Mark Tonderai Talks Hush

8 months ago 09th Mar 11:02

Thriller Hush is the debut feature film for writer-director Mark Tonderai which follows a young couple who get into an altercation with a truck driver on the M1.

I caught up with mark to discuss his movie, the issues he face during filming and the difficulties of working in the British film industry.

Hush is about to be released so can you tell me a bit about the movie?

I suppose it’s a moral dilemma film really about a guy who is driving on the M1 with his girlfriend beside him and it’s wet and raining, he goes around putting up posters in service stations, and as a truck goes past the back of the truck comes down and he thinks he sees a woman in the back bleeding.

But he can’t quite decide on what he saw so the film then becomes more of a dilemma should he get involved should he not get involved? Should he help her should he not help her? And it follows what happens from that point on.

Hush isn’t your average horror film, as you say it has that moral element, so what was your thinking behind the film when you came to make it?

I was really more interested in making a thriller because there is a lot of that gory horror around and that wasn’t something that I wanted to do, I’m not belittling it or anything it’s just something that I didn’t want to do.

I really just wanted to make it a bit more Hitchcocky a bit more like Man on the Run a man trapped in isolated places; a man trapped under a truck, a man trapped toilet, a guy trapped in a car and that’s what I wanted to do and I just thought to myself that we haven’t really seen that for a long time, there a long of horror porn stuff and I didn’t really want to do that, so that was the way that I wanted to go.

I’m a big Hitchcock fan and I really wanted to do something that was more suspense basically.

You also penned the script so how does the writing process work for you?

I think I write quite visually anyway and I write with the audience in mind I think would I go and see that? Would I pay money to go and see that? 

And that’s pretty much how I do it and the hardest part of writing a screenplay is making sure that it works and that it’s tight and then you have to go out into the marketplace and try and get money for it and that’s really really hard.

But once you have done it then I think it’s really cool because you can start with the visual part of it, but I try to separate these two parts of the screenwriting process and I try not to think about the visuals until I have to, but that’s the fun part of it.

But the writing for me is very methodical and I do it again, because that is what writing it rewrites, rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite and that’s pretty much what I have been doing, I think I had thirty or forty drafts of Hush.

Usually I have an idea or a premise, which is pretty much where I start, and then I try to infuse it with what is going on in my life at the time I was that guy I was driving up and down the motorway putting up posters so I was that guy and I all I did was making him, not me because I always finish my work, but he is a writer that doesn’t finish stuff but I do. 

He has lost a bit of faith in himself and if I’m honest I probably lost a bit of faith in myself, and so that is all I did I went ok what would happen if?

So I very much put what I want to talk about in as well as elements of me, it’s not me, but there are a lot of themes, like feeling trapped, are all in there.