Page 10 - Fujifilm Exposure_18 Shackleton_ok

NORTH BY NORT
NORTH BY NORT
Back in 1990 director Jim Doyle won a Fuji Scholarship Award for his film, Wendy, in the same year Damian Bromley enjoyed success at the same prizegiving for cine- matography and editing on A Killing.
Ten years later they linked up to make the feature, Going Off Big Time, and have now continued the partner- ship with Reinventing Eddie, a black comedy drama, shot on Fuji at loca- tions in the North West of England.
“It’s funny that in the same year we both won Fujis, we didn’t know each other,” says Doyle. “When we did Going Off Big Time I remember Damian say- ing, ‘If only we had hooked up 10 years ago’.
“But I don’t think we could have done it then. When the time came we both had a lot more experience and knew what we could do.”
Reinventing Eddie, adapted by Doyle from a play, One Fine Day, by Dennis Lumborg, is the story of a hard-working family man whose idyllic life is destroyed by false accusation
and wrong assumptions.
Eddie, played by John Lynch,
believes in honesty and frankness and both he and his wife (Geraldine Somerville) agree to be totally open and natural with their children, even down to questions about the facts of life.
The philosophy backfires after their daughter stumbles in on the cou- ple making love and proceeds in all innocence to regale her school with the ins and outs of what she has seen.
This prompts a call from the social services, and Eddie is forced to go into hiding and leave behind all that he loves.
Reinventing Eddie, which also stars John Thomson from Cold Feet, is from the same production company respon-
sible for Going Off Big Time. BBG Pictures stands for Ian Brady, Jonny Boston and Elaine Grainger, the found- ing directors. The budget, according to Boston, is £2.75m with funding coming from Great British Films, essentially a network of small investors.
Going Off Big Time was set in Liverpool and Reinventing Eddie was shot in the same part of the country, principally around Warrington, Widnes and Runcorn, ending up in North Wales, for scenes in which Eddie takes a trip to Rhyl and the Conway valley.
Doyle and Bromley are originally from Liverpool, though the director now lives in Ireland and the camera- man in London, and it was not essen- tial that the story was filmed in that
part of the world, they say.
“It was set anywhere and we
looked at other parts of the UK,” says Doyle. “I suppose it made sense to come here because we are both famil- iar with the area. It’s a drama driven by the comedic responses of the char- acters. I wanted the film with its industrial setting to be a visually stim- ulating experience and so I thought of the petro-chemical works and Runcorn bridge.
“The day out to Wales gives us a contrast between the industrial scenes and the estuary and mountains. It rep- resents a big leap. From fairly intimate scenes, the North Wales sequence has lots of extras and we’ve hired a Victorian carousel. It will be an inter-
From Runcorn to Rhyl for Reinventing Eddie
Photos above left and main: John Lynch in scenes from Reinventing Eddie; below right: behind the camera on Reinventing Eddie
EXPOSURE • 8 & 9
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