How does the co-writing partnership with you and I work?
I’m not sure what the writing process on this one was, as I don’t remember anything about writing it. But normally these things come about thanks to conversations we have, we’ll talk endlessly and sometimes an idea for something comes out of that. When it comes to writing we tend (once we have a draft) to read it over and over and over, out loud, acting it out, and that way we can normally tell if something is or isn’t working for us. For example, if it’s a sitcom and a joke stops making one of us laugh it comes under a spotlight and we try and find out why it's stopped working. Mostly though we rely on the trust we’ve built up in each other, which lets us experiment and go off on some crazy ideas that I don’t think we’d explore on our own- like the “she’s a phone” bit in this film. When you pitched that to me it was a lot crazier than it is now, and I think you were surprised by my enthusiasm for it. Think you thought it was going to be stupid. Maybe had you been writing on your own that idea wouldn’t have made it to the screen. We like to play about and see what we can get away with, that’s how it works mostly, I think.
Do you think the film tries to pack too much into its short running time?
No, I don’t think it does. Time Catches Up isn’t that complex, really. It felt a bit crammed on the page, but Leonie did a good job telling the story. Stephen and Sara sold the relationship well. And I think after this long, having made so many short films now, we can tell richer story’s in a shorter time. That’s not to say the film isn’t full of story, it is. But it’s not trying to do too much, it works. It pulls it off, in my opinion.
How come time catches up is your only contribution for series 4?
Because I’m not a part of series 4. I stepped back a bit, well a lot, after series 3, but before I did that I had done this co-write and it ended up in the series. Simple as that really. Though we are starting to talk about the future of Twisted Showcase, and I might be coming back and being more involved again at some point.
Can you pick out a typical Rhys moment and a typical Robin moment from the script or is that impossible?
I don’t think this is a very typical script of mine. It isn’t the sort of thing I’d normally write, so I don’t think there is anything in it that is particularly, specifically “me” in it. Not that I’d recognise that anyway. It does have a lot of those themes that creep up in our conversations, like the fear of wasting our lives, so as a whole it probably is very typical of the pair us when we get together.
I would like to explore what you see as a “me” idea?
I don’t know, I don’t tend to revisit my own stuff. I’m not sure if there is an example of the kind of idea that I think of as very “me”. Maybe Toilet Soup would be closest, because that’s funny and daft, but has something to say, and that’s the kind of thing I’ve always wanted to do. I really liked the shock value in Toilet Soup, how it was used to make a point. Whether that’s what I do as typical “me”, I don’t know. Maybe Time Catches is up is more typical of me than I think. If I went through and looked at my student films, and my stuff for the showcase short story ebooks and the micro fiction on the website, perhaps I’d discover I'm talking rubbish when I said it’s not something I’d normally write. I always think you have a very distinctive voice, something like Be My Head, which I think is great, feels to me to be a very Robin idea.
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