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Fest Track On Sirk TV Interview: ODYSSEY [SXSW 2025] - Part II
Fest Track
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3/27/2025
Writer/Director Gerard Johnson and Actress Polly Maberly talk to Fest Track about location, pace and approach in regards to their new film: "Odyssey" playing the Visions section of the 2025 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
Category
🎥
Short film
Transcript
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00:00
This is Tim Wastbrook from FesTrackOnStreetTV.
00:29
I'm here at the South Baseline West Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
00:59
So everyone's already so relaxed, they're not even worried about the camera in the moment.
01:05
And also on the film, it was just walking around.
01:07
I mean, I would go into, we would get permission from a pub or a club,
01:12
but from one person, the owner.
01:14
Okay.
01:15
So all of those people, when we were coming in with a camera, they didn't know what's going on.
01:19
There was a lot of poor bar staff that didn't know anything about biking.
01:22
And for me, that's the energy.
01:24
The energy of going into a real place and there's a band playing in one club.
01:29
There was, you know, people staring at the camera.
01:31
That to me, I love because it feels you cannot replicate that without doing it for real.
01:37
You can't replicate those nights.
01:40
It feels artificial.
01:41
So her journey of walking through the night just feels almost like it's going into a documentary
01:46
area.
01:47
In a way, it is because people are, who are you?
01:50
Like trying to grab hold of Polly or trying to grab hold of the camera and like, you know.
01:54
Or they don't bat an eyelid.
01:56
In central London, they're just like, I'll get out of the way.
01:58
I'm going to work.
02:00
Yeah, well, it's quite a big set up of the minimal people around the camera.
02:06
Do you know what I mean?
02:06
Like minimal, but it's still, it's a big camera really.
02:09
But it's also amazing.
02:13
When I made my first film 15 years ago, people were a lot more inquisitive there.
02:18
I think now people are so used to being filmed or being so used to have people having cameras
02:23
out the whole time that there's still people who are interested.
02:27
But when you're so minimal, people don't really bat an eyelid so much now.
02:33
Do you know what I mean?
02:33
It's cold.
02:35
We are surrounded by cameras the whole time.
02:38
Yeah.
02:41
Look, he needs moving somewhere else.
02:43
He's not safe here anymore.
02:44
We just, we need your help to move him somewhere else.
02:49
No.
02:49
Yes.
02:50
No.
02:50
Yes.
02:51
What are you doing?
02:51
Let him go.
02:52
It's too late for that.
02:54
Douglas tried to pull a fast one on us, didn't he, Douglas?
02:57
Oh, yeah.
03:01
Well, yeah, I suppose I didn't see it as the whole.
03:03
I still put one foot in front of the other and saw it like that.
03:06
And what helped was, Korshan's such a wicked guy behind the camera.
03:11
The DOP, yeah.
03:11
DOP.
03:12
And he immediately felt like my friend, you know, because I'm not used to.
03:16
Yeah, I mean, it just felt very, very freeing.
03:19
And, you know, of course, I felt a bit rabbit in the headlights the first day,
03:22
windy day, Mornington Crescent, you know, just my voice was going.
03:28
It felt, you know, I warmed up quick, though, I warmed up quick.
03:33
And then we turned the corner into Camden High Street.
03:35
And we were, that was the first scene we took, actually,
03:38
when I was saying to Dylan, you know, about what's the lines, you know,
03:44
about how you have to behave and never say small.
03:48
What's always compact and all this.
03:49
And it just felt really freeing.
03:52
And a few days in, I just thought, well, I've made my choices.
03:59
She's out there now.
04:00
I'm not thinking about that, but you have to tap into her anger at the world
04:05
and her justifiable anger at it.
04:08
And the feeling of playing out her mission was very useful,
04:13
like to just keep breathing and keep moving.
04:16
It was really, that's what it was.
04:18
It was sort of like the pace that we set was great for me as well.
04:23
Who is she really?
04:24
Is she evil underneath?
04:26
Or is she just, is it just survival of the fittest?
04:29
And is it just, you have to get to the top.
04:32
That's how you have to win in business.
04:35
I need to leave now.
04:37
You listen to me.
04:38
We're not asking you.
04:40
We're done for you.
04:41
Okay?
04:45
No, stop, stop, stop.
04:46
Natasha, just stop.
04:48
Stop.
04:50
I know, hey, look at me.
04:51
I know, it's f***ing mad.
04:53
All right?
04:54
If you do this and you're going to do this,
04:57
yes, you're going to do this.
04:59
You get to keep the loan.
05:00
I tried to have it feel like, as you say, the walls are closing in,
05:08
you know, with the phone calls, the constant phone calls.
05:10
What stresses you out?
05:12
You know, people asking for money.
05:14
People wanting, you know, having to avoid people getting in
05:18
and realizing if I just get to this place, everything will be okay.
05:22
Because we've all been stressed about money.
05:25
We've all been stressed in generally in life, in big cities.
05:31
And that always is interesting going into a film
05:39
and feeling even more stressed than you are yourself.
05:42
Do you know what I mean?
05:43
Coming out and thinking, oh, I feel a little bit better now.
05:48
It's cathartic.
05:48
Yeah, cathartic, but you start to get a real understanding,
05:52
you know, from reviews and from, you know, the audience,
05:55
you get a real understanding of what really,
05:59
what they got from it and what really stood out.
06:01
And if people are saying, you know, for instance, South by Southwest,
06:04
they said every time the committee watched it,
06:10
all they talked about was how stressful it was.
06:12
And that to me is brilliant because that's the intention.
06:17
The intention of just one character
06:22
and just feeling for their predicament in a way.
06:25
No more debt, you keep that money.
06:28
If you don't do this.
06:35
Lovely f***ing brother, Dan.
06:37
You have to introduce me to the rest of your f***ing family.
06:40
Take care, Taz.
06:43
There's always a bit of light in, you know, everything in the darkness.
06:47
I think it's Bukowski, actually.
06:50
But just, yeah, and I think once she finds the Viking,
06:56
the way they embrace, the way, because up until that point,
07:00
you're very used to seeing one side of this character, right?
07:04
This character, she's alone, she's very business, everything else.
07:07
She's looking for someone you don't quite know.
07:09
You don't quite know who it is.
07:11
And it's just that embrace when they first meet again after all those years.
07:17
You see the child in her now, the innocent child, you know?
07:24
And the wanting answers when they're in the apartment
07:27
talking about what happened and everything else.
07:29
And you see that there was an innocent person in there.
07:33
Maybe there was a person that wouldn't have been sedated
07:35
if she'd have had a father figure, if the mother wouldn't have run off.
07:38
All of those things have then made her who she is now.
07:44
And she's having also to survive in a male-dominated world,
07:46
which is the world of real estate, estate agents,
07:49
and had to get cut pro to be the person she is.
07:54
And as playing it, I would say that, you know,
07:56
that those penultimate scenes and the calm before the storm,
08:00
at that point, she's made her decision.
08:02
And so there's a sense of enjoyment as well that she gets from those last moments.
08:07
I mean, that rises up, that builds.
08:14
And so it was nice to make those choices.
08:16
It felt, you know, she was a series of decisions
08:20
and she just hated being out of control for one minute.
08:22
She liked to come back to control.
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