Interview [Part 2]: Amma Asante, Director, “Belle”

Amma Asante has been an actress, TV writer-producer, and movie writer-director. Her latest is the period piece drama Belle, written by Misan Sagay and directed by Asante. The movie opens this Friday, May 2nd in theaters across North America.

I had an engaging and informative conversation with Amma after she had just returned from the U.S. to her home in The Netherlands.

Today in Part 2, Amma describes how she worked as a TV writer-producer, then added movie director to her list of credits:

Scott: Literally, you had no formal training in writing. This is all coming from instinct, your experiences in acting, and watching TV and movies?

Amma: Yeah, it was observation. The two scripts a week that we were shooting on “Grange Hill” while I was a child actress, I think were really, really important to my getting some kind of grip on script structure, two half hour episodes a week. It goes back to the ‘language of the industry’ thing. Acting really helped me understand how structure is built, and eventually what I had learned began to garner results. I think it made it easier because I entered the industry as a child and all of this information was subconsciously seeping in to my head.

I was sort of learning a language of storytelling and TV making and script writing without really focusing, without really knowing that that’s what I was doing. I think that element was really important for me.

Then it was just all coming from inside. As most writers do, I would always just take situations from my own family, friends, life. I was always a bit of a funny storyteller and people would always say to me, “Your stories are so hilarious.” Lots of people get that, I guess

Being a funny story teller doesn’t mean that you’re going to be any kind of skilled writer. But I knew how to take situations from my own family life and give them dramatic value. That seems to be something that I was very good at doing.

Scott: One of these projects at BBC2 turned into “Brothers and Sisters,” right?

Amma: That’s right. I was head-writer and producer on the show.

Scott: You’d acted in a TV series. Now, you’re writing one and you’re also producing it. There’s a natural evolution there in terms of your process.

Amma: There is. Once again, this was really all about me finding my feet. With hindsight, I realized that I ended up producing because we made the show through my company. I’d set up a little production company which really was the front room of my house with a name. Suddenly, I had this commission.

I realized now, looking back, that taking on the role of producing was actually my wish to direct, to be on set, to be involved with the actors and be involved with production, seeing story and characters through to onscreen fruition. But directing just didn’t figure in my grand scheme of things, because for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, I didn’t even think of it as an option. I had seen, strangely enough in the UK, a fair amount of female produces but not female directors. So producing didn’t seem such a big jump to me.

Again, I’m pretty organized. I was pretty good with budgets and that kind of thing. I knew how to stick to a schedule and I was pretty OK at producing but it wasn’t my love.

As an example, I used to run away on a Friday to an all day literature class while we were filming. Nobody knew that’s what I would do, but I would escape. There, we would study Jane Austen and John Donne. Suddenly, I was opened up to this world that I hadn’t had the opportunity to dig into when I was a kid because I was too busy being in contemporary drama.

By this point, I’m about 26. I’m in a class where the oldest person is 80 and the youngest person is 26. I’m exploring literature with a variety of other minds, and it’s such a joy. It’s so freeing. I think that’s where I really got my satisfaction during most producing years, to be honest.

Scott: You mentioned this idea of wanting to be on set and directing, and in 2004, there was a film released you wrote and directed called A Way of Life. It won several awards. How did that project come into being?

Amma: I was at an event, an industry event. I think the other thing about writing, for me, is that I never, at that point, got the opportunity to meet other writers. It can feel very solitary. I was very alone and I was quite lonely. What I did was start to go to lots and lots of industry events where I could meet other people who also sat in a dark room and put pen to paper or looked at the blank screen and tried to fill it with a story.

I was at one of these events, and I was thrown an introduction to a guy, Peter Edwards, who was the head of drama for ITV Wales in the UK. I literally didn’t know that this was coming, and I didn’t know what to say to him. I thought, “My goodness, I better say something intelligent.” He was from Wales so I said, “You have such an interesting history. Wales has some of the oldest Black communities in Europe. What is your TV channel doing to reflect that?”

He thought, “Oh, my God. I’ve got some kind of militant on my hands. This is the last thing I want.” I remember him looking over my shoulder the whole time to try and make his escape. Six weeks later, he called and said, “Are you the woman that I met at the industry event, where we had the discussion about A, B, and C.”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “I’ve been looking for you for six weeks.”

I wanted to say light-heartedly, “Well when I go to these events, I’m not that hard to find. I’m often the only black female there!!” At least that’s how it was at the time. He said, “I’d love to meet with you. I’ve got some money for a single one off drama on my channel and I’d love to talk to you about what you might be thinking about doing next now that ‘Brothers and Sisters’ had wrapped up off two series.”

I went to meet him. It was a writer’s dream, because he said to me, “I’ve got this money and I plan to ring-fence it for you to write whatever you would like. But it has to be drama and it has to pertain to Wales in some way.”

I said, “But what sort of thing are you looking for?”

He said again, “Whatever you want to write.”

I said, “I don’t get this.” Because “Brothers and Sisters” had been heavily prescribed to me. They’d been very clear about what they wanted and how commercial it needed to be and all of those things. I was at a loss with someone actually saying, “write what ever you’d like.”

Essentially, he was giving me the freedom to come up with something. We talked about some of the themes that interested me and him. Eventually, he sent me an article, a wonderful, wonderful piece in The Telegraph, a UK newspaper. It was on the phenomenon of girl-led gang crime.

The gang would be boys, but a girl — one female would be leading, and they’d be young. These kids would be living on the margins of society and we seemed to be going through a phase, in the UK, where these kids would end up getting involved in murder. I started researching this whole phenomenon. From there my movie, A Way of Life emerged. It was again, three years in the writing and many, many drafts.

As Peter Edwards had promised, he had ring-fenced money for the project but he felt that we should send it out to other financiers too, because he felt that there might be some film interest and chances of investment. It wasn’t so easy, but we did manage to get film financiers on board as well.

Then I embarked on looking for a director. I met with Stephen Frears. You name the Brit director, I met with them on this script and had lots of lots of really interesting discussions with them. All of them loving the script, but all of them finding it deeply depressing and finding that, for them, it wasn’t what they wanted to do with their career at that stage.

On the one hand, it was quite inspiring to sit and speak with directors. On the other hand, it was demoralizing because they didn’t want to shoot my work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RiLuj74Ajg

A Way of Life, written and directed by Amma Asante

Scott: Eventually, you directed it.

Amma: I was called in very late one afternoon into the BFI [British Film Institute], by Paul Trijbits who ran the New Cinema Fund there. The BFI film funding department were then the UK Film Council. I was terrified because I thought, “What on Earth can they be calling me in for at 6:00 in the evening? They must want to fire me as a writer and bring on somebody else or something.” In fact, they called me in and they sat me down. My agent came in with me, because she was as scared as I was. They said, “We want you very much to direct this movie.”

I said that really can’t work. I love the script, and I really want a good director to direct it. I would really want a good director to take this on and take this vision and do what ever it is that a good director is supposed to do.

They told me exactly what I’d been told with that very first ‘half hour’ sitcom treatment I had written, “You have such a clear vision of what you want. You are the right person to direct this. Nobody else would be better.” There was a technical reason for it as well, which was, the kind of directors I wanted were very expensive and could unbalance the budget of the film, because the worry was, we might be able to afford their DP, or the team and the crew that they might come with.

The mantra of the Film Counsel at the time was “to create a sustainable film industry” and to facilitate new writers and directors.

What they said is, “Look, we’ll send you to film school for a month.” I didn’t know what a month could do to help me, but at the time, they thought that it would do something. “We will allow you to shoot a couple of scenes from your movie just so you’ll get a feel of what it’s like to be behind the camera. You shooting the pilot is not what we will make our decision based on. We’ve decided we want you to direct it. It’s diagnostic, and we want to know where you’re weak and where you’re strong. Then we want to try and strengthen where you’re weak.”

It was a gift. I don’t know where it came from or why it came. When I tell you the story in sound bites, it sounds like I’ve just had this blessed life. Actually, in between, there had been so many struggles. In between of A Way of Life and Belle was eight years. It was collapsed project after collapsed project. Years and years of development as we all know, and then a project would collapse.

I must admit myself, when I listen to myself coming up with these sound bites talking to you now, it does sound charmed. But, in between, there were and are really harsh struggles.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Amma discusses how she became involved with the project Belle.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Amma is repped by CAA and United Agents.

Twitter: @AmmaAsante.

For an interview with Belle screenwriter Misan Sagay, go here.

For when and where to see Belle in U.S movie theaters, go here.

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