the thing with feathers.
It’s Friday! It’s Friday 21st November… which can only mean one thing… The Thing With Feathers is playing in Cinemas from today, yay! To celebrate, we’re sharing a special zine we received during our time at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York during the following ASFF session:
FILM4: SHORTS TO FEATURES
Amy O’Hara and Dylan Southern
Film4 is celebrated for its innovative projects, working with both
UK and international talents. The globally recognised broadcaster
produces critically acclaimed films, including BAFTA-nominated
Hard Truths, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste, as well as Yorgos
Lanthimos’ Golden Globe-winning Poor Things. The company also
supports emerging talent to get their projects off the ground. Join
Development Executive Amy O’Hara and Dylan Southern (The Thing
with Feathers) as they explore the transition from shorts to features.
The session was amazing, it’s so interesting hearing about the ups and downs and nitty gritty of birthing creations to life. Without further ado, please enjoy the exclusive zine… and then go see the film on the big screen (and if you’ve yet to read the book: Grief Is A Thing With Feathers, add that to your book list, it’s pretty special.)
====================
i.
Written and Directed by
Dylan Southern
Based on the Novel by
Max Porter
Starring
Benedict Cumberbatch
THE THING
WITH
FEATHERS
. . . . . . . . . .
ii.
Intro.
Oscar® nominee Benedict Cumberbatch
stars in The Thing with Feathers, adapted
from the award-winning debut novel by
Max Porter.
Following the death of his wife,
a young father’s hold on reality crumbles,
and a strange presence begins to stalk
him from the shadowy recesses of the
apartment he shares with his two young
sons. A man-like crow, voiced by David
Thewlis, is seemingly brought to life
from the father’s work as an illustrator
and is about to become a very real part
of all of their lives, ultimately guiding
them towards the new shape their family
must take.
A lyrical exploration of love, loss and
the strange ways we heal.
. . . . . . . . . .
iii.
“I needed stories to
mourn with and play with”
Max Porter
Author
Once upon a sleep-deprived and
revelatory time when the kids were
little I needed stories to mourn
with and play with. I drew empty
Polaroids and poets being mocked
by the empty puppets of their own
poems and I found a red folder full
of family secrets and crow was in
my garden auditioning, entertaining
forever-6-year-old me, over the top
stealing the show and fast forward
to Dylan calling to tell me the
demon scene is being filmed and
Dad’s being thrown through a wall.
I thought you’d like that. He’s right;
I like that.
Once upon a dislocated time
me and my brother clambering on
our bunk beds with a crow in the
room but we didn’t know it yet,
fast forward to the Boxall Brothers
clambering on our bunk beds but
it’s a film set, eight people helping
Eric into his suit, hundreds of people
building a flat, building a model which
is realer than the real one ever was,
Fordesman peeking in with his bird’s
eye vision, making it sing. This must
be strange for you, says the ghost
of my dad. This must be some kind
of magic.
Tell him to go away and write
a proper book, fast forward to the
Chinese edition with an illustration
of the midwife, grinning, If you’re
not heartbroken you’re not paying
attention, kids playing dead meat,
marching in the street, novel like a
film like a comic like an essay like a
poem like a joke like a love letter, like
Benedict screaming, spun around on
a turntable while an eight foot bird
hurts him and heals him, while Lucy
doodles on his eyeballs, ink splashes
in the cinema, good book bad book
rip a hole in the Hallmark card and slip
a smelly truth in, Nicola dripping wax
and paint and ancient corvid posture
into the mess we left of our myths,
all of us playing cameo parts in the
heart-breaking dramatization of our
lives, Thewlis growling from outside
that we’ll be fine, but we’re fucked,
we’ll be ok, but it hurts.
“Crow flies from sun to sun and
finds his home.” Dad flies from son
to son and finds his wife.
. . . . . . . . . .
iv.
Dylan Southern
Writer/Director
I couldn’t use structure in the same
way Max’s book does, but I knew I
wanted to play with structure in a
way that was analogous and which
reflected the temporal qualities of
grief. I wanted to explore the way
time can dilate, examine the inflection
points loss creates between memory
and the present, and I wanted to span
grief-time, rather than real-time.
I wanted the film to be a visceral
document of a human experience;
cathartic for those who have
experienced the thing it depicts,
illuminating for those who haven’t.
Wild. Chaotic. Messy. Funny
This wasn’t an obvious (or easy)
book to adapt, so I’m incredibly proud
of the film we made together with a
commitment to kindness, handmade
craft and love.
As a teenager I lost two close
friends. These deaths left me
bewildered. Reading Max Porter’s
novella Grief is the Thing with Feathers
years later was one of the most
cathartic experiences of my life. With
this adaptation, my ambition and
priority were to create a cinematic
language that would honour the DNA
of Max’s book, while being its own
thing – just as unconventional, yet
accessible to audiences who might
not be aware of its literary origins.
The film has moments inflected
by genre; the opening act is full of
deliciously and deliberately dislocating
shards of horror that unsettle the
nervous system and act as a tonal
counterpoint to domestic reality
(where the true horror of the family’s
l situation lies).
. . . . . . . . . .
v.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Actor / Producer
Max’s novel is an exceptional
piece of prose. It’s lyrical,
damaged, salvational, majestical,
mundane, domestic, real and
surreal. It is an extraordinary
prism through which to reflect
grief – the structure and intimacy
of it. When reading it, I had the
most amazing film playing in
my head
Crow is everything to Dad.
He’s a provocateur. He’s an
angry harbinger of grief and
inadequacy. He’s the worst
internal critic. He’s a guardian
angel. He’s a protector. He’s
a mess of grief, and it takes
the form of this Crow. The
relationship between Dad
and Crow is wonderful – the
suspicion, the discovery, the horror,
the craziness, the embarrassment,
the confrontation, the anger.
This film is important for any
time, but I think it is particularly
important now, because it is about
the idea of male vulnerability and
what it is to deal with grief and
loss. Love inevitably means loss
because you can’t love something
without loss. Nothing lasts forever.
This is the extraordinary, haunting,
beautiful and profound way to
explore loss.
. . . . . . . . . .
vi.
Lucy Sullivan
Artist
Finding Art DAD was like putting on
an old coat l’d packed away. One
that I cloaked myself in to make my
own tale of grief and breakdown
BARKING. My graphic novel was
heavily influenced by Grief is the Thing
with Feathers. I’d stumbled on the
book in a shop one day, drawn to the
blackest crow on the cover. I think my
jaw dropped when I read the synopsis
and saw the similarities to my own
work-in-progress book. Swap CROW
for my Black Dog, DAD for my alter-
ego Alix and the theme of manifesting
your grief into a creature … it was
pretty close for comfort so I prepared
myself for a rewrite on reading.
Instead what I found was less
the same story but more permission
to create mine in exactly the way
I wanted to. It pushed boundaries,
stuck two fingers up at the rules and
screamed its pain in your face. It felt
like my grief and everyone else’s who
had fallen into that pit of black.
So when Dylan approached me
to draw DAD’s art, without hesitation,
I put my grief coat back on. Dragged
into the experience by a playlist Dylan
created for DAD I spent two weeks
scribbling in sketchbooks, smearing
paint, spilling ink and scratching out
CROW from carbon. It felt weirdly
like home. To see Benedict then bring
DAD into life and embody the artist so
fully, alongside Eric’s looming CROW,
was an emotional and deeply fulfilling
experience. I would have said the
book was unfilmable but what Dylan,
the crew and cast have created is the
perfect expression of it’s heart. A truly
extraordinary film.
. . . . . . . . . .
vii.
Behind the Scenes:
Crafting the Film
Nicola Hicks, MBE, created CROW.
An English sculptor, she is best known
for her works using straw and plaster.
She was the only choice for director,
Dylan Southern, to bring CROW to
life because of the mythical quality of her work.
Lucy Sullivan is a Writer & Artist from
London (UK) who creates comics about
social concerns combined with folklore
and expressive mark-making. Lucy’s
latest release is the new edition
of BARKING, her acclaimed debut based
on her own experience of a mental health
crisis, published by Avery Hill.
Suzie Davies is a BAFTA and Academy Award®-nominated Production Designer. Having started as a model maker and sculptor in the 90s
she then became an Art Director
and now gets to work on amazing
films as a Production Designer.
Recent titles include Conclave,
Saltburn, and the new adaptation
of the highly anticipated Wuthering
Heights, directed by Emerald Fennell.
Conor O’Sullivan is a British Creature
and Prosthetic artist who has
been nominated for two Academy
Award®s and was one of the creators of The Joker’s makeup in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
He and his team at Creatures Inc.
expertly adapted Nicola Hicks’ Crow
Design, creating the Crow creature’s
prosthetic suit and animatronic head.
. . . . . . . . . .
viii.
Making Crow
An unwanted and unhinged
house guest, CROW is the
heartbeat of the story –
forcing Dad, in increasingly
inventive, sometimes cruel
ways, to face up to the fact
his wife is gone. Dylan describes
him as a trickster or an archetypal
fairytale character.
In fact, for a long time when anyone
asked me what I was working on l’d
describe it in those terms – a sort of
live-action adult Studio Ghibli film.
Mixing the domestic and everyday
with moments of fantasy and visual
invention.’
Or put another way ‘Part
demented Mary Poppins, part Tyler
Durden, with shades of The Fall’s
spiky frontman Mark E Smith, the
barely concealed volcanic violence of
Sexy Beast’s Don Logan, the gauche
entitlement of Withnail’
Designed by Nicola Hicks, played
by Eric Lampaert and voiced by David/
Thewlis, CROW is a character unlike any we’ve seen before.
. . . . . . . . . .
ix.
Credits
Film4 and Bfi present in association with
Align and Uncommon Creative Studio,
Mk2 Films, Rank And File
in co-production with Filmgate Films,
A Lobo Films & Sunnymarch production
Benedict Cumberbatch,
Richard Boxall, Henry Boxall,
Eric Lampaert, Vinette Robinson,
Sam Spruell, Leo Bill and David Thewlis
Casting Director: Shaheen Baig
Music by: Zebedee C. Budworth
Hair & Make-Up Designer: Wakana Yoshihara
Costume Designer: Sophie O’Neill
Editor: George Cragg
Production Designer: Suzie Davies
Director of Photography: Ben Fordesman Bsc
Co-Producer: Kristina Börjeson
Executive Producers: Adrian Politowski,
Sierra Garcia, Nadia Khamlichi,
Nessa Mcgill, Mia Bays,
Charlie Gatsky Sinclair,
Nils Leonard, Nathanaël & Elisha Karmitz,
Fionnuala Jamison, Sean Wheelan
Morwin Schmookler, Patricia Lawley
Lee Broda, Thomas R. Burke, Ollie Madden, Ben Coren, Benedict Cumberbatch
Produced by: Andrea Cornwell,
Adam Ackland, Leah Clarke
Distributed in the UK and Ireland
by Vue Lumière
All art is copyright to Lucy Sullivan
Based on the Novel
‘Grief Is The Thing With Feathers’
by Max Porter
Written and Directed by Dylan Southern
thethingwithfeathers.co.uk