Nice one Son

5:11pm Thursday 3rd April 2008

Film-maker Garth Jennings tells Steve Pratt he'd dreamed of making Son Of Rambow since he was a boy. But it took two years and five months of casting to create the feelgood movie of the year'

WHEN he was 11, Garth Jennings and his friends saw the first Rambo film First Blood. "We thought it was incredible and started making our own films," he recalls. "Then, when I went back to my mum and dad's house three or four years ago, I found the tapes and they were ghastly."

But viewing that homemade childhood version of the Sylvester Stallone action movie gave him the idea for a grown-up movie. Today he's rather better placed to get it into production because he's a partner with Neil Goldsmith in the production company Hammer & Tongs, that's made music videos for the likes of Blur, Fatboy Slim, REM, Pulp and Supergrass.

He began writing the script of what became Son Of Rambow, about schoolfriends who see First Blood and set out to make their own movie. Then something got in the way - he was asked to direct the big screen version of Douglas Adams' radio hit The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Although he'd wanted to direct feature films, he never intended to do any big films, he says. "I didn't think it would be much fun, but it was great fun." Then it was back to raising the money to shoot Son Of Rambow. It took two years before the project was funded and the mainly young cast found. Now he finds himself as the director of a project being touted as the feelgood movie of the year, one that sparked a bidding war when shown at the Sundance Film Festival in the US last year.

"No one has seen the film until then, but after ten minutes of the screening I realised it was going well and by the end it did what I wanted it to do," says Jennings.

"There was this crazy bidding war that was so silly. I went to bed with a $7.5m deal with Paramount, which meant that everyone who put money into the film got it back that night."

The 1982-set film stars newcomers Will Poulter and Bill Milner as the boys who, armed with a large video camera and even bigger ambitions, embark on making their home movie, Son Of Rambow, in homage to their hero Rambo.

Bill plays ten-year-old Will, who's been raised in a strict religious upbringing and enters the stranger new world of movies through his friendship with school tearaway Lee Carter (Will Poulter).

To find his young heroes, Jennings and the casting people went to regular schools rather than stage schools. He's overjoyed he found Bill and Will. "The two made the film what it is," says Jennings.

"Whether you like the film or not, you can't help but admit they did a very good job."

The two boys are sitting next to him at the time, at a Cinema Days event for regional film writers.

They're so bright and chatty that you'd never know it was their first press appearance. Will, now 15, auditioned after casting director Susie Figgis came to his school. "I was in English one day and my slightly mad drama teacher was at the window mouthing audition'," he says.

"I got through to the next round, where I met Nick and Gareth who were also mad. They helped me through the audition process and then I met Bill. I'd done few school plays but I loved acting."

Bill, 11, goes to a drama group near his home. "It wasn't to audition for things, it was to enjoy myself.

Then one day the casting director came along," he says.

By this time the search for two boys had been going on for five months. "We'd seen some great kids who weren't exactly right. It was pretty much the last day when we saw these two," recalls Jennings.

Neither boy was much aware of Rambo at this point. Why should they be? The third Rambo movie was released 20 years ago and Stallone's return as the disgruntled Vietnam veteran didn't reach cinemas until earlier this year.

Jennings reports that Stallone has seen the film and really liked it. In US cinemas, the trailer for Son Of Rambow was shown before the new Rambo movie.

He had no problems getting clips from First Blood to show in Son Of Rambow, although took the precaution of adding a W in the title Son Of Rambow to avoid any confusion.

The boys' natural performances are what make the movie such a treat. "It was completely different from anything I'd done before,"

admits Will. "I didn't know what I was doing, to be honest. I just followed Garth because I had no clue."

Bill "didn't mind the acting" but was mystified by all the technical jargon. On the first day when someone shouted "Turn over", the traditional cry to begin shooting a scene, he actually turned over himself.

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