http://www.blogcdn.com/www.horrorsquad.com/media/2010/03/red-white-and-blue.jpg
If I had to come out swinging for anything at SXSW, it would have to be Simon Rumley’s (The Living and the Dead) new film, Red, White & Blue](Red White & Blue (2010) - IMDb) (review). It’s far and away my favorite of the fest thus far, which is odd because usually I don’t assign a favorite label to things that make me feel physically battered and emotionally bruised afterwards. But I can’t help but respect a film that can pull that off without ever being outright exploitative. So, if you’re at SXSW, keep an eye out for it. If not, know that we here at *Cinematical *will definitely be keeping an eye out for news on the distribution front.
Cinematical: When you were first coming up with Red, White & Blue, what was your sales pitch, so to speak, to producers and friends wanting to know about it?
**Simon Rumley: **I guess when I first wrote it, I was looking to do a specific story about this girl who used her body as a weapon. I did a few drafts of that and it didn’t really work, so I thought that if it was going to work, it would have to be a character study first and foremost. And then once we have sympathy for the character, you can take it other places. So once I had that worked out myself, it became a bit more clear in my mind how it would progress and then the structure came.
By the time I had finished writing the script, in my own mind it was a slacker-revenge movie. The first half is very much a Richard Linklater / Larry Cohen film and then the second half becomes a lot harder and more extreme. So that’s actually how I ended up selling it to people, as ‘slacker-revenge’. And some people would say, ‘slasher-revenge? What’s so cool about that?’ and I was going, “No, Slacker!” and they’d go, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ Really I figured there aren’t any other slacker-revenge films around, so I took two elements from stuff I like in films and put them in one.
Continue reading SXSW Interview: ‘Red, White & Blue’ Director Simon Rumley