20 Years On - an interview with Greg J. Read.
The setting: we begin in a dimly lit bedroom somewhere in the middle of Yorkshire, at almost 1am. The collection of posters and stuffed animals feel a little far removed from the subject we're preparing to talk about, but a large piece of artwork depicting Nigel Colbie, as drawn by a dear friend of mine serves as a gentle reminder of the grit of the film I'm about to grill this poor man about.
I answer the phone to the friendliest Australian accent I have ever heard in my life.
Gregory J. Read, an Australian filmmaker known for an array of documentaries and projects, and of course our topic of the night - Like Minds, his 2006 feature film about the murder of Nigel Colbie. He's apologetic about the time it has taken for this call to come to fruition, but I don't mind - I have far too many questions for him, and almost 20 years after the film's initial release, it feels like the right time to ask them.
For clarification, questions/interviewer statements are bold/italicised.
GREG: I'm sure it's quite late for you.
It's currently 00:40 in the morning, but I have nowhere to be, so it's no problem.
GREG: Yeah, sorry about that. It's just been very busy, as you know, for the last six or eight months. It's been busier than normal.
Have you been up to a lot of new stuff recently, then? Anything in particular that you've got coming out, or that you're proud of?
GREG: I'm working on a bunch of projects right now, but I do a lot of things these days. I've been very fortunate in my career that I've been able to move across all parts of the film industry from development to all areas of production including post. I'm not someone that just does one thing. I tend to do multiple, I always have.
When I started on Like Minds, it was my hobby project. At the time I was working on documentaries, television commercials, and music videos. For me, as a documentary film maker, it was a concept that I wanted to develop. So I wrote the original treatment as a documentary. Primarily it was an investigation into Gestalt psychology and how people who are incapable of being a monster by themselves can come together to be one. In a way a psychological Frankenstein story. What is it about these sorts of relationships?
However my documentary sales company took one look at my treatment and said "This is not a documentary." Well you can imagine my disappointment with him saying that. Then after what felt like an eternity, he said, “you must write this as a feature film.” It was a moment of “wow what a compliment,” to one of absolute trepidation. Trouble was I had never written a drama script before and I had no idea if I could. So I took a short night time writing course and got the basics. I also got my hands on some great scripts. Kubrick, Hitchcock, David Lean films. These wonderful filmmakers had scripts that were so well constructed, every word had to fight to be on the page. I love the way their stories explored character. I found the character driven plots incredibly well thought out, especially in Hitchcock films, like Strangers on a Train.
Beautiful film.
GREG: Yeah, beautiful. That's why I make a little homage to it in the Like Minds when Alex goes to the cinema. And it also relates to the last shot of my film, two strangers on a train….
So I thought, well, okay, why can't I write a drama that explores character but also stays true to my original documentary idea. So I set about to write something that explored Gestalt psychology but tell it in an interesting/engaging way.
So every morning, before a busy work day I would write 3-5 pages. I had a lot of support from my wife, she would read each scene as I wrote them to give me feedback on where she thought the story was heading, this helped me weave the story threads and make it less predictable and stay on track. It was wonderful to watch the script evolve this way. But this took time. I was still running my companies and I had staff. I couldn't just say to my staff, "Well I'm going to go make movies now, so you can all go home," I didn't want to do that. So I thought, "Well alright, I'll write this over time and see how it goes, and we'll go from there."
After finishing the first draft I sent it back to my documentary sales company. Then there was silence. Not a word. It was like torture, not knowing what someone thinks of your work. After a few days I heard my sales guy had flown to New Zealand, where he met up with some producers who were working on Lord of the Rings, and he had shown the script to one of the producers, Mark Ordesky.
Mark was travelling to Sydney so he met up with me. I got to meet Orlando Bloom and a few other people who were in Sydney at the time, which was very, very exciting. However as it turned out Orlando was very busy on the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Black Hawk Down was about to happen so he wasn’t available. But just as well, as I wouldn’t have ended up finding Eddie [Redmayne]. But it gave me a glimpse into the rollercoaster ride of film making. One day you’re making a film, the next you are back to square one. This was quite a welcome to the “Snakes and Ladders” of feature film making.
A few years passed. I did some more drafts but there was no meaningful traction. During this time I expanded my experience into working on Australian feature films as a co-producer and executive producer, to gain experience. I also worked on low budget films as 1st Assistant Director and Production Manager. Even though I had been to film school, this was “at the coal face” experience, which was invaluable.
It was now six years since the first draft, however over the years, having worked on a range of films, I had met some great film makers and producers, one being the producer Jonathan Shteinman. Jonathan felt the best chance we had to make the film was to raise the finance as a co-production with the UK. So we teamed up with Piers Tempest at Tempo Productions in the UK. Screen Australia came on board and we were able to get Toni Collette interested. I travelled to London and started casting.
Lucy Bevan, an amazing casting director, suggested watching some plays which had some great young actors in them. One being a play at Covent Garden called Hecuba, a Greek tragedy. Eddie played Polydorus, the murdered son of Hecuba. The first time I saw him was as he rose up out of a pond in the middle of the stage soaking wet. His performance was mesmerizing. I knew straight away he’d be perfect for Alex. I met Eddie after the play and invited him to a casting session with us. At that point, I already had Tom [Sturridge] on my radar. So I brought them in together, and the chemistry between the two was just palpable. I made a video, then sent some images to Toni Collette to get her reaction, and she looked at them and said "wow, these guys are great." So I knew I had the chemistry.
Eddie Redmayne in “Hecuba” - Donmar Warhouse, 2004. (courtesy of @laurelwen and @addictedtoeddie)
They are absolutely fantastic. I mean, that's something that gets mentioned a lot in fan discussions about Like Minds - the chemistry between the two of them. As you know, I've told you about the community online and it's always sort of growing, and we'll occasionally get someone new who wants to know what the deal is, really. Like, are they in love? Do they just want to kill one another? Which is thrilling for us to be able to tell them it's up for their interpretation, how they were written. There's so many ways to interpret it, which is a testament not just to your writing but to the fantastic chemistry between the actors.
GREG: Thank you. That was absolutely, the intention because I believe there's many ways you can see things, many ways to unpack it, based on your own learned experience and what you know. I wrote the script so that it could be interpreted in different ways. But there is one clear way that it should be examined, if you want to be really black and white about it - it does follow the rules of Gestalt psychology. So it's not ambiguous, but it’s not a closed book either, which is a very strange way to put it, but I was deliberate about it. It's a psychological puzzle, the actual film is a puzzle box. So you're right, when you said you were trying to unpack it, trying to understand it as it seems to have a lot of layers - yes. Yes, it does. There's lots of little hidden things throughout it, little Easter eggs, so to speak.
I thought, if people looked into the history the boys talk about in the film, they may get something extra out of the story as well. It may inspire people to read books on these subjects and start to understand some of the concepts I included. There's so much material in contemporary historical books as well as books written back in the 1800’s that is referred to in the story.
Definitely a lot to read, then!
GREG: I know! Some is in Nigel’s Bible. There's all sorts of history, but ultimately that was just me having fun because I knew when I started refining the research that went into this, there was so much more than I could put into the screenplay.
Of course.
GREG: So I had thousands of pages of documentation, and I handpicked things to look at. Maybe in hindsight I could have been a little bit clearer about certain things, but I don't know - I don't think you need to be hand fed. I didn't want to lead people one way or the other. I felt that it was important that they come away with their own interpretation. What does the ending mean? What actually happened?
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · 20 Years On - Part 2 · But anyway, if I can answer any of your questions. Well, I do have a few. Some of them are from
