CineKink NYC 2009

I blame Warren Chung for this one. We met up in the early summer of 2006 to get a short film called The Corpse Wore White off the ground, and he bought me a large coffee around 5 PM — way too late in the day for me. I spent the night with my head buzzing and some weird scenes playing in my head. As a writer I've learned that the 3 AM stuff is often the best, so I got up and wrote down the fragments of what appeared to be an incomplete jigsaw. The next day I assembled them into sequence and discovered a beautiful but somewhat provocative story — which I immediately shelved as too risqué.

Some time later I swapped scripts with young Kiwi filmmaker Anoushka Klaus. When she gave it the thumbs up, My Favourite Time of the Day became the follow-on project to Corpse. The story's 1969 setting posed some artistic challenges which Rachel Vidal (the production designer from Corpse) accepted when she joined as co-producer.

The script went out to the London acting community. Although not to everyone's taste, Favourite Time elicited some very enthusiastic replies: "Fantastic — really original, well-written, funny and poignant"... "A very brave piece!"... "Brilliant! I love its audaciousness"... "I was sad, amused and felt like I was peeling an onion".

Auditions were followed by a recall for the last half-dozen prospective mothers and daughters. The daughters tackled the challenging material (shades of Meg Ryan and "I'll have what she's having") with huge bravado and everyone came away with a smile on their face.



From over three hundred actors who initially expressed interest in the two roles, Rebecca Steele and Victoria Daniels were ultimately cast as the loving but feuding mother and daughter. The scary moment came when I took down Rebecca and Victoria's contact details. Their 11-digit mobile phone numbers only have one different digit between them. I knew I'd got my casting right!



In 2008 My Favourite Time of the Day was nominated for the Channel Islanders Film Award at the Branchage Jersey International Film Festival.