Damian Lewis and Kate Ashfield lie at my feet, all but naked, covered in flour, eggs, jam, custard, cake mix and glacé cherries. From the shadows, a group of men and women stare at the bodies on the floor. In this cramped room, the temperature has risen to that of a Swedish sauna; sweat trickles down the inside of my shirt. I put my hand on the table to support myself and inadvertently squirt cream all over my trousers. Looking down at the mess, I find myself wondering, not for the first time, how I got into this position. More importantly, how did they get into that position? And will we be able to untangle them?
The answer has its roots in a conversation that took place a couple of years ago between myself and the lead actor in this scenario, Damian Lewis - my brother. It went something like this:
Me: You want to be in my film?
Damian: Sure.
A taut and dramatic scene, full of pathos, I think you'll agree. At that point it hadn't really occurred to either of us what it would be like to work together. We'd mooted the possibility as a sort of "wouldn't it be fun one day to work together on something?" - but hadn't actually considered what that might mean for us, either personally or professionally. It just seemed like a good idea: Damian was perfect for the role, he liked the script, liked me, I liked him, I bought him another beer and thrust the contract under his nose. It was a beautiful moment.
In the cold, grey light of dawn, we started to understand what we'd got ourselves into. He was going to commit to saying words I'd written, under my direction, on film, a film that was going out into the big, wide world to have a life of its own beyond our control. I was going to be responsible for keeping his reputation as an actor intact.
I wondered if I hadn't just muddied the waters of my first feature film experience by getting family involved. Would there be an added level of emotional tension? I was going to have to tell him what to do on occasion, and he was going to have to do it. That would certainly be a first - at least since he was 10 and I was eight and I had the moral authority of our mother behind me when I asked him to stop sitting on my head.
We got to work on the script, and as Damian got his teeth into the role, I started to get a feeling for how the character was going to play out in his hands. This was before we got anywhere near production, or even full finance. By the time we got to the first day of the shoot, we seemed to be working well together. So far, so good. But now would come the real test: working under the intense pressure of a film set, in the public gaze, as it were, of the crew and cast. How would it play? If we disagreed, would we do it nicely, through gritted teeth, or just shout and scream at each other? Would he sit on my head again? Would I sit on his?
I'm from the school of gritted teeth, with the occasional explosive release under (semi-)controlled circumstances. As it turned out, my teeth were no more worn down at the end of the shoot than at the start. It seemed to me that the same was the case for Damian. He was loving it. Wasn't he? Well, he's a great actor, and when he tells me he had a great time, who am I to doubt? So he had to go for long walks, clenching and unclenching his fists and chanting a mantra he'd been given by his yogi, to help him calm down. But otherwise it was like being kids playing make-believe again - only with more expensive toys.
There was still the small matter of the sex scene. Was it going to be weird directing my brother getting semi-naked with a beautiful woman? It's hard enough to direct a sex scene without inviting your family to get involved. Put it this way: in the end, it was weirder filming him getting knocked unconscious by a sheep's head. Read that how you like.
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