MrMr: Katie Lambert, standing, and Martha McGuirk
Lyndy:
Thanks for sending the short across. I loved it. It’s the first time I’ve laughed out loud watching a film for ages. Tell me how it came about. When did you write the script for ‘Eat It’?
Katie:
I wrote it in 2021 when we were in LA doing a Samsung job with Felix Brady. We’d been wanting to make a short film for a while but nothing had really stuck. Then one night I was in the bath, having stolen Martha’s book of short stories by Jon Jodzio (“If you lived here, you’d already be home”). The very first one was “Colonel Cheese is Closed on Mondays” – a super short story about a group of heartbroken waiters who kind of hate each other, but who get wasted together on Sunday nights. I loved it.
Martha:
I was like “maybe we should read a few of them”. And she was, “No. This is the one”
Katie:
Jon couldn’t have been more helpful. I really wanted his approval on the script because he is such a brilliant writer and his kindness and enthusiasm really spurred us on.
Lyndy:
What was it about the story that inspired you?
Katie:
I was thinking about breakups, and about this idea of eating / repressing your feelings, only for them to come vomiting up. At one point she was going to vomit up everything she’d eaten in the whole film. She was going to vomit back up the flowers, the fish, the ring, all as a big metaphor but it felt too on the nose.
Photo storyboard for the film (above) vs final frame
Lyndy:
Did the script change much from conception to now?
Martha:
We had so many ideas which didn’t happen. Remember – we were going to make a cake of the guy’s face and she was going to actually eat a giant face cake. That would’ve been fun.
Katie:
We discussed the ending when she’s snogging him and then eating the pie for ages. You know, when someone is really, really kissing someone and it looks like they’re eating the other person’s face…I wanted her to eat his face. I wanted a literal face eating.
Actually even on the shoot day I wanted the pie to stand upright so she could mush straight in…
Martha:
We didn’t do it.
Katie:
..and the art director couldn’t make it happen. She tried bless her but it didn’t work <laugh>
Martha:
We had a very limited budget.
Katie:
But actually I think it’s a bit classier as it is. Nyk (Allen, cinematographer) pulled out some tricks when we were shooting that scene and made it so much better than I thought it ever could be. But we talked about it in prep so much. I was like, she has to eat it. It’s the whole thing!
Lyndy:
Did you detail everything in pre-production as you would for a music video or commercial?
Katie:
Definitely as much, if not more. We wrote a treatment. We did whole storyboards that were half pictures, half what we’d drawn. Obviously it changed a little bit in the shoot.
I felt really aware that it was my first thing and I just didn’t want to fuck it up. We put in a lot of work. Also it was fun and it felt exciting.
Martha:
We actually have the whole film storyboarded with you and me standing in all the places…
Katie:
Incredibly high quality renders.
Lyndy:
Why Nashville?
Katie:
Because the story is about eating competitions, we knew it had to be in America. We just don’t have that culture in England. We like small towns, not that Nashville itself is small, but this idea of a southern town on the outskirts of a big city appealed. Somewhere where they’d have a pie eating contest in a car park.
Martha:
We were talking to a few producers, and then we remembered our friend Robert H. Dyar Jnr (R.H. to his friends). R.H. is an incredibly special person, and Nashville legend and he was the first person just to be like ‘hell yeah, it’ll be fun’ – which is exactly the energy we like. So we decided on Nashville.
Katie:
We were very lucky to have Nyk Allen too – who is not just a phenomenal cinematographer but also another Nashville icon. He made the biggest impact on the film and was unbelievably kind with his time and talent.
Lyndy:
How long were you out there on the shoot?
Katie:
It was a four-day shoot, but we were there for a whole month, listening to country music and frequenting the ‘Lipstick Lounge’.
Martha:
We became incredibly country. We have matching cowgirl tattoos but that’s another story.
Katie:
I feel like the country elements really influenced the film as well. Country music is all about heartbreak! So it was perfect and something which became really important. R.H. sorted the amazing Hogslop band too, who recorded the whole soundtrack for ‘Eat it’.
Martha:
The whole month is really a story of us meeting incredible people and roping them into helping on our crazy short. We chatted up a woman in a bar once (classic) and she ended up bringing 50 extras for the film. She took time off work to find and organize 50 people to come and be in our film, all for the love of it. It was insane and amazing.
Lyndy:
Were there any challenges being in a place you didn’t know?
Katie:
We were fighting to make it happen. In the opening shot, there’s a slushie machine that Jake puts tequila in and I was determined we’d have one. We found one at a gas station, and the poor clerk was very much ambushed by me and Martha. He very unwillingly said “erm yeah, I guess you can borrow it” as we were unhooking it and carrying it to our car. Fast forward a week, he’s full of regret and sending us all these emails saying, “Please return it. My boss is so angry with me”. We were running around Nashville with a stolen slushie.
Martha:
It was funny because he helped us unplug it, and it was enormous and incredibly heavy, so he helped us carry it into the boot of the car. As we drove away, you could see he was thinking, “I’ve made a terrible mistake”.
Katie:
Ours now.
Martha:
They’re really expensive. We googled it, they’re thousands of pounds. We returned it after the shoot.
Lyndy:
Did you do the edit out there or did you bring it back to London?
Martha:
The edit was done back here. Paul O’Reilly did a first cut and then Laura (Reyes, who is now at Homespun) took over and formed the rest.
Katie:
Paul brought so much to the film, he was immediately very critical, but in the best way.
Martha:
He changed the whole structure of the film actually, and pretty quickly, right?
Katie:
Yes, he tore it to shreds <laughs>
Lyndy:
The film stars Shannon Woodward, who has been in HBOs ‘Westworld’ and ‘Raising Hope’ – how did that come about?
Martha:
The amazing Hannah Ashby Ward at Lane casting sorted it out. We were thrilled.
Katie:
Shannon likes to support new female directors, and so is in one newcomer’s short per year. It was great she liked ‘Eat It’. She’s so amazing, gorgeous, funny, and…
Martha:
My girlfriend now. <Laugh>
Katie:
She was brilliant with the way scenes should flow and dialogue and she contributed so much, not just in her performance, but with her general experience in making narrative drama.
Sometimes I disagreed with her. Most of the time I agreed. But what was good is that she was such a strong and giving presence. She is so talented and funny.
Martha:
She definitely wanted to make it with us, she wanted to be part of the whole process.
Lyndy:
That’s so important. Just other people having other ideas contributing and collaborating.
Martha:
Yes! That’s the whole point of MrMr!
Lyndy:
And now you’ve signed to Stink as a duo for commercials? Producing and directing…? How does that work?
Martha:
I think the good thing about MrMr and this weird partnership world we’ve created, is that it is a very strange, lovely safe space for us to do whatever we like. We’re not saying that becoming a producer / director duo would work for everyone, but we know it works for us.
Katie:
This producer, director split is interesting. The whole point of us being a duo is acknowledging that, for us, the split doesn’t really exist. We both have a huge creative impact on the script, however we’re labeled. We can switch and it’s still the same.
Martha:
Yes, as a duo, we’d always pick one person to talk to the agency producer and be that contact, and the other person would be more with the creatives. But it’s both of us on the creative and both of us on the production.
Katie:
Martha had such a huge creative input on ‘Eat It’ . In this industry we create really hard lines between roles. But the truth is it was both of us going around Nashville talking about locations, you did most of the casting…
Martha:
I thought you were about to say i did most of the driving
Katie:
<Laugh>, <laugh> you did most of the driving too…
Anyway we work together on both. It’s so much more fun that way and the work is better for it. There is no gap between having the idea and making it.
Martha:
It’s funny, because it’s just the two of us now; if we have an idea that we want to develop, we can just write it, and then do it. We can make it happen. It’s liberating.
Lyndy:
You’d both been working on treatments for music videos as well as commercials when you worked at Stink when did you start writing scripts and wanting to direct?
Katie:
I always kind of knew I wanted to write and I’ve been talking about it for lots of years. I love reading. I did English Lit at uni and wrote a lot of plays (very high brow of course). I’m a big English nerd, and I always liked writing treatments and working on ideas. Just before the pandemic I wrote a feature. So, writing never felt like that much of a stretch. But directing was kind of sensitive for a second because I worked with so many brilliant directors, so I was very much, no, no, I don’t want to direct.
Martha:
It changed with your feature. We were having very exciting conversations with Lionsgate and it always came up about the director.
And of course we were chatting about all these directors who could possibly do it, and obviously you hit people up, but everyone’s got their own projects and no one is quite right for yours. Added to that, we’d spent so long talking about this film and how it could look and who could be in it… One day the solution was just obvious – “you should just direct it”.
Katie:
Features weirdly are much more accepting of that. The feature producers we spoke to said, “well you wrote it so you should direct it.”
Martha:
Also we were looking for female queer comedy directors and we couldn’t find any.
Lyndy:
And then the Stink connection?
Katie:
Just before Christmas we were with Daniel Bergman in LA and, a few pints down, we were talking about commercials and he said, “you guys should direct, we’ll sign you..”[half joking].
Martha:
And we followed up hard!
Katie:
We sent him “Eat It”, which he hadn’t seen. And we sent it to Blake as well. They really liked it and they thought it was viable. Also they’d missed us in the office so really any excuse.
Martha:
And we thought, why not! So yeah, here we are.
Katie on set, Nashville
Lyndy:
Why did you call yourselves MrMr?
Katie:
We were working for the man and then we were like, we’ll be the man and people can work for us.
Martha:
What’s the other reason, that weird song?
Katie:
My mum used to sing it…God help the mister that comes between me and my sister and God help the sister… something something. It’s this random musical. But,in my mind, MrMr links the idea of sisterhood. I wanted our logo to be MrMr – Help your Sister ..
Martha:
But we thought it was too religious.
Katie:
So now it’s just GOOD TIMES ALL THE TIME.
INFO:
MrMr @ Stink website
