Persistence Pays

Meanwhile, producer Pip Piper had been busy in the UK. With the audacity and persistence needed to be a feature producer, he went back once again to Gillies Mackinnon and asked him to reconsider taking on the role of director. To our absolute delight, this time he agreed. I began communicating with Gillies over the script and creative direction.

We quickly established a robust and lively correspondence over the film. Gillies, as a Glaswegian, was nothing if not blunt in his assessments, and I found it best to answer in kind. This resulted in a few exchanges which worried the producers ("Alright then, kill the fucking angels...") but Gillies and I were on common ground in understanding the importance of story. And as a director who has written himself, he has total respect for the place of the writer.

Partly on the back of Gillies' involvement, Pip moved on and began collecting interest from some key talent - always necessary to attract finance. Before long we had letters of interest from Tim Spall, James Nesbitt and John Rhys-Davies, along with our longstanding commitment from Rawiri Paratene.

Also, in the days when Tim Sanders had been shooting Perfect Creature in NZ, he Rawiri and I had lunch with Saffron Burrows. She expressed interest in the project and read the novel and the script.

With these solid affirmations from experienced actors, we felt we had a script and a project worthy of support. Surely now the film was well on the road to production...