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Interview – WAMG Talks To Director Mat Kirkby From Oscar Nominated Short THE PHONE CALL; Stars Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent
Whether making a feature or short film, a great amount of time goes into the process. The writing, the shooting, the editing and then getting your film shown… every filmmaker makes the arduous journey and dreams one day they’ll hear their names announced on Oscar nominations morning.
For one such filmmaking team, Mat Kirkby and James Lucas, the dream became reality on January 16 when their short film, THE PHONE CALL, was among the five films nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Short Film category.
Their emotional film follows Heather, (played by Oscar nominee SALLY HAWKINS), a shy lady who works at a helpline call centre. When she receives a phone call from a mystery man (played by Oscar winner JIM BROADBENT) she has no idea that the encounter will change her life forever.
Mat Kirkby is a commercials/music video director working out of Ridley Scott Associates in London, although he spends much of his time writing screenplays and eating cake. His work includes videos for Adele, Basement Jaxx and Muse and adverts for Nike and Playstation. Mat appeared on the cover of Screen International as a “uK STAR OF TOMORROW”, (although the other ‘stars’ such as Gemma Arterton, Andrew Garfield and Felicity Jones all actually became stars). He is currently developing 3 features, the psychological thriller “CALL GIRL”, biopic “HAIR OF THE DOG” and comedy “WINGMA”’. Mat’s greatest achievement still remains setting the Guinness World Record for ‘most consecutive bikini-waxes in a 24 hr period’ for the Fatboy Slim video ‘Bushes’.
Having already made his way to Hollywood for the Oscar Nominees Luncheon, Mat Kirkby and I had a delightful and funny phone conversation on the inspiration for the short film, what he’ll be wearing on Oscar night and his upcoming feature film.
WAMG: Your film was shown at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November and it received a warm reception.
Mat Kirkby: You know what I do is all these festivals where I can’t go to, which is most of them, that are in wonderful places like St. Louis, I have a look at where the cinema is and when the screening is, I have a little walk on Google maps down the road. (laughs). So I’m there in spirit.
WAMG: Everyone is getting the chance to see it now as it’s playing as part of the OSCAR Nominated Short Film program. People can watch your film in theaters and On-Demand.
MK: It’s incredible, isn’t it? When you think about it, with these feature films, we’ve seen them all – the Oscar campaign and all those big stories. We know who the stars are and we’ve seen the movies, but in our case, we’re only just, at this moment, finding an audience.
WAMG: How did the film come about?
MK: My day job is doing commercials and music videos. One of my colleagues, James, as we were talking at work, discovered both of our mums volunteer for helplines. It’s a funny coincidence. We decided to write the script together as an ode to our mothers as a tribute to them. They are both very selfless and they give up their times with no money or no reward just to help other people. We wanted to celebrate that.
WAMG: What was their reaction on the nomination?
MK: They’re both extremely excited. We just had the Nominee Luncheon and I sent her a picture of Clint Eastwood which she liked.
WAMG: You even made it on The Academy’s Instagram page
MK: I know! We did well. I wore a very loud suit on purpose. I thought I’m going to get in the way here and get on people’s pictures.
WAMG: What’s great is that everyone can follow your road to the Oscar’s on the film’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
MK: It’s funny, isn’t it? I never would have believed it. When we started up our little website, we had one picture and we just filmed a film. I didn’t think it would keep going this long. It’s been great.
WAMG: You tweeted out, “we’re sending on our film to the Academy today.” Like on a lark.
MK: I remember sending that package off and kissing the envelope for good luck. I thought, it’s out of our hands now and off it went. (laughs)
Today we sent our film to the Academy for consideration for the Oscars in early 2015. Wow!!
— The Phone Call (@ThePhoneCall) September 23, 2014
WAMG: How great was it that someone was recording you and James Lucas as you were watching the Nominations announcement!
MK: I saw that. It was recorded on somebody’s phone and I’m so glad. A couple of people have asked what it felt like to get a nomination. I have no idea because my mind went completely blank. It’s like I’m from the Shires – like I’m a Hobbit. He’s not really used to this kind of stuff. I know what my reaction was because there’s video of it. I tend to send them this and say this is what it was like.
WAMG: How did you convince Hawkins, a previous Oscar nominee and Broadbent, an Oscar winner, to be in your film?
MK: We sent them the script. Sally is simply amazing. She read the script, which I couldn’t believe. Then we arranged to meet for a cup of tea, through her agent, and she said, “I’d love to do this. We need to wait for a window in my schedule.” We waited a year. We had to be really tenacious and not go mad and patient because when you’re asking somebody like that to do this massive favor of lending you their talent, we dug our heels in. When we got the call, they asked if we could shoot in two weeks – there’s a window – and we said yes. We filmed with her two weeks after she finished shooting BLUE JASMINE. It’s taken a year longer than it would’ve taken a feature film to get a nomination.
With Jim Broadbent, because she’s the central role and you’ve got to see her, we waited until we got her and then we used her as a carrot. It’s a very good carrot to dangle in front of Jim. The minute we knew she was available then we could call up Jim’s agent. We asked if he was in town and that Sally Hawkins would love to do a short film with him. He was available! It was just sheer luck. It took a year to get her and two hours to get him.
The Phone Call
WAMG: Tell me about working with one on the phone and one in front of the camera?
MK: It crossed our minds – what if Jim is not available. How would we technically do this? He was available for both days, so we had a proper phone line going between him and her. We had Sally in an office and we had him in another room and he sat there for two days on the phone. I made him up a little room that his character would inhabit. We got him a comfy chair and put pictures up on the wall to make it feel like the character’s home. I didn’t even point the camera at him.
Funny enough, after the first day, someone said they couldn’t believe we were using Jim Broadbent, an Oscar winner, and we’re not even going to film him. I said, oh, has he won an Oscar? I didn’t realize. If I had known, I probably would have succumbed, but that’s the freedom of making your own short film. It was all done on favors with no expectations.
WAMG: There’s such a nice, natural pacing to the film.
MK: There were 20 pages to the script and Sally did four run-throughs, so that really helped them. There was no start and stop as with a normal film. It’s hard to get back into that moment. We were doing these long takes which meant they were really getting into it and crying every time. We only did about six takes for the main shot we used of her. The only thing that stopped us from continuing was so Sally could clean up from crying and her tears. They’re not pretend ones. You couldn’t just wipe them up. She looked like she had been crying for hours.
WAMG: Who wrote the score – it goes so well with the emotional dialogue.
MK: A friend of mine, Andrew Wallace. He’s amazing and a brilliant pianist. He had a friend who played the saxophone and in the story, you’ve got this little bit about Jim Broadbent’s character being into jazz and he used to play the tenor sax. There’s this bit about a famous jazz club in London called Ronnie Scott’s and we managed to get a fantastic jazz saxophonist and he watched the piece that we already filmed. We showed him the cut and he played it to the picture. The sadness, the mournful tune came straight out of watching it.
There’s a fantastic song at the end by an Irish singer called Carmen Phelan. We were in the edit room and struggling with the end and what music to put there. Andy suggested his friend Carmen and he had some of her songs on his laptop. We had a listen and her song fitted perfectly – all the lyrics were spot on. You can do a commercial and listen to a hundred songs to try to find anything that works and you’re always looking – it was just kind of serendipity I think.
WAMG: It’s a lovely song that by the film’s end you’ve run out of tissues.
MK: It’s funny, I didn’t watch the film purposefully for a little while and there was recent screening where it hit me as well. I know how it’s made so I never hit that emotion that everyone else did. I had to get up and do a Q&A, and I’m crying and had to apologize by saying it was the first time I’d seen it after watching it 500 times in the edit room. It was the first time it got me. Now I know what it feels like as well.
WAMG: Now more people will get to see it.
MK: Yes! I think it goes up to four or five hundred screens across America, which is fantastic because that doesn’t happen in Britain. We don’t get that opportunity like everyone in the States.
Director, Mat Kirkby talking with Sally Hawkins on #ThePhoneCall film shoot. #ShortFilm #BritishFilm pic.twitter.com/M3rOtBvhdU
— The Phone Call (@ThePhoneCall) September 4, 2013
WAMG: What’s next for Mat Kirkby?
MK: In the year the film’s been on the road, I’ve been screenwriting. I’ve sat at home writing a feature film which is completely finished. I’m pitching that now in LA to producers. The success of the short film is what’s enabled me to be in the situation I’m in now where I’m at all the big studios talking to very well-known producers – I’m able to get in the room now.
WAMG: What’s the film about?
MK: It’s a thriller. I’ve gone from teary-jerky to kind of an emotional thriller. With the short, I’d never done tear-jerker before. That’s my first go at it. I’d mostly done comedy before. This thriller that I’ve written is my first go at trying to scare the bejesus out of people. It’s kind of a FATAL ATTRACTION type thing. Imagine if Quentin Tarantino directed FATAL ATTRACTION.
WAMG: Who are you wearing to the Oscars?
MK: We got a call from Burberry, the designers, and they said they’d be honored if we wore their tuxedoes to the Academy Awards. It’s been amazing. We went in and got fitted for them. They loved the film and wanted to help out. People are continuing to help us.
WAMG: If you win, where’s the first place you’ll be going with the statue when you go back to London?
MK: There’s a bakery nearby where I live and there’s a lady who’s promised me a free donut if I bring in the Oscar. I love their rhubarb donuts – they’re really good!
WAMG: Best of luck on the 22nd!
The 2015 Oscar® Nominated Short Films are in theaters and on VOD now.
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