Interview: Rachael Prior
One of the delights about spending time on Twitter is having met and gotten to know Rachael Prior. Whip smart and passionate about movies and storytelling, Rachael is the Head of Film at Big Talk Pictures, a U.K.-based film company overseeing movies such as Attack the Block, Cuban Fury, and the excellent romantic comedy Man Up (2015), written by Tess Morris, directed by Ben Palmer, and starring Lake Bell and Simon Pegg. Previously Rachael worked in development at Working Title where she was involved numerous movies including Edgar Wright’s ‘Blood & Ice-Cream Trilogy’ — Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End.
Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:
Part 1: “I liked long-form, complete narratives. Movies are like novels in that way. They have a beginning, middle and end and that always appealed to me more than the episodic narratives of comic books or TV did.”
Part 2: “ I get to be part of a creative process, and I do think my job is… I see myself as a facilitator.”
Part 3: “I think it’s quite challenging, when you make a romantic comedy to take real‑life notions about what it’s like to be single and then make them play in a movie authentically, and in an entertaining way.”
Part 4: “You just have to be very instinctive about the way that you get out of the writer what you know has to be delivered. You don’t always get there, but a good development person or producer will facilitate for a writer their best shot at succeeding.”
Part 5: “All stories are essentially borrowed or reconstituted. But character and dialogue are, I think, where writers truly innovate, and are at the heart of an audience’s emotional connection to material. Films live or die on that.”
Part 6: “I don’t know a single writer that I admire, and is successful, that doesn’t have their moments of really hating it. You hit those moments, in the writing process — you hit walls. You question the sanity of doing this for a living.”
Twitter: @ORachaelO.
For the Big Talk Pictures website, go here.