Little Ashes

Posted by Lara Masters at 16:37 on 11 May 2009

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About 8 years ago I worked as a film script consultant for Euroscript and the company held a competition inviting writers to win an editor to work on developing their script further.

The superb winning script was Little Ashes which explored the metamorphic  friendships formed between Salvador Dali, poet Federico Garcia Lorca and film-maker Luis Bunuel when they were studying in Madrid in the 1920s. The writer, phosphorescent Philippa Goslett won me as her editor and we worked together re-drafting. My responsibilities included making sure proper nouns were capitalised. Plus I had to highlight strengths and weaknesses so that character voices were distinct and identifiable, character motivation was clear without over-explaining and that there were sufficient scenes of explicit sex.  

As we say in the film script biz; “If the audience don't get it, we’re gonna get it!” (referring to the chop I believe rather than a bonk.)  And the other staple saying in scriptwriting circles; “No sex, no cheques” (read "checks" for that quote if you're stateside or other parts of the world where literacy is not as high up the agenda as war.)  I also believe that quote has been hijacked by the prostitution trade.

And now, all these years later, that very script has been made into a film and is actually in the sin of Mars! (I said “cinemas” then but my voice recognition program came up with something so befittingly surreal I had to leave it in.)  

I saw it yesterday at the Apollo Piccadilly with a gang of friends who I made sit through right to the very end of the credits to see my name! On a film! Hello-o! Even Mars’s sinfulness - which is surely as dark and all consuming as a frantically multiplying cluster of black holes - does not compare to the magnitude of this event. And I am quite confident drawing that comparison because I have read some of Professor Stephen Hawkings’ work, and from that brief biog on his website, I think he would certainly agree with my summation that black holes are pretty massive - especially when they are frantically multiplying which I believe happens about once a month, in the middle of their cycle.  Anyhoo - enough of me banging on about being so marvellous just because I happen to have got MY NAME on a FILM... time for a quick review...

Little Ashes, the movie, is a sensual, sumptuous film capturing the dichotomous ambience of 1920’s decadence and the under-current of desperation and disillusionment in a country where social and political unrest looks to fascism as a salve. This uneasy backdrop heightens and fortifies the passions and ideologies of art students, particularly the quixotic Dali played by Robert Pattinson (beautiful vampiric star of Twilight).  The cinematography contains both an epic quality displaying glorious Spanish aspects and footage of civil unrest as well as a finer detail absorbing subtle intimacies such as the complexities of the burgeoning love between Dali and Federico.  The acting is superb perhaps largely due to an out-standing script by Philippa Goslett and who was that script consultant? Oh, yeah, ME!

Go see it in the sin of Mars right now; http://www.littleashes-themovie.com/

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