I spoke with Oscar shortlisted filmmaker Stephen Fingleton about all his work, from his Oscar nominated ‘Hitchcockian’ short film SLR to his upcoming Dystopian feature The Survivalist. He told me about what he looks for in a performer.

“You wanna know why most actors don’t make it? It’s because they’re boring, and they’re fucking normal. I see all these CV’s of these guys emailing me, going you know please hire me or whatever, and their faces are boring, their backgrounds are boring, they’ve got nothing to say, they’ve got no heap of pain to transmute into an experience for an audience, whereas it’s the guy who’s got a heap of tattoos over his face – He goes in the consider pile.”

He’s seen a lot of critical success and we discussed what being “shit hot” means to him, does that affect how hard it is to get funding and does it help get a top actor like Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) on board for a project. He told me about his concerns about Filmmaker’s Unions.

“What we really need in terms of representation is a union that takes a brick, throws it into a producer’s face and then sells them back their teeth”

I ask him about what drew him to film making, and what he sees as most important when making a film. We chat about artistic integrity and the ability to stick to your guns in the face of the producers who want to “Slash your Canvas,” “Destroy your film.”

“Most people aren’t prepared to walk away, because they’re pussies. I mean I look at some of the contracts some of my fellow Writers and fellow Directors sign – They’re pathetic. They deserve to have the money taken off them; they deserve to lose their cars, to lose their houses, because they’re weak. And they make it more difficult for people like me who are prepared to stand toe to toe with these producers.”

You can listen to the full 40 minute interview below:

Stephen’s Vimeo profile, Sfingali, has all of his short film work, including Magpie, Shirin and SLR, which is embedded below.

You can keep up to date on everything Stephen is doing on www.driverfilms.com