Written in Blood: An Interview With Ben Shillito On Writing Dead Cert

Dead Cert Writer and Co-Producer, Ben Shillito talks to Ed Whitfield about the perils of orchestrating an orgy of rampaging violence between Gangsters and Vampires on the page and how it all started in Colin Baker’s TARDIS.

Tell me a little about your background. How do you get involved in screenwriting and what brought you to Dead Cert?

I’ve been writing since I was a child. It started with Dr Who scripts for Colin Baker’s doctor, mainly based around TARDIS repair, bickering with Bonnie Langford and regenerating every few pages. A little later I read some lit. crit. and got it into my head that telling stories was a better idea than just plodding out a bunch of random scenes and then killing everyone off (a lesson I forgot on Dead Cert but promise to re-learn for my next project). Studying literature and film helped with the writing, as there is a specific grammar to film which is wildly different from prose structure. My main “film school” experience, however, which took me beyond film theory and into practice, was when I first discovered the DVD commentary. Listening to writers and directors talk about their craft, with reference to specific scenes from their completed film, is invaluable.

About 18 months ago I was working on yet another novel that I would never be confident enough to send to anyone, when a chance viewing of Chinatown one drunken evening got me thinking about making films. The idea was to make a convoluted film noir set on Southend sea front. Through a series of contacts, the script landed on [Dead Cert Director] Steve Lawson’s desk and he took me on as a script editor. In 2009, I did some re-writes on Just for the Record, with input from Steve, helping him get his directorial vision into the script as well as generating my own content and scenes. When that wrapped, we started looking for something else to do, and ended up brainstorming (over the course of a weekend) the story that would become Dead Cert.

Dead Cert is a hybrid of the gangster and vampire genre. What were the challenges of combining the two? Tell us a little about the evolution of the screenplay – your movie influences, etc.

The history of British cinema has gone in phases – documentary, realism, horror, smut, rom-coms, gangsters and now horror again. Dead Cert was an attempt to capture what’s great about two much-loved British genres, and splice them together. For people who like gangster films, we have Dexter Fletcher and Craig Fairbrass on top gravel-voiced form, while the gore-hounds and genre freaks (people like me, in other words) there is a huge splatter of gore. You could call it a Guy Ritchie version of From Dusk till Dawn, but I prefer to look at it as Get Carter meets Dracula – Get Dracula, if you like.

Dead Cert is a British movie but British writers and producers always tend to have one eye on the American market. Was that the case here and how, if at all, did it change your approach to writing it?

You’d have to be clinically stupid not to have an eye on the biggest English-speaking film market in the world, but there were actually very few compromises made in the script for the American audience. From the first draft to the last, some brand names were changed, the cockney slang was toned down, and a lot of instances of the dreaded ‘c-word’ were removed and replaced with more creative swearing. Luckily, creative swearing is my forte. You cock-loving son of a whore’s granny. (Free sample for you, there.) It’s easy to say that the Americans are more puritanical than us trendy Europeans when it comes to sex and swearing, but it’s worth remembering that Shortbus, Bad Lieutenant and I Spit on Your Grave are American films. The only consideration is the MPAA, the American ratings board, who are known to err on the side of prudery, and who can destroy a movie’s box office with the dreaded NC-17 rating. So the scenes of Nazi robots raping and eating babies had to be cut, too. (Joke.)

What’s been your involvement in refining the script during the shoot?

There weren’t that many tweaks once we started shooting. Steve allows actors to find their way around a scene, and there’s often a bit of improv on set, but that’s fine. As a writer, I’m not precious about dialogue (most of the time), as long as they don’t improv the story into a blind alley by changing something that messes up a scene later on. But there’s enough crew around, particularly the script supervisor and 1st AD, who can make sure this doesn’t happen.

Writers tend to get sucked dry when it comes to the production process. What’s been your experience of screenwriting on this project?

With my writer hat on, I haven’t had any problems. I have to remind myself that once I’ve typed ‘THE END’ it’s someone else’s job to get the film shot, get it right and make it pretty.

Tell us about what you’ve got coming up next.

I’m working on Bulla, Regency’s new comedy project for next spring, with Steve Lawson and Ricky Grover. I also have a handful of scripts bouncing around other companies, looking for homes. I’m also eight years into my grand experiment – the attempt to prolong adolescence beyond all previous limits – which is going very well.

FilmShaft wishes Ben success in his experiment and looks forward to seeing his words on screen in the New Year.

Tags: Ben Shillito, Dead Cert, interview