An Interview with Filmmaker Mark AC Brown
Mark AC Brown (above, right) was born and bred in North Yorkshire, and has been forging a career in film as a screenwriter and director. Dead on the Vine is his second film as director and won Best Film at indie icon Kevin Smith’s Smodcastle Film Festival and the BIFA qualifying Unrestricted View Film Festival. He talks to Roger Crow about the movie, which is out now.
Tell us about Dead on the Vine. What was the inspiration?
Drayton and Ellis, the male characters, were the two lead characters in a play that I’d written that was going to go on until COVID came and shut everything down, but I really latched on to these characters. They were kind of two sides to my own psyche. I’d struggled with quite a lot of mental health problems in my 20s, late teens, 20s and stuff. And I’ve never been able to write about them. It was never something that I kind of really wanted to write about. It was not that interesting to me; it was something that I went through, I’m out the other side. But there was always something nagging me that I should write about it. And so in my own way, I guess, I dealt with a lot of it with with Ellis and Drayton.
What sort of characters are they?
One is a kind of character that’s trying to be sensible and do the right thing, but is always at the mercy of his unstable, impulsive and often violent brother. That’s how I felt quite a lot of the time in my earlier days, so that was the original inspiration to write the play. And when the film came around, it was again, because of COVID. We had this opportunity to shoot in the vineyard. When I was chatting with our producer, Laura Rees, about what it could be, I said, ‘I’ve got these two characters and I can think of something’. So I transposed the characters onto this other story that I’d been kind of thrown around to another company that didn’t go anywhere. And I like the idea of these people just turning up on this farm and causing chaos.
Yorkshire lends itself to horror movies. Why do you think the region is so inspiring for chilling the blood?
Yorkshire is an incredible place for horror. It’s such a rich world of ancient cities and countryside, with all sorts of interesting folklore and history. And even to the modern era where the industrial age clashes with the rural communities and stuff, there’s so much going on. There’s so much contradictory richness that has been kind of the signature of Yorkshire for a long time. Also just the beauty of it; the vast moorlands that I used to spend my weekends. And when I got older with my friends, we’d go up the camping or just for drives up onto the moors.
“Pretty spooky”
Which of course is synonymous with a classic horror comedy.
American Werewolf is one of my favourite films. So I was always thinking of those moments when we were kind of driving around in the dark on the moors and stopping the car and scaring the hell out of ourselves, just wondering what was out there in the darkness.
You’ve written a film about my favourite coastal resort. Tell us about that.
I wrote a film set in Whitby called Limpet, which is a horror film. And it’s a horror comedy. And I really wanted to play again on all those contradictions and conflicts that come with a seaside town and a Yorkshire town and like the influx of all the Goths and the history of Dracula, and quite substantially the seafood, which is a big part of that film. But just the atmosphere of of Whitby, which is a brilliantly jolly, but also a pretty spooky town, depending on on the weather. I’ve been going there since I was a kid, and I just I just love it.
Finally, what can we look forward to next?
Well, I’ve had two more films produced since Dead on the Vine. One is called Video Killed the Radio Star. I was writer on that and it was directed by my good friend Brad Watson and stars Luke Brandon Field, from Interview with the Vampire, and Harriet Cains from Bridgerton. That’s a horror film set in a radio station in 1979. I’ve seen a version of that that I think is brilliant. So we’ll see if that version makes it to the screen or not. Hopefully it won’t be tinkered with too much. I also wrote a film called Twin, which stars Nick Moran from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Jack McEvoy from Vikings. It’s in post-production right now and I’m intrigued to see how that turns out.
The full version of this interview can be found here: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/nostalgiahhh-cult-films
Adopted Yorkshireman Roger Crow developed a passion for film and TV in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been a published film and TV reviewer since the 1990s; a world travel and restaurant critic since the noughties, and for the past decade has assessed the pros and cons of live gigs and theatre productions around the UK. His ideal day would involve reviewing a performance of Bat Out of Hell, followed by a Pad Thai while being serenaded by Texas on a cruise around Europe.
crowsfeat.com; nostalgiahhh film podcast
