#oh greg

You’ve said that if you’re going to make a film, make it about something fascinating. What is it that excites you about this film?

Rather than say ‘fascinating’, I think you should make something that you can sink your teeth  into, something that, I hate to say, you can ‘relate to’ – especially because it’s about sociopathy – but that is going to be engaging for an audience. There are so many projects out of America, where the film means nothing to the makers, it’s just homogenized, plastic rubbish. I find so many films really are just perfunctory. I wanted to explore a story which drew on psychology; rather than just shooting frame by frame, ask ‘What’s actually behind the frames?’ And that’s what appealed to me about this particular story.

It’s deeply interested in the macabre, in the occult, religious history, in half-forgotten histories. What attracts you to these elements, and what do you think attracts viewers?

I think it’s a fascination in psychology, a fascination in our own history and our identity – where we come from. All those elements are to do with obsession and control and Alex’s understanding of history and his lineage. For Nigel it was a matter of knowing where he came from also, so he could understand his own identity and give himself a place in the world. I think that sort of fascination appeals to all of us. We’re all curious about where we originally came from, what our lineage is, what is history, and how it informs our existence and us as individuals. How did we come to be where we are now? And the darker side of history too is quite fascinating – certainly for me – because it’s something which has existed forever and a day. Go back to the dawn of man: we’ve always had these myths, and this look at life, that are quite frightening. But they do inform us of where we are and where we come from.

It strikes me that these macabre stories involving say, the occult, or in this case the myth of Maraclea, touch a part of the modern psyche.

You know these fables – that one’s a twelfth century fable – it’s incredible how they do exist in our society, how people do draw on those sorts of ideas. Not necessarily Maraclea, but certainly other fables and ideas about history. I don’t see Maraclea as being [about] the occult. I see it more as a very strange look at how people believed that they could garner power from obscure and strange and mystical events. [Drawing] power from something as macabre as Maraclea is quite disturbing, and if you’re going to have someone who’s a sociopath who wants to draw on history, and is obsessive about history, what an amazing fable to draw on. Because you can utilize that and create something in the modern world that draws back off that original fable. And there are people around today that do still believe in these old world ideas and try to draw them into some kind of modern context. I think that’s quite disturbing – very disturbing.

Which is the case in the film. It’s what’s going on with the character of Nigel.

Well, he’s using it for a number of reasons. He’s using it to draw Alex into his world, as well – because he was aware of the fable, but without the help of Alex, he could never fulfill it. So it’s part of his obsession, but [also] part of his controlling another being. Sociopaths like to be in control of their environment. So when someone comes into close proximity they try to draw them into their world …

Which brings us to one of the other main ideas in the film, which is Gestalt psychology. The two boys are in some ways latent psychopaths or sociopaths, and they bring this out in each other. It’s a fascinating idea – in your research you discovered that most psychopaths are latent.

That really intrigued me. The American Psychiatric Society released some figures that said that four per cent of the population is sociopathic: one per cent female, three per cent male. I thought, ‘My God, that means they’re everywhere!’ If you take two latent sociopaths, who are going to go on to become merchant bankers or tops of industry (they’re saying most of the sociopaths are actually heads of industry. Because they’re remorseless, they’re without conscience). These are the individuals that you’ve got to watch out for because they don’t give a fuck: they’re going to take you for everything they possibly can, and they’d be happy to cut down companies and close them up. If you have that many people in society it means we’ve all come into contact with one in our time. That’s where the genesis of the story came from, because if these people exist, what would happen if you threw two of them into a room? And you end up with something like gestalt. Would it create something bigger between them, and then, what would that be?

The script has a real density to it – there are a lot of elements to keep under control: the history of the Knights Templar, the myth of Maraclea, Gestalt psychology, and how these relate to the situation of the two boys. Can you say anything about the process of writing it? What were some of the challenges?

I had to really delve into the characters first. So I read material on forensic psychology, on juvenile psychology, on sociopathy, psychopathy and APD (anti-social personality disorder), which is what it’s all under the umbrella of. And then I tried to understand: was it nature versus nurture? I studied forensic psychologists’ notes on case studies, but tried to get into the heads of these sociopaths so I could understand what their true motivations would be, what would happen if you threw them together.

Once I’d done that – it was quite deeply disturbing; your head goes numb with this material – I wrote a treatment and understood how these characters would bounce off each other. I wrote the script, and realized it had to have a strong narrative flow to be able to engage the audience. Otherwise, if it was just an intensive study of psychology, people would be yawning in ten minutes because it’s just not interesting. So I decided to weave two storylines and I thought I should make the story gestalt: to have a fore-story and back-story but weave them in such a way that they create something bigger than themselves. So my storyline is going to be a gestalt flow-through and I decided to tell some of the story out of context. Some things are told back to front, some things are forwards – a lot of people don’t necessarily notice that, but it’s a psychological puzzle. That was part of the process of writing it as a challenge, to see whether it would work.

I sent it out to a producer to look at it, and he just said, ‘Yeah, that really works well.’ He sent it in to the AWGIES [Australian Writers’ Guild Awards] and that’s when it got nominated for the Monty Miller [Award for an unproduced script]. I was so surprised when that happened. And I thought, ‘OK, it works!’ But it was a long process. Even though I wrote it over a six-week period, it took years to really hone it. The original draft was about one hundred and thirty pages and it was too dense and too complex, so I had to simplify elements, but at the same time not to lose the integrity of the story … that it is a psychological study. And that everything that’s told is real. I didn’t want it to be red herrings. I didn’t want to have the situation where Alex is telling a story and then you realize, ‘Oh, it’s all a lie.’ It’s not. The thing about psychology is it doesn’t have to be a lie. The mind is dark and dense, and why can’t a story do the same thing? Whether some people get the depth of it or some people don’t doesn’t really matter. Everyone’s welcome to take it the way they want; people come to me afterwards and say, ‘I got that through line’, or ‘I really got into the psychology.’ It was a challenge but it paid off.

You managed to get some really strong performances from the actors, especially Eddie Redmayne and Toni Collette. How did you go about working with them?

Pretty closely. I sent a lot of material to Toni explaining to her how forensic psychologists truly work. She’s an amazing actress. She’s a chameleon, but I wanted to give her information that was from real forensic psychologists. So I sent her reams of information: studies on psychology from forensic psychologists, papers from forensic psychologists, to inform her of the characters that truly exist out there, and then let her bring what she wanted to that character. At the same time I made sure that it was in tune with where I wanted to be, where I wanted her to sit in the story. It was wonderful. The first day of rehearsal I was thinking, ‘Ok, here we go, I don’t know how she has interpreted this.’ I hadn’t really spoken to her. She sat down in front of me and she started saying these wonderful passages of dialogue perfectly. I just sat there and went, ‘My goodness, that’s exactly where I want you to be, give or take a little bit here.’ It was a matter of honing her rather than [getting her to] create something new.

With the boys [Eddie Redmayne and Tom Sturridge], it was a whole new experience for them. Eddie had never worked in film before, so he really needed to be moulded a little bit more. He was like clay: he allowed me to get into his head and inform him of where that character would be, and I’d give him motivation and concepts that may not necessarily be on the page, but ideas that would put him into that frame, that headspace. He’d start to feel that and you could see it in his posture, his emotional state, which is testament to a wonderful actor. Then I’d say, ‘Action’, and he delivered his lines in that state and he did it every time, even when we cut between a shot we did three months before. We did shots in Australia because I needed the wideness of the location, but we couldn’t possibly shoot the close-ups on the same day, because we had a very strict shooting schedule. We ended up doing them in Leeds at the end of the shoot. It was the last part, we’re doing these close-ups and they were just spot on. I just put him back in the space, he knew the script, he’d worked out his beats. He was just wonderful.

This is your first feature film, before that you were a documentary director. How did you find the transition?

It felt fairly natural, maybe because I’d written the script … I’d had the characters in my head [and] it was more a matter of making sure that’s what I got – a truthful performance. I was so focused on that and the look of the film and the sense of the backgrounds, the sets, the cinematography. Everything for me was part of the mise en scène. I wanted to let the set and let the cinematography be part of the psychology of the film. So I was so conscious of all of that, I was so conscious of my performances being number one, and just being truthful to what was on the page. It wasn’t till I finished shooting: ‘Oh my goodness, I think I just did it!’

I did storyboard the whole film, from go to whoa, every shot. It’s not exactly how I shot it.  Sometimes you get the location and it’s not going to be exactly like that, but it was a good process, to take the screenplay, put it in a drawing form that informed the cinematographer and the production designer about what I wanted to do. I had visual references from other films and things: style, colour, texture. Working with people like Steven Jones Evans, who’s an amazing production designer, and Nigel Black as the DP and the music by Carlo Giacco – all of those elements – it was a wonderful process of collaboration. I think that’s where my head was at mostly. Coming from documentary to that felt strangely natural. And it’s normally not.

Can you tell us a bit about your next projects?

I’m working on a number of different projects, at different stages. I’ve just got back from L.A. where I’m represented by a great agent and I’m seeing lots of people … It’s great to be in a situation with these great producers who really enjoyed my film and are willing to consider me. I don’t like talking about future projects at all, unless they’re actually signed on the dotted line. A lot of people do talk about them, and I don’t agree with that. That’s why no one knew anything about Like Minds. It’s just personal. I think you’ve got to focus on what you’re doing and you move forward. I’m thrilled that the Americans enjoyed the film. I’m thrilled it’s sold all over the world. It just means it’s a universal story that people can relate to. What will I do next? I’ll see what opportunity fronts itself first that I can do something with.