Dan Palmer and Christian James talks Zombies with The Fan Carpet’s Matt Seton
The surprise hit of last year’s FrightFest, Stalled is a British, micro-budget, horror-comedy set almost entirely within a toilet cubicle.
It’s a simple setup that gives director Christian James and writer/star Dan Palmer a lot of room to fill with some fantastically absurd moments.
It is this humor that is appealing strongly to genre fans far and wide. We spoke to Dan and Christian in light of the film’s recent DVD release.
You guys have been working together for quite a while. Tell me about how you two got together and started making films.
Dan Palmer: Christian and I met at a film school in Bournemouth. We were the youngest on the course, it was for people in their early to mid twenties and Christian and I were both barely 16, straight out of school. We migrated towards each other because of our age, but we also had similar tastes, we both liked stuff like Joe Dante and Robert Zemeckis. Because we were the kids there, when we had assignments everyone was allocated a job and there was no way we were going to have any job of seniority so we always had to paint a set of buy some props so we just went off and made our own stuff.
Stalled seems to have been very well received by fans of the genre, can you tell me about the reception it’s got? Was it what you expected?
Christian James: You just make what you want to make and hope people will connect with it as well. Going off the “success” of our first film Freak Out, which is an acquired taste because it’s an out-and-out comedy set within the horror universe. We saw it as a comedy for horror fans, some people got it and loved it but quite a few people took against it. So Stalled has a heavy dose of comedy too but I don’t see it necessarily as a horror, its sort of an indie drama, it’s got a touch of everything really. I didn’t know how it would be taken because of that. People would say “it’s not horror enough, it’s not comedy enough” but we seem to be ticking all the boxes for everybody, and that’s great. At first I was concerned that we weren’t one or the other enough, but I couldn’t be happier with the reception it’s got so far.
Can you tell me about the reception the film received at Frightfest?
Dan Palmer: FrightFest was fantastic because we never thought we’d get in, it’s quite an honour to be accepted. Alan Jones, the granddaddy of Frightfest saw our first film and abjectly hated it, he detested it. We thought “there’s no way we’ll get into Frightfest,” but the next thing we heard was that it had been accepted and would be shown twice at Leicester Square, we couldn’t believe it. It was especially surprising when we found out the person who watched it was actually Alan and he’s been one of our biggest champions since. Tickets went on sale and both screenings sold out, we were one of the first films to sell out. Then we were given a third screening because of the demand for the first two. When we attended we thought maybe they were playing a joke on us, they’d got this film they all hate so they could laugh at it but we were wrong. Everyone loved it and the reactions were astounding. From there those reactions have spring-boarded us into everything else.
Did you ever worry that spending 80 odd minutes in one room would go stale or were you always confident you’d pull it off?
Christian James: That’s the challenge, it’s the fun of making a micro-budget movie like this. Because it didn’t cost a lot of money we could experiment. We know each other well enough to know that we could do this. We were confident that we could make it entertaining in that time. We had a gut instinct of knowing we could pull this off and it’s that fun challenge of thinking “can we set a whole movie in a toilet cubicle and make it fun?” I like containment thrillers like Buried etc. but they’re not that fun. We wanted to create a sense of journey to this, Buried is a really neat exercise in filmmaking but you don’t really go on much of a journey with it.
Dan Palmer: I think I would be more nervous about trying something which didn’t have an odd angle to it, like a boy meets girl rom-com, something thats tried and tested. The fact that Stalled has a unique take and a slight bizarre setup gave me a little bit more confidence.
Was the relatively small budget and short shooting time (15 days) a help or a hinderance?
Christian James: Time is your worst enemy when making a film. It’s tough but it keeps you focussed. It’s good that I’ve worked with Dan before because we can remind each other to do things. Sometimes you’ll be doing a scene and before you knew it, just through rushing around, a really important element will have been dropped and Dan will say to me, “don’t forget that”. It’s good that we have each other’s backs like that. The only way you can make a film like this is knowing your key crew well.
Dan, can you tell me how you go about writing a script when you know you’re going to play the main character? Is your thought process different to if you were writing for another actor?
Dan Palmer: Not really, I don’t write any nude scenes.
Christian James: Kissing scenes!
Dan Palmer: Yeah, lots of boob massage scenes. No not really, I don’t change anything because if you do that you may end up emphasising one more character than another. Plus as a writer you’re meant to put yourself in every character’s shoes. Male, female, black, white, old, young. I never specifically write for myself but then again, every character will have my voice to a certain extent.
As a British zombie comedy, comparisons with Shaun of the Dead are inevitable. Was that in the back of your minds when you were making this?
Christian James: You just cannot make a british zombie movie without SotD quite rightly being raised, its a great benchmark. The trouble is we’re such a different beast, our lead character W.C. is the anti-Sean, we went out of our way to make him very unlikeable. A few producers said to us, “how can we make him more like Simon Pegg?”. We were constantly in a battle to steer it away from Sean.
Dan Palmer: One review recently said that comparing Stalled to Sean of the Dead is like comparing South Park to Shrek.
Did you ever think about not going with zombies?
Dan Palmer: When I first game Christian the script, the film was called Occupied then which has no references to zombies. He really liked it and wanted to direct but we did have that discussion of “does it have to be zombies?” We were thinking it can’t be werewolves they’ll tear the door down in seconds, it can’t be vampires because they’re basically as intelligent as human beings. At the end of the day we thought we’d make a zombie movie, I’ve wanted to make one since I was a kid and we know it’s not a cheap cash in. Hopefully those in the know will realise it’s from people with a genuine love for the genre.
I’ve heard about your next idea that you’ve billed as ‘The Machinist meets Happy Gilmore’. Would you like to expand on that idea and give a little more information?
Dan Palmer: I can’t really, I shouldn’t have said that either. That’ll be our next project with the Stalled team if the producer does his job right. That isn’t a horror, its a dark sci-fi comedy, and that’s how I pitched it as ‘The Machinist meets Happy Gilmore’.
Christian James: There was 8 years between out first micro-budget feature and our second micro-budget feature, we’ve had several projects nearly get going. Back in 2008 we had a feature film get painfully close, sets were being build at Pinewood studios and then the money that was all signed off didn’t turn up so the whole thing came crashing down. Luckily in this whole time Dan and I have developed a lot of ideas, so we have no shortage of projects its just about trying to marry them up with the right people. Stalled’s been a great success and we’re now meeting people and trying to match the right project with the right producer. It’ll be exciting to see where we go next.
Christian decided to finish off by giving his writer some terrible news about their next film together, “Dan I didn’t want to tell you this but we’ve got Danny Dyer in to star!”
STALLED IS OUT NOW ON BLU-RAY AND DVD