You will know him by his plaid shirt and supremely fuzzy hair. Familiar to most for his role as nerd icon Moss in The IT Crowd, Richard his first steps into comedy), the half-Norwegian, half-Nigerian actor/director has also directed videos for Vampire Weekend and Arctic Monkeys, helped to create the late-night curiosity Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, and once co-authored something called AD/BC: A Rock Opera. And now he’s written and directed his debut film. Submarine is adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s 2008 novel of the same name, and executive produced, oddly enough, by Hollywood’s Ben Stiller. Painfully funny and saturated with gorgeous colour, the film offers a glimpse into the paranoid imaginings of a megalomaniac 15-year-old boy, his dreams and affectations, and close observations of his equally quirky neighbours in suburban Wales. Sentimental, slushy and deadpan enough to get away with it, Submarine marks the debut of an exciting voice in British cinema. Here we talk to Ayoade and his bowl-cut leading man, Welsh actor Craig Roberts, about on-set experiences and the state of Welsh national headwear.
Well guys. You’re staying at the Merrion. Have you noticed the chocolate chair in the lobby?
RA; What? No! How does it not melt?
I’m presuming they have some kind of purpose-built climate control.
RA: It’s a lot of effort. I’d managed to not notice it.
So you’ve made a proud Welsh film, despite not being Welsh. How did the Welsh tourist board feel about it?
CR: I’m Welsh, I’d definitely see it as such. Wales is a beautiful country, and it’s made to look beautiful in the film. I think Wales really needs to take its hat off to Richard. I mean, if Wales wore a hat.
RA: Oh I think it would take its hat off to me…
What hat does Wales wear? I mean, if it was able to wear one?
CR: Maybe like a bandanna. Most of the films that have been shot in Wales don’t even try to show it off. So really I do think Wales needs to take its Welsh bandanna off to him.
I really liked how the film is set in a nondescript past. Did you have a specific era in mind, or does it just reflect a kind of parody of ‘backward rural Britain’…
RA: There wasn’t ever really a need to specify, because as soon as you do that your viewers start looking out for signifiers of a certain era. Even having the characters watch Crocodile Dundee – I thought that could be any time after it was made. It ran for around three years, in Ipswich anyhow. It didn’t feel necessary to name a year; I like that the film just radiates a certain image and mood. Specific information would be surplus.
Was there an element of rebuilding childhood memories in Submarine?
RA: I tend to resist any kind of research. It was more about creating something impressionistic; there was no Kubrick moment where I sent off someone to take four thousand photos of the street I grew up on.
You can be a tyrant next time.
RA: I completely understand that approach! I’d love to have someone do all that for me, instead of having to go out and actually look at locations.
One of my favourite lines in the film was about the ‘Super 8 film of memory’. There’s a nostalgia for something universal to everyone…
RA: And I think Oliver has all these cinematic and literary tropes in his mind which he can trawl through when he needs to. He views himself in the third person a lot. In fact the German title of the book is ‘I, Oliver Tate’. The German word for ‘Submarine’ is more or less ‘U-Boat’, and it’s just a little bit too military. ‘I, Oliver Tate’ would be quite fitting.
The film makes Jordana, Oliver’s first girlfriend, seem super-cold.. It’s strange to see such an aloof female character juxtaposed with a very vulnerable male one.
RA: I don’t think Jordana is cold; she’s just very angry. And when she becomes open with Oliver it’s a very big leap for her. It’s the perspective of the film, everything being from Oliver’s viewpoint, rather than the film itself going hard on girls. Or being scared of them. It would be like saying Taxi Driver objectifies women. It’s about how Oliver relates to them; in his eyes they get turned into these distant figures.
As actors did both of you relate in some way to Oliver’s obsession with studying people, the way he looks at details and how people behave?
RA: I suppose you just become interested in your character. For me personally, looking for things like me is not a quest. There’s an idea that you write something because you relate to it, but personally I don’t find myself interesting as a subject material. I’d much rather read about a man in Russia in the 17th century than someone currently living near Elephant and Castle.
Did the author, Joe Dunthorne, have much input in the script?
RA: I’d meet up with him fairly often and show him drafts of the script. I always wanted him to be as involved as he wanted to be, checking up on it before it was done.
And then Ben Stiller comes along.
RA: Yes and typed the whole thing up.
How did that collaboration come about?
RA: Well, you see he’d done the Mavis Beacon Course. He wanted to get full value out of it.
Was adapting a novel in any way like adapting songs, as in, you had to visualize it in a new form?
RA: Much more of the job is already done with a music video, in that none of the story is there. You’re potentially writing a whole new scenario. While with a book you already have a set of characters, and maybe a setting, already.
Though it’s not always been the case with the videos I’ve done, the song is usually the main thing. It’s a bit more geometric; there’s this very definite length to it, and the pacing is very important. Whereas you have to create your own pacing in a film, which is, I think, why music video directors often find it quite difficult when they start out making films. That whole skeleton is gone.
Reading the novel did you have a very clear idea of what you wanted?
RA: No, I find that my idea of it comes about during the writing process. When you start out thinking about how it’s going to look, casting it, finding where it’s going to be shot. You do have images in your head which you cling to from the outset, which are in many ways the worst things… it always changes along the way. Often I find that the old ideas are safety blankets, things you cling to because you know you can do them, and those are often the first things that need to go.
Craig, how was it for you working with all these established, ‘adult’ actors like Sally Hawkins and Paddy Considine?
CR: I was a major fan of Paddy Considine before. Stuff like Dead Man’s Shoes. I’d not seen Happy-Go-Lucky before shooting the film, because people told me specifically not to see it. And I’m glad I didn’t see it before Submarine, as she really is amazing in it. And Noah Taylor is one of the funniest guys you’ll find. He’s a brilliant actor.
One of the things in the film I liked was the combination of humour and sadness. Are you going in a more serious direction?
RA: It really depends on what the story is, I don’t have any genre affiliations. It always seems odd to me when people declare ‘I will only make sci fi movies from now on’ or whatever. Kubrick did a pretty good sci fi film and remained within the genre, without making only sci fi films. I think what he did was just watch everything, and decide that all the other films weren’t as good as what he could do.
Submarine is on general release from the 18th March.
Words: Roisin Kiberd
