Coming to UK DVD, Blu-ray and digital from Monday 3rd September is John Cameron Mitchell’s How To Talk To Girls At Parties, a story of the birth of punk, the exuberance of first love, and the universe’s greatest mystery of all.
Enn (Alex Sharp) is a shy suburban London teenager in 1977, sneaking out with his best friends to after-hours punk parties. One night they stumble upon a bizarre gathering of teenagers who seem like they are from another planet. In fact, they are from another planet, visiting Earth to complete a mysterious rite of passage. That doesn’t stop Enn from falling madly in love with Zan (Elle Fanning), a beautiful and rebellious alien teenager who, despite her allegiance to her strange colony, is fascinated by Enn. Together they embark on a delirious adventure through the kinetic punk rock world of 1970s London, inadvertently setting off a series of events that will lead to the ultimate showdown of punks vs. aliens and test the limits of how far each of them will go for true love.
We caught up with John Cameron Mitchell earlier in the week to talk about the film.
Tell me about how you developed the short story & what it was like collaborating with Neil Gaiman.
Well, my producing partner Howard Gertler really had the vision to make it a film and worked with British co-writer Philippa Goslett. I came in later and added my own spin. Neil was a benevolent godfather checking in every year or so, scratching his beneficient beard and saying, Well done. The story was like the touchstone and in effect the first act. We had lots of fun extrapolating to do.
You’ve got an eclectic cast, Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, Matt Lucas. What was it like working with them as a company?
Well, Nicole, Matt Lucas, Ruth Wilson and Simon Amstell were buddies who joined in on the fun. Elle and Alex Sharp were new friends who bloomed as our Juliet and Romeo. And then there were the wonderful low-key national treasures like Jo Scanlan, Edward Petherbridge, Evan Lawrence. And then the excitement of introducing talented newcomers like AJ Lewis, Marina Bye, Lara Peake, Alice Sanders and Martin Tomlinson.
Was it fun to create the look of the film?
It was. We really wanted a 70’s midnight movie low-rent home-made DIY look. Our animation was deliberately hand-hewn and old-fashioned and my long-time DOP revelled in creating a super16 film look with the digital means at our disposal. Sandy Powell’s fabulous latex Pam Hogg-inspired Chakra-themed alien looks really anchored cartoon fairy tale look of the aliens which was really set off by her Vivienne Westwood-manqué black, whites and gray punk themes.
Does having a theatrical background give you a good grounding for sci-fi?
Our sci-fi is more fantasy than hard science, and fantasy was first created in children stories and then later on the stage. Peter Pan was actually a play first, then a book!
What are you working on next?
I’m acting in a new TV comedy called Shrill and editing a fictional podcast series called Anthem where I play a guy doing an online telethon to raise money to get his brain tumor out, co-starring Glenn Close, Patti Lupone and Laurie Anderson. Both will be out early next year!
How To Talk To Girls At Parties is released on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Download on 3 September 2018.
