The making of The Accomplice
Filmmaker Charlie Weaver Rolfe talks ambition, delusion … and how to proceed anyway. My Accomplice is showing on Latest TV on Valentine’s Day and on Sunday 15 February, at 9pm
There’s a joke about asking an Irishman for directions, and he says; “Well, you wouldn’t want to start from here.” Looking back on the making of our low-budget independent feature, My Accomplice, set in Brighton, which airs on Latest TV on Valentine’s Day (and Feb 15th), this advice is the first thing that springs to mind.
I knew that I wanted to make a film. I had some money – at the time, about £10,000 – I was going to use to make a film. But I didn’t know how to make a film, certainly not a feature film. Which was the kind of film for which I’d written a script. The result was a form of neurotic inertia composed of much tangential activity. I painted the outside of Chez Dimitrina, the café in Sydney Street in which much of the film is set (whose owner, Dimitrina, plays an important secondary character: herself), to try and keep it from going out of business. I went weekly to visit Colin, a man with autism and a morbid sense of humour, in his day centre to read the script with him and try and convince him to be in the film (playing an important secondary character: himself). And I filmed all this on my camera phone while I talked myself round and round in circles about how I was going to get to wherever it was I was trying to go.
Fortunately, the Irishman I asked for directions had a different answer to the man in the joke. John said: “The way to proceed? – is just to proceed. If you want to do something, you do something. That’s it. That’s life.” Maybe it’s because he’s Irish-American. In any case, this is the reason why My Accomplice became a John Said Production (in which John plays an important secondary character: a homeless, elective mute version of himself).
Another way of putting this is that you have to commit. You can’t make a feature film unless many people help – and people will only help once they believe it’s going to happen. You commit. Then they commit. Then together you get everyone else. Which effectively means that the first person who commits (you) is delusional, and the first people they get to help them must share in their delusion to a high degree.
You can’t make a feature film unless many people help – and people will only help once they believe it’s going to happen. You commit. Then they commit.
At this point a special mention must go to Barbara, who agreed to shoot the film, Alex, who agreed to play Ilse on the back of an audition with me and my mum in a flat in East Berlin, my mum (see above), Stuart, who agreed to play Frank on the back of an audition opposite me playing Ilse, and Martyn, the producer of My Accomplice (who plays a pivotal cameo role as an intoxicated fancy dress Trotsky in home-made wire spectacles). This last shared delusion is strong and ongoing; our partners have learnt to live with it.
So what sort of film did we make? I hesitate to say it’s a romantic comedy because, well, most romantic comedies are … not great. A ‘hesitant romantic comedy’, then. With music and seagulls. About two people who meet and fall in love, but don’t know how to proceed.
Still not sure? Watch the trailer and hear the soundtrack at www.myaccomplicemovie.com
My Accomplice is showing on Latest TV on Saturday 14 February at 9pm and Sunday 15 February at 9pm
