Can You Survive?

Casting the Lead

Part 4 - Music

Lena Mascara Searching for our lead female to play Karina proved difficult at first to find. The subject matter of the film was difficult to pigeonhole, as I had advertised that we were making an exploitation horror film, which conjures up the intention for big-breasted naked victims akin to the Grindhouse movies of the seventies, or snuff porn. I then re-titled it as “artsploitation” hoping to attract the discerning actress, and using the tagline “Be My Horror Queen” I was delighted by an overwhelming response. But it was a reply titled “I AM your horror queen” that caught my eye more than the rest, from Polish actress Lena Mascara. There was no questioning of audition, this girl had decided for me! When I met her in a Czech bar in East London, the moment she walked through the door, I knew I had found our girl.

The element of having a Polish couple subjected to malice and mistreatment in the opening scenes became too good to resist and also to use their native tongue for the dialogue, opening up a further debate, that continues to trouble me as a British citizen. To me the major USP of the United Kingdom is its multi-cultural population and the possibility of a future of understanding each and every community in the world, something the world should envy. Every time the BNP or similar xenophobic organisations gain the main stage, I felt the urge to document my abhorrence in some way or other. I do believe that in Can You Survive? the use of the subject has been placed in a grey area, one that I have become happy to leave as it is, to allow the audience to dig deeper into what I am trying to say.

Christmas 2008 became the most difficult period of the film’s production for me as I had filmed at least 70% of the footage and constantly staring down a dark abyss finally took its toll on me. It was a colleague that pointed out to me the obvious, that if you spend enough time with people with colds you will eventually be infected with one, and that the same analogy is happening with me. It seemed that I could see no light at the end of the tunnel at all with regards to completing the film and that the subject matter was not helping the situation. Thankfully I am surrounded by a supportive wife and friends and ironically as the evenings got lighter, so did my outlook.