Papadopoulos And Sons
By Christa Ktorides – Papadopoulos And Sons tells the timely tale of Anglo-Greek entrepreneur Harry Papadopoulos (Stephen Dillane) who loses it all in a financial crisis and has to return to his roots running the old family business – a fish and chip shop – which reunites him with his larger-than-life estranged brother Spiros (George Corraface). Christa Ktorides sat down with the bundle of energy and infectiously enthusiastic writer/director Marcus Markou and star Georgia Groome (who plays Harry’s spoilt daughter Katie) to chat about the battle this little film has gone through to secure a release despite wowing festival audiences.
By Christa Ktorides
Papadopoulos
And Sons tells the timely tale of Anglo-Greek entrepreneur Harry Papadopoulos
(Stephen Dillane) who loses it all in a financial crisis and has to return to
his roots running the old family business – a fish and chip shop – which
reunites him with his larger-than-life estranged brother Spiros (George
Corraface). Christa Ktorides sat down with the bundle of energy and
infectiously enthusiastic writer/director Marcus Markou and star Georgia Groome
(who plays Harry’s spoilt daughter Katie) to chat about the battle this little
film has gone through to secure a release despite wowing festival audiences.
Georgia,
you nailed the Greek Princess thing. Did you do much in the way of research?
Georgia: I sat down with Donald
McGuiness who was our hair and make-up man – he’s actually an old friend of
mine and lives around the corner from me – so we met in our local pub and he
got out his iPad. I walked over thinking, “please give me hair extensions”
because it was either that or he was gonna cut it short and he got this picture
up and it was of Kim Kardashian and
I was like, “brilliant!” It’s so much fun, before you knew it I was
at his house having my hair dyed, and I’ve got the Greek baby hair (indicates
to her hairline]. I’m not Greek. I just have it. We spent hours in Top Shop trying on things that I would
never wear!
Did
you have a lot of input in the costumes and how Katie looked?
Georgia: I was very on the same page as the team. It was what she [Katie]
needed. She’s hysterical in terms of that. Weirdly, I was at a party a few
months later in Portland Place and we gatecrashed a Princesses Birthday party
and I walked in wearing ripped, glittery tights, a t-shirt that should not be
worn as a dress and a pair of Doc Martens with a hoodie and I was surrounded by
these girls that were Katie Papadopoulos. I thought, “this is
terrifying!” [Laughs].
Marcus,
this is a huge labour of love for you. It’s your baby…?
Marcus: Yeah it is. I’ve designed the poster, run the website, do the blog. I
do everything.
You
must be knackered!
Marcus: I’m shattered! But at the same time I am constantly driven. Like, last
night, I went to some concert by the Greek
Robbie Williams. I didn’t know who he was until last night but there were
700-800 Greeks there so I flyered every one of them leaving the concert and
pitched the story. I’m the writer, the director, I’ve remortgaged my house and
self-distribute. I almost feel that this is the model for independent
filmmaking. There are so many people who want to get into the film business but
for what? To sell your soul and everything you’ve ever believed in to people
that have no love for films. Their only love and interest is in making money
and they often get it wrong. [I think] you will find your audience if you’re
passionate about telling a story with integrity. That’s the thing that keeps me
going. I was lucky that the vibe attracted the right people. The sun shone when
we needed it. The Cypriot banking crisis has come just when we’re releasing
it [laughs]. It’s weird that one
day we even had to stop filming because of the London riots! That brought us
together as a team. Things have happened [during the filming] that have been
like the spirit of the film – quite joyous and quite serendipitous.
Why
has it been so important for you to target Greeks in your marketing campaign?
Marcus: I’m sticking this film in 13 cinemas. I don’t have a marketing budget
for posters, bus campaigns or TV commercials. I had to ask myself, “What
makes people go to the cinema before they’ve seen the film?” And often
it’s because that film is an event. Why did Wild Bill, which is a brilliant and lovely film, not get any
audiences? It did like £50 per screen. Why does a film like Margin Call with Kevin Spacey, not become huge? The point is, it doesn’t matter
whether your film is good or not – it’s [all down to if] the film is an event.
Whether it’s the next Bond film or
it’s a film that’s had Oscar buzz
before release. You need something to make it an event so that people go to see
it. While this film is universal, while it played brilliantly at Dinard and Palm Springs Film Festivals, and it’s doing really great business
on Singapore Airlines, I still have
got to get my initial weekend filled with enough people to [get Cineworld interested. Right now]
they’re not even responding to some of my emails because why would they?
They’re dealing with huge Hollywood blockbusters and I’m going, “could you
please retweet this? Could you please put this on your Facebook page?” I’m
lucky that they’ve just given me 13 screens for one week but if I don’t get
numbers through that door, I don’t have a chance.
It’s
the old fashioned way though isn’t it? Films used to have incredibly long runs
because they would start in limited locations and then spread through word of
mouth.
Marcus: I’m doing it the old fashioned way. The way it works now …. you are up
against huge Hollywood films with massive budgets flooding the posters and
billboards and you’re this little indie film. [That’s why] I’m going straight
to social media to market the film.
Have
you noticed this method of getting the word out is working?
Marcus: Yeah. At this concert last night, I snuck into the after party to try
and get a photo with the Greek Robbie Williams [laughs] and had loads of people
going, “oh yeah I know Papadopoulos And Sons, I’ve heard about it on the
radio, I’ve seen it on Facebook.” So whether you like the film or not, I’m
hoping it’s going to be a rallying call to other independent filmmakers to say
you can do it. We need to do it. This is one of the most diverse cities on the
planet yet we get one type of film. If I opened a cinema in Central London that
just played Polish, French, Romanian, Russian, Brazilian films, I would pack it
out every night and it would probably make more money than these Hollywood
films that we’re just schlepping across the country.
What
made you go with Cineworld to show the film?
Marcus: Cineworld liked the film. Odeon liked it but Cineworld were generally
more progressive and open to the idea. I think they’re a much more progressive
cinema chain. They’ve also got the better popcorn! I’ve made friends on Twitter
with all the Cineworld managers, they’re great! It’s exciting for them, I
think, to be interacting directly with the filmmaker, I don’t think happens
very much. I don’t think Ridley Scott
is tweeting Cineworld Liverpool saying, “have you got our posters
yet?!” [Laughs] But I think he would benefit from doing that!
You’ve
a deal with BBC Films …?
Marcus: They’ve bought the free TV deal. They loved it! This is a sweet, gentle
comedy that’s very timely, [Stephen] Dillane is wonderful in it and Stephen is
very well respected at the BBC. All these things combined together with our
response from Palm Springs, where it won the Audience Favourite, I think the BBC thought that actually this
ticks a lot of boxes for them. As well as the Greek Cypriot thing, I think that
was a big box to tick. As an independent filmmaker for me it was a huge tick of
relief. It felt like so much of this has been a huge struggle. This is a film
that not a single distributor in the UK was interested, not a single sales
agent …
It’s
an uplifting tale, similar in tone to The Full Monty, which was huge. It’s odd
that no one was interested?
Marcus: Half of the distributors didn’t show up for the screening. The other
half that did said, “it’s not commercial at all.” You know, though, it
might be the making of this film. The fact that they said no. Sony couldn’t
have sold it like this. They wouldn’t be standing outside the Greek Robbie
Williams concert [laughs]! It’s a reflection of our industry, that one company
said, “I can’t see this selling DVD’s in supermarkets,” another
distributor said, “there is no market for it outside of the UK.” I went,
“Are you crazy? There’s Greek communities all over the world.” Even
if they just did that and nothing else. It’s been part of the birth of this
movie, it’s part of its spirit, it’s part of its identity. It’s a little
outsider made by an outsider. The people that came to work on this film,
they’re all rebels; they’ve all got a rebel streak. These are people that took
a risk with an unknown writer/director. They may not have been paid, they might
have turned up on day one and it could’ve been a complete farce. These are all
the questions running through every actors mind, “yeah the scripts nice
but I don’t know this guy, don’t know even if we’re going to get paid.”
So
Georgia, why did you do the film? He might not have paid you?!
Georgia: I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. A lot of what is sent to
my generation in terms of scripts and in terms of we’re supposed to want to go
and see at the cinema, is knives, gangs, rape, it’s grim. I don’t want to watch
that, I think Noel Clarke did an
amazing thing with Kidulthood but it
spawned a youth culture that I think is unhealthy and in terms of Papadopoulos
it was one of the only scripts outside of TV that I’d got in a long time that
wasn’t bleak. It didn’t end with a girl lying in the middle of the woods. It
didn’t end with somebody in prison. It was hopeful and I thought that’s what
British films should try and be a bit more like. British films have become a
bit of a cliché recently. We weren’t in competition at Dinard but people were
coming up and stopping us saying, “we loved your film and we’re going to
tell all of our friends.”
Marcus: One of the distribution companies, even before they had seen the film,
said, “we’d never take a film with Papadopoulos in the title.” That
is what independent filmmakers are up against. Unfortunately for them – and
fortunately for me – I’m not just a writer/director I’m also an independent
businessman. I have my own independent source of finance and I am using that to
try and create a sense of formidable independence.
That’s
true independent cinema.
Georgia: It’s exciting.
Marcus: It is exciting and it’s taken me 20 years to get to this point. I am
tired but I have my collapse planned for mid-April! [Laughs].
Papadopoulos
And Sons gets a week long release in selected Cineworld cinemas from Friday
April 5th with several special screenings attended by cast and crew.
