Interview with John McPhail - Director of Anna and the Apocalypse

I had the opportunity to talk with Scottish film director John McPhail, who last year gave the world the only Scottish, Teen, Zombie Musical, Anna and The Apocalypse, as the film comes to Limited Edition Blu-Ray from Second Sight this month. We talk about how the movie came about, its production, various different cuts, his career and an encounter with a cast member from the Neil Marshall Horror Film The Decent.

How did Anna and The Apocalypse come about? And what attracted you to the project?

Anna and The Apocalypse started as a short film in 2009 by a guy called Ryan McHendry. It won a New Talent Bafta and then it was picked up to be developed into a feature. While in development and writing the script with Alan McDonald, unfortunately Ryan was diagnosed with a bone cancer, which only affects young people, and he sadly passed away in 2015.

I never got to meet Ryan. Quite a lot of the people I worked with, they were making their short films and I was making mine with my mates. It's funny how parallel we all were at the same time and who we were all working with before Ryan passed. Naysun Alae Carew was the lead producer; him and Ryan grew up in Dumfries and Galloway. Ryan, Naysun and our art director Ryan Clachrie are from there. They met at 16. They started making movies together. Ryan beat cancer; then it came back with a vengeance. They tried to get it to a state where he could make it, but it wasn't meant to be. Naysun went to him and said, “What do you want to do about the film?”
“Look, it's all our film. Go on and make it. See what you can do", he said.

They carried on. Actually, one of the drafts of the film, it took a darker turn because Alan not only lost his writing partner but lost a really good friend. A lot of the messages in the film are about young people dealing with loss and understanding death. There's a lot of that that's true towards this film. A lot of the production team and writing team, the musical side were dealing with the loss of a friend at such a young age. There was that darker element that came into the film, the film took that severe turn or twist. Our script executive Gillian Christie and Naysun Carew approached Alan to bring a lot more of the fun and lightness back into it, and then they went out to find a director. They had been looking at Musical and Horror directors. They hadn't found that right fit. They saw my first feature Where Do We Go From Here at the Glasgow Film Festival, which had a wonderful reception that night. I just came back from a talk and saw the last couple of scenes from that movie. I didn't know how it played when the credits rolled. The air felt electric - people were out of their seats clapping and cheering. I felt like I missed something, especially afterwards when I found out people were really loving on the film.

The two producers were there, and they thought I'd be there to do them a good turn with Anna. They were after the heart that my first film had. They invited me to pitch for it. The moment I read the script I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the kids and characters; it just spoke to me. These kids felt like kids. There was this comedy side, this darkness to it. I love John Hughes movies like The Breakfast Club. In them there is that teenage angst plus all this silliness too, alongside the reality of it. That's what really came through. Credit must go to Ryan McHendry and Alan for that.

Anna and the Apocalypse - Hollywood Ending

What was your approach to the script and were you a fan of the the Musical & Horror genres?

It was so funny the day that I came in to meet the team. Alan passed me the script and said, “Here, this is yours; now goodbye.”
I went, “No, no, this is not how this works! You had been working on this film for years, and I want us to work together.”

What I also asked for - I love movies from the 80s that had on-set writers - I wanted him to be on set as much as possible, to just sit behind the monitor. I might not need you all the time but there's going to be time where I need you. I would really like that. For me it was really important to have Alan there. He lived and breathed this film for so long I wanted him there to be part of it.

There were days, I remember one in particular, we were so behind shooting the last scene, 101, where she comes into the gym and she has to sing and fight onto the stage, then the dad has to fight savage. He gets knocked off and she says goodbye. That whole scene was one scene. Having Alan there, he was able to cut out a couple of pages of the film that I didn't need, that we could work round. We could reposition things. That was really important to me, not only to have that as a tool but because Alan came that far with the film. I didn't want him to miss out the fun that could be happening on set.

The writing aspect of it was down to him. When I came on board I wanted my jokes in there, too, and my stamp on the film. We did work together to get that in there. The musical side of it I was terrified about because my favourite musical is South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. I'm not the biggest fan of musicals; it's not in my wheelhouse. The moment I got the job, right, I thought, I really need to sit down and watch some of these. I fell in love with West Side Story, forgot Steve Martin was in Little Shop Of Horrors with dark hair, I re-watched Rocky Horror Picture Show and I'm a massive Miike fan, so any opportunity to watch The Happiness of the Katakuris, I'm in. Once I understood the musical side of it - it's just an extension of the story telling - It's an opportunity to sit with the audience and reaffirm things. Just show them what these characters want and what their desires are, what they need. I feel like we all hate the edition of Bade Runner with the voice-over on it. This is a great moment for me to sit and have these characters just bear their souls to the audience.

Once I realized what I was doing and how to do it, it became easier. The horror and the zombie stuff I love. I love Horror movies and zombie movies. I was always terrified to make a horror film in case horror fans hated me. I had been doing comedy for so long, and people kept on telling me comedy is dead hard to do. I went, no, horror is hard to do because I would be terrified of screwing it up. The opportunity to do in-camera gore and practical stuff, the score starting to increase the blackness of the film, and having all those bright colours at the beginning and then by the third act souring them all was something that really excited me. I really couldn't wait to get my hands on.

How was the film financed and how much support did Creative Scotland give the production?

I can't really answer the finance question. It's the first film I've just been able to direct; everything else I've been a producer on or helped raise the finance for. The boys, Naysun Carew and Nicholas Crum, were so keen for me to not to have a producer hat on, just to direct. It was a real luxury which I'm delighted about.

When it came to Creative Scotland, they got behind this project like nothing else, supported us and championed us from day one. From the boys on their side and for me we had a great relationship with them. They never step on our toes. We were never dictated to. We were never told to we couldn't do this, and they were genuinely brilliant with us. Even when we got to Post Production they came in and would give us their notes, just like every other execs. I can't praise them any more.

What was then biggest challenge, if any, you overcame during production and how long was the shoot?

The challenge of production for the film for us was to find a school that was going to be suitable. We always knew we were going to have a 28-day shoot; that was as much as we could afford, which was five weeks, five days on, two days off, six days on, one day off, if you know that kind of thing. So, one of the challenges we were going to have was three weeks of shooting on-site and two weeks of location filming, so we needed a school that was going to be able to help double as our offices, as well as be used as a functioning set, as well as a store for our vehicles and the equipment - everything. It's got to look like a picturesque little town, so finding the school was always going to be a difficult thing for us.

When we were in prep and eventually we found St. Stephen's down in Port Glasgow and they were amazing. I love Port Glasgow because it's a total working class town. I love on the way down there towards Gourock you go through Port Glasgow, which is rough working class, then you get to Greenock, it's a little bit working class, as the further towards Gourock you get it starts to get a bit more sandstone type houses up on the hill, and you get to Giffnock it's real upper class. I love this lower, upper middle class system on that drive down there. Port Glasgow is the rough one; that's where we were shooting in a housing scheme.

The locals were brilliant, so they were. I'm so glad that we chose to go down there because when we were doing the song “Turning My Life Around” and she comes out of her house in the morning, most of those Christmas decorations are the locals'. We asked them, we got permission to shoot on that street, and we asked loads of houses if they could leave their decorations or put them up the night before. The local community came out in force. They championed us. We were really lucky to get this picturesque town, this amazing school, and we came into a community in Port Glasgow and Greenock who just embraced us and wanted us there. We were sitting there shooting, we've got dummies with blood all over them in people's back gardens coming home from taking their kids to school and going, “Oh, hello. I'll just go 'round the other way.” Nobody had any complaints, nobody moaned at us, “Why are you here doing this? Get out of my street!” Once we got the school we were off to a flyer with it.

Did you have to make concessions in the script to make the film more attractive to international audiences?

One of the reasons why I wanted to shoot in Port Glasgow was because it was on the Clyde and you've got the Clyde running through this little picturesque town and over on the other side you've got Dumbarton, you've got the rolling hills of Dumbarton, and then you've got the Clyde through there, so I always thought the Americans were going to go, ”Wow! Look at this picturesque little Scottish town,” and that's the kind of quaintness that you want to feel. That's really going to relate to them. There was never any talk of let's cast an American or cast someone who's got an accent that they are attached to. Sarah Swire was the knockout Steph. When I saw her audition tape it was like, there's nobody else getting it than her. She was just perfect for it, absolutely perfect. I feel with her addition to it, it really has helped with that North American audience be part of it even though she's the kooky, weird one. She is such a popular character that helped with it. I also feel that we told a story that didn't feel colloquial, it just didn't feel Scottish or British. It felt like it was a story most people could understand. We all fight with our parents; we all have disagreements with whatever want do with our parents.

I remember having an argument with my dad. I didn't want to go to Glasgow Uni to go and study Film and Critical Analysis. I wanted to go to Glasgow College of Building and Printing to do a practical course for him. Why wouldn't you want to go to university rather than college? But it was best for me. Like a lot of other people, there are these moments in time that their parents know better, but really nobody knows better than you. I feel that's international. We all have parents that are hard on us. We all fall in and out of love with people. We all have that unattainable person that we are in love with and a best friend. The message behind the film is kids are dealing with death too - that moment when you find out death is real. It's everywhere on the news. Once you've opened that door you can't shut it. It's like Santa Claus isn't real anymore. Once you know that its like these kids dealing with death; that's a relatable theme.

What was your favourite sequence to shoot? And were there any planned but not filmed?

There was one sequence that we were really disappointed didn't work out and it was the original opening to the film. We had a little cardboard town made up and this little toy car was screaming through it and all of a sudden Santa Clause's foot comes in and crushes it. The little paper mache town is a model of the town we are in. Its this big musical number. Santa is like patient X with a bite on his leg stumbling through this town. Everyone thinks hes drunk. It's very Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places. We shot that sequence. We turned up in the morning, the light was perfect, with a nice dusting of snow. Our Art Department had been working for weeks to get this little town absolutely right. It's the same centre that Anna and John go through when he's pushing her in the shopping trolley except it's pretty, there's people wandering around, everyone is singing “What a Time to be Alive.” Santa is bumping through people and we meet the snow man, we meet the stag party and the Rudolph Emporium Elves. We go through all that, but what happened was we just had wind pick up and then the rain came. It just didn't stop raining. We had to take down a lot of the decorations because of health and safety. We were averaging 17 set-ups a day. On that day we averaged 7, so we all thought it was going to be an insurance job and that we would come back and do it.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. We saw that we shot enough to be able to make it work, then when got into post we couldn't get it to work. It broke our hearts. We were really excited by it as it was dead funny. I saw La La Land the day before we shot Anna. They had this big opening sequence in the cars and on the freeway. I went, “Ours is going to be better than La La Land. It got rained off, didn't it ? Ha, ha, which is a shame.

The sequence I loved doing was the bowling alley fight scene. I knew exactly how I was going to do that, and on that day because we were so tight for time, I'm a big fan of collaboration and its key with every aspect of film making, but right that day I was a dictator. I'm not directing, this is the set up we are doing. I'm working with the cast, giving my camera crew leeway. I knew exactly every shot and how we were going to get it. I loved that day because we got to crush heads with bowling balls. It was a lot of fun. My best friend is Tyler Collins, who plays the zombie that get stabbed in the face with the spatula, so to have your best pal on set the whole was always great fun.

How was it working with the cast especially Paul Kaye as Savage? who has appeared in Game Of Thrones and is a favourite of mine.

Paul Kaye was amazing! The Americans were Marmite with him, either love him or hate him. Because he's a traditional British pantomime villain, for me I always wanted Willy Wonka meets the Joker. I feel like I got it with Paul: he's big, crazy and bombastic. There's a lot of stuff in there that's him. For example, when Anna gets on stage, her and her dad embrace. Paul goes, “Group hug!” That's Paul. When he eventually smashes the bottle and he's standing there he goes, "You roly poly pig faced pleb,” that's him, too. When we were shooting both his numbers he was just mental and he would go crazy with it. It's exactly what you want with your actors; you want someone who's going to throw everything at it and the kitchen sink. It was great working with Paul.

The other members of the cast, those kids were incredible. I could not fault them. You couldn't have said a bad word about them on set, I would never hear it. They could do no wrong in my eyes. They came in every day regardless of wind, rain, shine, snow, sleet, they were in. They would hit their marks with absolute passion and gusto. They were incredible. They just loved each other. I haven't seen a cast come together like that and just be. There was no egos, nothing but friendship and support, and every single time we would be behind due to raining then that would be turning into sleet we'd just be getting ready. We were an hour or two behind, their cast cars would pull up onto set, they would come out with all their jackets on and hot water bottles. I would just beam. They were going to come down, hit their marks, deliver their dialogue and do it with everything we were going to get out of this two hour hole, and these kids were going to do it for me. They did it off their own. I loved working with them. I couldn't recommend them to anyone higher.

There's three cuts of the film, which is your preferred version?

There's 3 cuts of the film. I would say the closest version to where I want it to be, FTR 3. The rest of the world's theatrical version just to run through them there FTR 1, which is our festival cut, FTR 2, which is our northern American/Latin America cut, and then there's FTR 3, which is the rest of the world cut. An interesting story is that all 3 versions of the film got theatrical release; it all played in different parts of the world. FTR 1 played in Australia because they couldn't get FTR 3 rated in time; they had to use the festival version. FTR 2 played in North America and FTR 3 here in Europe and the rest of the world. The reason why FTR 3 is my preferred version is I love the festival version and I'm disappointed that we lose a song in there in part of hindsight and part of a cut for so long. You lose a bit of sight of things after spending time on the festival circuit with it. The Americans wanted to make amendments for their theatrical cut, and me alongside my producer Neysun saw this as an opportunity to dive back in and fix a couple of things that we hadn't spotted or things we'd tighten up the film a little bit. It's strange, there's so many things I like about the original version, the song that got cut I love, the poem “Night Before Christmas” we just had to get into it and ramp into the third act. I would encourage people to watch the festival version just to see where we came from.

What can fans of the film expect from this upcoming Blu-ray release of Anna and The Apocalypse?

There is a commentary with me, Alan, the writer and composers Roddy Hart & Tommy Reilly. We did that ourselves, so I don't know if it's going to be any good or not, but I'm sure it should be a lot of fun because nobody cut it apart from Roddy, so it should be really ridiculous. It will have little nods pointing out different things in the background, just inspirations of songs; there will be information there. There's the two different cuts of the film, so you will be able to see the FTR 3 as well as FTR 1. There's a bunch of interviews from me and the cast. Roddy and Tommy that will be on the disc, too.

Are you hoping that Anna and The Apocalypse becomes a Christmas viewing main stay of peoples holidays, and what will you be watching during this time?

So far, Anna and The Apocalypse has been a dream come true; the dream of a theatrical release, of getting opportunity to make a zombie/horror/teen movie to be distributed by Orion Pictures. This film has sort of already exceeded my expectations and then some. This year the Glasgow Film Theatre - along with Home Alone, Muppets Christmas Carol, Elf - Anna and The Apocalypse is playing there, which is also a dream come true because that's where you go watch the classics.

Can you talk about how you became a Film Director and offer advice to those who want to follow in your footsteps?

I was working on Waterloo Road (BBC High School set drama shot in Greenock) and I wasn't enjoying my job anymore. This might sound mental, but I was working in the Camera Department, I was Camera Assistant. I was working 13-14 hour days 6 day weeks. I wasn't feeling creative anymore and I felt something was missing.

One of the actors took unwell. so we had three weeks off and I wrote this little short film called Notes. We were going to shoot it over one weekend, me and a bunch of mates. Do you know that I was never picked 1st, 2nd, or 6th or 7th in football? I always got the “cheers for turning up” medal. Even with the camera department I always felt like I was trying to keep up with everything. Things didn't click, but the moment I did Notes everything clicked: the communication, the cutting, the framing, everything in my head just came together with that little shoot and I remember coming away from it going, “I had the best time doing that and everything worked out. I'm going to do this again.” We got into post and I thought, this isn't bad at all. It went to its first festival and it won an award. I'm like, “I'm going to give this directing malarkey a go.” Me and the director of photography on Waterloo Road had fallen out and my contract wasn't getting renewed. I was, “Do you know what? I'm going to show you. I'm going to become a Director.” I went out and made another 4 short films over the next year to help raise my profile to try and raise finance for that first feature.

I'm dyslexic. I didn't found out until I got to university. I did 6 years of school; I did my 2 years of college and then I was lucky to be accepted into university the very first essay I handed in. I got pulled into my head lecturer's office and they went, “Are you dyslexic?” I went, “No.” He went, “Are you sure?” They sent me for a test and it turns out that I was severely dyslexic. I went, “That's how I couldn't pass English!” Hahaha!

What are your thoughts on the current state of the Scottish Film Industry and what are your hopes for its future?

I don't know. We don't have a lot of money, that's the problem. One of the things is trying to get the right projects. When you think about what's come out recently, Beats has done really well and I'm dead excited for Micheal Caton-Jones film, Our Ladies. There a handful of films I know that are going to do well and should do well internationally. I think Our Ladies is going to be one of those Scottish Films that will be like a Bill Forsyth movie that will be there forever, but there's not a lot of money here.

I remember applying to Creative Scotland for financing for Where Do We Go From Here. I never got it, but it's because it's like anything, you try to get a mortgage and if you don't tick the boxes, then you don't get it. Same for film financing. My parents aren't in the arts. My mum was a Social Worker and my dad was a Painter/Decorator, so there is opportunities for people. I hope people believe that in themselves and know that it's just about putting the work in. I know I said I went and shot a film with my mates. I did spend the next year writing and directing shorts, developing my craft. It's so it's achievable. What I hope for the Scottish Film Industry is that it picks up. I know that's what I want to do. I want to live and work here. I want to make movies here. There's more chance that I'll be going over to the States on my next couple of films, but my end goal is to be back here working, not only making movies here but bring finance and investment here. That's what the production company that made Anna and The Apocalypse, Blazing Griffin, want to do too.

What projects are you currently working on?

I've got a few. me and Naysun Carew, who was the lead producer on Anna and The Apocalypse, we are working on a film called Prestigious Animals, which is a comedy heist movie. It's being written by Grady Hendrix. He's the guy who wrote Satanic Panic and he wrote a whole bunch of Horror Novels. It is a comedy about two brothers that get in deep with these drug dealers and they have to steal a Nile crocodile from one drug dealer to give to another drug dealer. It's really ridiculous and really funny. It's about two brothers trying to connect. We are really excited about that. We are waiting for the first draft to come through at the moment. I've got a couple of things with Worrying Drake I've put a development application in and we've got this film we know XYZ are really excited about. Hopefully we can get the financing for that so we can get stuck into that over the start of next year.

Anna and the Apocalypse - cleaner zombie

Was there any fear about Anna and The Apocalypse being a genre film within the Scottish Film Industry?

I didn't have any fear until the release and I realised that the UK doesn't really like genre. I think they really don't like me. This is the funny thing, I don't get any job opportunities here. I get no job offers. I apply for jobs and written to people for jobs. It would be great to live and work here. I can't get anything. The Americans, on the other hand, I've got 3 massive agents at Paradigm, which is a huge talent agency in LA. XYZ have just taken me on for management but I've got no UK representation, no UK offers for me. That's the UK's attitude towards genre, which is goodbye for me. That's heartbreaking. I'm watching people around me getting jobs who are from down south or abroad, no matter what I can do.

The fear of genre is our theatrical release wasn't done very well in the UK. US was amazing; it was incredible for what Orion Pictures put into it. Even our Japanese theatrical release plus our Australian release was far better than the UK. You don't know how heartbreaking it is when you've put so much work, me and my team, so much effort in this film and to get the UK theatrical release we did and the attitude we did, it was really heartbreaking. There's so many fans in the UK that wanted to see this film not only in their city, but make it accessible. We had to fight to get a screening in London, I'm talking about fighting, and eventually we got one screening in London in the Prince Charles Theatre. The screening sold out and that was it. There's your UK release. That's because of the UK's attitude towards genre, which isn't the greatest.

I should say there's been one UK company that's been good to me, and that's Studio Canal. They have been very good to me and keen to work with me. The Koreans are making the best cinema at the moment. They make sure certain screens are for Korean cinema. Whenever a big blockbuster comes out they don't shut down the rest of the screens for the blockbuster; that gets a limited amount of screens because they want to show off their own movies.

Cineworld have been dead good to me. When we did Where Do We Go From Here, we got Glasgow Cineworld to give us a two-week release. That was because Lisa Henderson is one of the programmers of Cineworld and is a fan of Scottish independent cinema. What happened was we did an Indiegogo launch night at the Cineworld. I paid £250 for a screen and invited a lot of people to come see the short films, and this was the launch of Indiegogo campaign, and she saw all of our shorts. She goes, "John, these are brilliant. I love these! When you get the feature done can you pass it onto us to see If we could do a limited run of it,” which happened. We got 2 weeks off the back of that. Cineworld do want to support independent cinema, they want to support independent filmmakers, particularly in Glasgow. That's our own Cineworld that wants to help us, so there is an opportunity there to be able to get that, it's just how and when.

Finally…. Do you have a favourite Scottish film?

I love Local Hero, Gregory's Girl, but do Neil Marshall's films count? I love The Decent; it's incredible. It's got Shauna MacDonald in it. In fact, one of my all-time favourite things that has happened to me, I was in Korea, for a film festival and I do this red carpet thing. It's huge with hundreds and thousands of people there. I go and find my seat. It's outside. I'm sitting there nervously. This woman in a blue dress comes up to me and says, “Hi, John, my name is Shauna MacDonald.” I was like, “Oh, my God! You're the woman from The Decent and you know my name! How is this happening?” She was there with a film and she had heard my voice. It was the best thing to have happened to me. I love Neil Marshall's movie, Dog Soldiers.