chunky monkey

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The budget for CHUNKY MONKEY was £160,000, money raised through private investment, with everyone involved working for union minimum fees. After eight days of rehearsal the film began its two-week shoot on February 28, 2000, entirely on location at a former day nursery in Fulham. The building housed the production offices, hair and make-up rooms and the main sitting room set. Greg Cruttwell notes, "It was like our own mini-studio. Everything we needed was there and our outside locations were minutes away. I did write CHUNKY MONKEY mainly to take place in one room because I wanted it to have an intensely claustrophobic feel. It's Donald's space which gets invaded over the course of an evening and it was my intention to make the camera the ninth major character to give it a fly-on-the-wall docu-drama feel".

To capture that atmosphere Cruttwell turned to Sean Bobbitt, a cameraman experienced in hard news, television documentaries and with Michael Winterbottom's acclaimed film WONDERLAND recently under his belt, who says "I wanted to work on CHUNKY MONKEY because I adored the double-edged script - I didn't know whether to laugh or be horrified - and I wanted the challenge of working with the new high definition video technology. I knew enough about digital cameras to know their capabilities and couldn't wait to try out all our ideas".

He continues, "We broke the script down into long scenes and built our shots around the actors' mesmerising performances. It was my job to ensure the film moved within the one set and it didn't look static. This was accomplished by focusing on unusual angles and my hand-held camera reacting to the actors performing rather than just film what they were doing. That way the camera could home in on one actor's speech and then, sometimes even halfway through a sentence, zip to the other side of the room to capture another actor's glance. CHUNKY MONKEY is about bizarre characters in eccentric situations and this technique catches the weird shifting dynamics. The high calibre of the performances ensures the audience will be watching the actors - not what the camera is doing".

He adds, "Greg and I discussed everything and continued discussing after every take to ensure we picked up all the subtleties and nuances in the script. It was a huge challenge because it was like creating a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle out of present movement and future movement. The set lighting was all in the ceiling so it didn't get in my way as I ran around the room and although the actors were quite shocked by this method of working for the first couple of hours they soon got into it and ended up thoroughly enjoying the experience".

Alison Steadman certainly did. She laughs, "You never knew where the camera was going to be from one take to the next and you couldn't ease off for a second because Sean might suddenly be in your face filming you scratching your nose! I enjoyed doing the long takes with no cuts because you could throw yourself into the performance every single time. In most movies you say two lines and go back to your trailer for four hours! CHUNKY MONKEY kept up the artistic momentum in a marvelous way by giving us all a number of chances to refine and explore the building energy. This method of working is so exciting because it keeps you on your toes and stops you getting stale".

Director Greg Cruttwell says, "Making CHUNKY MONKEY has been liberating for everyone on both sides of the camera. I do think we have broken the mould in the way movies should be made, as it really is an ideal way of working in my view. But then CHUNKY MONKEY seems to have had a unique life all of its own from the moment I wrote it. Throughout its genesis I've been continually told not what to do. No, you can't start a film with a person talking to camera for a long time. No, you can't have a film contained all in one set. No, you can't shoot long sections of continuous action and use weird camera angles. My response was always, Why not? I started out not wanting to write a formula movie and nor did I want to approach making it like one either. It is what it is and I'm extremely proud of that".