Interview with Dean Lennox Kelly -

Promoting: Frequently Asked Questions About Time-Travel
Venue: Lionsgate offices
Interview type: One-on-one


ViewLondon (VL): What's the film about?

Dean Lennox Kelly (DLK): I think the writer had in mind putting three very ordinary fellas with very ordinary lives in an extraordinary situation, which takes them on a journey of madness and insanity and just to see how they're gonna cope with it. And it's a real kind of puzzle box, jigsaw of a movie which sometimes is so confusing, I'm still confused with it – I remember how confused I was when I read it. But it really ends up holding together brilliantly, especially considering the world it's set in and all the time-travel rules - there's a time-travel Bible, there's a way of going about it and he manages to incorporate everything, as well as bringing the film to a larger audience. It's just brilliant and so original and so funny and clever, the fact that we don't really go anywhere and it's set in this pub. It blew me away, really.

VL: How did you get involved in the film?

DLK: Just the way it always happens, you know. You get a meeting, you get told the premise – I'm like, 'It's called WHAT? Right.' And, you know, I really am quite cynical about this sort of thing, cynical in a good way, that I'm not into time-travel and sci-fi, so the casting was pretty perfect. And [co-stars] Mark and Chris were very much into it, Mark especially. And when you read something like that you've got to go and meet these people, you want to meet the guy who could sit and write this thing. And the meeting didn't even go particularly well, I didn't even really think I would hear back, so I just thought, 'Well, it's not really my thing', but luckily I was the man for the job – I had the right amount of cynicism and negativity just to slot into the threesome.

VL: It's very strange to see Anna Faris in it. How did she get involved?

DLK: Who knows, you know? They obviously were trying to get an American star, because of the half-American financing. And she's got a really good profile in the States, she's made good films. And she's brilliant. I think she's going to be a big star. In fact, in the two and a half years since we made the film, she's just got bigger and bigger, so that's great. I think they had all sorts of names. But at the time, I'd never really heard of her apart from the Scary Movie films and she was lovely. And it was a coup, when you think about it. She was just brilliant – really down to earth, just knew it, knew where to pitch it, didn't need to be directed, she was just really good.

VL: In the film, the actual events in the future are only hinted at – did the three of you have a theory as to what actually happened?

DLK: No. I didn't care. I swear to you, I just didn't think about that. I know Chris did, he was like [slips into note-perfect impression of co-star Chris O'Dowd] 'There'd be like people with like tiny big heads and like...' whatever he says and that's about as much as I could take. I just didn't really think, because it wasn't about that. Because there was so much going on. For me, it was about how the fuck do we get back, are we back, are we okay now? It's just bonkers to try and think of it as a beginning, middle and end, it's just so bonkers that you can't approach the film the way you'd approach any other job, because it's hard enough getting your head round the script and the order of scenes and the order of where we are.

VL: You said you weren't a big sci-fi fan generally, but do you have a favourite sci-fi film?

DLK: Back to the Future. That's about as sci-fi as I get. Time Bandits was quite good.

VL: Do you have a favourite scene in the film?

DLK: Yeah. I love the scene where we have to do Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart, when all three of us do it, in the toilet and we have to go through the motions and work out if we should all pirouette from this urinal or we should all hold on to each other and finding out what works. And just thinking, 'Well, this is bonkers, but people do go to the toilet and do weird things, do sing, do have their little quirky mannerisms, especially if no-one's there'. You know, you might do little things just because you're on your own and it's just funny, and having Chris say, [does O'Dowd impression again] 'Do you really do all this, Pete, when you're in here?' But I just love the scene too, where our characters are in the toilet, but we're also all in the cubicle and we're peering over the top. All that was just brilliant, it was just so good.