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Jamie BlackleyMARK in UWANTME2KILLHIM? We spoke to him about the film.

You are a Crystal Palace supporter? Was football your original passion?

Oh yes but I was never good enough to play. It would have been my dream to play for Palace. To score at Wembley! All of that. But it was never going to happen and acting was something that I had enjoyed when I was a kid, so I just sort of explored it. Eventually it worked out. I’m not a season ticket holder at Palace because I’m away so much. So I like to do Palace as a treat. I go with my Dad and cheer them on, we went to Wembley for the play-offs. That was one of the best days of my life. We got up early and went into town and went to pub in Baker Street that was full of Palace fans, got the Tube to Wembley. As soon as we beat Brighton I knew in my gut that we were going to do it (win promotion). I wake up every morning and say to my Dad can you believe that weare in the Premier League. I am so proud of the team. Now I have the same gut feeling that we will stay up.

Did you actively pursue uwantme2killhim? as soon as you knew there was even the slightest chance of being cast?

It is very rare that you read something and have that kind of reaction and just imagining that I would be in it was incredible. It was just one of those jobs that gave me a jump out of the seat moment. It was th plays Mark in e longest shoot I’ve ever done, the toughest shoot I’ve ever done. I have a lot of dialogue and I came out of it thinking that I had achieved something and learned a lot. It was just really great!

How much had you known about the real story?

I knew nothing of the real story when I first read the script. But when I got the part I was sent the Vanity Fair article. I read through that and it was amazing just to compare the two – the script and the article. What really happened is even more unbelievable and shocking than what is in the film. So that was incredibly interesting. But in terms of what I took from that I don’t really know because we can only take things from ourselves and the script, make sense of it and make it believable.

How hard was it to step back a few years to portray a schoolboy?

It was kind of difficult. I was about 19 or 20 when we made the film. So it was a bit weird to think of how it was when I had been back at school. You thought, my goodness it was that long ago. I had to think about how when I was at school I’d have reacted differently to things. Toby and I went back to school for a day and that was really helpful. They are big on drama there so we attended a class with the kids. We became friendly with the kids and chatted with them. It was surprisingly simple once the kids, who gave up their half term, came in.

Your body language seems spot on, even the way you ride a bike in the film?

I imagined that being on the bike was like being a great moment. And at the school desk I just slouched.

And how many times a day did you shave?

I actually did shave twice a day. First in the morning about 6.15 am and then later on. One of the big questions that director Andrew Douglas had when he cast me was whether or not I could look young enough. Eventually we managed to pull it off with make-up and shaving but my skin was falling off by the end.

It must be intriguing to consider that some day the two real boys will see the film?

I have thought about that a lot. I’m sure it is a part of their lives that they will not want to remember in a hurry. I hope that the film does not affect them in any way. I do feel for both boys. As it says in the film, each boy is a victim of the other. That is completely the case.

The film is a telling indictment of the Internet?

There are people out there who know how to use the Internet a lot better than anyone else. They can exploit it. There is never going to be a day when that is not going to happen. It can be a dangerous thing. You just have to know about that. I’m not a hi-tech wizard. I use the Internet for YouTube and Crystal Palace. That’s about as far as it gets.

You have had a busy time, what’s the year ahead looking like?

I haven’t got anything on at the moment. I want to be careful what I do. I don’t want to do anything just for the sake of doing it. I want to be in this for a long time.

What role gives you the greatest sense of pride?

It has got to be uwantme2killhim? This was the first moment in my life where I got to explore and learn a lot. I was there pretty much every day of the six week shoot. I got collected at 5.30 am and went home at 8.30 pm to eat and sleep. I lived it for that long. When I look back I see that as a turning point and felt that maybe I was going to do all right.

Cheers Jamie

We spoke to Andrew Douglas, director of UWANTME2KILLHIM?

This is a quantum leap from your previous movie, The Amityville Horror, which I assume was a foot in the door movie?

It was completely that. I had been making TV commercials for years and years and in America there is a route through from commercials to making feature films. But you have to go through the genre films. It was a boot camp education, going from king of your own set to being very low on the totem pole in a studio movie. You do it to get to the next place. So I made The Amityville Horror but in truth it felt like making another commercial. I was not as proud of it but I was proud to have survived it. I went there as a mechanic, as a shooter, and I was glad to have done it and it did well. So to some extent it gave me some kind of credentials in America but I got offered the same films. I jumped on another one, Priest, and developed that for six months and then realised it was the same film. So I jumped off, which is not a popular thing to do. Then I looked around for something of my own – and it was this. It came about in a strange way. Bryan Singer grabbed the article in Vanity Fair but we saw it at the same time and went for it. He developed a script and I took a meeting on that script, but I had my own ideas percolating and I suggested a different flavour. I had never seen a story like it.

Was there ever a suggestion that the story should become American?

I think if Bryan had made it, it would be American. Anyway, I got a call about developing the take that I had on the material. I said yes and found a writer in Britain.

What research was done before filming?


We had the article, which was really the template for everything and the material was compelling. A year ago there was an opera called Two Boys which was the same material and in a year or so there may be something else based on the material. I felt the only sway that I’d get a film made was if it was a genre film. I had learned that much. I wanted to figure a sway of framing it as a genre film – a thriller – and I also felt the way to tell the story was to make the journey with Mark, whom I thought was the more challenging character. On paper Mark was very credulous and I was keen to tackle that and look at the film from his point of view. There are precedents for his kind of story telling – The Usual Suspects, A Beautiful Mind, and on on. Our reference material was the article and I got a look, slightly informally, at the transcripts. One of my regrets is that I did not quite get the scale of the transcripts. I would try to do that if I made the film again. The transcripts were night after night, hour after hour…eight hours at a time. At some level I knew this was a story of addiction – a story of people who could not get what they wanted at home, so went out to look for it and to escape into fantasy. And the Internet was that fantasy. Anyway, the transcripts were just vast and the scale unbelievable. And they are all in the odd, almost Orwellian language. Beyond that research we couldn’t really move because legally we could never get to the boys. I hope at some point I meet the boys because I hope they see the film. It would interesting to hear what they thought. I like to think that the film is very even-handed. I very genuinely emphasised with both characters. I’d like to think that I found something dramatically credible in each character.

How hard was the casting of the principal characters?

I saw dozens of dozens of boys. I am such a big fan of Shane Meadows and at first I thought this was going to be like a Shane Meadows’ film. In the sense that I was going to find a young Tommy Turgoose. So I went to Manchester – which is where the true story happened – and did a real people casting. But I quickly realised that although they looked real and authentic, we had written such complicated characters and real people casting could not get anywhere near them. So we started casting conventionally and it took three months. I saw Toby and Jamie a couple of times but thought that they were both too pretty. They are so handsome! But they were head and shoulders the best actors with the best grasp on the material. Originally I read Toby for both characters. But then I realised when I had all these faces in my mind that it was Toby and Jamie. So we did a kind of make-up test which little more than shaving Jamie.

Were you ever concerned about the two leads looking young enough on screen?

We shot at a school in Harlow and we cherry-picked school kids on the older side of 16 and when you surrounded Toby and Jamie with those kids they fitted in. I think we got away with it.

There is good screen chemistry between Amy Wren and Jamie.

She and Jamie are an item. We did not know. We had them romping around for a scene and when I wondered why the scene had taken so long, Jamie said it was because he fancied her like mad!

Why is the policewoman played by Joanne Froggatt pregnant?

It was a little something. She comes in so suddenly and undeveloped as a character and I wanted to give her something so that in a shorthand way it shows that she’s dealing with a 16 year old whom she doesn’t understand and she’s about to bring a baby into a world that she doesn’t have an understanding of. I wanted that to be a layer for her and the film. She’d be so conflicted – she’d be angry with this kid and then she stay with the case longer than normal because she was grappling to understand something that was bewildering. The pregnancy gave the character a reason for doing what she did.

It’s surprising that Joanne Froggatt took on a film in which she only has a handful of scenes.

I think she was intrigued. I don’t know why she did it but I am so grateful that she did. It is a dense character. There is another whole film that would be set in the police interview.

A nice coincidence of course that Joanne’s first TV role was in The Bill?

She didn’t say but almost every actor has been in The Bill.

All the twists must make the film difficult to talk about without spoiling things?

There is a risking of giving too much away. And it doesn’t cheat. It all tracks, you could go back to the start and see the connections. Once I had decided on the device, I used at The Usual Subjects and Fight Club and A Beautiful Mind. All those films drop beautiful clues. I felt if I was going to use the device I could not cheat.

In one scene there is a porn film showing on TV.

Yes, I shot a real porno for that. I got a porno director and porno stars and we shot it. It was the most shocking experience of my life. We needed to make our own porno film because for the plot the actress in it has to say certain words.

Do you know what you might tackle next?

No because I have been concentrating on this. It has been a long haul. It is a great film and it will have its moment.

Thanks Andrew.