GE: "I’d like to open it up very soon because it seems to me this is an absolutely extraordinary and essential film. It feels like a film from the future actually. A vision of a kind of necessary future that I think we will find ourselves moving into in many different aspects and perhaps more relevant now than it was when it was made. Philip – I wonder if you could tell us … a couple of primary questions really – how you came across the family and then how you made a film with them – how you decided to make a film about them, and then actually how you made that film because you inhabit the film, you’re inside the family to such a degree that we almost forget that you’re there."
PT They lived not very far from where I was brought up and I was with a friend who had been to an auction with them. They’d bought far too many bits and pieces and they needed a hand getting it on. When I went back to the woods with my friend he said you’ve just got to come along and meet these people, they’re special, very special, and of course they were.
GE How did you actually make the film with them? Did you live there? Did you visit?
PT Yes.. we had a team I’d worked with before. Wonderful camerawork you’ll notice, by Richard Stanley, cameraman…
We used to go to work in a bus – an old Commer van with a fridge and a cooker in it, and we went and sat in the woods with that and just spent a long time – I think the best part of a month on and off, about a month there, some days between shooting, rests between shooting. That’s how it went.
GE What the film reveals in lots of ways is an extraordinary psychology among the family members. There’s this sense of a kind of unique space they’ve created. It’s a real shock at the end when they enter the world of the town and the street. It’s as though this world is unimaginable almost when they’re in the wood. How did you find that sense of coming from outside into this space? Was it very much as the film suggests? This kind of other parallel world?
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