Ant Timpson & Bookworm: In Uncharted Lands

ENTERTAINMENT | INTERVIEW | DRUGS

Written by Thomas Giblin (he/him) | @thegreengiblin | Entertainment Editor

Ant Timpson is a stalwart of the Aotearoa film industry. He founded the annual 48Hours film challenge, which helped birth such talents as Taika Waititi, Gerad Johnstone, Tom Furniss and Chillbox. But now the producer and director best known for his genre work with The ABCs of Death, The Field Guide to Evil, and Come To Daddy is branching out.. Timpson's sophomore feature, Bookworm, co-written with Toby Harvard, is a far cry from the blood and gore he's most associated with. The film is a family-friendly story of an absent father, a washed-up illusionist, connecting with his whip-smart daughter. Together, in the rugged plains of the South Island, the duo set out on an expedition in search of a mythical Bigfoot-type creature. The Canterbury panther. Does it exist? Many seem to think so.

11-year-old Mildred, played by Nell Fisher, recently cast in season 5 of Stranger Things, believes in the creature's existence. Her father, Strawn Wise, played by Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood, reunites with Timpson after working together on Come To Daddy. Together, Fisher and Wood star in a charming story that has a few tricks up its sleeve. There's a twist you won't see coming. Moreover, Bookworm is a welcome throwback to films like The Goonies, Jumanji and Hook.

I spoke to Timpson days before he jetted off to open the Fantasia Film Festival with Bookworm. We discussed Bigfoot, working within different genres, fatherhood and aspect ratios. And, of course, as film obsessives, we got sidetracked.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]

What drew you & writer Toby Harvard to the mythos of the Canterbury Panther? Our version of Bigfoot. Are you two believers? Absolutely. I grew up in a period when Bigfoot felt very, very real. There was an avalanche of these documentaries that filled cinemas in the heyday when I was at an impressionable age. From about seven to ten, I saw numerous ones on the Bermuda Triangle, life after death, UFOs and, of course, Bigfoot. I just soaked them all up. And so, in my mind, the world was full of unexplored areas where anything could happen.

You've mentioned that the film is a love letter to the 70s. It was a time when you weren't all wrapped up in cotton wool. You could go out into the great expanse without worrying about being home on time. I do remember a pivotal visit to my cousins in the South. I must have been seven, around seven or eight and saying we're going to go off and explore. There were no questions about where you're going or how long you're going to be away. No deadlines. You could roam great distances without parental supervision or helicopter parenting. Now you'd be GPS tagged up the wazoo, and you'd be made to text or have a Starlink connection to let everyone know where you are. So Bookworm is a real nostalgic ode to those times and the loss of innocence kids have.

Bookworm is another parents-meet-child fable like Come to Daddy, but it's very different in genre. It's a bit of a detour from your roots as a genre director and producer. So, I'm curious: how did you find yourself working within this 'new' genre? I feel like a lot of the sensibilities in Come to Daddy are threaded through this film. It feels like it's from the same birthplace, in a way. It's just a PG version of the same male insecurities and fears of parenting that Toby and I mine for comedic effect.

You're a father of two. I wonder how being a father informed the writing person process and the film's depiction of parent-child relations. Would a younger you have written the same film? Oh, hell no. It would have been a blood bath. The younger me was a huge fan of the exploitation elements of the genre. How do you freak people out? How do you shock people? It was always about boundary-pushing. I got the most kicks as an audience member of things that were confronting or over the top. I still have that deep within me. But I also am not stuck to that these days. I find so much of it a little bit mean-spirited, and I don't know whether that's me getting older. It definitely wasn't turning into a parent because I kept making crazy things when I had our kids and when they were also super young. It's more about what feels right for the story and the characters involved. I'm sure I'll go back to something that's got a lot more viscera in it.

Have your kids seen Bookworm yet? Or are they waiting to see it? No, they haven't. My wife's annoyed that other people have seen it before she has, but I like them to see it at a premiere. A special night for everyone to get together and see it for the first time under optimal conditions. The idea of showing them [Timpson's family] a screener on a laptop or a badly lagging TV is not something I'm fond of. I want them to see it under premium conditions.

And you're working with Elijah again. Were there always plans to work together again? Both Come to Daddy and Bookworm were written specifically for him. So we would have been in a little bit of trouble if he said no. Because of the characters involved, he becomes a vessel or an avatar for the insecurities that we have deep down. Elijah's someone who's got a huge amount of inherent likability. So it's easy to hang all this baggage on because he's got so much empathy from the audience. His character has so much vulnerability and humanity that it's easy for others to empathise. No matter how idiosyncratic or potentially annoying that character can be in real life.

Can you tell me about Elijah's character's ridiculous hat? Well, to be honest, there were many more wardrobe changes for Strawn Wise throughout the film. But the logistics of shooting in the wilderness on location with costumes that you have to keep track of for continuity was hard enough. So we ended up trying to do a lot of bang-for-buck stuff with Strawn Wise. When he first arrives, in full majesty, in his head, he's doing a performance to win her [Mildred] over. Then it's how can we keep this sort of look going, which is so inappropriate. It was inherently funny to see someone completely ill-prepared and dropped in. And it's me. I never travel well. I never prepare. I've turned up to places with subzero conditions without any thermals or gloves. I'm terrible. There's a lot of that—using Elijah's character to become this coat hanger for all our [Timspon and Harvard's] foibles.

Elijah's co-star, Nell Fisher,  is rumoured (now confirmed) to be in season five of Stranger Things. What was it like working with her? You gave Nell a glowing endorsement at the preview screening of Bookworm I attended. We searched through a few hundred kids to find Nell, and she came highly recommended by the casting agents, who did a great job assembling a lot of awesome talent. It was great to see that there's a good depth of up-and-coming young talent. But honestly, when we got down to a very short list, and we did chemistry reads with Elijah with them [the auditionees] and sat them together, I bought that she [Nell Fisher] could easily be his daughter. They both have striking eyes, and she's super confident. Then I talked to Lee Cronin, the director of Evil Dead Rise. She had a great part in that film. I just asked him off the record, "How was it working with Nell?" and, "What was it like for you?". He was so effusive about her talent and confidence on set. He said, "Get her before you lose her." We were so stoked that she accepted the role, and we love her for it. She's going to be a big, big star.

Can we touch on the aspect ratio change? Like Xavier Dolan's Mommy, you go from the Academy ratio to Cinemascope. Can you talk me through that creative decision? To be honest, that wasn't in the script. That was something I came up with when I was down South scouting with my DP [Daniel Katz]. We were talking about the look of the film throughout the whole thing as we started getting to all the locations and seeing these expanses. I suddenly had a Wizard of Oz moment, like Dorothy opening the door in a whole new technicolour world. I wanted Elijah's character, who's been trapped in Vegas bars and would never set foot in the wild, and Nell's character, who's been contained by her mother's love and suburbia, to feel like they are being enveloped in a new, wide-open world. So it was natural to go from Academy, and then blow it out to Cinemascope at the right time.

You mention Wizard of Oz, and I know you’re a cinephile. From your encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema, what films did you draw on as a reference for Bookworm? The weird thing is that I am such a cinephile that when I hear about other people's films, I always come up with a list. I'm one of those annoying people. Oh, you mean it's like this, this, this and this, which just pisses off any person who's got a script or has made a film. I do make lists of stuff for others to get the vibe. The editor [ Dan Kircher], the DP [Daniel Katz] and Kar [Sölve Steven], who did the score to get a sense of the world that we want to have as a touching point to work off. But the reality is it all goes out the window. In my preparation, there are all these types of things that I want to riff on, do homages to or lift and steal. But I completely forget everything and lose it all. You create so much once you're down there [on set]. There's only so much you can retain. And unless you're doing Xerox copying, storyboarding the whole thing based on other people's work, so much of it [a film] comes off being in the environment itself and seeing how it all plays out. That's one of the joys of filmmaking. There are so many happy accidents.

Bookworm releases nationwide on August the 8th.