An Interview with James Moran, Screenwriter for Cockneys Vs. Zombies
When Cockneys vs. Zombies premiered at the superb Frightfest a week or so back, I was able to have a chat with James Moran, the film’s screenwriter. He’s probably best loved in this parish for his work on Doctor Who and Torchwood, though I have to admit a personal preference for his short, Cheap Rate Gravity.
We spoke about a few things besides cockneys and zombies, but that will wait for another time. For now, here’s what Moran had to tell me about his new undead East End comedy, which is in cinemas across the UK now.
Right from the start, the title was part of the original pitch. When I went in to meet with the producers and Mattias I’d made a list of loads of things I’d expect to see from a film with this title.
It was only meant to be a working title but by the time I finished there wasn’t anything else that would fit. A title like this tells you what you’re getting into, so you know if you’re going to like it or not. It’s a double-edged sword. Half the people who hear it laugh and think “Right, I’m definitely going to see that” and the other half say “That’s stupid, I’m not going to see that.” Hopefully, we’re able to win over that other half, and I think we have been, slowly, with the trailer. People have said “That’s not quite as stupid as the title makes out.” It is very, very silly, I’m not going to lie about that.
The first thing I wanted to do with cockneys was make sure I didn’t make fun of them or do a ‘mockney’ thing. It would have been very easy to do that and have a bunch of stereotypes running around but I thought “These are real people.” The whole concept of this is about how real cockneys would involve in a zombie outbreak – wouldn’t they be funny and cool? We wanted to celebrate the cockney spirit and the East End. It might not get shown on TV and in movies much as it’s not as trendy as some of the other parts of London.
The good thing about the audience having zombie preconceptions is that very early on we could decide that our characters also know what zombies are, that they’ve seen zombie movies. As soon as a zombie appears they can say “Oh, it’s a zombie. We have to shoot them in the head.” We chose to go down that route rather than five to ten minutes of exposition when we could just be getting on with the zombie killing.
We knew we wanted Alan Ford right from the beginning. Part of my original concept was the whole pensioner thing. I knew I wanted the main pensioner to be Alan Ford because nobody else would do – accept no substitutes – so I just wrote it for him. But that was the only character that was written for an actor, but once everybody was cast, we had a read through and I sat in on that and every time they made a different joke or reworded something, I made a note of it.
Richard Briers was the last to be cast and then I did a quick polish to take advantage of the fact that we had him. And after the read through I was sat next to Honor Blackman and she made a joke about not having much swearing, so I threw in a lot more swear words for her, and gave her a bigger gun.
As a member of the horror audience, I know that what I want to see is what the audience will want to see. I’m the pickiest picker of all. But we horror fans, we’re both very particular and we’ll also watch any old shit because we want it to be good.
Cockneys vs. Zombies is not an extreme horror. Nobody’s going to come out of this never able to sleep again. But right from the start, when I first knew I was going to be writing a film called Cockneys vs. Zombies, I was aware that nobody was going to be expecting a hardcore, traumatic experience. They’re going to be expecting a bloody good laugh, jumps, some thrills, and to come out smiling.
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