Typically, a trip to the hairdresser involves nothing more than a blow dry, a cup of tea, and a good old chinwag. Bridging together elements of artistic hair styling and murder mystery, Thomas Hardiman’s feature debut Medusa Deluxe is a British tale unlike any other. FILMHOUNDS sat down with him to find out more about his process.
How did this story come to you?
I mean, a few different places. They sort of hit you out of the blue sometimes. I always had an interest in hairdressing. It’s comedic, heightened drama and I’m interested in spaces where passion goes into obsession. Through my mum, I spent a lot of time in hairdressers and I was looking for that space where I could show something I loved but also where there’s an important cultural value. It’s how you present yourself and how you want yourself to be perceived. At the same time, you’ve got the fun of the salon, and comedy exists between those two spaces. It felt like I could be comedic, honest, and passionate and make a film about love at the same time as being fun and engaging to an audience and pushing the limits of storytelling.
What was the casting process like? I know that there’s at least one person featured that has never acted before, which I found incredibly hard to believe.
Most of them have got at least a background in theatre. It’s a pretty technical film, so they had to hit a lot of marks. Casting is a nightmare — usually, it’s tough and when you’re on short films, you don’t get rehearsal. You basically just have to beg everyone to do you a favour. But this time, Gary Davies (casting director) got the scripts from the very first moment he understood. There’s a love of independent arthouse cinema. Nashville is a big reference, Slacker is a big reference. Then there’s Drag Race, Love Island. This film is a collision of things and it’s that balance, isn’t it? He got it. He understood that it was going to be a heightened fun world, but we’re here we want to tell a story and we want to make it contemporary and interesting in ways that people haven’t necessarily seen before.
Talking of it being like a huge technical undertaking — deciding to shoot a film in one take isn’t a decision to make lightly. The rehearsal process must have felt quite like a theatre project.
It’s a bit like a travelling troupe — like in Game of Thrones, they’ve got that troupe of Mormons. I’ve always liked that idea of 12th-century or 14th-century people who have random talents and function like a circus. The film was shot in nine days, so there is only a few weeks of rehearsal. It’s a bit mental. I wanted it to be like a collegiate mentality. I want people to come there for the full time because in cinema, people usually just drop in for a day here or two days here and it’s just not really how I want to work. I want a different sort of engagement and I just want to feel that everyone’s supporting each other. The actors are there for each other like I’m there for them. The crew is closer to the actors than they would normally be. It’s not just we turn up for a day, say a few lines and disappear. It’s a different thing. And I think that you can see it in the film. There’s a level of kind of love and craft that isn’t possible without that.
Normally one-take films are in a tiny environment, like an office or a restaurant. How aware of using space were you through that process?
That’s a really great question. That’s something that I think about a lot, geography is actually really important to me. I like to know where I am in a building. There’s films I’ve seen where the rooms just do not connect in a way that really throws you, and it’s genuinely something I think about a lot. When you’re following people, you’re not actually just plunking a camera down on sticks and carting it over so you can put it all together. It’s a low-budget film, but it’s pretty ambitious, and we want it to be a snowball that just gets bigger and bigger as you go through. There is this like level of trying to guess, but it’s also about how a viewer engages with space. The film is a deconstructed murder mystery, there’s a lot of things going on — but right down in the bottom of my thoughts is a lot of stuff about geography.
In your opinion, why do we love the whodunnit so much — and why do the Brits do them so well?
God, it’s hard to say, isn’t it? I mean, there are a great load of mysteries from everywhere. I guess Hitchcock has a lot to do with it. I know Agatha Christie is obviously right at the same time Hitchcock’s making films but like, he’s the king of the thriller, isn’t he? Filmmaking is an industry, and you get expertise as people and they build on what has come before. We did those sorts of films quite early and I think that seeped into our TV culture. Seeped into our national consciousness. I’ve been around the world and people have asked, “What about British murder mysteries? How come you guys do such great ones?” I think we’ve just been lucky. We just had great writers and other people have built on that writing. We’ve had great filmmakers and other people have built on that filmmaking. Even Sherlock Holmes, it’s all those things. They go back so far. I don’t know. It’s weird, isn’t it? Maybe it’s the printing press in the way that newspapers were going around Britain in the 19th century. We were at the forefront — and I’m not saying a good or a bad way. There are a lot of bad things that came with us at the forefront. I guess culturally, it meant we were sowing the seeds of things that got built on 100 years later.
There’s so much play with form here — not only is the whodunnit element not typical… for me, a hairdresser is somebody you divulge everything to. Here, they hold all the secrets. How much fun was that?
I mean, that’s massive. That’s the heart of the film. It is a deconstructed murder mystery that’s about pushing the form. There’s 100 years of murder mysteries — if I’m going to rip out the detective and kind of make that the audience, I’m going to rip out other classic elements. I’ve said it a few times, but the Internet’s changed everything. The way that people inhabit stories is vastly different in the last decade. We go through Twitter, we got a cat, we’ve got a joke. We’ve got a heartfelt thing and the way our emotions are moving is different. I come from pretty “out there” independent British art cinema but when I started to see that reflected in the mainstream, I felt like things were changing. To see like The Hurt Locker, which was 10 years ago but that was the first mainstream film that was three acts, which is a pretty unusual way to tell a story. And then The Lego Movie was a complete game changer. There’s a constellation in which people might not think they’re all linked, but there’s a reason those stories are being told like that. And I think it’s the internet. I think it’s pushing things. My nieces learned a lot about makeup and hairdressing from YouTube. The way they were digesting media was so different to what has come before. If you take a murder mystery and you’re not cutting away once you’ve given a red herring or whatever, what does that do? How does that change a murder mystery? It means you’re with the people. It means you’re doing a character drama, and that’s what excites me. That’s why I love Nashville and Slacker. How do you tell these stories in a way that feels contemporary? That’s the challenge and that’s what excites me.
Is hair everything?
It can’t be everything because there are some people who like some people who don’t have it. It’s a difficult thing. How do I answer that? Is hair everything? I actually think creativity is everything. Hair is connected to all different sorts of creativity. The skill of someone who can push the boat out with hairdressing and can look at it as a creative medium is exactly the same as the skill of a classic sculptor and that’s what Rene doing like. He shows the artefacts he’s looking at hairdressing and thinks about ways to break it and be creative. I want hairdressing to be on a pedestal, I want it to be up there with, literature and all these other art forms. I want people to see the level of passion and skill behind it. So yeah, it’s everything, but in the same way that human endeavour and creativity are everything. That’s why we’re here. It’s why we fight wars and fall in love.
Medusa Deluxe is released at UK & Irish cinemas from 9th June.
