Q&A with Ben Hector

From London, England comes “Jo,” a film about a mother struggling with her daughters’s diminishing interest in sports. We asked director Ben Hector about the origins of the project, finding his cast, and the provocative actions of his lead character…

How did you first get interested in making movies?

My start in movie making was very cliche - I picked up my dads camera and started making small sketches with my family and friends. I remember the pure excitement of creating something and giggling about as a team and then showing it to family or in class at school. That excitement still continues today.

Can you talk about the origins of the project, and how it started coming together?

Jo came about after watching 'The Piano Teacher' and just being blown away by it. I also failed to get the director role on a grad film at the time and took out my frustration by writing a lot, and one of the subjects that stuck with me was my time spent in amateur sports. I remembered that some parents were very involved in their child's sporting career, and the boundaries were blurred as to whether the parents were passionate or pushy. I did about 5 or 6 drafts of the script, which started with me writing some pretty extreme stuff, and then I'd get feedback from friends who would gradually bring me back down to earth.

What about your cast? Both leads are great. How did you find them? What was your working process like? Did you have rehearsals or do chemistry building activities? It’s a hard thing to capture, a believable mother / daughter dynamic. But I was totally convinced.

Thanks! Me and the producer Ellie Gocher spent hours pouring over the Spotlight casting directory and ended up auditioning around 20 women for Jo and around 10 for her daughter Rosie. That may not seem like much but we had whittled this down from several hundred showreels that we'd watched online. It was exhausting but totally worth it! As for rehearsals, myself and Emma Keele (who plays Jo) sat down a couple of times in pre-production to discuss and rehearse. Emma whipped the motivations into shape and did the best she could to make the situations believable. It helped that she had done a lot of training and had a lot of experience under her belt - she really helped push the film to another level. As for the relationship between Jo and her daughter, this mother/daughter chemistry was a hunch we had in pre-production. We got lucky!

The mom takes some pretty extreme action at the end. Can you talk about arriving at the decision to have her intervene in that way? Did you have doubts whether you wanted to take it there?

The ending was something we arrived at quite late and was a result of feeling dissatisfied with some fairly dull alternatives. The kiss for me was so outrageous and carried all kinds of other strange connotations regarding the character of Jo, that I just had to have it. It was a real motivator throughout production.

What’s next for you?

We're currently just finishing up our new short film set deep in the English countryside, about repressed desires and frustrations (again). It's called 'Old Friends' and will be out very soon!

Contact Info:

Twitter: @mcbennybob