You are listening to The Next Best Picture podcast, and this is Emma Sassick's interview with the director for the Ballad of Wallace Island, James Griffiths, and the film stars and writers, Tom Bazden and Tim Key. You made it, okay? It's not like a harbour. It's not like a harbour. Welcome to Wallace Island. No, no, no, no. Do you sell rice? My fire got wet? We've got pasta. Has to be rice, apparently. Oh, you've got rice pudding, look. Rice pudding definitely won't work. Well, not with that attitude, no, it won't. You know, it isn't... The Great Hermcguire. Coming all the way out here without your roadies. Which brings me to the thorny issue of payment. Where will the audience be? He said there'd be 100. I said less than 100. Is it just you? Yeah. Right. I'm literally playing one guy. I'm gonna have to take out a restraining order. Can you shut the door? Absolutely. No, I meant... Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry I have. I'm not really used to having guests. So, what's happened with you and Nell Mortimer? What was the last time you played together? I'm quite a private person, to be honest. I know you are. But gone, what happened? Do you invite Nell? Yeah, she's... With Michael? Who's Michael? The husband? Oh shit. In a good way? You knew I was coming, right? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't really listen to your songs back in the day. Is this like guitar? Yeah, got that at auction. Oh wow, you are a fan. My favourite. There's always McGuire Mortimer. Your music changed everything.

Hello.

He's going to get his guitar.

Oh, has he? Has he? Oh. If you need... Okay, hello. My name is Emma, and I am with Next Best Picture. Hello, gentlemen. Hi. Hi. Hi. I'm to meet you, Emma. Very nice to meet you. Thank you so much for your time today. I'm so thrilled to be speaking with you about this film. I just had such a blast watching this at Klundance a few weeks ago, so I'm very pleased already.

Everything's starting off so well.

I guess I'll just kind of dive in.

I'm sure many people have already asked this, but the three of you had a chance to work on this film when it was just a short film several years ago.

Most often than not, people will turn around a short film into a feature-length film within maybe a year or two.

But there was quite a bit of time in between the process here. Why was now the right time to do this feature-link film?

It's a good question, and I think it's one that we've asked ourselves quite a lot,

particularly when we're finally making the film that we started all those years ago.

The truth is that I think the film is much better

for us having waited.

I think we're now the right age to play the characters.

And I also think, you know, we've just,

we've got a different attitude towards life,

towards, towards, you know, love and loss

and all these things. the film the feature film is is as a result

a much more emotionally rich um film and you know the the the short really was an out-and-out comedy

in many ways sort of 25 minutes sort of of of kind of comic kind of misunderstandings and sort of tension, really.

And there's still a lot of that in the feature,

particularly because, you know, Charles and Herb, our characters meet as strangers

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