An eccentric tale of an Anglican Dean who believes he once was a dog… So began my first pitches in early 2005 for the film that would become Dean Spanley.
As any reasonable reader would probably concede, it was a proposal that was just begging for at best a raised eyebrow and, at worst, a flat no. Which is, of course, what I received the first time I mentioned this project to anyone.
I can still remember it now…
‘A Dean who thinks he was a what? – pass, thanks.’
Now, it must be admitted that this is the film business where rejection is a part of everyday life, if not the norm. Nonetheless, a few too many Nos early on can doom any project to the Dante’s Inferno of the movie world, development hell.
So, while my first was likely to be the first of many, I decided that this was a film that needed a different path. A path that would need tens of millions of dollars, but which (at least in the year 2005) did not look likely to be attracting the cheque writers of Hollywood by any stretch of a producer’s considerable imagination.
Nevertheless, as the book you are holding reveals, the film did get made, and there is a story to tell of how it did. So, like any good after-dinner tale, it is perhaps best to go back and begin at the beginning.
For my part, it all really began one night back in late 2004 as I was drifting off to sleep. As the reader will learn from Alan Sharp’s description of the development process, I had come across the short film version of the screenplay by way of a mutual friend in 1998 and had loved it from the opening lines to the final scene. However, there was little I could do with a 50-page screenplay, so like many wonderful ideas in this business it went into the bottom drawer where it would stay until a fateful night’s sleep several years later.
That particular night in question I recall sitting bolt upright in my bed, in what might be called a ‘Eureka!’ moment, and thinking to myself, ‘Dean Spanley – I must make it’. More importantly than that I had an idea as to how to make it work as a feature film. Of course, it must be pointed out that the path from ‘Eureka’ to ‘Camera Set – Action’ is a long and arduous one, but like all producers this one is an eternal optimist with, at times, what must seem to others an almost foolish level of enthusiasm. Thus what came next was somewhat typical of the species.
Leaping out of bed I headed for the bottom drawer of my desk where the (short) screenplay that filled my head with possibility was meant to reside. After some five years it was, of course, not there, which led (as it does at 1.00am) to the house being pulled to pieces in a fruitless effort to find this wondrous script of which I had such a clear vision (or so I thought at 1.00am that morning). By 4.00am my vision had somewhat been replaced by the sight of my house, which looked like a train wreck. The script was nowhere to be found, with only my cat left untouched, its disdain for what I had done to its sleeping area showing all over its little face.
Now, I will not bore the reader with the arcane detail of what came next, for it is enough to say that it took several months to even get a copy of the script and then begin to convince Alan Sharp that it should be further developed. Lots of phone calls and emails were exchanged, comprising the boring stuff of producing that I suspect no reader really wants to wade into. Suffice to say that eventually a partnership of sorts was found and Alan and I began the process of turning his short film screenplay into a full-blown feature film.
So it was that by early 2006 Dean Spanley was nicely making the transition to its soon to be fuller incarnation. However, this brings us back to the problem of how to pitch such a film and beyond that, how to get it funded.
Early attempts had, as previously described, not met with a particularly strong response. The message being clear that dogs who reincarnate as Deans was just not of the same sort of box office material as trucks and cars who transform into robots.
So as this next stage of development continued I took what was upon reflection the best possible course of action: I hid the project from the world.
Now this will, of course, seem (quite logically, I would argue) to the reader rather the wrong thing to do. After all, should not all producers be out there telling the world of their next masterpiece, whipping financiers into a state of frenzied anticipation and generally acting in a manner of supreme confidence and assuredness? Well, in this case, the answer is an unequivocal no. This was a project that could not show its face to the world until it was in nothing short of a solid state. Financiers would have to swoon at the story’s charms and become infatuated by the cast possibilities that the film’s roles promised if this was ever to be a ‘go’ film. So for nearly a year (most of 2006), while the writer worked quietly away, I busied myself with post-production on my then-current film, all the while hoping that what was simmering away in the writer’s mind was to be nothing short of a stunning and exotic dish.
I had high hopes and my mind, I must confess, was filled with the imaginings of all producers, a film with stars, red carpets and glowing reviews. One can imagine then the anticipation I felt when in late 2006 a large envelope containing the script was handed to me by the writer. Each page was fantastic, with every flick of the page the story ever more potent and compelling as I had hoped it might be. Until, that is, I got to page 75…
Now, it’s not that page 75 wasn’t any good; it’s simply that it was not there. Nor was page 76, 77 or 78, for that matter. The script just finished, incomplete.
Scripts arriving incomplete is, within the industry, something of an urban myth. One of those stories like finding a mouse in your Big Mac that many have heard of, but never actually experienced themselves. At this point it’s important to clarify that Alan Sharp is one hell of a writer and not himself to be confused with those who would put a rodent in a burger. So I did what all producers would in this situation, I grabbed the phone and dialled. The conversation of which went something like this:
Writer: ‘Hello.’
Producer: ‘The script’s fantastic, I love it…’
Note: Producers are excitable beasts and when faced with a fantastic screenplay are prone to skipping the formalities.
Writer: ‘Great, great, I’m quite pleased with it myself.’
Producer: ‘I enjoyed every page right up to the point where it stopped.’
Producer: ‘So I think we should finish the screenplay.’
Writer: ‘Right…’ (followed by a long pause)
Truth be told, the conversation was a little more than the above, with much discussion about what the end of the film would be. Either way, Alan agreed to keep writing and within a few days a shiny new screenplay, very similar to the one printed in this book, was delivered to me. It was, in short, a beautiful and moving piece of writing and it deserved to be brought to the screen. It just needed a director, money and cast.
Of course, producers don’t make films by themselves and, for that matter, they rarely produce films on their own. For the previous two years I had been working with an excellent London-based producer called Alan Harris and it was to him that I first turned with the now-finished script for Dean Spanley. Luckily for the project he loved it and so this skilled producer now became part of the conspiracy to let the right people see the project at the right time.
Collectively (now there were two producers trying to make this movie happen) the first thought was of course who shall direct this? Choosing the director of a movie is one of the most difficult and important decisions a producer will make along the path towards production. Get it right and glory is yours, get it wrong and you will see all your dreams come undone before your eyes. My own view was that we needed someone who understood family, who got the subtext of the powerful emotions that exist between father and son, and who could understand that a whimsical story about an eccentric Dean who thought he was once a dog could become a metaphor for the powerful forces that the film would explore.
Both Alan Harris and I thought that a New Zealand director called Toa Fraser could well fit the description above. He had directed only one other film before (No. 2) but it had won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 and had shown a real flair for storytelling, family, pathos and imagery. Further to that, Toa had an established international reputation as a playwright, something that we felt would help qualify him to breathe life into scenes that in many cases were static, taking place in a room, club or other such confined space. He was our first choice and I hope that when you, the reader, see the film, you will agree that not only was he the best choice, but that he also brought a special magic to the film.
Signing a director does not, of course, put your film instantly into production (unless it is Mr Spielberg or Mr Lucas that you have just signed), you still have to go through the boring, but unfortunately completely necessary part of financing the film. Now, given that this introduction is to a book that hopefully the reader will enjoy over a glass of something while sitting by the fire, and given that the subject of financing leaves even those who work in the business with eyes glazing at just the mention of the word, we will leave this part of the process out of our description. Suffice to say that the New Zealand Film Commission, Aramid Entertainment, Screen East and Lip Sync Productions all felt that a Dean who gets drunk then reminisces about being a dog was as suitable a subject as any to pour millions of dollars into.
The reader may recall at this point that the script was previously described as hidden from the world, for reasons that suggest that those who were trying to make this film were somewhat insane or at the very least delusional. Be that as it may, at some point it must be revealed to the wider film world and it was with this in mind that we as producers gingerly began to show the script in early 2007. The plan was to let just a few people at a time read it, allowing each to enjoy it and have the wonderful premise behind it find a place in their heart. One by one Alan Harris and I did this, building the script up in the financing community and allowing the word of mouth that this was something special to find its way out to those who can make the green-light decisions. All of this was aided by the prodigious talent of Toa Fraser, whose win the previous year at Sundance ensured that all who considered the project saw it as we intended it to be seen, as nothing short of the highest quality drama with a unique, fresh and original story to tell. This path proved the right one and over a period of some six months Dean Spanley became known as an exciting and original film with a genuine future in theatres everywhere. This was confirmed when our first distribution partners, Alliance Films in Canada and Paramount in Australasia, came on board. From that point on, the script was very much un-hidden and was, as Wrather’s Aunt Molly would say, ‘a boat that was going to float’.
There is, of course, so much more to making a movie and in some way I am sure that I am doing the enthusiastic film reader a disservice by not continuing with my description of the path to production of this movie. But, truth be told, it would fill a book on its own to describe the adventures, trials and tribulations involved as we banked the millions (ready to spend again on the film), cast the actors and hired the crew ready to roll camera. Instead, by the time the reader casts their eyes over these short passages they will be able to see for themselves how well the project worked out and whether the choice of cast, director, locations, costumes, music and all the other cornucopia of resources that go into a movie were the right ones. Certainly this producer hopes that the answer will be a resounding yes.
The process of making any movie is a special one and it will be for the rest of my life that I remember such a team as came together to tell this lovely story. Thus I hope the reader will indulge me as I take this rather public opportunity to thank my fellow co-producer, Alan Harris, the film’s director Toa Fraser, the entire cast and crew, the financiers and last but very far from least, the film’s writer, Alan Sharp. A man for whom I have the utmost respect and affection and without whom there would be no retelling for the screen of this great classic of which you the reader are now in possession. My Talks with Dean Spanley by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany.
Matthew Metcalfe
Soho, London 2008