Some thoughts from Alan Dearling including a little ‘conversation’ with Janis and photographs from the event
I had first heard about the filming of ‘Chuck Chuck Baby’ about six months before the premiere at Edinburgh Film Festival. My source of info? Director Janis Pugh’s sister, Alison, who is a friend in Todmorden. I was intrigued. I heard more from Alison when she returned from the screening in Edinburgh. I’d already gleaned that this was the first feature from Janis and was some kind of working-class, lesbian musical love story.
Photo: Janis and Alison Pugh
Now, here I was about a year later at the remarkable Hebden Bridge Picture House, which is billed as one of the last independent not-for-profit cinemas in England. An entirely appropriate indie setting for a screening of ‘Chuck Chuck Baby’ featuring a Q&A afterwards with Janis Pugh taking questions from the packed audience.
Janis Pugh, “The use of music in the film is significant part of my work, it is used to convey the wants and desires of characters. It’s much more than mood and atmosphere, it is very much part of their emotional journey. Although the film is a story of love, it is also a story of barriers and fences and what happens when we shut people out. I think from the moment I started writing this film, I really wanted the audience to cry, laugh, sing, cry a little bit more and then go home with the film in their hearts and pull down their own fences.”
We learned that it took three years to get the finance in place. Janis added, “…the budget for the 26 day shoot was about the same as for the catering budget for many films!” The film is an almost surreal take on working class realities of life – chicken factory work – women caressing or abandoning failed or faded dreams, but remaining full of life and camaraderie – longings, the daily grind of routines of work and screwed-up family life/lives. And, most importantly music and L-O-V-E, which are central throughout the 102 minute film. Janis described how she wrote the narrative based on the songs and music she wanted to use, “…to celebrate incredible working class women and put them on a world stage…” She added that the main two characters, Helen and Joanne, both had “…brutal pasts; they needed to go back to adolescence…feel with your heart.”
If this all sounds a bit emotionally challenging, it is, but it’s also an invigorating, uplifting, quirky and funny film. It’s also very much a celebration of love between women. And the dysfunctional nature of real lives and experiences.
Two major challenges faced Janis. Firstly, obtaining and paying for copyright clearances on the songs. Some of the songs are less well-known, but an important one is ‘I am, I said’ written and performed by Neil Diamond. Janis contacted the famous star, explained that she was producing a low-budget, indie film with her cast members often singing along to the recordings. “Neil was very generous,” Janis said. The second challenge was posed by financiers wanting to have the cast members replaced by younger actors. Janis, her crew and production team resisted. These older, strong women, come alive on the screen.
Emily Aston (originally from nearby Bacup in the Lancashire), who plays one of the feisty chicken factory workers in the film, joined Janis on stage for the Q&A session and added, “We had a real laugh, a really good time…We got on so well, and some of the women you see on screen in the chicken factory are the real women who work in the factory.” Emily has appeared in Coronation Street, Heartbeat, War Horse and the Railway Children.
Janis is rightly proud of celebrating in the film, her Flintshire heritage, its Welshness, her own history and sense of ‘place’. She told us, “I worked briefly in a chicken factory when I was 16. I wasn’t much good.” “Flintshire is Fargo-like, not quite Scouse or Mancunian, but a wonderful landscape…and the film is deliberately, timeless.”
‘Chuck Chuck Baby’ to my mind is remarkable in its mix of being ‘one from the heart’, a passionate, compassionate roller-coaster comprised of a working-class group of women, with the two lead characters, Helen and Joanne, trying to come to terms with their own longings and passions. It’s furiously inventive and interspersed with the darker social realities of housing estates, death and life. Many hilarious scenes in the factory are laugh-out-loud set pieces, including some psychedelic mushrooms! The main actors, Louise Brealey, also known as Loo, was Molly Hooper in the TV series of ‘Sherlock’, and plays Helen, living in a house shared with her husband and his much younger live-in girlfriend. Annabel Scholey (Joanne) along with Louise, gives a wonderfully nuanced, naturalistic performance, providing rich depth to the characters they both portray. Annabel has starred in TV series such as Dr Who and is about to be seen as Cathy in a BBC four-part drama, ‘Dead and Buried’. But essentially, ‘Chuck Chuck Baby’ is an ensemble film. The audience get to know all of the women, their strengths and quirks. The central courtship between Helen and Louise is both hilarious and heart-rending, as is the relationship between Helen and her original next-door-neighbour, grandmother, Gwen (Sorcha Cusack) who is still proffering wisdom even while she is dying.
And then there’s the music, more music, singing and dancing across the screen. Singer Lesley Duncan’s sublime ‘Love Song’, originally recorded for the 1970 album, ‘Sing, children, sing’ is the centre-piece. And the settings for the film’s action set the tone, such as the montage of photos of powerful women pasted on the walls of Joanne’s old bedroom. A tone, described by Janis, as being like a ‘mood-ball’.
Alan: Watching the film, I was much reminded by the epoch-changing, gritty, social reality films of the 1960s and early ‘70s which were created for TV, such as ‘Cathy come home’, ‘Poor Cow’, ‘Up the Junction’ and ‘Edna, the inebriate woman’. And, especially ‘Family Life’. Do you see yourself making a slightly surreal successor to these works from the likes of Jeremy Sandford, Nell Dunn and Ken Loach?
Janis: I think every filmmaker has their vision. I will continue to combine the social realism form and the musical form – I love the power of realism as a character build and audience investment, BUT I also love taking the audience ‘into a world’.
Alan: These are the songs you used so effectively in the film. were there others, or, other versions which you couldn’t use?
Love Song – Lesley Duncan
I Am…I Said – Neil Diamond
From Me To You – Janis Ian
Rhythm Of The Rain – The Cascades
Northern Lights – Renaissance
Les Fleurs – Minnie Riperton
Walk In Love – The Manhattan Transfer
Dirty Old Town – Julie Felix
Goin’ Out Of My Head – Little Anthony & the Imperials
Janis: The selection begins at script stage – I always have a B selection just in case clearance is difficult. But I was very lucky to get all these through thanks to an amazing music clearance team.
Alan: Is there a soundtrack album being produced?
Janis: I’m told the soundtrack will come late September.
Alan: I loved it when you told the audience that “No chickens were harmed in the making of the film!” And that the many chickens what were thrown around in the factory were all fake. Have you actually had many concerns about animal welfare issues?
Janis: No we haven’t had any issues from animal welfare – just lots of people not eating chicken again!
Alan: You’re still on the ‘rounds’ of screenings and film festivals. Can you tell me about the awards so far, and of any particular hopes and dreams?
Janis: The film has travelled over the world and is one of the most successful British films of 2023/24 regarding festivals. We have won two audience awards one in Canada and the other in France.
Alan: You told us that you want to film more in Flintshire, and there is a new project in the pipeline, but you said, “Not talking about it, not jinx it!” Honouring that sentiment, if you had an unlimited budget, what sort of film and content would you like to make?
Janis: I will still continue making what I always set out to do – highlighting women’s lives through stories that have a real heart and combining that with the musical form. It just would be nice to have a longer shooting period than 26 days!
Alan: Much respect, and many thanks for your time and your remarkable gift of a film in ‘Chuck Chuck Baby’.
Janis: Thanks Alan for everything! The photos are great. Next time I’m in Tod we should grab a beer.
Janis Pugh | Filmmaker www.janispugh.co.uk
“Utterly irresistible… this might be the soundtrack of the year.” Uncut
Official trailer: