The Hardly Trinity

Interview with Huck Melnick, Jeremy Herman and Anna Neil of HARDLY BEAR TO LOOK AT YOU

Joining the director, producer, writer, editor and lead actors of HARDLY BEAR TO LOOK AT YOU for brunch suggests that things aren’t quite as they seem. Especially as there’s only three of them! It soon becomes apparent that actress Anna Neil has had some experience of covert operations herself, as writer, producer and leading man Jeremy Herman explains. “We always thought that we spotted her, but it turns out that she spotted him”, gesturing towards director Huck Melnick. Elaborating on the story further, Neil explains “I was doing my flower act that’s in the film. I’d certainly spotted Huck and thought: he looks like an interesting character”.

Soon after this initial meeting the trio hooked up together and worked on a film called MY YACHT. Originally intended to be a feature, Neil suggested that they make it a short and film it in Cannes themselves. Inspired and full of enthusiasm, that is exactly what they did, the experience of which shaped their approach to their latest film, HARDLY BEAR TO LOOK AT YOU. Melnick continues, “MY YACHT was made in a much more traditional style with a much bigger crew, but having made that and developing other scripts we realised that we wanted to jump ahead of the industry projects we had in mind. Why are we going to try to raise funding for these commercial projects if we’re only going to go back and make something more personal later? Why don’t we make our first feature ourselves.”

Following this bold decision, they set about making their film using whatever resources were available. Melnick explains, “The film world can be very daunting and I think that a lot of people get caught up in the struggle to find finance for their film. It’s important to realise now that there are various other ways of doing it. Some of the most exciting innovations that have become part of the blockbuster film started out with people who didn’t have access to the bigger budgets.” The project employed a small crew, a number of whom also appear in front of the camera, and adopted a free flowing style of filmmaking similar to that employed by Cassavetes. It notably fuses tightly scripted scenes with others of a more improvised nature.

Speaking of some of the film’s improvised moments writer Herman says, “In some cases we were really just being pragmatic. We’d book a restaurant for two hours because you couldn’t do it for anything less but the script may have only six lines in it so we had to do it, we had to improvise and some of those were the best scenes actually. Huck’s philosophy was always keep the camera running, just keep the camera running and you never know what you’re going to pick up. Because of our budget, that we were just using video, we could do it, that’s the advantage of having flexible, relatively cheap tools.” Elaborating further Melnick suggests, “What we find works best is to have a tight story, sometimes with dialogue or sometimes with a theme made up of a couple of sentences, and then improvise from that. It gives it the spontaneity of improvisation but with the backbone of having the storyline. The core is having a strong story I think.”

With a number of other projects planned for the future, the group’s level of creativity shows no boundaries and they may be faces seen returning to the Festival in the future. Melnick explains, “The Cambridge audience is a good audience. They are very involved and you can feel that when you’re watching the film. When you make a film like this you want them to respond, it’s rewarding for a filmmaker when the audience has an opinion.”

HARDLY BEAR TO LOOK AT YOU is screened on Thursday 24 September at 11.30pm

CHRISTOPHER PECK