Underdog 101
Welcome to Filmmaking 101, an interview series in which Massive speaks to creatives about the topics and themes that fuel their process, the emotions that make them tick as people. A crash-course and a deep dive, we lift the curtain on the things that excite them as filmmakers and inspire them as humans. This week, Rafa Sales Ross speaks to master of portraying quirky outsiders Craig Roberts for Underdog 101.
Craig Roberts is interested in how society arranges its individuals and how individuals rearrange society. His 2015 directorial debut, Just Jim, revolved around the titular character’s quest for coolness as the holy grail of belonging, while his sophomore feature, 2019’s Eternal Beauty, questioned one’s perception of normality through a sensitive, beautifully moving depiction of paranoid schizophrenia.
For his third feature, the actor-turned-director partnered with Paddington 2 writer Simon Farnaby to tell the incredible true story of Maurice Flitcroft, a crane operator who earned the title of “world’s worst golf player” after entering the prestigious British Open without ever having played a round of golf. A heartwarming ode to optimism, The Phantom of the Open is a testament to Roberts’ love of an underdog. To best understand the film, you need to understand the director’s fascination with finding beauty in the way dark horses navigate a world built to crush them.
DEFINITIONS
How would you define an underdog?
I'd say it’s probably something that's misunderstood. Somebody that's not been given the time to potentially figure out who they want to be in some respect. And I'd say underdogs are probably people who have an undiscovered superpower.
It's interesting because I've heard you and Simon [Farnaby] say that, in The Phantom of the Open, optimism is a superpower. What would you say is yours?
I think my superpower is that I've been incredibly lucky, really. I feel my imposter syndrome is constantly shouting off that I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing and I feel very lucky to be able to do it. So potentially that. Also blending in and not being seen.
OUTSIDERS AND OPTIMISM
Your previous film, Eternal Beauty, ends with the protagonist calling normal “boring” and it feels such an apt encapsulation of your central characters. With The Phantom of the Open, you return once more to this idea of the status quo being unexciting. Do you feel creatively drawn to this idea of an outsider?
Definitely. I'm just interested in society putting people in boxes, and telling people they should be this or that and not taking the time to understand people or give them time to speak. I think we need to be listening to people all the time and trying our best to give people a platform. I am definitely interested in outsiders but more so in flipping that idea and questioning the societal constructs that are put around us.
Despite not necessarily ending on a gloomy note, your first two films were still very gloomy at heart, with characters saying things like, “There’s no such thing as happiness, only moments of not being depressed” and “I just wanted to come to a place where people look miserable but sound happy”. The Phantom of the Open, however, despite its fair amount of heartbreaking moments, is a very optimistic film.
I think it was a result of working with Farnaby. He’s a fantastic writer and the story in itself, the true story on which the film is based, is a very optimistic story about somebody who believes in themselves more than other people do. [Maurice Flitcroft] is a complete dreamer.
If I had written the script, it probably would have been a lot darker so I am glad I didn’t. In terms of my progression as a filmmaker and what kind of stories I want to tell, I tend to go towards the darker stuff sometimes, but this film felt like something that, given where I was in my life and where the world was at the moment, was so incredibly uplifting and just the kind of escapism people need, so I love that I have done this. My next film will be darker though.
VISUAL TRANSLATIONS
Your films visually translate mental turmoil in a manner that is tricky to do through dialogue without relying on overexposure. It is no different with The Phantom of the Open, which has beautifully ludicrous sequences throughout. How early on does the visual process start for you?
It starts before I decide to do the job, because if I can’t find a way into it, I feel like I am probably not the right person to be doing it. To be honest, I always feel like if I’m not going to add anything to the imagery in any way, it should just be a radio play, because I feel like the kind of cinema I love has a multilayered iconography and is something I can always return to and find something new. This is not right for everything but it is the type of cinema I love, like Charlie Kaufman and Ingmar Bergman and these types of movies.
With Phantom, it was like that from the beginning. There was a Superman theme in the script, and we had this scene where Maurice opened his overalls and revealed this golf outfit as if he was Superman and this just kind of connected with me because Eternal Beauty was about recasting people’s weaknesses as a strength and a superpower. So I thought this was a great way to follow that.
The Superman motif and these themes of hidden superpowers play throughout The Phantom of the Open and it is the same with Eternal Beauty. It is all about getting into the protagonist’s head. With Beauty, the main character was living with paranoid schizophrenia, so sometimes the camera would move very quickly around Sally’s [Hawkins] character to enhance this feeling of paranoia. So I think this is all a way of trying to elevate certain feelings.
Was there any visual moment with Phantom that stood out? What did you have fun with?
There are a few. I always have fun working with Kit Fraser, the cinematographer. He’s absolutely fantastic and we are great collaborators. Some of my favourite moments were when the two of us were testing film stocks, or doing lens checks and deciding what lens we wanted to use because I felt like we were not wasting anybody’s time at that point. My favourite things to shoot were the stuff where we just had a long shot of a field with nobody in it because you can’t really screw that up.
I think the music was also great, and I felt like we achieved something wonderful with Isobel [Waller-Bridge, composer]. We had this strange reference of Coronation Street with Taxi Driver because we wanted the main theme to take us through this story.
Despite living in a world made to make you feel small, the film is ever-expansive, as if Maurice could never be confined by the restraints of his working-class predicament. How did you create this feeling with Fraser?
Kit, our production designer and our costume designer were all on the same page from the very beginning. We wanted to have a darker, muted colour towards the start of the movie and we had this running theme of Guy Fawkes throughout the film because we wanted to convey this industrial world in which Maurice was living through darkness and smoke. There’s so much smoke, people smoking all the time, and it was important to us that he wouldn’t be able to see through the heaviness of the smoke so that golf would become almost like his version of Oz in a way, full of technicolour.
FAMILY & GOLF
Familial dynamics are central to your films, and we get an insight into how someone’s upbringing can shape their lives. Is having a character’s family background thoroughly examined something you feel is necessary when portraying an underdog?
I think so. I mean, look at this movie, Maurice gets shipped off to Scotland at a very young age and is told to dream bigger. As kids, you get to read bedtime stories that inform your moral compass and shape who you are and how you can navigate your way through the world, so I think it absolutely is important to explore family connections.
It's certainly important here because this, for me, isn't a movie about golf. It's about family. It really is about love. And when you think about it, Maurice certainly believed in himself, but I think Jean [his wife] believed in him more than he did and without that, he would not have been able to really go for it.
I agree. I know nothing about golf. And, at first, I thought he was this wonderful player…
I still know nothing about golf!
Did the research process lead you to no vast knowledge of golf?
Well, I did it as much as I could. I guess I know how the game works, now. Most of the research was pretty much into how it looked, to be honest. We shot on 60mm to get as close to this ‘70s feel as possible. It was a lot of fun playing around with that.
FEARS AND ASPIRATIONS
You are still so young and have worked with some titanic names of British cinema, such as Hawkins and Rylance. Is this something that scares you?
Yeah. I mean, it all scares me, to be totally honest. In a way, though, that's the easy part, working with those kinds of actors. You're in safe hands and you know it's good, you know they're going to be great. The hardest part is just getting them to do it. I was very fortunate with Sally and I hope we get to work on many more projects together. I think she's just a beautiful human being, and Mark was just very kind with his time and an altogether lovely person.
Filmmaking scares me generally. Directing feels like being a conductor, and you have to have people that can play the instruments very well. It's a lot of saying, “Yes, you know what you want”, even though you're questioning yourself at every second. It's a very scary thing to do. You just have to cross your fingers. Nobody sets out to make a bad movie but no one can tell you what makes a great movie…
As a director, is there a part of you that you imbue in your conceptions of these stories? And is there something you take from the film once it is out in the world?
I take anything I can from them. I learned a lot from the characters within my movies. I've certainly learned a lot from Phantom about beliefs and, you know, believing in yourself.
I love offbeat comedies and awkward comedies, so I hope that this film reflects some of my favourite comedies such as what David Lynch creates. People don’t see him as a comedic director, but I find his dialogue very funny. In his films, people could say something that isn’t funny in itself but then they hold a smile a bit too long and I think that’s wonderful. So I hope that even when I make the darkest movies, they still have some form of comedy in them because the world is far too serious. People need some kind of escapism.
The Phantom Of The Open is out in UK cinemas on March 18.
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