UNTITLED (a film)

“This is not a director’s statement” By Chris Loizou

In 2010 my producers and I had managed to secure three million pounds to shoot a romantic comedy in London. Camped at a London studio, sets designed, cast rehearsing and on the verge of having affairs already and Iʼm in the starting gate and ready to be released into the bull ring. The finance fell apart at the last minute and I remained bucking, bolting and rearing myself against the penn. The doors however, never opened.

I limped back to my Kingʼs Cross office to lick my wounds and sat alone staring at a wall decorated the set & costume designs I had imagined, a colourful strip board schedule and a photograph of me, smiling, along with my producers shaking hands on the 1st day of pre-production. Hardly an inspiration. I drew on all the scriptwriting books, seminars, courses I had taken through the years. My career & what it meant as a writer. Eight options
and commissions under my belt for movies that never saw the light of day. Tv shows that never hit the small screen along with an exec who keeled over dead from a heart attack the day before the official green-light.I imagined Robert Mckee on his last legs, screaming in my face “Write what you know! Write what you know!”. However, all I knew, at that point was a writer sitting alone in his office, beaten, and tired and trying to make sense of it all. Idea! So drawing from dozens of spec scripts to unrealised Hollywood deals and enough spitballing lunches that could have only have lead to a liver complaint, and through it all, my fare share of script notes.

Script notes. Those meanderings of development executives, those sometimes generic musings of those who hope to shape your story into a palatable screen version for wide eyed popcorn chomping audiences. I started writing the screenplay, I had decided I would do exactly what I was told not to do, as GEORGE the agent says to KURT, “No black & white & no art Kurty boy”. I knew I wanted to make a convincing film-noir that fit the brief of an exciting thriller but is laughing and eating itself inside out. Too clever for itʼs own good? Possibly. I didnʼt have a title, so it was by pure definition UNTITLED.

A thriller, following Kurtʼs low-budget ethos and his life imitating art as it turns into the very story Timothy is desperately trying to peddle, flaws and all. Shot in glorious black and white, in a style lost to the silver screen against a rousing orchestral score. Breaking every screenwriting & filmmaking rule by making a wry twist on the indie art-film, 40ʼs noir and modern cinema but with a nudge and a wink and crashing against modern technology, leaving the audience with an unsettling paradox. The characterʼs are bizarrely drawn, saved from Timothyʼs dreaded script notes, invading the screen relentlessly on what has become the way we digitally communicate today, you could connect with 1000ʼs of people in a day, and not see a soul. But to thrill, to scare, to shock, to intrigue, but to never leave that room. Cheekily making nods to some of the planetʼs most revered filmmakers, Godard, Fellini,, Hitchcock and loaded with film references, hidden away but there to be discovered. A truly unique neo-noir. I believe I achieved that.