Remember the 80s? Teased hair, spandex, Atari? And how the ultimate movie was First Blood — 130 totally awesome minutes of Sly Stallone stalking through the forest with a red bandana and a kick-ass knife? Son of Rambow director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith (known collectively as Hammer & Tongs, the duo behind Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
haven't forgotten that time. In fact, they've spent the last eight
years on a script that is a love letter to their years growing up in
England.
Son of Rambow tells the story a friendship between two
British boys and their attempt to pay homage to the greatest action
flick of the decade. Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a wildly creative
kid who has been insulated from the excesses of the 80s by his mother,
a member of a stoic conservative Christian group Plymouth Brethren,
which forbids television, films and popular music.
When he is banished from the classroom because he is not permitted by
his faith to watch an educational film, he runs into Lee Carter (Will
Poulter), the obnoxiously malevolent school bully. Lee has been left to
his own devices by a wealthy mother who relies on her eldest son
Lawrence (Gossip Girl's Ed Westwick) to raise his brother
while she flits around Europe. Lee has all the material needs a kid
could desire. He doesn't give a sod about school. All he wants to do is
direct, executive produce and star in a sequel to his favorite film, First Blood.
Lee initially exploits the naïve Will by roping him into his filmmaking
adventure, but the overly ambitious project proves to be the exact
creative outlet Will has needed, and the two boys develop a
blood-brother bond. "We were trying to capture how great it felt to be
twelve, using this story about these kids' friendship through the
making of this crazy movie as a way of doing that," says Jennings.
"[And] by having a boy who has never seen any movies and the first thing he ever sees is First Blood
everyone gets it from that point on, especially as he has been
established as a very imaginative little child, and you smash those two
things together, and then you are off and running."
Son of Rambow is the final product of a life-long ambition for Jennings, who says he too had been "blown away" by a pirated copy of First Blood
as a kid and made a film inspired by Rambo. "I have the original film,"
he confesses. "It is called Aaron Part 1. I play the head of the
Military of Defense and I am kidnapped by the PLO (Palestinian
Liberation Organization) and my Dad was the get-away driver and then I
am thrown in a shed and tortured and held to ransom and then my friend
Aaron, who is a Rambo guy comes over, and beats everybody up and burns
the terrorists alive — which must have been weird for my Mum and Dad to
watch, especially as it was all filmed in their back yard!"
"We set out to try and capture how great it is to be at an age and
in a position to not consider the consequences and have no fear of
making mistakes," says Jennings, "and not really care where someone is
from: if you like them and you share an interest, you become friends.
And those friendships can be really deep."
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