Interview with Joe Atkins – Director of “If You Ever Get to Heaven”

First of all, congratulations on the film, it’s lovely! I know you used to work as a lighting designer, what prompted you to move from that to directing a feature film?

Ever since I can remember I wanted to make films, I’ve loved film since I understood what a film was. But growing up in England is a tough place to aspire to make movies because we don’t really make many in the UK.

I was always going to do something in show-business and I ended up working in theatre for 25 years as a lighting designer, where I had a great time and a great career. I worked all over the world and did hundreds of shows, but I always knew in the back of my mind that film was where I belonged.

So, in 2008 I just sat myself down and looked at my diary and saw a space where it might be possible and went ‘let’s do it!’

I was on the train coming back from France, going to London, I got off at Paris, phoned my friend Claire [Jephcott] who I’ve known forever and said ‘meet me at a bar by the Gare du Nord’. She turned up, I sat her down and after 20 minutes of catching up I asked ‘how do you fancy making a movie next year?’, after a stunned silence she said ‘yeah ok!’

I told her I wanted to write it with her and then we would see what happens. We bashed around a few ideas, and this is from scratch, a blank piece of paper, no existing script whatsoever, just from me waking up one morning thinking ‘actually if I don’t make it now, I might find that I’ve never done it’.

If You Ever Get To Heaven director, Joe Atkins, on set

We gave ourselves a ridiculous schedule, I said I wanted to lock the script by April – and we’re in the middle of December only starting to talk about it – I want it cast by May and we’re shooting in July. We hit every deadline.

I’m driven, when I set out to do something I make sure I do it, and having 25 years experience in theatre and live shows, deadlines are second nature to me.

So we chucked some ideas around, the first few were going down blind alleys, so I said give me a few days to think what the story is that I want to tell. We’d visited one of the places on the pilgrim route so I was thinking about that, I wanted a feel good movie and more importantly I wanted to base the film on a strong woman.

Even though the film revolves around an emotional destruction of this woman, of her existence, you never watch her being anything other than strong.  Strong for her children, her sister, for people she doesn’t know. She collects these people along the way and she’s never anything but unbelievably strong. The emotional turmoil doesn’t destroy her or make her weak… does it make her stronger? Or was she that strong all along? It allows her to use her strength. I think there are too many films about the strength of men, and not enough about the strength of women and I wanted to try and tell a story that discusses that.

We now live in France, and have done for a couple of years…there’s a huge difference between English/American Film and European Film. I wanted to make an English speaking film in a European way so it’s laid back and much slower than would be acceptable in an English film. There’s lots of space for people to think, to see the options, remember what’s  happened, predict what might be happening. In that very European sense that there’s lots of air in it, and not many words.

Music becomes more important and it drives the film along. There’s time to contemplate the film, and not have it chucked at you. I deliberately didn’t shoot the obvious shots, I didn’t want to tell people the story, I wanted to offer this story to them and for them to piece it together so there aren’t those reaction shots and so on that assume the audience are a little bit dim or can’t quite keep up. I don’t want to make those assumptions, I want to believe that my audience is clever enough, interested enough, to make those jumps themselves. Somebody’s just said to me, and I think it’s a good word, that it’s a brave film because it tries to do something new and hopefully we can drive that forward now.

What’s the reception of ‘If You Ever Get to Heaven’ been like so far?

Unbelievable really! Making a film is a very insular business, ultimately it comes down to one guy or one girl, loads of people are involved in the film and as you take it into post-production that number becomes less and less until it comes to one person. Then when you get to the end of post-production you have to open it out to lots of people again, and it’s a scary moment much like introducing a newborn child into the world you sort of go ‘err does everybody get it?’

You get so close to it, just you in a darkened room day after day and it becomes hard to think objectively,  you can find yourself making assumptions that just aren’t necessarily right, so that point where you start to show it to people again is very interesting.  The reaction has been fantastic! People get it, they understand it, it’s not obtuse, and it’s not too slow. I think it’s worked, I’m happy with it and I’m proud of it.

What made you put the film into the festival circuit?

Because it’s very quirky, the film industry is very genre lead; comedy, horror, and so on and the film doesn’t fit into any genre…it’s all those things and more. It doesn’t belong in or connect to the established film industry so it’s not the sort of film that’ll crawl onto somebody’s desk and they’ll say ‘yes please we’ll have that!’ It’s going to need a slow burn; lots of people to see it, talk about it, discussing what it is, understanding what it’s about. The way to do that is using the festival circuit because there’s more opportunity there for more people to see it, for the right people to see it, and then maybe somebody will buy it!

The theme and idea of ‘journey’ is important in If You Ever Get to Heaven, how much has your own travels with your family affected or influenced your work?

They were obviously always there as part of the process, travelling with your own family, and we were on the road for 18 months with 6 of us travelling in a bus, was the most remarkable time. I can’t even begin to describe the privilege of those 18 months. I will write a book about it one day!

So of course that was always there but I didn’t want it to be and it is in no way auto-biographical, it’s a story out of a desire to tell the story of a strong woman. But the travelling worked for that because travelling allows you to change your own front garden if you like, every morning and that was part of what we loved about it. That was a great vehicle for us to be able to meander through the story we were trying to tell, that and the pilgrim route because it’s full of some really quirky people.

I noticed quite a bit of religious imagery, especially with the Pilgrim Route, how significant is Religion in the film?

Well, they’re not really there…I mean they are there, but they’re not there! The religious side of it is not actually that important, but it’s a good starting point to move from. It sort of presents a character that is very recognisable, very middle England, very WASP and then you watch her react, and that sort of learned religion if you like, actually doesn’t bear any witness to what she does at all, it’s her as a person that does it.

There’s a great line at the end of the film where she’s asked ‘how do you feel’ and she answers ‘like a tourist’. She’s in one of the most religiously significant places in all of Europe and ‘I feel like a tourist’, it’s a great line, and it says it all.

I know all of your family were involved in the film, what was that like?

It was fantastic, I mean when you spend 18 months travelling, living on a bus 12 metres long by 2.5 metres wide day after day you get to know these people, and I know every father on the planet says that they’re children are talented, but my children are just extraordinarily talented!

I offered the film to them, I’ve never forced any of my children to do anything, I mean it’s like…we played music together as a family for years, we used to all play in a band, the 6 of us and the way that happened was I used to play in bands and we had all these instruments lying around the house, so we just waited for them to go and figure out which one they wanted to play. I used to play the drums and I realised, Harry who was 10 at the time, that my 10 year old son was going to be a better drummer than I was ever going to be, he is an extraordinary drummer.

So that was the whole rhythm section of the band taken care of, Manny (Amanda Garwood, mother, wife and actress, who plays the lead role of Jen Belstaff) and Beth have fabulous voices and both of them play keys. So that was an aspect of what we do, nothing was ever forced it kind of grows organically, like the trip grew organically…one Sunday morning we were having breakfast and I just said ‘anyone just fancy quitting England and going for a bit of trip?’ and everybody said ‘….tell us more’ and I said ‘Well it’s going to be a lot of work!’ and then at the end of Christmas 2008 I said ‘anyone fancy making a film’ they said ‘…tell us more’, ‘Well it’s going to be a lot of work!’ and they just yes, bring it on!

Harry did all the sound recording, it’s unbelievable, every bit of dialogue you hear in that film is recorded by him on the road. I have a deep dislike of English children in English films, other than Bill Milner who was in Son of Rambow (a 2008 British-French comedy-drama film written and directed by Garth Jennings) who’s a great actor, so many English films are completely ruined by bad English child actors. So here was an interesting decision, do you put your own children in a film when this is your mindset?

The way we got round it was by saying ‘guys, don’t act, just be’ and talking a lot about who the characters were, and what you saw on the screen, those were not my children those are the characters. We wrote and scheduled it so that if any of the children were having an off day we could take them out and put one of the other children in so that all the lines were interchangeable, apart from some of Lucy’s [played by his daughter Beth].

Your daughter actually sang and played the guitar for the song at the end of film didn’t she?

What a gorgeous voice, she wrote that song.

Really? I was sitting up there thinking ‘Ooh I wonder if I can get that off of iTunes!’, it’s absolutely beautiful.

Well it will be on iTunes, we’re going to do an album with her next year. She’s written a bunch of songs and she just gets better and better.

How old is she?

12

Scary!

She came down the other day and she said I’ve written a new song, she recorded it on her Mac, she said have a listen to it and I was speechless. I’m proud and more than that, I’m thrilled for them, they’re already worldly wise, streetwise, but they’re still kids. They’re always allowed to have fun, in fact, I demand it! I have to have a good time, I work very hard and long hours so it has to be fun. That’s how we made the movie, we had high pressure, we had problems – of course we had problems going on a 5 week shoot on the road! But we got over it, every barrier put in front of us we jumped over it.

Did the family dynamic change at all, or did it change your work?

No, we’re very lucky Manny and I have 4 children and they are the most genuine people, they really look out for each other and it’s not just a brother sister thing, but they’re best friends, and it’s what allows us to do what we do. We make these big decisions, big plans, together as a family and there’s no reason for it not to be like that, talk to each other and find out who you are, that’s what travelling together does, you find out who these people are.

People kept saying why didn’t we wait until the kids left home to do all this, why would I want to do that? Why would I want to have 4 children and then wait for them to leave home before doing something like this? I had 4 children because I want to do things with them! And they know, and they’ll all tell you…I’m 12 years old and always will be, and one day they’ll all be older than me.

12 is a great age, when you’re 12 nothing is impossible and that’s how I live my life.

The only one point of sadness for me tonight, is that my eldest son, Luke, wasn’t able to make it to the screening. He’s just finished his baccalaureate, in a foreign language, in two years. An unbelievable achievement, but he’s absolutely knackered!

He’s in that funny place where he has no idea what he wants to do. He’s a fantastic dancer, he’s a great musician, a very good actor, and he’s thinking about going to university but he doesn’t know what. I told him ‘go run away to the circus for a year, go buy a transit van and chuck your mates in the back with your guitars and go round southern Europe for a year and play some music and figure out what it is you want to do’

I mean he can go to Uni for the next three years, come out with a student loan and a bunch of debt and still not know what he wants to do and not actually have progressed, why would you want to do that?

Do your children have plans on going into the same artistic and creative work as you and your wife?

No, I mean Harry is extraordinary, he runs his own business already doing website design, coding, platform architecture, the whole thing. He works for an American agency and he’s a genius at it, he just soaks it all up and his sense of design at the age of 15 is so sophisticated, so that’s the route he will take. And he’ll always drum, he’s a great drummer and a great dancer as well. Luke, no idea I just hope he hits the path that allows him to do what he wants, he’s horribly talented but it’s up to him. Beth, wants to be a singer/songwriter and she’s well on her way! And Arthur well he plays football and loves Pokémon and he loves watching telly…although we don’t actually own a telly. But whatever they choose, there’s nothing they can’t do.

But you are quite an artistic family?

There’s a great joy in creation, it’s a great self-esteem booster and there’s all those things that build good people you know? And hopefully we’re just building good people, and if they put that on my headstone ‘Joe Atkins blah blah blah. Father, grew some good people’ enough said.

Well that ends the interview quite nicely! Thank you so much for letting me interview you, the film was lovely, I wish you the best of luck.

Bless your heart, thank you! Tell everyone about it!

-

If You Ever Get to Heaven is Joe Atkins’ first feature film. He lives in France with his wife Amanda [who plays Jen Belstaff], and his children Luke [Camera Assistant], Harry [Sound Recordist], Beth [Lucy Belstaff] and Arthur [Jake Belstaff].

“If You Ever Get to Heaven is a one-of-a-kind European road movie, that follows the adventures of Jen Belstaff and her family as they take a life-changing journey across southern Europe.”

It stars Amanda Garwood as Jen Belstaff, and mother in real life.

and

Richard Shelton as James Belstaff

Claire Parker as Katie

Sam Kane as Elvis

Saul Jephcott as Geoffrey

You can find out more about the film here: www.ifyouevergettoheaven.com

And more about the production company: 43 Pictures

Amada Garwood is blogging about The Atkins’ Family new adventure here

If You Ever Get To Heaven is on Facebook: If You Ever Get To Heaven FB

Becca Heaton is Beat Magazine’s resident cinema correspondent.

Joe kindly let me interview him after a preview of If You Ever Get to Heaven, at The Firestation Arts Centre in Windsor – my review of this was published in last month’s edition of Beat.

Thank you to Joe, and we wish you the greatest of good fortune

The photograph was taken by Doug Harding

Tagged as: 43pictures, amanda atkins, amanda garwood, Claire Parker, family, fathers, film, if you ever get to heaven, issue 12, joe atkins, parenting, Richard Shelton, Sam Kane, Saul Jephcott, the firestation, uk film industry