- I would want people to take hope in the face of helplessness from it, to take the idea that you can do more than just stand by and watch, that even when everything is rigged against you -- hardwired against you -- you can actually transcend that and defeat it
- My advice would be - anything is possible so don't despair. I left an abusive home at eleven years old and nobody was especially optimistic about my prospects
- I feel that we could do with a little more joy in the world right now
- I didn't see the inside of a theatre until I was thirty five
- As somebody who left an abusive home at 11 years old and struggled for safety and validity, I always found refuge in the extraordinarily brave and marginalized characters of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. The feelings of hope and the determination to overcome helplessness that Sam, Sybil, Cheery, Angua and Carrot inspired in me are very much present in The Watch.
- I left home at eleven years old and spent a large part of my life feeling unwanted and invalid. I've always been drawn to marginalized characters who don't have the advantages that a stable familial background can give you.
- I'm a writer, not a typist.
- I LOVE the fact I got to write letters to Phil Collins, Jan Hammer and George Michael's estate! This job is just crazy!
- One of the things I'm very glad people have picked up on is how The Watch is effortlessly queer.
- Sadly a few of the more extreme negative social media responses have struggled to articulate objections to the show's lack of fidelity without being racist, transphobic or ableist. Whatever differences there may be between The Watch and the characters it was inspired by, I'm quite sure its spirit of inclusion and tolerance is exactly the same as that in which the books were written. At the very least, the show and the books share those values.
- Much of the industry is built by and for people in London with the inherited advantages of a family and all the capital, confidence and connectivity that comes when there's support and love and, especially, money. If you don't have that certainty in your blood and that security in your background, if you're having to devote all your energies into just surviving it's going to be tougher, riskier and it's going to take much longer.
- I'm genuinely hopeful that things are changing for creatives from under-represented backgrounds and I'm trying to play my part. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Help yourself to a pamphlet and a biscuit on the way out! We'll be re-convening at the Docks later for the 'other' conversation....
- I would have people come to me and give me concepts and ideas and I'd say, 'If you think you've gone too far you haven't gone far enough!'
- Ever since I saw Jaws (1975) when I was about eight or nine, I've been convinced that the way I'll go out of this world is to get killed by a Great White Shark so I was thinking 'It'll happen here!' But I was very disappointed, I saw Orcas but I didn't see any Great Whites out there.
- Something often goes missing with the supernatural when it's presented in a longer narrative. There's a tendency to explain every single thing, to impose human motivation and agency. But I had a supernatural experience when I was 18 and it wasn't like that at all! It was scary because it defied comprehension and any kind of easy or immediate interpretation. It left me with a sense of terror but also wonder.
- Toby and I had to do a call with Asa Butterfield which was quite high stakes, because we were told: 'Look, he wants to talk to you, and if you get him, then we'll green light you.' You're sort of braced for the big pitch. Then we fire up Zoom, and he's got all this gaming stuff in the background, and his cool headphones on, and he's sat in his gaming chair. And you instantly think, 'Oh, he's gonna do this!' He was lovely, really lovely!
- I'm sentimental I'm sorry. I like love stories!
- There are so many embedded structures, presumptions, and power influences systemically
- [Isaac] likes Duran Duran, I couldn't get Duran Duran in the film because Toby hates Duran Duran, but Asa's character likes Duran Duran I think...
- We're particularly proud that Netflix took something on which is subverting their holy grail. However, it's still an indie film that's gone out and hit number one for them everywhere in the world.
- If you watch episode 5 we drop Crockett's Theme over a Vimes montage, and you'll hear the music lose confidence in Vimes when he falls over. And then Matt Berry becomes this meta aware commentator on the action, giving him advice on how to montage!
- I think almost anyone who works in film and television would say solving problems is the most exciting thing about this job and this industry. As you progress and work with more and more people, you very quickly learn that the people that really endure are the ones that are good at doing that. They are not the ones that sit back and make assumptions about how easy it is to do these things but understand what it's like at the coalface
- Amrou (Al-Kadhi) just talked about quantum physics, gender fluidity, deconstructing constructs and conventions and perceptions and gazes, particularly the male gaze and hetero normative gaze and so on. That had such a massive influence on me
- The facts are that you write a script, that script has to satisfy and please and impress hundreds and hundreds of people, all of whom have to understand it and be enthusiastic about it and all of whom have thoughts about it.
- So my first year of university I was commuting up to Surrey, I was doing a media degree, the same degree that Toby was doing, and I encountered something which I think a lot of men don't encounter which is quite a discriminatory attitude from some of the tutors towards the fact that I had a baby. I had responsibilities, I was working four night shifts at Sainsbury's at the same time and they were like "I don't think you'll be able to do this."
- I think this (Choose or Die) is a really good example of two guys from very deprived backgrounds, when we started out, being able to make something like this and get it to go this big. I hope that people in the industry and in the UK look at it and think, 'Well, if they can do it maybe we can too. Maybe there are other routes and if we're not welcome or don't feel included in certain institutional circumstances then maybe there are other ways in which we can do this.'
- It's an indie horror film. (Choose or Die) This is not a complaint just an observation: we've never received support from the BFI or any of those institutions. We've never been a part of that world and it does seem that part of that world, from the outside, tends to produce the same kind of thing in the same kind of way. Some of them work and go over the top and find an audience; an awful lot of them don't.
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