Jamie Patterson has directed 3 movies since the one released two days ago

“The opening scene of the movie is one take for six minutes”

In the last couple of blogs, I chatted to Derren Nesbitt, star of the new film Tucked which was directed by Jamie Patterson. So, obviously, I had a chat with Jamie as well.

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JOHN: Why Tucked as a title?

JAMIE: Originally the title was Jackie – the central character’s name – simple and it worked – but then that Jackie Kennedy movie came out with Natalie Portman. 

JOHN: Anything else that you hadn’t foreseen?

JAMIE: Some of the dresses Derren wore were so heavy. I think the dress he wears in the last scene… I’ve never felt something so heavy. I hadn’t even thought about that. And the wig was so heavy. The opening scene of the movie is one take for six minutes. He had to do the full-on stage act, singing, doing jokes, all the lights on him with the heavy dress, the heavy wig, the jewellery… But Derren would never complain.

JOHN: How many takes for that opening shot?

JAMIE: Three. The other two we didn’t use were not because of anything Derren did; we had focus issues because it was quite a tricky move on Steadicam

JOHN: You live in Brighton and Derren lives in Worthing, so you knew him personally before you cast him?

“He did a little bit – a day – on a film I did”

JAMIE: I used to date his step-daughter – she was make-up artist on another film I did. So I’ve known him for years and he did a little bit – a day – on a film I made called Home For Christmas. And I had always had this idea for Tucked and, honestly, as I was writing it, I couldn’t think of anyone else who would be so good in the central role…

The way Derren talks and his persona, his stories… Been in the industry for 50 years and worked with Sinatra and Burton and all these incredible people. He’s got that history and I just knew he would be perfect for it.

JOHN: You finished shooting Tucked in 2016 and finished editing it in 2018. Done anything since then?

JAMIE: Three films. 

JOHN: Heavens! How many films have you made in total?

JAMIE: Fifteen. A lot were Amazon, iTunes, VOD release, that sort of thing. Tucked is the first one to have a theatrical release in the UK. I have had theatrical release in America before – 15 cities – a movie called Caught. A terrible title. A horror film set in the 1970s. Horror is actually my favourite genre to watch, but I like character-driven horror. I’ve never liked gore tests. I like tone and atmosphere.

JOHN: Well, Val Lewton – What you don’t see is more frightening than what you see.

JAMIE: Exactly.

JOHN: But three films directed since Tucked…!

JAMIE: Yes. A week after we finished filming it, I went off to start a very silly fun comedy called Tracks, an interrailing film all round Europe.

JOHN: A what?

“We did it proper guerrilla stuff to give it an authentic feel”

JAMIE: An interrailing comedy. It’s about a couple who go on trains all round Europe. We had a crew of six and shot in Paris, Nice, Rome, Venice, Florence, Milan. We cast all the supporting roles as we were going. We didn’t have any location secured. We did it proper guerrilla stuff to give it an authentic feel. We have just finished that one now. Very different from Tucked.

JOHN: The entire film was shot on trains?

JAMIE: On trains, in hostels, hotels. I shot in the middle of Venice.

JOHN: Filming sound on a train is dodgy.

JAMIE: I tried to write it so there weren’t many dialogue scenes on a train. The scenes which had dialogue, we shot back in the UK. We rented a train carriage which went from London to Heathrow and back twice.

JOHN: You saw West London passing by through the windows?

The energetic and indefatigable Jamie

JAMIE: (LAUGHS) We made sure we didn’t see too much out the window! Anyway, I did that one, then a movie called Justine, written by Jeff Murphy, who wrote for the TV show Hinterland; he has a musical, Denmark, coming out. A really good writer.

JOHN: And Justine is…?

JAMIE: …about two young girls who fall in love. A lovely little heartbreaking, beautiful, charming love story.

I did that and then I’ve just wrapped a movie called God’s Petting You, which is like a British True Romance. It’s about two addicts who fall in love and together plan on robbing the biggest porn star in Europe. It’s very slick, very colourful. I wanted to do something very different and ‘out there’. It’s inspired by American films in the visuals, but very very British in its content.

JOHN: About two addicts who plan to rob the biggest porn star in Europe… Based on a true story?

JAMIE: (LAUGHS) No…. Well, I know someone who’s like that.

JOHN: So you have made three films since you finished Tucked…

JAMIE: Yes. And on July 1st I start my next one.

JOHN: Heavens! Which is…?

JAMIE: The Kindred, a psychological thriller, written by Christian J.Hearn, who wrote a movie I did called Fractured about five years ago now – a couple of films before Tucked.

JOHN: And, after that?

JAMIE: I’ve just signed with an American agency called Gersh, so I’m trying to write my first script to do out in America.

How an Apple iPad could finally cure my concussion and help me forget the embarrassing toilet incidents

In yesterday’s blog, I wrote about Jason Cook, who is dyslexic but has written three gangster novels and I mentioned that, since the morning of 9th March 1991, I have not been able to read a book – not since I got hit by a large truck while standing on the pavement in Borehamwood.

I have written books since 1991, but I am physically unable to read them. Always best not to mention this to a publisher.

In 1981, ten years before the accident, I contributed three chapters to the anthology Anatomy of the Movies (which I have just now looked up on Amazon and copies appear, astonishingly, to be selling for £57.60 upwards; sadly I get none of this).

But, since 1991, I have been unable to read any book, though I have written several.

I have no actual memory of getting hit except I was standing on the pavement at a junction. What I have reconstructed in my mind is that I was rushing down to the post office on Saturday morning to send a friend her birthday card before the final midday collection. At a junction, I stood on the pavement and turned round to see if any traffic was coming. The driver’s cab of a large truck passed me by but the front corner edge of the wider, protruding container behind it hit me on my turned-round shoulder, breaking my collar bone in two places.

I was thrown backwards with a slight spin and the back of my head hit the sharp edge of a low brick wall maybe nine inches above the ground. What I didn’t know until much later was that my spine had been twisted and jerked when my head hit the wall.

I don’t remember any of that. But, from what I do know, that’s what must have happened.

I do have flashes of memory after that. I remember lying on the ground looking up at a group of people looking down at me; some were kneeling. I remember being in an ambulance and being asked my name and address.

“Ah, you need to write down my details,” I remember saying to an ambulance man.

“No,” he replied. “I’m just checking you know who you are.”

I remember looking at the ceiling while being wheeled along a corridor in Barnet Hospital.

I have only hazy memories. I think I had about ten or twelve stitches in the back of my head, but I can’t remember. I was theoretically in the care of whichever doctor(s) looked after concussion and brain damage; but I was in an orthopedic ward for people who had broken bones because of my collar bone. So the brain doctor upstairs who had responsibility for me didn’t visit that downstairs orthopedic ward because it wasn’t his area and the nurses in the ward I was in were only observing me for the specialist who didn’t come.

I had enough trouble trying to remember if you put the plastic toilet seat up or down when you sat on it. Sitting on the white ceramic of the bowl didn’t seem to quite work and was distractingly cold on the buttocks. And I can tell you the curved edges dig into your bum. I spent a week there. In the hospital, not in the toilet. I was eventually released from the hospital when a very weary and over-worked junior-looking doctor from the ‘mind’ ward came down to the ‘bone’ ward and said I seemed to be OK. He was very kindly but was just about to go home for some much-needed sleep and appeared to me to be in much worse condition than I was. But what did I know?

It took about eighteen months to (mostly) sort out the pain in my shoulder – but only after I went to a Chinese doctor (ie Chinese medicine not the NHS).

It took about nine or ten months to get over the concussion.

I kept thinking I was better but my mind kept draining away for periods. I would come home, sit on the sofa and look at the wall, blankly, unable to think.

To formulate thoughts in my mind, I needed words and the words would not come to my mind nor come together. I could not hold thoughts together. It was like I could feel my nerve-endings or brain strands like little hands reaching out and trying to connect with one another but not quite being able to reach each other. I could almost put the thought together but could not quite reach. My brain was like thin vegetable soup with separate strands of spaghetti floating about like living worms trying but not quite able to touch each other.

When I tried to read a newspaper, I could only read about three lines of the first paragraph before I lost concentration. It was like looking at an object but then your eyes de-focus. I could see the words in newspapers and magazines OK but, after two or three lines, I could not hold their meaning together in my brain.

It was a flash forward to my own inevitable senility.

After a couple of weeks being OK, I would think I was better, but then my mind would go into vegetable soup mode again for two or three days. Then I would think I was better again. Then it would go soupy again. There was no NHS aftercare, of course, because I had been no-one’s specific responsibility. This went on for nine or ten months.

Since then, I can read newspapers and magazines with no problems, but I cannot read printed books.

Too much print. Too much density of words.

Whether it’s a psychological or physical problem I don’t know.

But I CAN write (and read) books on my computer. I think it’s because the amount of text you see at any given time is much less. Somehow this doesn’t flummox my mind the way holding a 300-page book in my hand does.

Since 1991, I have written comedian Malcolm Hardee’s autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake (published 1996)…

I edited the anthology Sit-Down Comedy (2003) which involved commissioning original work from 19 comedians and then badgering them to deliver the stuff; some just delivered perfect manuscripts; some needed suggestions and help; some needed careful editing; it was a bit like juggling meerkats.

I then edited comedian Janey Godley’s utterly amazing autobiography Handstands in the Dark (I can say that because I did not write it and it was justly a top ten bestseller in 2005 and 2006)…

And, in early 2010, I wrote the first 55,000 words of a 70,000 novelisation of the by-anyone’s-standards controversial movie Killer Bitch. The publisher pulled that one two weeks before I finished the manuscript because all the supermarkets and WH Smiths refused to handle the book (despite the fact they had not read any of it). I might still revive/finish that one, though I’m useless without deadlines.

Anyway, I have written and/or edited/proof-read/shepherded all of the above, but I have not read any of the published printed books.

However, I have an Apple iPad with its gob-smackingly beautiful iBook application.

You can make the pages sepia, change the font and size of the text and turn a page with your finger just like a real book. The corner or edge of the page curls over as you move your finger and you see on the back of the previous page the reversed text and illustrations which were on it.

I adore it.

It is a thing of beauty.

And I think I could read a book on it, just as I can read a manuscript on my normal computer.

I have not yet tried a whole book, but I feel the urge coming on.

The Apple iPad could yet save me from illiteracy.

Oh and – yes – I do have trouble reading printed TV and film scripts too.