Simon Pegg is coming to MANIFF2020
Simon Pegg will be attending the screening of LOST TRANSMISSIONS at the Manchester Film Festival 2020 on Sunday 8th March at 5:30PM at the Odeon, Great Northern. Simon will also be taking part in a Q&A alongside director Katharine O’Brien.
Tickets are available here http://www.maniff.com/losttransmissions
LOST TRANSMISSIONS sees Pegg in a rare dramatic role, playing an acclaimed music producer who goes off his medication for schizophrenia. The film also stars Juno Temple as a friend who chases him through the L.A. music scene, trying to get him the help he needs.
The film will be having its Manchester Premiere after having its World Premiere at Tribeca and UK Premiere at Glasgow and Pegg and director Katharine O’Brien will be on hand to take questions from the audience after the screening.
Pegg who is the star of the Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End), the Mission Impossible franchise and the Star Trek franchise has said that the film has helped him open up about his own struggles with mental health and that it represented a great opportunity to work with a female director.
Katharine O’Brien is making her directorial debut with the film after having previously written The Automatic Hate and worked on Virgin Suicides and Buffalo ʼ66. O’Brien also wrote LOST TRANSMISSIONS and has said that the film is based on events she experienced when a close friend went of his medication. See below for our interview with Katharine.
LOST TRANSMISSIONS screens at MANIFF2020 at the Odeon, Great Northern on Sunday 8th March at 5:30PM.
Tickets are available here http://www.maniff.com/losttransmissions
KATHARINE O’BRIEN INTERVIEW
You wrote and directed the film. What was the inspiration?
It was inspired by a similar experience I went through with a friend of mine. There were a lot of us trying to get him help but we discovered how impossible it can be to get someone psychiatric care when they don’t want it. You just go through this revolving door of temporary hospital stays. It was heartbreaking. It was around the same time that the homeless crisis was exploding in Los Angeles. I would drive by encampments on my way home every day, and it really connected the dots for me. Most of the people on the streets are suffering some kind of mental illness and in need of help, not being brushed off by society. I thought there wasn’t a strong enough connection being drawn between the broken mental health care system and our homeless problem in the public consciousness, and the film aims to do that.
How long did the process take from finishing the script to getting the film made?
I started writing the script in 2015 after taking my last film I co-wrote around the festival circuit, and we shot in the spring of 2018. Pulse Films was interested in the script because it’s really in their wheelhouse, being a story set in the music scene.
At what stage did Simon and Juno become involved?
Simon became involved and was a champion for it early on. He was way ahead of the curve of making an effort to work with female directors. He just made the realization on his own that he hadn’t worked with any female directors in his career yet and wanted to do something about it. He also was ready for a more dramatic role. We had to wait for a bit while he finished shooting Mission Impossible. There was a moment when that got delayed we considered moving on to someone else, but I just couldn’t. He was the one for it. The character is challenging to play in the sense that for the majority of the film he is frustrating people and pissing them off. It required someone that you just loved and wanted to continue to help despite it all. Simon is so uniquely lovable. In addition to having incredible comedic and dramatic range and knowing just when to play what. The person the film is based on was very funny, and the things he would say would be funny when he was on his medication and disturbing when he was off. Having grown up with schizophrenia in my own family I found that to be a particular experience of it. A lot of the things they say are by nature off the wall. It’s the kind of thing where in the moment it’s scary and then once things have settled down, you can laugh at the absurdity of it. Humor is a coping mechanism in these situations. So it was great luck to work with such a comedic ninja as Simon.
Juno came on board closer to the shoot. She was suggested to us by our casting director Jessica Kelly, who knew Juno personally and knew Juno to be similar to Hannah in having a huge heart. She hadn’t initially crossed my mind because Juno is such a chameleon in all her different roles. She’s an incredible character actor. I was happy to have a role for her that let the world in on what an incredibly loving, empathetic human being she is. This character is our heroine because she is nurturing and sticks it through to the end, which is a specifically feminine type of hero. Juno also has all this wildness contained within her, so as Hannah is going through her own journey, tapping into this reservoir of emotion she had been suppressing through antidepressants, Juno had all that to release like a damn breaking.
What were the biggest challenges in making the film?
It was a great experience. We had a very enthusiastic devoted crew. It was a fluid shoot with producers who were on top of everything. But we were a small film and that means that you don’t have a lot of time. We shot in 19 days and had 15 locations across Los Angeles. You find yourself whittling things down just to fit within the parameters of your resources. I would have pushed the clock a little longer to get shots perfect if I could go back. You realize in the edit room that’s the most important thing.
What are you planning next?
I have an action film set in 1500s Scotland. Quite a different genre! But treated with a similar level of realism and social commentary. We’re looking to make it a American and British co-production, so I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time over here! I wrote it in Scotland and just love this part of the world. I’m of Irish and English descent so everything feels very familiar. I’m very happy when I visit.