More stuff from Sue W. This time from The Times Online and dated from last week:

Budget nightmares, casting catastrophes, defecting producers…..despite all this the actor Richard E. Grant got his directorial debut ready for the Edinburgh Festival next week.

When I first started to pitch Wah-Wah I was an unknown quantity: I had no track record to prove myself as a director to any actor or financier. My work outside acting had consisted solely of my film diaries and my novel, By Design. People thought I could write, but writing a screenplay was another risk factor. It was difficult trying to get people to take me seriously.

Wah-Wah is about my upbringing in Swaziland and the trauma of my parents’ separation. Being an actor helped to get it made – it allowed me to get my foot through the door and approach people who knew who I was. But they said I had no track record: “Why should we give you money?” Then, of course, people wanted to know who was going to star in the film. To secure interest you have to get actors – you have to bull**** them. That happens only one way: you send out the script and hope that somebody bites.

Gabriel Byrne and Julie Walters wanted to do the film almost straight away, and once they had committed it made things a little easier. Byrne, though, was very worried that his character, based on my abusive father, was so hateful that anybody watching the film would find it difficult to relate to him. After a while, though, he saw the role for what it was: a challenging one.

Read the whole article here.