already?

Good question.

Actually, it varies.

Sometimes you have done pre-sales, like for example, with The Ledge, that was pre-sold by GFM Films, a friend of mine, Fred Headman, who we worked together on a bunch of films.

He and they had pre-sold the movie already on the basis of the concept.

It's a high concept movie.

The girl's stuff is part of a mountain, so it's going to have a girl, it's going to have a mountain.

You're going to have something.

Myself as a director and the type of actors we were going to cast.

He'd gone out and pre-sold it.

We had pre-sales there.

Part of the financing was made up of cash flowing those pre-sales without going into too much detail.

But often it is a case of you make the movie and then you take it to market.

But hopefully by the time you get to market, you've already got an amount of publicity out there.

Distributors have already shown an interest.

Hopefully, you've got a sales company like a sales agent who is already sort of tweaking the interest of those, what they call buyers, which are ultimately the distributors around the world, to come see it in Cannes or whatever, Berlin or whatever market you're at if you're showing the film, or then a lot of it's sending out on the link, which is kind of sad.

They'll have to watch it on a laptop or whatever system they have to watch it.

The Ledge was number one for a while on Netflix, right?

It was number six of all movies on Netflix for a while.

I say for a while, it wasn't a huge amount of time, but it's doing pretty well.

There was a time when it was at number one.

I think it might have been trending.

It was like a top trending film.

But hey, I don't even fully understand it, but a lot of people watched it and also a lot of people say to me, oh, I was on a flight to wherever.

So many people, that film was on a flight.

You know what I mean?

So people say, oh, I love this one.

On that tiny screen.

I tell you, they still don't seem to like it.

You know, I know, tiny screen.

And then you watch it there and then you watch it properly later, surely, if that's what you've done.

Well, I hope so.

Because even then it's a wide screen movie.

And so of course on the flight, all the edges are chopped off anyway.

So I understand it's sold in every country in the world that buys a movie, it's sold in.

So that's.

I think it's one of those just perfect movies.

If you're in the mood for it, it's just like, oh, that is, it's like there's someone else made that movie.

I can't remember what it's called.

There was a movie called Fall.

That's almost one of your films as well.

You could have made that one.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

I didn't want to say it, but a few people, I had a lot of people messaging me saying, oh, I'm not saying this.

A lot of people messaged me saying they've ripped off your movie, The Ledge.

I really don't think they had.

I don't know.

No, no, it's different.

It's different.

It's a different movie.

And I think, look, the fall looks great.

I haven't seen it.

And I made a point of not seeing it because I think, I'm sure it's brilliant and it would just be too annoying to see if they nail something.

It's very dissimilar.

The thing with The Ledge is, you would go up and out and you would climb up there.

She would do those things that would get her into that mess.

But fall is literally two girls walking up a giant ladder to something that is clearly dangerous.

It doesn't have a dead boyfriend as well.

So we had the boyfriend that's in Tom Boyle's script.

There is someone that falls and some terrible things happen.

But apparently that backstory is the same as ours, but I really don't know.

Yeah, there's that sort of two girls arrive at the thing and they're followed by...

Yeah, but the film is nothing like it.

I only put them in the same kind of...

I guess they're the same kind of film, but then I didn't find the story similar.

And I found it ridiculously unbelievable, that one.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Because, I mean, she climbs up a bit and then the ladder falls, it gets a bit rusty and they go, oh, should we keep going?

Yeah, let's keep going.

Right.

What do you...

No one would do that.

No.

No one would climb that.

You got it somehow.

It's finding that that's the thing is that believability.

And I'm not saying, you know, I'm always getting that right.

You always try and go, you know, believe that that scenario could be possible.

You know, you've got to somehow at least get the audience in that place if you can, that they would buy it.

And also when you're, you know, you're working with the actors on set, a lot of the scenes when you're doing them is like, well, would this be believable?

Would I do that?

And sometimes you can, you know, you're working a scene with an actor and the actor's going, do you know, my character wouldn't do this.

You know, we have a bit of an issue here.

I think we're going to have to rewrite this bit.

Or I just don't think, I just, why would I say that line?

And sometimes you're working these tiny little moments in films to try and get around what you see as a problem.

And that is the problem there being that you want the audience to believe it.

So you don't want to go ahead with the scene the way it necessarily is on the page.

If you're in the scenario and then you're suddenly realizing, it's ludicrous, I wouldn't go out that door.

I wouldn't go up that hill.

Are you receptive to that then?

Are you receptive to actors changing?

Yeah, I am.

I am.

But you don't want it happening all the time.

But I used to, it's funny because I've changed slightly the way I, I like to take pressure off actors.

So I think there are some directors out there.

I don't know.

I hear stories and I've seen other people work that I feel like they want to work by putting pressure on everyone.

Right, we're going to put this pressure on, we need to get this done, da-da-da-da.

I like to move very quickly and start shooting very soon.

I don't like to lay pressure on them.

I always like to make them almost feel like we're not even making a movie.

So I don't come at them with any kind of stress or whatever.

I always try and make them relax so that I feel like they can actually give, they're free and they can actually give their best performance.

And I used to, it's funny I've changed my way because having done a bit of acting, I'm not an actor, but I've ended up in a bunch of these movies.

You're an adventure boy, aren't you?

Well, yeah, I mean that far too much.

I was available.

I was going to have another act to play the dad of my boys.

And I was going to get Joseph Milsom to play the dad because he's a brilliant actor.

He's a way better actor than I could be.

But he was like, yeah, okay, well, I could do that Thursday, the following Saturday and then in two weeks.

Do you know what?

I'm here.

I'm literally the father of my boys.

Why don't I?

And I screen tested myself.

So I went out like the field and I set up a camera and I tried to go on and do something really emotional in front of the lens like I was really.

And I thought, do you know what?

I'm not brilliant, but I think I could edit around my performance where I get it wrong.

But during that time of doing, say adventure boys, the times when I was acting, I realized certain things I was doing as a director.

I was thinking, yeah, that's probably not so helpful for the actors.

Now I'm here doing the performance.

I think that thing that I say to actors, when I see them in the morning, it's probably not helpful actually.

I'm going to stop doing that.

I'm now in that position.

If I came to me with the usual thing I'm doing, I think that's going to throw me off on one.

Because I've come to the table as an actor in this instance.

I've obviously learned the lines, unless I'm a terrible actor and I just don't care.

The actors, they want to do a good job.

They turn up.

You know they've studied the lines.

They've probably been through them a hundred times, and they've got this idea of how they're going to do it.

So now, I always want to get their first one out the gate and I want to shoot it.

Because even if I'm going to change it drastically, I just want to see what they do and I want to feel them in their natural state, their instinctive state.

So I won't give them much.

It's not that I don't give them direction, but I want them to be very free at the beginning.

I've often found that I capture better stuff with that.

I'll deal with the cinematics around their performance and where you're going to be, where you're going to stand and within certain limitations.

But yeah, I like to capture what's there from the actor.

Whereas I used to come in in the morning and go, hey, this scene, I think we should do this, I think we should do that.

Occasionally, I'd catch a look on their face, disappointment.

I think in that disappointment was because they'd had this plan and now I was already tearing them off it and we hadn't done it.

Anyway, there we are.

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Are you someone that does a lot of takes or are you Clint Eastwood, Two Takes and Done?

I do not do a lot of takes.

I am someone, in fact, I sometimes like to do one take, two, maximum three.

But there are certain actors that I work with and I love actors, so I'm not going to dis actors.

They're brilliant and I'm always impressed by their talent.

But actually, certain actors, probably even the more experienced ones who've done a lot of movies and TV, they're like, what the hell?

You're going to do one take?

No, I said, why?

Why do you need another take?

I've got this.

It's actually really good.

Obviously, they want to explore and I do understand the actor's point of view, that they often want to explore the scene.

That is all well and good and it's wonderful, but I have a 90-minute movie to make.

We have many locations, how many things, so there's this balance of a reality of making a low-budget movie because I've made low-budget movies.

They're not huge budget, these things.

My budget, I hope, are going up, but yes, you have to get it done in a certain amount of time.

Also, I can only come at it from musical background of mixing lots of tracks.

The more versions you have, how do you make the choice?

You are absolutely right.

You are so right, Steve.

Ultimately, when all is said and done, someone is going to be, someone, often me, if I'm editing the film, and I'd say 70% of the films I've done, I have edited, I'm the one in that room of my own left with 10 takes of that, 10 takes of the close up.

I could literally spend a week editing this 30 second piece now.

How is that better than me concocting the scenario where we capture something raw and instinctive?

I like to at least, if I'm going to do another take on it, I like to at least move the camera.

That's a bit of advice for film.

If you're going to do another take, fine.

Do a couple of takes, move the camera to another position because at the very least, you're giving yourself some cutting options.

What I don't want to do is, Stanley Kubrick, as much as he's made The Shining, which is, I think, an amazing movie, Eyes Wide Shut, you mentioned earlier, did they do 183 takes, one close-up on that, and the actors are completely exhausted and they've lost their mind and they don't even know the meaning of the words anymore.

That's just not healthy.

Sounds awful.

Yeah, horrible, horrible.

Stuck in a night.

So you're not one of these people that has, when you take a photo of your kids and your phone, you've only got one or two shots, you've got like six versions.

Yeah, no, well, actually, I probably might overtake photos more than I would overtake.

Here's the thing, I came from working, my first two features, I've shot a lot of TVs, I've done more than 300 TV commercials as a director.

The first 100 or so TV commercials I made and the first three feature films I made as a director were shot on film, on cellulite, where when that thing was wearing through, that was money wearing through.

Yeah, of course.

That was money, not just from the buying of the film stock, the processing of the film stock, the tele-cine, the storage, there were so many connotations to that.

So I came from a world where we shot on film.

So I would literally want to roll the camera and then no waiting.

I want to get the action done and I don't want to do too many takes.

And I kind of, in a funny old way, I missed that.

I mean, don't get me wrong, shooting with film is cumbersome.

And we did The Dead.

We went out to the Sahara Desert and shoot on, we shot on 35 mil.

Really?

Nightmare trying to keep film stock cold.

That and we were almost dying of malaria half the time.

But on that movie, the lead actor got cerebral malaria.

The crew was so ill.

The sound guy, for example, if the sound guy wasn't vomiting or diarrhea, we could do dialogue that day.

That's how that movie got made.

It was just kind of hell on earth.

Was India similar?

Because I mean, I've been to India about four or five times.

And I think I was better last time, but every time I go, I get sick for the first time.

Yeah, well, here's the thing with it.

Yeah, we were getting sick a lot, but we were, I found, again, both the challenge.

And I love Africa and I love India.

They're amazing places.

They are beautiful and amazing places.

And there's a lot of wonderful people there.

And I didn't, I got ill a lot in India, but it was more like a deli belly.

You know what I mean?

I mean, I used to, I seen it was just like, okay, well I've, it's flowing, so I'm a human food blender, but I can still operate when we're-

Yeah, you've just got to get through it, haven't you?

I'll get through it.

And you're losing energy because it's all like, it doesn't want to go into detail on the, you know.

But we all get what I'm saying.

And that stuff, you can deal with that because it wasn't horrific.

Whereas when we were making The Dead, you know, I kid you not, we would be, you know, be there on location.

We'd be like, what should we have, myself and my brother, should we put a wide lens?

Excuse me.

We'd be like, what?

We'd wipe it off and go, yeah, I think let's put a long lens on this because we're going to capture this.

And that's how, you know, that's how we rolled.

Guys, just so awful.

And having done that movie and it was a successful movie, that was number one horror movie in America for a period of time, about six weeks.

But it was just hell to make that.

And I think my brother and I felt we got like 35% of what we actually wanted because we were either, either the police had, you know, we had like police stopping us to get into location and then like impounding our vehicles and finding...

You have to give them a bit of money.

Oh, it was just money.

I actually developed a bad arm from the act of handing over money.

I literally developed a clicking shoulder from that.

That's not even a joke.

I mean, it was madness, absolute madness.

Anyway, I wrote a book about that.

I'm not trying to sell my books.

It's out of print, but I wrote this Surviving the Dead.

Because I got back from that shoot and I thought, okay, what the hell has just happened?

It's great that we survived.

I just went to Thailand weirdly and I sat in a Starbucks.

What a weird thing to do, right?

I was just like, I just needed to escape somewhere.

I thought, I'm going to write all this down, and I'm going to almost ritualistically burn it.

I think we've awoken a sort of, I don't know, something weird because everything went wrong on that film.

I love Thailand as well.

Thailand is an amazing place.

But India, I love, but we had a couple of issues where, I don't know if it's controversial to say this, but the ladies who were working with us on the film had a lot of guys giving them really, well, I mean, when I say unwanted attention, it was-

Oh, yeah.

Oh, well, I mean, literally, we had a situation where we had our lead actress in the movie and the guys who were even working as background extras from some of the villages we hired literally wanted to take her into the bushes to have sex with her.

You know, I won't use the word, but I was like, what are you talking about?

I said, oh, don't we?

We're ready.

We're ready.

They were like looking down at the, you know, going, I'm sure you are ready, mate, but you are not.

What are you talking about?

I said, oh, don't worry, we won't be long.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

So time is the issue.

Oh, yeah.

So I'm going to be, as a director, I'm worried about time.

It takes you to take her into the bushes.

What is actually going on here?

Really?

So we had Joseph Wilson guarding her with an AK-47 in the truck and they were around and some of these were playing zombies in the movie, but so they had white content.

Yeah.

And I'm like, this is nuts.

And I'm still busy.

I've got to make the movie so I can't get too involved in this, but this is weird, right?

I mean, don't get me wrong, it wasn't all like that.

We had wonderful people, we had some things like that, but they were just like, wow, what the fuck?

I've heard some bad stories from female travelers, friends of mine.

The first time I went there, stayed in a hotel in Mumbai, and my then-girlfriend, she was having a shower and the guy sneaked in via the sort of adjoining room door to try and sneak a peek, stuff like that.

It happens all the time, man, it happens all the time.

But I'll tell you a funnier thing, let's get away from the bad bushes.

Yeah, it's not taking down a dot.

Me and Andrew were on tour in India together in 2004, and we were doing A Woman in Black again, it's the only play we ever talk about.

And it was direct from London, it wasn't, it was direct from like Sheffield or something.

Truth's getting away with a good story.

Yeah, I know, I know.

But we got out there and our sort of intervals, all I remember is like lots of people shouting at each other.

Like you'd, I remember when I did the get in, I would like put a speaker on a stand and then I'd say, oh, I need to move that and then people go, no, no, no, you don't need to move it, we'll move it.

And then someone would shout at someone else, they'd shout at someone else and then five little guys would move my speakers down.

I'd be like, it's okay, I can do it myself.

And I'm like, it was like a joke.

And to the left, to the right, it was just so funny.

But in the foyer, there was this woman selling samosas, veg and non-veg, right?

So I got into the samosas.

I love all that.

So I'm at the back of the auditorium, I'm grabbing these things and my mates are like, what are you doing?

You can't eat that.

That's going to really hurt your stomach.

Because it's fine, I've been here before.

Every interval from that point was just me sitting on soundless waiting for one to end and then you just go find a bucket or something, come back, do act two.

And then it all went around the cast.

Just everyone got sick.

And that's all we were doing.

The interval was like queuing up to toilets and buckets.

That's it.

It's terrific, isn't it?

It's terrific.

Glamorous.

Having said that, this is the thing that actually the food in India, I found amazing.

I actually literally had a withdrawal symptom.

Like a cold turkey, I kid you not.

Because every meal was curry.

Every meal was a beautiful curry.

And actually, I know sometimes it gave me the daily belly, but it was wonderful food.

And I remember we stopped at this scenario.

My brother, who was obviously violently ill at the time, so he was not well at all.

And brother's girlfriend, Anne, who was working on the movie.

We were starving.

We were driving along.

And we stopped at this sort of truck stop.

But we were so hungry and we looked at the things.

It looked so dirty, this place.

And these guys with their shirts off, these young guys and these...

It just looked disgusting, this kitchen.

It looked like a toilet from Trainspotty.

Do you know what I mean?

Exactly.

Yeah, I know.

But we had this meal and it cost like nothing.

And it turned up and it was the most, I think it's one of the most beautiful meals I've ever had in my life.

And we still to this day, you know, talk about that meal.

And it didn't make us ill.

So it was a gorgeous meal that these young men cooked in the most disgusting looking place.

It was a work of art.

It was better than any top London restaurant I've ever eaten in.

I mean, you've got to eat in a place like that.

The best bread I've ever had, the best any kind of bread I've ever had is in Amritsar, in a tiny little, not even a cafe, a guy with a clay oven and there were actual rats and things running around.

And my wife, yeah, we were married and were there.

And she was like, I'm not eating in there.

I'm telling you, that's got a crowd in there.

And all it was was some dal on a tin plate with a piece of bread.

And I was like, fuck it, let's go.

Let's just eat it, that's fine.

We sat in there, we had about three of them.

It was the most delicious bread I've ever seen.

You just throw in the dough in, it's cooking.

There's all kinds of bugs around and dirt.

I didn't get ill.

You sort of acclimatize eventually.

And before you know it, you're in a Punjabi dhaba eating the spiciest food you've ever eaten in your life.

Yeah, lovely.

I miss the food.

I have to say India, it was crazy in India.

There was a, I really do miss, I really do miss the food.

There were lovely people we were working with as well, but we went to this, we went to this village, which I'd fallen in love with in the, went for a location recce and the shoot was tight.

So that was a quick turnaround.

And we fell in love with this incredible looking village.

It was, it was about, I was a couple of hundred miles outside of Delhi.

That's on some random road.

You're in Rajasthan, aren't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Beautiful.

So you're in the Triangle.

Yes, that's it.

And it's gorgeous location.

And we're going to this village and it was stunning.

It was like, wow, this is like a multi, this is like a $10 million studio set.

This is insane.

We went back to film there, but when we went back to film, there was like thousands, there was like children in the corner.

There's like thousands of kids.

So much so that, I mean, literally it was terrifying.

They drop kicked the dog onto us from a roof and they were throwing cow dung and stones at us all.

Because we were back to make the movie.

So much so that I remember being in the crowd of kids, and literally, that's even my feet lifted off the ground and I went like side, in a, it was that bad.

We had to get out and we had tried to hire police so we could control them because I really wanted to film this location.

We hired these police and then they said, which village is it?

When they found out, they said, no, we can't go there.

They said, why not?

They said, because our colleague went there and they cut his ear off.

And I'm like, holy crap.

So Howard, Escape, obviously, I know what I've seen online, but I've tried to sort of not, I haven't even watched a trailer.

I don't really like watching trailers.

I like to see them just as they are.

But so what's Escape about?

Essentially, it's about 10 girls who are kidnapped for sex trafficking and they are held by a heinous criminal gang headed by Andres who is Sean Cronin.

He's been in Mission Impossible and a whole bunch of others.

And basically, these girls are going to be sold to an overseas buyer and they've got like 48 hours until that the boat is coming and they've got 48 hours until that happens.

So these girls are stuck underground, this villa in the middle of the desert, and they've got 48 hours to either be sold off or escape.

And these girls are not taking it lying down.

They're kidnapped by these horrible, horrible people.

And basically, the girls rise up and they're banned together.

I mean, Sarah, Alexandra Marks, Sophie Rankin, the two lead ladies, they kind of band together and girl power to try and get the hell out of there and take down the kidnappers.

See, that's the thing, isn't it?

I think there's a few things on social media I've seen, which is like, why do men make films about women being, you know, imprisoned and things like that?

But what I'm noticing is there is a lot of filmmakers making films, especially you, where women are, it's almost a feminist movie, really, it's literally, it's the other way around.

No, if we made these movies, and I believe there are movies out there, I think there was someone who got into trouble for something recently, that just, you know, just about, I don't know, it's horrible to women and nothing good happens, you know, whatever, I never want to make a film like that.

Why would you want to watch that?

Yeah, why would you want to watch that?

You know, and I think there is this sort of, you know, female imperil, as much as you may not like it, but it's seeing that, you know, women using their strength to rise up and take down, because there's been so much sort of, you know, misogynistic stuff going on.

You know, there's a hell of a lot of decent guys out there, and I'm not out there to give them a bad rep.

We're not all bad.

No, no.

But also there's been some pretty nasty treatment going on.

Some of it we talked about earlier.

And what I found shocking and went before I did escape, I realized from my female friends, it felt like 90 something percent of them had had some really bad, at the very least, I'm going to call it unwanted attention.

But it's just kind of horrific.

The stats are horrific.

So having this scenario where you can put them in a scenario, and don't get me wrong, escape is a larger than life exaggeration.

It is not a documentary.

There's a guy with an eyepatch, for God's sake.

It's one of the, it is the bad guy.

I've got these thugs that really look like thugs.

Yeah.

I do have beautiful women in the movie.

Also the reason they're kidnapped.

Their kidnaps be sold.

It's all exaggerated and it's in a desert location.

I think having these girls rise up and band together and not have some guy come and save them, and they can go do it for themselves.

I think it's a scenario that you could take people.

It's a bit old school, I'm going to say, with Escape.

And I'm not trying to have a film that takes itself so seriously.

It was my 10th movie, 10th feature film as a director, and I wanted it to be an absolute blast.

So I actually wanted it to be a complete exaggeration in every respect.

I won't give away the end, but, you know, pretty extreme stuff happens.

And I hope it's a film you go, well, like it or hate it, you can't not notice it.

Well, I look forward to watching it, definitely.

It sounds right up my alley, like all your films seem to be.

And River of Blood, that's a new one.

I guess that's out next year, I'm guessing.

Yeah.

Well, it's a possibility we might see the beginnings of the release this year.

But River of Blood, which we shot in Thailand, and it also stars Sarah Alexandra Markth and Louis James, with the main lead being Joseph Milson, who was in, of course, the star of The Dead 2 India.

And it's basically about a bunch of kayakers who go on.

It's like wrong turn meets deliverance, I'm going to say.

That's not the official pitch, but I quite like it.

Like a River Wild, that kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

And also it's got other actors from like Ella Starbark and Tiffany Hannum Daniels, who are two of the kidnapped girls from Escape.

So I'm working with, and Louis James is in Escape.

So I've got David Wayman, who's in The Ledge.

So you know, it's got a lot of my crew.

Got my crew in there as well.

And so basically they go on this kayaking tour and they end up in this beautiful place.

It's a beautiful holiday again.

You know, it's the ream thing in the beginning.

And then they, there is a tribe of cannibals out there.

So this tribe of cannibals who are on this particular bit of land, not to be disturbed.

We don't go in there.

They don't come out here.

To quote a Joseph Milton line from the film.

And that's the way it's always been.

And his granddad in the movie, they believe to have been killed by this tribe because he went in there to look for diamonds and things.

So basically there's an altercation and they end up in the space that they shouldn't be in.

And the tribe of cannibals start picking off our kayakers.

That's the scenario.

I have not seen a cannibal movie in some time.

So you can be at the forefront of that.

Thank you.

And I hope so.

Well, look, it's an adventure movie as well.

So it has blood, blood, guts and got, you know, because I know you could be quite extreme with the cannibal movie.

I mean, you know, it's called River of Blood.

There is blood, but it's not all about that.

You know, there's a lot of a lot of character stuff.

We showed it down in Cannes, you know, this year.

And it was great.

It was just great to, you know, we it's a market screening in Cannes, but it was a lovely full cinema with a, you know, big queue of people outside.

And it was lovely to show it on the big screen there.

And it was such a short turnaround, this movie.

I only agreed to do it.

I think it was like seven months prior to it being finished.

I'd agreed to do the film.

So it's really incredible.

You're very prolific.

I mean, especially, are you going to take a break?

My mom keeps telling me, take a break.

My aim is to take a break.

I'm now finished post-production, which is doing deliverables now on River of Blood.

I am attached to a couple more films that may go this year.

One of the two may go this year.

And also, like yesterday, I've had a phone call about another movie and there's another scripts do come in and I can't always read them all.

That's the thing.

I used to get really excited when someone would ring me and say, hey, we want you to do this project.

That felt like the phone call that I'd want.

Now, I got to admit, I kind of go, do I want to give a year of my life to this thing you're bringing me about?

There's a lot of people who come to you with movies.

Also, I've noticed over the years and it happens to a lot of filmmakers that someone will say, hey, we've got this movie, we want you to direct, we've got the money, we've got this investor and he's sticking in this money or whatever.

Then you go down the road with it and you find out, this investor is not sticking in any money.

It's kind of, you can waste your time.

I've got to be really careful how much time I give to these projects that come in because you've got a kind of, A, I can only make one film at a time.

Yes.

I do need a break at some point, otherwise I'm going to...

Do you prefer, because you've written films and you've directed films you haven't written, do you prefer to just direct or do you prefer to do the whole thing?

It's a great question.

Do you know there are pluses?

It's a question I ask myself a lot.

There are pluses and minuses to both.

So the one thing is, if I haven't written the script, well, I haven't spent three months of my life doing that.

That's kind of nice because it's quite an investment to write a script, even if there are so many scripts made for films that don't get made and they still take a very long time to write.

So sometimes I feel I've got this idea for this movie and as much as I'm inspired, I'm also thinking, okay, well, now I've got to spend three months writing it.

And it may not be as good as I think this idea.

So I do love it when I get a really good script.

The bits that I don't love about it, when someone else has written the script, they sometimes know stuff you don't know.

And that's a weird place to be as a director.

I'm the one who's got to stand on set and literally coordinate every shot with a cinematographer or whatever, or a camera person.

But generally, you have to set every shot up with this movie to tell this story.

And sometimes if you could talk to a writer and you suddenly go, oh, but what I meant by this scene was that.

And you sometimes go, do you know what?

I didn't see that.

I actually thought what this scene was saying was that, the subtext or whatever.

Nationally, you have different ideas.

So when I've written it, I know what it's saying.

Does that make sense?

I know exactly what it means.

I know if there's something beneath the surface, I know what that message is.

You wrote Adventure Boys, didn't you?

I did.

Yeah.

I'd say that film, for me, tells me a lot about you in a sort of, because I mean, it is very much you tell your kids, right?

You know, you can't always, what's the line?

Something about like you can't just find adventure in computer games and all of that sort of, you'll get outside and have real adventure.

So to end the podcast, what do you think, especially with COVID and everything like that and kids playing online and not playing outside as much as they used to, do you think that's going to be a problem in the future?

It's absolutely a problem.

And in fact, before COVID, I'm glad you brought this up, but before COVID and then adventure boys had its digital release the week of COVID.

So can you believe this?

That I made this movie because I thought we had a disaster and we do have a disaster where we are all, we're like a guy in the street.

I bet you if you go out in the street by now, the first person you see is going to be walking along the street staring into this thing, right?

This very useful thing that we have called a phone.

And don't get me wrong, they're brilliant and they're very useful.

But we are falling into this stuff and we're losing connection with each other.

And so I made Adventure Boys to just try and get this message out there that this was a total disaster.

We are losing each other.

We're losing our children.

We're losing everyone around us because they're all disappearing into this phone.

And I'm doing it myself often.

And it's very difficult.

It's really difficult.

So I think it's absolutely a problem.

And I think as much as I use these devices myself, I think we're losing this connection with each other.

And Adventure Boys was all about that.

It was just a shame that it...

So our tagline was like, get off your device and get out there.

That was the poster.

And we had all these events at supermarkets.

We were going to go around with the DVDs and sign them and show the track.

And everything was locked down.

So that film has delivered a massive blow.

So it wasn't as popular as it could have been.

It's ironic in many, many ways.

Yeah.

So I hope people dig out.

It's free on Amazon.

You watch Adventure Boys for nothing.

You know, it's out there and it's got that message in it.

And I think it's a really important one.

I think we need to really, no matter what we're doing, whether you're making movies or whatever, we've still got to keep this connection with each other.

Well, I've got to go and pick up my children, Howard.

So thank you so much for coming on.

We didn't talk about television and we didn't need to because your films are on television.

So that's the way I'm playing this one.

There we are.

Yeah.

Thanks.

No format questions required.

I got too much to talk to you about.

I can't be talking about, like, what's your favorite TV show?

I can't be doing that with you.

We'll do it all next time.

You'd be surprised because you'd think I'd be watching horror stuff.

I don't.

We'll have to do a part two.

We will.

We will.

I look forward to it.

All right.

Well, thanks for coming on.

Cheers, Steve.

That was me talking to Howard J.

Ford, the English film director.

That was a great chat.

I really enjoyed talking to him about all his films that I've seen and the ones I haven't.

I've since seen Escape.

I really enjoyed it.

So, you know, go and watch that right now on Apple TV and look out for DarkGame.

It'll be out very soon.

And watch The Ledge and all of his films and keep an eye out for River of Blood next year.

Now to today's outro track.

Right, today's outro track is the shortest one of all.

It's just simply named Chase Scene.

I made this up as a piece of film music for some kind of action sequence.

I don't know.

And because I was talking to Howard, I thought this would be a perfect place to just pop this tune on.

In the background, you can hear the vocal talents of Ethan Alley, the operatic singing.

That's why it was on the 1117 album back in 2009.

Here we go, Chase Scene.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Howard J.

Ford.

Come back next week for another episode of Television Times.

Until then, thank you for listening.

Bye bye for now.