New York state of mind
UNO catches up with local film director James Ashcroft in New York to discuss his new thriller, the demons driving his films, working with Robert De Niro and Stephen King, and how he achieved all of this from the shores of Mount Maunganui.
words KARL PUSCHMANN
photos MIKE ROOKE | hair + make-up TALITHA DAENG SITUJU
This sounds made up but it is entirely true. A local film director who lives in Mount Maunganui has just released his second film, The Rule of Jenny Pen. The terrifying psychological thriller stars internationally renowned actors, Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow.
When UNO calls, the director is in Manhattan, New York, in pre-production for his next movie, The Whisper Man, which he is making for Netflix. The star of this dark thriller? Acting legend Robert De Niro.
Once wrapped on that, he’ll begin work on his next project, Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream. This is based on a story by famed horror author Stephen King, who kept the fan favourite story aside specifically for him.
As I said, it sounds made up. Rush, Lithgow, De Niro, King... they’re all bonafide legends and the guy linking them all together lives just down the road? Really?
It sounds not just improbable, but impossible, and when I ask director James Ashcroft if he ever has to pinch himself when thinking about all this. He looks a little perturbed and answers, “No. I don't.”
He pauses and looks around the Manhattan apartment he’s calling home for the next little while and then adds, “My wife would be the first one to say I should try just... you know... celebrating a bit and acknowledging who I’m around and everything.”
At the moment he doesn’t have time to stop and smell the roses. Given the level of achievement we’re talking about here, it should come as no surprise that James funnels extraordinary amounts of his time, energy and focus into his work. But, as I’ll discover through our chat, this is by design. Keeping busy keeps his own demons at bay. We’ll get to them in a minute. But for now, I only want to know one thing.
How did all of this happen? The Rule of Jenny Pen is based on a short story by Aotearoa author Owen Marshall. It’s set in a retirement village that outwardly seems lovely but hides a dark and disturbing secret after dark. Its premise is frightening and its realisation by leads Rush and Lithgow is both believable and brilliantly horrifying.
The movie is James’ follow-up to 2021’s Coming Home in the Dark, the acclaimed thriller that caught Hollywood’s attention after gaining buzz at Sundance, the prestigious tastemaker film festival.
When success came knocking, James was prepared to answer. The script for Jenny Pen had been sitting in his desk drawer for 11 years. He seized the moment and approached his dream leads for the movie. He knew he had a great story and a great script. He knew they’d both be amazing in the roles. He knew he was asking them to temporarily relocate to New Zealand for filming and to take a substantial pay cut.
He asked them anyway.
“My father was somebody who was very much about, ‘You can't know, unless you find out,” he says. “It was really important for me to have them [in the film]. I grew up watching them. I had to disguise my fanboy-ness for a long time. I‘m not sure if I‘ve even revealed it to them.”
To his delight — and surprise — the pair were quick to sign on. Rush agreed in four days. Lithgow made James sweat by taking seven.
“The material really frightened him,” James admits. “It‘s quite confronting. John is one of the nicest human beings on the planet and the part required him to do a number of things that are less than savoury.”
But once Lithgow was in, he was all in. His performance in the film is menacingly unsettling. Made even more so by his delivery of one of the finest, mostly accurate, Kiwi accents ever captured on film.
“I‘m seeing John next week so I‘ll pass that on to him. He’ll be very gratified to hear that,” James grins. “It’s very hard to get right and we were all aware of its difficulty.
Many fine actors have stood at the base of the Everest-type challenge of that accent... But John was very committed. I would notice him talking to different people, like an extra or a caterer, and if he liked their accent or their range and tone, he’d ask them to say certain words that he would listen to and practice and try and master it that way.”
That James was so interested in the process isn’t surprising when you learn he began his career as an actor, appearing in TV shows and films. His acting love, however, was the theater. But, as he tells me, “It‘s incredibly hard to sustain a viable living as an actor in New Zealand. It's near impossible”.
It was at cast drinks after performing in a middling play to a disinterested audience that he had a revelation.
“We’d gone down to the bar to bitch and moan about how the director doesn‘t know what they‘re doing, and how the theatre should do this and that. And I thought, ‘If I don't change something I‘m going to be leaning on this bar with a bunch of moaning actors in 20 years singing the same old song’. It was a case of going, ‘You need to do something about that, James’.”
It was then he decided to move behind the scenes. Directing, he realised, would use all his talents. It’s a job that requires concentration, collaboration, managing relationships and steering a ship towards a singular vision.
“I would find it very frustrating that all those decisions were made by somebody else,” he says. “Part of me was unfulfilled. I wanted to be the boss. I‘m interested in the big picture.
I love working with people who are great at what they do and leading them together in a cohesive way that brings about the whole.”
“I thought I was going to find stepping away from acting very, very hard,” he says. “But since getting behind the camera, I‘ve been more curious and more passionate about the craft of acting. And I enjoy actors a lot more.”
He sheepishly admits to being a “very competitive actor,” back in the day. Someone once likened him to the “John McEnroe of actors,” telling him, “You can give a really good game, but it‘s not always pleasant to be around.”
“I think they meant it as a compliment,” he chuckles. “I‘m not sure...”
James and Geoffrey Rush on the set of The Rule of Jenny Penn.
When UNO Zooms in for our interview James had only been in New York for a few days.
“I‘m missing my family terribly,” he says. “I burst into tears when I arrived in Manhattan last Saturday, because it really hit me; ‘Oh my God, I'm going to be gone for nine months’.”
The plus side that he’s identified is that he’ll be “cocooned in the work,” his removal from his normal everyday life forcing him, “to live it and breathe it in another way.”
The New York air is very different to the sea-salted breeze of the Mount. He and his family moved here from Wellington 10 years ago and have now “put down very deep roots,” in the area.
“It was a very big change of scenery and took a long time to get used to,” he says. “I moved from running the National Theatre Company to wanting to pursue that goal of film. My wife and I, we had two kids at the time, we've got three now, we were going, ‘What else are we wanting from life?’.”
Along with giving film his best shot, James realised he also wanted to be a stay-at-home parent.
“I didn’t want to miss out on that time with my girls,” he smiles, thinking of his three daughters, who are aged seven, 11 and 13. “It’s a great place to raise a family.”
Then, he laughs and says, “But I’m still the most uptight person on the beach.”
James sees the world in grey. It’s where his fascination as a filmmaker lies. In his view, the world isn’t black or white. The material he’s drawn to reflects this.
“I don’t believe in good and bad people. I believe in good and bad actions or intentions. As human beings, we all have those within ourselves. It’s something that we grapple with throughout our lives,” he says.
Working in the creative industries, first an actor, now as a director, that darkness is never far away. Whether auditioning for a part or pitching a film project, James says the industry has a “99 percent rejection” rate.
While things are going swimmingly now, he’s definitely not relaxing or coasting, saying “you’re only as good as your last job. And the next job won’t necessarily come”.
He tries not to dwell on these things. Instead, choosing to pour his energy into making things happen for himself.
“I don’t want to wait. It’s important to me to develop and create things in the way in which myself and my peers want to. How do you get Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow in your movie? You give them a script you think they will respond to. You go, ‘I think you might be interested in this strange little story I want to tell that I want to tell in this way’.”
He pauses a beat, then says, “They’re definitely not going to be in it, if you don't ask them.”
The work keeps him too busy for his hang-ups. The failed pitches. The rejections. The worry. The anxiety. These haven’t been conquered. But they have been successfully minimised. He refers to them as “distractions,” attempting to thwart his goals.
“I don’t think I’ve overcome them at all. They’re always there. I’m not worried about Robert De Niro being the lead in the new film that I’m directing. I don’t have time to worry or be anxious about working with Bob. What I have to be clear about is; What are the objectives and actions that I’m going to give to him? What are the questions he might have? That makes it all about the work. It’s when I'm not working that those doubts start to creep in and become distractions.”
“Late in life I found weightlifting. It helps keep it steady and keep that boiling of anxiety that can come up at times under control. Having that level of fitness and health in my daily routine helps and has really been good at keeping that volume down and manageable. Because it’s always going to be there. Everyone has it. It’s not something to fix or dispel. You've got this much space inside. If I’m going to fill it up with work, then there’s very little space for all that unhealthy noise to exist. That’s why I have seven or eight projects on the boil at different stages at the moment. I find that incredibly energising to move around and helpful to quell those professional anxieties and things like that.”
James’ love of genre was instilled at an early age. His dad would occasionally let him stay up late to watch the Sunday Night Horrors on TV. But he became truly fascinated with the possibilities of darker storytelling at age 10 when his cousin, who was babysitting, put on David Lynch’s surreally unsettling masterpiece Blue Velvet.
“Blue Velvet is not a film that a 10 year old should watch,” James admits. “But it definitely made a very big impact on me. I wouldn’t say it was traumatising or anything like that. A lot of it went over my head. But the images and the feeling of it was something that I hadn’t been exposed to. It had a huge impact on me.”
From there he began reading horror literature, like Dracula, before finding, and devouring, the work of horror maestro Stephen King. His journey to the dark side was complete. After the success of Coming Home in the Dark, James wasn’t going to sit around and wait for people to come to him. He’d been picked up at a big Hollywood agency and so he decided to work his contacts. “Whatʼs the worst thing that Stephen King can do if you send him a letter? Not reply.”
The next day he went book shopping. Naturally, he had made his way to the horror section when his phone buzzed with a notification. He looked at the screen and saw it was from ‘S. King’. “I didn't connect the dots. I thought it must be, you know, Samuel King or Sarah King,” he says, thinking back. He opened the message and started reading.
“I was like, ‘Holy shit! This is from Stephen King!” he laughs. “He’d written this incredibly wonderful, complimentary email. It was like, ‘Wow’. It was a surreal moment. I was literally standing right in front of his books.”
Then, with a mixture somewhere between joy and astonishment, James Ashcroft says, “I was slightly floaty for the whole night after that,” and then we say our goodbyes and he resumes working on his Robert De Niro film in his apartment in Manhattan.
