Ant Timpson on his incredibly strangely family-friendly flick
New direction: Ant Timpson at Auckland's Hollywood Cinema, owned by his brother, Matt. Photo / Jane Ussher
Ant Timpson is the creator of the Incredibly Strange Film Festival, purveyor of insanely gory films and possessor of a deep streak of black humour. He likes horror and mayhem and what most normal people might regard as sicko stuff.
Do you know what trepanation is? I didn’t. Timpson does. Of course he does. His first short film, Crab Boy, involved “a pregnant woman who got hit on the head by a falling giant crab claw and died during childbirth”. The practice of trepanation – which involved drilling holes in people’s skulls to let evil spirits out and which presumably is now out of medical fashion – featured in a script he wrote and, god only knows how, got a grant for.
He had an obsession with holes in heads and “that jaw-dropping home movie Heartbeat in the Brain, where Amanda Feilding drills into her own head in 1970″. What do you mean you’ve never heard of it?
You really wouldn’t want to drill into Timpson’s head. It must be incredibly strange in there. I read him a quote: “Really, I reject people’s attempts to portray me as some sort of unprincipled smut peddler. To be honest, I think I’m doing a public service.”
He said: “What? Michele, are you trying to stitch me up? I’m trying to peddle my PG movie here.”
Here is one of his earlier attempts to peddle an Incredibly Strange Film Festival winner, Hobo with a Shotgun: “It’s as if director Jason Eisener had downed a keg of Street Trash Viper, blended it with some chunks of Texas Gladiators 2020 and Class of 1984, then vomited it all up in Technicolor.” You’d rush to see that. “It had a certain percentage of the audience definitely frothing at the bung to see it.”
His PG movie will leave his reputation for being a smut and gore merchant in tatters. He has made Bookworm, his second feature, which he directed, and also wrote in collaboration with his mate Toby Harvard. It is a warm, funny and lovely film about a strange, bookish girl, Mildred (the infuriating, engaging Nell Fisher, who was 11 when the film was being shot), who speaks as though she has swallowed a dictionary – and quite possibly has. After her mother (Morgana O’Reilly) badly shocks herself making toast for Nell’s tea and ends up in the hospital, her father, Strawn (Elijah Wood), with whom Nell has never had any contact, arrives from the States to sort of take care of her. He is a failed wannabe telly magician who insists on being called an “illusionist”. His illusions are crap. Nell is not impressed.
Nell is on the hunt for the elusive Canterbury Black Panther, which some Cantabrians insist actually exists. There is a $50,000 reward for photographic evidence that it does indeed exist. Nell’s mum is in dire financial straits. Nell needs to win that money.
She insists that Strawn accompany her on a camping expedition. Strawn proves hapless and hopeless. His attempts to do camping things, like putting up a tent, are comical. Nell does not find him comical. She doesn’t bother to conceal her contempt and nobody signals contempt like an 11-year-old girl who has swallowed a dictionary.
It is charming. It looks stunning. You might shed a tear or two. It is truly wonderful, and full of magic despite – or perhaps partly because of – Strawn’s risible magician’s skills. And it has been made by Timpson. Golly. He knows. “It’s unusual, considering my background.”