By Sarah Hiscock | 02 October 2010 | Photos by Santiago Arribas Peña

Film, theatre and arts writer SARAH HISCOCK meets the dastardly duo behind the
new British horror comedy The Furred Man, filmmakers PAUL WILLIAMS and PAUL TERRY. She discovers how they formed Evil Hypnotist Productions many moons ago – a tale full of ghostbusting, taking risks, and mascara...

Portsmouth University: 1997. Two young English & Drama students meet over an eyeliner pencil. No, it's not the premise of the latest Evil Hypnotist Productions film, but how the two founding members, Paul Williams and Paul Terry, met – a group task in their first year that involved writing a monologue about conflict. Terry remembers the moment well. "Paul [Williams] was in white make-up and black eyeliner playing a hilarious version of Death who had a terrible train journey a n d I was playing some psychotic abstraction from a David Lynch film." It was a meeting that was to set the future dynamic of their relationship. "I came up with something comedic," explains Williams. "And he came up with something Lynchian. That pretty much explains the next 11 years."

Fast forward two years and the friends, who had bonded over their love of Ghostbusters, games consoles and comics, decided to make a short as their final year project. The only problem? The course was theatre/writing based and films weren't allowed. Not to be deterred, our wannabe filmmakers managed to convince university lecturers that film is simply theatre with a camera. "I remember Paul saying, 'I've written this script, which is words, and they will morph into something else, something filmic'," says Terry. The lecturers bought it; they left university with a First for the project, moved in to their "boys flat" and the stage was set for the creation of their own company.

At this point it might all sound a little Pegg/Frost and it was in fact a Big Train sketch, starring Simon Pegg, which gave rise to the company's name. "Everyone remembers the hypnotherapy sketch with the woman wanting to be cured of her smoking habit," says Williams. "She ends up seeing an evil hypnotist, played by Kevin Eldon. He appears in a top hat and Victorian garb doing this comedy evil walk. That became our logo and the name just stuck." And to those that thought the name meant that they would only make horror films? "Look at the logo," smiles Terry. "It couldn't be less scary."

The mission of The Evil Hypnotist? "To prove that making films isn't just reserved for mega- budget Hollywood productions, and when it comes to a British films, they can be about more than just gangsters or Hugh Grant." It was at Hypnotist HQ – while both working full time jobs, Williams at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith and Terry in publishing – that Mightier (2001) made an appearance. "It was a love triangle between two people and a pen," explains Williams. "It shows the actions the pen inflicts on this couple, Will and Jude, in the last death throes of their relationship."

Featuring a small cast and crew and filmed on DV over two weeks at Williams' friend's flat and around Elm Park and Covent Garden, the short was edited down from 35 to 15 minutes over a four-month period. "We sent it to a few festivals and then out of the blue I received a call from Jude Shravin, one of the organisers of the Cinemagic Film Festival held in Belfast. She told me that Mightier had been short listed, brought to London, watched by five industry professionals, and had won."

Cue the EHP boys flying out to Belfast to collect Williams' award for Young Filmmaker of the Year 2001 and ending up partying at award ceremony host Dermot O'Leary. "It was a very surreal experience," admits Terry. "It was our second short, and we were suddenly like, 'Oh, right... maybe this is something that we should push a bit further'."

The feeling was shared by Williams who saw Mightier as "the bridge between Bono's bar until 4am with making short films with a camera and some mates, to making a film with a camera and real actors and trying to be as professional as possible on a tight budget".

Having made two shorts it felt time to tackle a feature. However, with no way to film a feature, they opted for a set of promotional trailers in the hope that after industry people saw them, someone would want to make it. Paradox (2003), a time-travelling zombie film, was born. "It was before zombie films had their renaissance," says Williams. "We thought, 'zombies aren't really being done at the moment, that's great – we'll reinvent the zombie genre with some time travel in it'." And then Shaun of the Dead came out. "And a Dawn of the Dead remake," adds Terry. "Suddenly the genre just exploded so we slightly missed the boat on that one."

They did however make their trailers, and with them, they gained a greater understanding of the mechanics of the industry. Plus, as always, it prompted Williams to get his fingers "dancing over the keyboard again, coming up with a new way of getting everyone together again."

Two shorts, Staying In (2003) – inspired by Mark Z. Danielewski's novel House of Leaves (2000) – and Almost Human (2005), followed. The latter introduced actor Daniel Carter-Hope, now an established member of the EHP family, and lead actor in their first feature, The Wake (2006).

By this point, Williams was living back at home in Hornchurch (Terry was in Twickenham) and working part-time having turned down a promotion at work. "That was the moment when I thought 'am I going to do this seriously?'" he explains. "Mightier and Paradox proved that it's so hard to follow that type of passion on a part-time basis, so I flipped it and did the work part-time and the film full time." The result? The Wake. Inspired by personal events – the death of EHP comrade and Paradox star Phil Thomas and Williams' mother – the film was about death, what comes out of it, how people react to it and what you can take from it. "Death can be inspiring," says Williams. "It's a chance to celebrate these people's lives and reevaluate your own. You almost want to achieve for their sake."

The story, based on the idea of what would happen if Cupid met Death was written around locations in which Williams knew he could film (his house, the Science Museum – where he worked part time) and was much more character based. It wasn't zombies, they had a three week shoot; the whole thing just seemed much more doable. Or was it? "Looking back, we were crazy," admits Terry. "The film had an insane amount of characters and sub-plots. It was a big, sprawling story, but at the same time incredibly exciting and challenging."

Reflecting on the experience, Williams encapsulates it in one sentence: "Two years. One film. A lifetime of memories and firm friends." One such friend to emerge from The Wake was Eugen Gritschneder, fresh out of film school and hired as the Director of Photography. "We bonded over three weeks of intense madness," says Williams. "He is still our DP today and will be for quite a while."

Gritschneder is just one of the regular names to appear on the EHP roll call – Carter-Hope and Chris Courtenay are others that instantly spring to mind and have appeared in recent short Commuterror (2008) and the music video for 'You Got the Girl' (2009) by Cellarscape – Terry's solo musical moniker . "We use the word family because there's that trust," Williams explains. "You're comfortable with them and there's a shorthand relationship where you don't want to explain every little detail of what you want, they just get it."

Terry is in total agreement. "We always say a shoot is like going away to camp. There's this – dare I say it – Big Brother- style situation where you're thrown together and my god it's got to work."

What does work – quite obviously – is the relationship between Williams and Terry. While Williams writes and directs, Terry – a talented musician – produces and also scores each film. "At university I forced myself to learn guitar to get these song ideas out of my head," he says. "Back in '99 Paul said, 'Well here's Sold, you should write material that fits all these scenes'. It was pretty freaky, as prior to that I'd only written songs and played gigs in Portsmouth and London. Writing for films was totally out of my comfort zone." As Williams acknowledges "every Steven Spielberg wannabe needs a John Williams wannabe" and today, music forms a massive part of the filmmaking process. "From the script stage, we'll say, 'Well, it should kind of feel like this," says Terry. "A bit of Dead Space here, a bit of The Frighteners and Danny Elfman there. We're big film nerds."

Nerds? Maybe. Best friends? Definitely. And it's this that allows 100 per cent honesty when discussing a script. "It's a nervous moment when I give Paul the first draft," admits Williams. "I want him to love it as much as I do. However, he'll tell me when some- thing's good and when something's rubbish and that's what I need. It's the George Lucas syndrome that I never want to happen. I never want to have a yes man by my side."

With the release of The Furred Man (2010), which has been accepted into film festivals around the world, EHP has grown considerably from the days of "a camera, an idea and a few gullible friends" and there's plenty more where that came from.

"There are three new feature ideas that are 50 per cent more of what you've seen before and 50 per cent a huge jump forward in terms of scope and story and character," says Terry. "We're keen to develop these depending on what relationships form out of The Furred Man. We'd love to meet a really good Line Producer who could help us with the funding." Williams too would like to welcome new people on board. "We want someone who will come on the journey with us; someone who will join the crazy EHP ride." Mwhahahaha...

SARAH HISCOCK www.svlh.co.uk
SANTIAGO ARRIBAS PENA www.santiagoarribas.co.uk