Sundance Interview: Richard Ayoade for Submarine

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began my interview with Richard Ayoade, director of Submarine, a fantastic coming-of-age story about a young man who falls in love amidst a sea of problems, the least of which is himself. I had seen the movie several days before and absolutely loved it. I knew he was in the television show The IT Crowd, which I had seen, but had purposely not read up on him beforehand. Sometimes interviews can feel a bit like the interviewer knows everything there is to know about the other person, and so I kept my knowledge at a bare minimum. During the Q&A for Submarine, audience members had asked some good questions and some very silly ones, but Ayoade made nearly all of them into a hilarious joke and it was one of the most enjoyable Q&As at the festival. When Ayoade finally arrived for the interview, he seemed very soft-spoken and reticent to talk too much, and I soon found out why.

Amanda Meyncke: Is this your first Sundance?

Richard Ayoade: Yes, I just got in very recently so I haven’t seen anything yet, just went to the screening the other night.

AM: This is a Welsh film, correct?

RA: Set in Wales, yes. The production company is based in Sheffield but yeah, all shot in Wales.

AM: Flannery O’Connor has this idea about regionalism that you can only really present a place that you know very well to people, so I wondered if this film had a particularly Welsh point of view?

RA: I don’t know. I love Flannery O’Connor, but you know, I think Kes is one of the most amazing films ever, and Ken Loach is not from that area, so I don’t think it necessarily applies. In terms of the writing, Joe Dunthorne, who wrote the book [Submarine, on which the film is based], is from Swansea. I don’t think Peter Bogdanovich is particularly of the area that The Last Picture Show is, but the author of the novel probably is, and that’s what he’s drawing on so I think it depends, really.

AM: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in making the film?

RA: The main thing was trying to write it, and adapting a novel.

AM: Do you feel differently about it now than you did four years ago? Would you do things differently?

RA: More car chases, I would have done more car chases. When you start it’s inconceivable that it’ll ever be finished, you can’t imagine ever finishing it. And by the time you finish, well, I think those sort of questions of “What would you have done differently” — I don’t think they are necessarily informed by being finished. What you should have done better, probably limitations you have that cannot be particularly overcome by applying thought to them. But they just exist as your own limitations.

AM: The film is rather devoid of technology. Is it set in the ’70s or ’80s?

RA: It’s just an indeterminate past, and I think coming-of-age things tend to be set in the past because the writer of the whatever it is tends to set it at the time they were that age. It seems somewhat ridiculous to attempt to be talking about people of this age now, since I’m 15 years adrift of that age. But neither did I want it to be something that was specifically current.

AM: Has the film screened in the UK, and have you seen a difference in how American audiences have taken it?

RA: It was in the London Film Festival. Not really [a difference], and it’s not a film that I feel that I am hungrily waiting for laughter during, I think a lot of comedies announce jokes and give permission to an audience to laugh at certain points, and tries to shepherd them towards guffaws, but it’s not really structured like that.

AM: Are you hoping to move more into directing, then?

RA: I’ve directed for a while, not films but other things — TV and music videos — for about six years.

AM: I only ask because American audiences know you primarily as an actor.

RA: I presume American audiences wouldn’t know me at all for anything, so yeah, I really would like to, yes.

AM: Do you have any features going on now?

RA: Just writing, trying to write something next and circling various things. Another adaptation at the moment, and other things that would sound terrible if I said them out loud.

AM: Sounds promising.

RA: Yeah, that’s the pitch that I’m going to give to funders. So terrible I can’t utter it.

AM: It’ll fit right in with current releases.

RA: I’m a big self-promoter, it’s a problem of mine.

AM: Do you struggle with that aspect of the film world?

RA: I’m not particularly good at that; I don’t know whether it’s an essential component. Anyone trying to sell you something is someone to be mistrusted, so anyone promoting their own film is clearly the last person you should believe. So I’m mindful of the fact that no one should … I don’t feel I’m in a position to recommend it, because why should I be? The public didn’t ask for this film, they didn’t sit round saying, “Can you please do this?” If someone commissions a charcoal drawing of their wife then you know they get what they ask for, but it somehow feels rude to try and rap on everyone’s door, try to sell them a bit of film.

AM: So why have you agreed to do press at all, then?

RA: I think that people think any contradictory position is utterly insane; I don’t feel that anyone is in a non-contradictory position. You can get to a stage where you sort of go, well, you probably don’t believe in the enforcement of mass poverty, but you will simply go along with a number of things that mean that as a result. There are many reasons for doing interviews. I haven’t done many. You feel very rude not doing them, and you do want people to see the film, and also you have a sort of duty to the people who’ve paid for it. It’s not my money, I didn’t fund it, I certainly ought to do what I can at least … I want the people who paid for the film to make their money back so it’s only right and proper. But I don’t think that’s a contradictory position to saying, “Clearly I’m not the better person to recommend it.” But ultimately there needs to be some kind of association between the manufacturer and the media, I suppose.

AM: I’ve often struggled with the fact I work in an industry where doing an interview means you’re doing the work of selling something. Usually I don’t ask about the movie, which has the potential to get you in trouble, so I try to ask about what interests me about the person.

RA: It’s a very tricky position. I’ll read interviews with Ingmar Bergman, I’m very interested in Ingmar Bergman, I’ve seen all his films and I’m very interested in finding out about the person, and I can tell he’s extremely uncomfortable doing interviews but feels that a large part of why he’s doing it is because he can’t articulate it in other ways. Also, the tacit question, which seems to lie underneath all interviews, is: “Is this a nice person?” Which is a very difficult thing to assess, particularly in the light of someone being incredibly uncomfortable. I’ve found that, of my friends who’ve done interviews or on TV or press, the people who’ve been nicest who I’ve liked most, who seem most genuine [in real life] come across as obstreperous and difficult, and the people who are entirely egotistical and unfiltered come across as open, candid, and incredibly warm. So it’s a complicated position and when a man comes and says, “You’ve got two minutes” I mean, any conversation where someone comes and says, “You’ve got one more minute” is a very odd thing.

AM: How could you possibly get to know anyone well enough in that amount of time to ask them anything that matters?

RA: I’ve been brought up to feel that it’s fundamentally impolite to talk about yourself and so, that’s a difficult thing to reconcile with another assumption that it’s very impolite not to answer questions that someone is asking genuinely to try and find out as best they can. I think anything that causes someone to be anxious or stressful generally arises from two equally valid positions that are equally incontrovertible.

AM: To completely change the subject, I was wondering what sort of books you’ve been reading lately.

RA: Flannery O’Connor, actually. I read The Violent Bear It Away
I found it very funny. I read it because my friend Avi Korine, who I’m working with, he’s obsessed with O’Connor. So I’ve just got all her stuff and I’m just started. I read a very interesting article she wrote on teaching the classics in school and whether you should teach more modern books, and she said you simply couldn’t understand the books, and the content of older books without all the work–

AM: She was speaking of Faulkner, I think. She said that seems like an insult to Faulkner because you don’t have the moral maturity to be able to understand those things.

RA: Yeah, I went to a Catholic school, so I’m very interested in Catholic writers and increasingly becoming less and less interested in the work of people who have no governing structure to them.

AM: Are you interested in other Southern gothic writers, like Carson McCullers? Have you read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter?

RA: Yes, I love it. Essentially through Avi [Korine], I’m getting an introduction to those writers, so I’m a real novice.

AM: What’s your favorite Bergman film?

RA: It’s very hard to say. I mean, I couldn’t do it in less than five. Wild Strawberries, I have a particular fondness for The Silence, I love Scenes From a Marriage. I really like Cries and Whispers, probably if it came down to it — Persona.

AM: Other than that, any other books or music you’ve been getting into?

RA: Sunhouse at the moment, and I’ve been really liking this book The Egotist by George Meredith, which is really good, yeah, very sort of funny. Richard Yates, recently just making my way through The Easter Parade.

Tags: flannery o'connor, interview, richard ayoade, sundance