Director Marcus Markou and his leading lady Georgia Groome discuss the pertinent timing of this title, set against the current economical crisis

There are few filmmakers as inspiring as first-time director Marcus Markou – a man who not only directed his debut feature Papadopoulos & Sons, but he wrote, produced and even distributed the title himself too – and we were fortunate enough to sit down and discuss his project alongside his leading lady Georgia Groome.

The pair speak highly of their time working on this film, as the uplifting, amiable nature of the production seems to have stemmed from the atmosphere on set. Groome also discusses doing a degree at the same time as acting, while Markou talks enthusiastically about his own cameo role in the film, why he remortgaged his house to self-distribute the title, and the pair also talk about the pertinent timing of this title, set against the current economical crisis.

I can start by saying that I really liked the film.

MM: Good. It’s a sweet film, it’s just a sweet old fashioned gentle comedy, that’s what we set out to do. You know, our influences are old films; the Billy Wilders’, the Wonderful Lifes’, that kind of sweet gentle comedy. I know it’s not a trendy film and it’s not cool in that respect, but we are really proud of its sweetness and its innocence.

The film ends on a dance too, which initially I wouldn’t have thought I’d like, but I found myself grinning about it for the next couple of days.

MM: That’s exactly what we wanted to do and as a writer my dream is to emotionally engage an audience, not just to intellectually engage them. When you read a story like The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde or The Happy Prince, I can’t read those stories without bursting into tears or feeling emotionally moved. Before I’m a director, before I’m a producer, I’m a writer, and what I’m trying to do is engage your audience emotionally and touch them, that’s what I was trying to do. I love the idea of the dance, finishing with a dance. I always have done because in Shakespeare, a lot of plays finish on a dance. It ties it in, like a unification, so I took that idea deliberately and I knew that a lot of films that I love, like Zorba the Greek and Slumdog Millionaire… Maybe there’s something in the superconsciousness that goes right back to Shakespeare about finishing on a dance, its like it’s all going to be all right [laughs].

This is your debut feature, are you quite excited or nervous about finally presenting it to the big bad world?

MM: Well we it in Dinard and Georgia was there and we had a lot of fun and we saw the audiences reaction to that. It won an audience award at Thessaloniki Film Festival and won over audiences at Palm Springs. I’ve gone through the nerves of ‘is anyone going to like it?’ I’ve seen enough people be moved by it to realise that yes, it’s not going to be for everyone this film, no film can be for everybody, I understand that, but this is the kind of film that you want to take your mum to, that’s the film I wanted to make. I didn’t want to make the film that would establish me as a cool film director, I wanted to make the film to take your mum to. Not cool, not trendy, but that’s the film I wanted to make so I’ve got no qualms about it.

It feels like a celebration of Greek culture.

MM: Well I think it is a celebration of Greek culture, but the celebration of Greek culture is in fact a celebration of joy and life because what the Greeks do well is they celebrate life through the idea of dance, and also when you smash a plate what you’re doing is you’re saying “I’m going to break these plates at some point in an argument when we fall out, so I’m going to break them when I’m happy instead” and I love that idea of going, I don’t know if I can swear on this but ‘eff it’ ‘eff it’, it’s going to be alright, it’s going to be alright and I love that kind of very simplistic philosophy to life that can easily be intellectualised or rationalised as naïve, but there’s something quite liberating about it saying, ‘eff it, I’m going to break a plate and dance on the street.

Considering how many Greeks and Cypriots live over here in London, it’s a culture and community relatively untouched in British cinema, why do think that might be?

MM: No idea, and it’s the same with our TV.  Peter Polycarpou was in Birds of a Feather and we waited 30 years to see a Greek, a Cypriot on our screens and when we saw him he was mainly in jail. Before that the only Greek we had on TV was in a old sitcom called Mind Your Language. It had everyone in it, a Chinese person, a French person, an Italian… Our contribution to culture in this country is huge, you know Cat Stevens is half Greek/Cypriot, George Michael… In terms of business you’ve got people like Theo Paphitis, Stellios, we are about in this culture, everyone knows a Greek – we’ve all got one at school, we all know a Greek because Cyprus was a British colony, so a lot of Greek Cypriots came over. So I don’t know, that’s a good question.

And Georgia, I mean Marcus’ passion for this project is infectious, did that emanate on to the cast?

GG: In terms of him being a first time director of a feature, we were a bit scared but we went in with the spirit that this was going to be fun but this was going to be full on in terms of giving it your all, and that’s what you get from Marcus. You’ve spent five minutes with him, you can tell that already, and I think everybody came out of it with the feeling that we had done something really special. Now everybody hopes, I really hope, that people get to see this film because it could easily go straight to DVD and be in a bargain bin within the next three years and that would be sad because what fueled this film was passion. Throughout the film we danced through rehearsals, we danced through the shoot, we ate Greek food all of the time, you know we had a Greek buffet at the read through and I that set the tone really.

MM: And we had Greek dancers at the read through, I brought them in and got everyone up and danced and it was a way to set the tone. I’ve run a business and I’m passionate about a family work ethic and I’m passionate about everybody pulling together for the same cause, I believe in flat management and I believe that every voice, whether it’s in a business or on a film set, has a value and it doesn’t matter whether you’re a runner or you’re the star – we’re all equal partners in this project, some of us have bigger parts to play, some of us have a greater responsibility and that’s reflected in what you’re paid, but the bottom line is, in term of getting this project up and running. You know I love the company of actors because they’re all story tellers and I’m a story teller. I love being around actors, I love just hanging around them, I trained as an actor and my dream was just to be actor, not necessarily because I really wanted to have a career as an actor, but I loved the idea of being a part of a touring theatre company and just going to different places and telling stories and jokes and just laughing and making mistakes on stage.

I love all that, that’s why you become an actor, that’s fun, that beats sitting behind a desk doing an office job. I love the crew too because they always remind me of the people that come round, like the electricians and the plumbers and you know the carpenters that come round to your house when you’re making your kitchen extension – plus they often want five sugars in their tea [laughs] and they want to talk about the football and they want to see that the director isn’t up himself. That’s their constant question; is this director up himself? Can he talk to us as ordinary working people? But I’m passionate about the set – it should be fun, the set should be engaging, the set shouldn’t be a thicket of politics, the set shouldn’t be about status and the set shouldn’t be about “he’s got this and I haven’t got that”. The set should be a fun working environment because guys the alternative is working in an office or in a bank. Do you know what I mean? This is where its fun.

The film has got this great, fun atmosphere to it – how much of that comes from the fact that there was this good feeling around on set?

MM: I think so, I think you know as Georgia said, we had greek dancing at the read through, we had Greek food, you’ve got me making fun of myself, you’ve got the actors making fun of me every time I called “cut” I had a weird…

GG: “Cuuuuttt’

MM: I had a weird way of saying cut when it was a good take and my voice would go up [laughs].

At least you would know it was a good take.

GG: I think the thing you can tell is that a film set is one of those environments where you can either finish your take or finish your scene and then everybody goes to their separate departments, you know an actor goes back to the trailer and they shut the door, they don’t talk or they don’t engage. Whereas we finished a take and there was a 35 year old camera man with a 10 year old boy showing him how the zoom lens works, and the sound man sticking googly eyes on his boom pole and Frank Dillane flirting with a make up girl, and it came together in that way and the beauty of having Stephen (Dillane) and Frank – who are father and son – working together would mean that Stephen could have been quite serious and there for the work, but then you’ve got Frank going “Er dad do it again, that was crap” and then suddenly, I think that’s OK cos Frank’s doing it, so I start doing it and have a dig at Stephen myself.

MM: Stephen loved that and he loved the informality of all that. yes we’ve all got to work and yes we’ve got to get the story right, but you know the reason you go into the film business, or the arts or entertainment, is because it’s much more fun as a living, surely, you know you’re story telling. You can’t take a group of story tellers and not share stories between takes and not tell stories at lunch, and you know, my job was to try and bring everyone together in the best possible way and set the tone early on and show that we’re here to have fun and share stories. I did think to myself, you know, what would I do if I was doing a murder mystery thriller film? I did ask a couple of other film maker friends, could I have taken the same approach? Because you know the beauty of Papadopoulos is that it’s a fun film and it’s sweet and gentle and therefore you can have a fun, sweet, gentle set. If I was going to do a thriller would I have to create a different spirit or atmosphere on set, and the response was no, actually it should still be fun, it’s just when the camera rolls you are doing something different.

You mentioned make-up Georgia, and I wondering – have you got any Greek in you? Because they did a great job of making you look very Mediterranean.

GG: [Laughs] Nothing, I am fully Anglo-Saxon. I was spray tanned pretty much every day and I went to this amazing Greek ladies house in Tottenham and she did my extensions and yeah, fur coats and things. It was a big transformation every day. I bite my nails and the make-up guy would try and physically kill me – he’d put false nails on and they would be off by the time I got off hair and make-up!

Your character is an 18 year old who wants to be considered as an adult and I wondered if, for you personally, you could draw comparisons from a professional sense? Because you’ve had a couple of big roles as a youngster in Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging and London to Brighton. Are you now looking for more mature roles?

GG: I don’t know, I think you hear that a lot when you have the child actor tag, but actually you know, why rush If I can still play a 16 year old? There are plenty of girls, you know the Carey Mulligans’ of this world that are like 28 and can still play 18, so I might as well. I don’t think there’s any rush if you’re doing good work.

How are you finding doing a degree and acting at the same time?

GG: I don’t think they go hand in hand! I don’t know how wise it was to keep on going, I think this term I’ve only been to three weeks of lessons and I’ve been working for the rest of it, but I guess that I’m lucky in that I’m doing English, so I don’t need to be in a lab dissecting a heart for five hours a week – I’m reading books. I was just doing a job actually, and for most of the first week I just had to sit in the corner and read a book and I was like ‘great’, and I nailed four of the books that I was meant to read in the whole time I was away, just spent in that corner reading my school books.  But on the whole it doesn’t necessarily work, but hey I think it was a good choice, wasn’t it Marcus?

MM: I think so, it’s good that you’ve done the degree, or are doing the degree. It broadens your view of the world certainly.

GG: I’m mainly still there cos everyone thought I would drop out, which isn’t the best attitude. I’m at a good university and I’ve got good grades and it would have been stupid not to go and Marcus was saying ‘you’re going, you’re going’. He basically bullied me into it, and now I’m still there.

MM: I told her that it’s also great when you go to university organising how information is managed, do you know what I mean? It changes your brain. Having to prepare to write an essay takes a certain skill set that you have to learn and my feeling is that Georgia is a great, talented actress, she’s so young, she’s so grounded, she’s so smart, she could easily become a director and a film maker in her own right, there’s no question in my mind it’s going to happen,. I think a degree is very important in being able to manage and organise information, it’s not just about the subject.

And Marcus you have a small role in this film yourself, I was wandering whether that would become a thing? A bit like Hitchcock.

MM: I started off as an actor, I went to LAMDA, I trained as an actor, but I couldn’t get any work. My first work was in a spin off of The Bill called Burnside. I couldn’t even get in The Bill. They took DCI Burnside and gave him his own six part series and it didn’t obviously work because there was no Burnside 2. I was in Trial by Fire, and I played a Turkish drug dealer, taped up in the back of a Jag. My mouth was taped and I had to wrestle before they shoot me and then set the car on fire, that was it. Someone somewhere was telling me ‘you ain’t destined to speak as an actor’. Even in this, I would have loved to have played Harry, but Stephen probably did a slightly better job than me. Even with my part as the newsreader – because we had to get permission from ITN to use their logo, they said, “oh we can give you a free news reporter – we won’t charge you”. The producer said ‘Marcus we don’t need you to do the news reporter after all”. I mean, this is my big screen debut, I had to fight to keep myself in the picture. I stayed in the picture because I’ve tried to rid myself of the curse of Trial by Fire in episode four of Burnside.

[Laughs] On a separate note, I noticed that you’ve called your film a fairytale, which is quite a nice description.

MM: Yes I did. I think it is a fairytale, for me if you look at the archetypes of the film, you have a king, he has a castle, and he through circumstances out of his control he loses everything, and the king has a wife who is dead, and he’s not in touch with his children, and they have to go back to their roots – then out of the blue a fairy godmother, in the form of uncle Spiros, arrives and fixes the family. For me the fairytale structure is universal and I wanted to write a universal story. Whether it’s Pretty Woman, or Slumdog Millionaire, I think a lot of popular films that do travel have a fairytale structure to them, there is no question in my mind, and that is engrained in our psyche. So yeah I was very conscious of that, of trying to tell a fairytale.

I was reading your blog post on the film’s official website and you discussed the importance of this film being seen in cinemas, so what do you think it is that is so important about seeing a film like this on the big screen?

MM: For me it’s about a collective experience, this is why I want the Greeks to turn out for it, because for us, we love theatre as well, what makes something special is when it’s a shared experience and cinemas can be a shared experience. I really can’t wait to see a couple of hundred Greeks packing out cinemas in Enfield and Wood Green because they’re going to share an experience, and that is really important. Yes you’ll enjoy this film on DVD, yes you can enjoy it on TV, but there is something special about a shared experience and that was always my dream for my film, that it could reach a community.

What with the current financial crisis, particularly in Cyprus, this is released with somewhat pertinent timing. Could this film serve as an uplifting take on this subject?

MM: Certainly, at its most basic level, this is about a family that comes together during an economic crisis, and globally we are in a huge economic crisis that has no end at the moment. But is it too simplistic to say that we can get through this and come together, and work together, and stick together? Is it too simplistic to say that? I don’t think it is, because the crisis is so horrific, in terms of the implications for ordinary people.

GG: It’s weird that now the film is coming out.

MM: Listen, I didn’t plan the crisis in Cyprus.

GG: It’s nothing to do with Marcus, honestly!

MM: But this film has got a weird link to what’s going on in the bigger picture and it is weird for me. It’s been April the 5th for the past few months, the big day, and then a week before this suddenly happens and it’s out of the blue. The European Central Bank, out of the blue, without telling anybody, decide to pull the rug from the Cypriot banks. It’s unbelievable.

GG: But it’s hope isn’t it? That’s what Papadopoulos can give to those communities, that things can be okay, even if everything goes as horribly wrong as it has.

So what’s next for you both? Anything in the pipeline?

GG: I’ve just finished an audience sitcom for the BBC, which is written by and stars Jessica Hynes of Spaced, which was exciting – it’s about the suffragettes. Hopefully another very British film that is meant to go this year. Then Marcus is going to write a vehicle for Frank and I [laughs].

MM: Honestly, I am so focused on getting this into UK cinemas.

Is it right that you remortgaged your house to self-distribute this?

MM: Yeah, just a little bit. That’s the true spirit of independent cinema – I’m putting my money where my mouth is. We sold the film to the BBC a couple of weeks ago which was remarkable, and it’s doing really well on Singapore Airlines. It’s got a big release in Germany in June, showing on over 50 screens, so I think this is an opportunity for me to do something, I’m going for it. If it had been picked up by a British distributor in the UK there would be no reaching out to the Greek community in the way I’m doing, I’ve got control over the posters. When I talked originally to distributors about the film and sales agents, the first thing they said was “Well the title has got to go”. I said why? They said, “You can’t sell a film with the title Papadopoulos & Sons” and I said why the hell not? They wanted to create a generic “Chip-Side down”, “Cheap as Chips” kind of title, that is what you’re dealing with. That’s the compromise. This has allowed me to have no compromise. This is my film 100% and it’s my distribution strategy as well.

As director, writer and producer you must be pretty protective over it?

MM: Yeah of course, it’s my baby. I’m very protective and I feel like I’ve got to give it its best possible shot. I genuinely get really tired and think, what am I doing? Last night I was flyering outside a Greek concert. The Greek Robbie Williams was singing at Koko in Camden and I was handing out flyers to every Greek coming out, and there is part of me that think, I am really tired, I want to go home, I want to be asleep – but there I am pushing the flyers – and that is what independent film making, at its core, it truly about.

Is this how you plan to work in the future too? Do you always want to be in full control over your film? Would you take on someone else’s script for example?

MM: I’m really scared of taking on someone else’s script because I’m a writer first. In an ideal world I would always just direct my own material, you know, I’d probably be out of my depth with somebody else’s work. I really would. There are some brilliant directors who are just perfect at getting in to the heads of writers, but I am a writer – how do I get in the head of another writer? I don’t know. It’s a frightening thought. I’d rather just stick to taking the full responsibility for my own work.

GG: You know what’s been brilliant about Marcus doing the entire thing, from pre-production right until being in the cinema…

MM: Has that ever happened before?

Not that I know of.

MM: Why aren’t people championing that? That idea.

GG: This is it, you know, the script I read is the film on the screen, it’s not gone through that committee. Even on London to Brighton there is a director’s cut, because when Vertigo took it there were changes that made it more marketable, and I think that’s really sad. It’ll be like being an artist and somebody, before hanging your work in their gallery, marker penning a mustache on it.

MM: It’s totally liberating. I designed the poster, I’ve handed out the flyers, I run the website, I do the Twitter, the Facebook, I helped cast it. It is effectively, as every independent filmmakers dream, is an extension of their world on screen – and that surely, is at the heart of every independent filmmaker, to have that level of control. So I am very lucky. Very lucky.

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Papadopoulos & Sons is released in cinemas nationwide from April 5th