And I think the film's really more about the music scene and the experiences of fame rather than about them struggling in Japan. Me and Seapa both went out there separately, experienced Japan for ourselves, had embarrassing, weird experiences on our own and ironed out what plots were more feasible and what felt like we were detouring away from reality a bit too much. We didn't want to make a film about Kurupt FM coming up against Japanese culture and doing a thing that felt lazy in terms of stereotypes or anything like that. Were you mindful to avoid too many Japanese stereotypes? Give the story a bigger arc and add a bit more drama. So we managed to keep doing what we do well but just make it a bit smoother, a bit more cinematic. They had moments where they broke up the action with those talking head interviews. Luckily, there are examples like Spinal Tap we were able to reference.
There was anxiety around it because that's not what you're supposed to do in a film. Steve: The challenge was making sure that we kept that. Steve: Those things don't make sense to me.Īsim: They never reference the camera in a scene. They do talking heads to the camera but it's not a mockumentary really. There are some mockumentaries where the format it so loose. Whereas hopefully, we've tried to keep it true to the same format that we had.Īsim: If you do a mockumentary, you have to always explain why the camera's there. It started to detour towards a slightly different format almost. In The Office they wouldn't have done that. In the David Brent film, there were moments with his psychiatrist and it felt like you wouldn't have a camera crew in there. It was so detailed with what you were allowed access to and what you wouldn't be allowed access to. Steve: What The Office did that we were obsessed with was it was the most true to the realism and the documentary style. But over the years, we've found our groove and our own style. Of course, The Office is the Holy Grail and it's the bible we started off mimicking and imitating. There was People Like Us …Īsim: Before that there was Spinal Tap. When we did our Christmas film together, Click & Collect, he said that out of all The Office rip-offs, ‘yours is one of the better ones'.
Steve: That's the highest compliment from Stephen Merchant.Īsim: He says it all the time.
WHERE TO WATCH KURUPT FM BIG IN JAPAN SERIES
You've been a lot more faithful to the television series haven't you? Yet this film is very different to say, David Brent: Life On The Road. Stephen Merchant has described People Just Do Nothing as the best of all The Office rip-offs. I'm very happy with how it ended up working. I'm glad that people who've seen the film feel like we nailed that. So the idea of him having any sort of romantic interest was a real task to get right. He's been a coke dick for 15 years or something.
Steve: For me, it was quite a challenge not to deviate too much from the Steves that everyone knows, who is basically a eunuch. But I think it's nice, it all comes together and they feed into each other quite well. And I'm part of this vengeance thing that Taka has no idea about. But Steves is part of this love story that's he's not really aware of until three-quarters of the way into the film. The Beats and Grindah bromance is definitely at the core of it. But it's Steves' love life and Chabuddy G's lust for revenge that really drive this film isn't it?Īsim: We all have our individual things going on. The Grindah-Beats bromance is all very well. Here, principal writer Stamp and Chaudhry tell JAY RICHARDSON abiout getting the band back together for their first film, People Just Do Nothing: Big In Japan, and Kurupt FM's debt to Wernham Hogg. Steve Stamp and Asim Chaudhry starred as drug casualty DJ Steves and band manager Chabuddy G - the latter loosely based on Chaudhry’s own wheeler-dealer father - in five series of People Just Do Nothing, the BBC mockumentary about Kurupt FM, Brentford's number one garage pirate radio station.
0 kommentar(er)
