Features > Interviews > Richard Ayoade -…

Richard Ayoade: It was given to me by Warp Films because Ally Gipps, the associate producer of Submarine, went to college with Joe and they’d optioned it before it was published. Plus I’d done one Arctic Monkeys’ video for Warp.

RA: I really liked Oliver Tate and just thought it was a funny character. I liked the kind of voice that he had and his tone.

RA: The main difference is just the writing; it’s much longer than anything I’d done before. In terms of the actual directing it’s not too dissimilar to other things like doing TV or music videos.

RA: The first 90 minutes I would have probably kicked out (laughter), but, I don’t know. I’ve not sought of revisited it. Once you’ve finished it you try to watch it as little as possible. That’s my coping mechanism.

RA: Not that many initially, mainly because I knew the two main characters would be people I hadn’t seen before. Paddy (Considine) I had in mind when I was writing, but other than that no-one really.

RA: No, Initially it was going to be Fleetwood Mac (laughter).  I was really pleased to have Alex do it, and he read the book quite a while before so he knew about it probably a year before we finished editing.

RA: He just read the script really; I don’t really know how it came about. It’s quite odd; he read it and then just sort of became involved somehow.

RA: He said, ‘give up’ (laughter), and after that he was very lovely. Quite hands off; he lives in L.A so he wasn’t going to come to Swansea.

RA:  Well stilton is fine... Cheddar, I like cheddar.

RA: I think Graham (Linehan) is writing at the moment so possibly yeah, but I imagine it may be the last one.

RA: I filmed it, and no it was my idea. He happened to be in London for Wimbledon, that’s what you do when you’re a star; you come over for the Wimbledon final (laughter).

RA: I think it depends on whether you would understand it because essentially you’re just asked a number of questions when you direct something, like ‘do you know what trousers this person should be wearing?’ or ‘should they be wearing trousers at all?’ You know, generally those two questions (laughter). So if you haven’t written it, you tend not to know. It could well be possible, but I would always be nervous that I was doing the writer a disservice.

RA: I didn’t expect any big reviews, you just don’t really think about that, because there are lots of things that are good that have received terrible reviews. I remember Lost Highway had just the worst reviews ever, and that was clearly very wrong.

RA: We’d just finished it and (the first screening) was in Toronto. It was more of just being in an audience watching it, because you have no task, so you just have to sit there, and it’s just excruciating.