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On January 26th, production began on the UK indie, STRAW MAN. After an intense two-week shoot, the film wrapped on Sunday, February 8th, and has been in post-production ever since.

Fango's new International contributor, "Penny B. Dreadful" recently caught up with actor Leslie Simpson, who portrays The Lone Man in the film. The busy actor, known for his role as Private Terry Milburn in Neil Marshall's DOG SOLDIERS, has also appeared as a creepy Crawler in THE DESCENT, along with a role in Marshall's DOOMSDAY, and can be seen in Hammer's BEYOND THE RAVE. Leslie took took time out to update us on the status of STRAW MAN, along with some of his other upcoming projects.


PENNY B. DREADFUL: Thanks for joining us, Leslie. First off, what is STRAW MAN, who's behind the project, and how did you get involved?

LESLIE SIMPSON: On the surface Straw Man is a post-apocalyptic "last man on earth" scenario. Erm, except it’s not. At least I don’t think so… Wait, no, hang on, erm… oh I don’t know, it’s hard to tell really. I’m not sure what it’s about. I know he’s alone, that’s fairly clear. Actually scratch that, I’m not entirely certain he’s alone. He’s surrounded by people made out of straw… do they count? As for who or what the straw people are, or who he is, or how he got there – wherever he is - is beyond me. Heck, he doesn’t even have a name or any definite history.

He writes a diary, if that helps?

I think for arguments’ sake though we should call him the Lone Man. ‘Lone Man’ is what it says he’s called in the script, so we should stick with that. Phew, well, at least we’ve sorted something out.

Straw Man is a psychological horror story. No, wait, sorry, it’s a ghost story… or is it an allegory? Yeah, that’s it, it’s a purgatorial allegory. Hang on; is there such a genre as a post-apocalyptic psycho-horror ghost story set in purgatory with allegorical overtones about the last man on earth?

I’m confused now. Where was I?

There seem to be hidden depths to Straw Man that I’m not sure it’s possible to wholly fathom. But that’s great because if audiences respond to it in the way that I feel they might, they’ll return to it time and again.

When I first read the script I was stunned. I hadn’t read anything quite like it. It sets the late 20th & 21st century paranoias of desolation and the apocalypse against timeless themes like the triumph of the spirit. When I first met the writers, Garry Charles & Andy Barker (who also directed), we had a vigorous debate as to what it was ultimately about. What was so refreshing and honest was that they were as mystified and open as I was. Because of their honesty we were able to explore the script from every angle. I hope I’m not making the film sound more complex than it is, because, erm, it’s not. It’s creepy, horrific, brutal, bleak, but ultimately uplifting. I remember Andy asking if I could inject some humour into the character because he was concerned that audiences might find it too dark to cope with, but I think the situation that the Lone Man finds himself in is so absurd that it’s sporadically hilarious as well.

As for how I got involved, well, I live a charmed life. I just got lucky. I don’t go chasing work because I’m chronically lazy & clueless (oops! Did I say that out loud?), and I‘m a very clumsy person, which means I don’t get much work - I’m one of those people who bang into lamp-posts a lot because they’re miles away. On top of that I live in Middlesbrough in the North East of England which is officially the worst town in the UK (survey courtesy of Channel 4). But somehow, with very little going for me, I’ve managed to get a fledgling film career going. Hurray for me!!!

But it’s miraculous that a script as good as Straw Man should fall into my lap.

PBD: I've seen a couple of photos and stills online of you and the set of Straw Man; but firstly let's talk about the location. The location looks stunning, creepy as hell and most notably, it looks very lonely and post-apocalyptic (my favourite). What's the story with this place? It reminds me of Chernobyl!


Oh, you mean the ghost town? Yeah, it could do with a lick of paint that’s for sure. It’s RAF Newtown in Derbyshire, England. It used to serve as the marriage quarters for the Airforce, but it was de-commissioned in the mid-eighties and has been utterly deserted ever since. There’s an entire village on there with tree lined streets and all manner of eerie, desolate buildings. And because it was deserted we were left to our own devices; we had the luxury of having a closed set on a tiny budget. Mint!

I said earlier that I came from Middlesbrough, so for me it was like home from home (although I didn’t see any zombies while I was at RAF Newton so there were differences), but there’s definitely a spooky atmosphere. You can almost bite into it. Coupled with the fact that temperatures regularly dipped below zero, it felt like we were genuinely in hell – you know the saying ‘when hell freezes over’? Well, grab your mittens and woolie hats people, ‘cos the Straw Man’s on his way.

I was aware that a lot of the crew didn’t really like to be left alone. Normally on low-budget flicks the crew might hang back, or even take up residence on the location to save travelling time, but not on this one.

As it happens the setting came first. The script would never have been written if it wasn’t for RAF Newton. Andy Barker hails from the Midlands and used to drive past wondering what on earth the place was. When he finally paid a visit his creative juices went into overdrive, and the entire concept was built around the cinematic possibilities.

PBD: You looked utterly emaciated in the photos I've seen! Was losing so much weight a necessary change for the role? Who made the decision for you to look that way? Was it tough for you to get into that shape, mentally/physically? What effect did your change of physique have on your portrayal of The Lone Man? Did you do any other special preparation for the role?


LS: Unfortunately I have to work extra hard to be successful as an actor. I’m impossibly handsome with a body to die for, so I never get offered the roles I like. Yeah, righto!

The truth is I have quite a neutral look and a neutral outlook on life, which I think makes me hard to place or cast. The producers at Hadesgate felt I had the right approach and the background to play the Lone Man, but couldn’t see me as the character. It happens regularly and I just take it in my stride. The Lone Man was such a challenging role that pulling any punches would have exposed me as a fraud – which in truth, is the point of all performance; to be happy to be exposed as a fraud. But from a neutral point you can move in any direction with relative freedom and ease. It heIps to have masochistic tendencies, because then it’s not suffering for my art, it’s just, erm, playing with myself… Hmm, that didn’t come out right. To be honest I’d suffer more if the role didn’t require that I put myself through the mixer. If anybody’s listening though, I’d like my next role to be the second fattest boy in the class.

PBD: What was the biggest challenge for you, in playing a role like The Lone Man?

LS: There was nothing that I was unduly worried about to be honest. I had to have confidence in my ability to carry a film, and I suppose that was a bit unnerving. It was my first lead in a feature and the Lone Man was, well, a baptism of fire… and er, ice. But on stage I’ve played some major roles so in one way I’m used to it. My fellow actors were made from straw, so green room conversation tended to be a bit dull. And oh yeah, the cold got a bit much at times. I realised quite early on that it was silly warming up between takes, because my core temperature would go doolally, so once my temperature dropped as far as it was going to without killing me, I just maintained it. I spent a large part of the shoot under-dressed, sometimes to the point of ‘going completely native’. I actually found that quite liberating. During the second week we had the worst snowfall in recent history and I was outside making nekkid snow angels in character. It brought new meaning to the term “there’s nothing to see”. Once you’ve gone that far, you’re as free as a bird.


PBD: To give us a taste of what we're in for with Straw Man, can you give us a comparison to another film?

LS: I think I must have watched every last man film that’s out there, and I can say with hand on heart that Straw Man is unique. The Lone Man is not an action hero; he doesn’t drive around in any car he wants nor does he own a flat screen TV; we’re not told where everyone else has disappeared to and we don’t have flashbacks to explain the apparent apocalypse – if indeed there was one. Neither does he battle with mutant humans or invading cannibals. Straw Man is a vivid, brutal & contemporary examination of an everyman who finds himself in a truly infernal environment.

If anything, I feel that there are more similarities with films like The Truman Show or The Shawshank Redemption; but the Lone Man’s prison is his mind and his isolation, and all the more horrific for that. As his attempts to escape & survive become more desperate, the knot of insanity tightens round his throat.

There are strong elements of psychological horror within the film, but it would be unfair to give the game away.

PBD: Did anything spooky happen during the filming of Straw Man? ...A bunch of people out in the middle of nowhere, shooting a psychological thriller in a ghost town; surely something strange happened?!

LS: Far too many to mention. Unfortunately talking about the weird goings on would involve my revealing plot points that I shouldn’t really discuss at this point. We had a couple of hospitalisations with injuries that correlated directly to things that happen in the script which creeped a few people out.

But I suppose the strangest incident involved the Garry Charles, the writer. We were shooting a classroom scene in one of the buildings and Garry was out in the hallway clearing some debris. When action was called and the scene played, Garry could distinctly hear someone playing a piano further down the corridor but there was no-one there, and to the best of his knowledge there was no piano on site anywhere. After the scene finished he went to investigate, but a little way down he bumped into Beck Ryder-Caddy (Costume Designer), who was quite shaken.

She told that Garry that during the scene she was convinced she’d heard strange piano music. They both froze, ashen faced.

But in general, I felt whatever the presence was that stalked the film, and something definitely stalked the film, was more a help than a hindrance.

There’s a minor incident that follows on from the one illustrated above. The next morning I had to do an interview for the Making of Documentary between takes. We were still working on the same set as the previous day. As usual I was a little distracted and threw out my answers willy-nilly, convinced that they’d never see the light of day. However, that first interview turned up in a podcast which was aired in full in mid March 2009. The reason it was aired? Well, throughout the interview, gurgling beneath my voice, you can distinctly hear the ominous, discordant stabs on a ghost piano.

PBD: You've worked with the gorgeous Axelle Carolyn (who plays The Woman of the Lone Man's Dreams) on a couple of productions now; including Neil Marshall's DOOMSDAY and a great short film by Tristan Versluis called I LOVE YOU. What's it like to work with someone that you know quite well personally, when you're so deep in the mind of a character like the Lone Man?

LS: I adore Axelle. She’s a great friend and a burgeoning actor with genuine presence.

As soon as I read the script I suggested Axelle for the part, and for the producers it was a no-brainer having seen her work on Tristan’s film. It also helped enormously that we’d worked together before because the relationship between the two characters is quite intimate.

As for being so far inside the mind of the Lone Man, I’m not sure I’m that type of actor. It’s only playing dressing up innit? You know, like kids playing vampires versus werewolves. Better to play with your mates and make it enjoyable, I say. There’s always residue from the character of course, but one has to keep that under control.

Actually, Axelle turning up was quite a shock to the system. For the majority of the shoot I was entirely alone, and was the centre of attention for about 14 hours of every day. When Axelle arrived toward the end of the shoot she completely stole my thunder. No more exclusive pampering from the wonderful Hannah Ecclestone the make-up designer, no more ‘left leg, right leg, arms up, good boy’ from Becky or Adelle in the costume dept; oh no, from there on in it was Axelle this & Axelle that, and “ Oi, you! Shove over a bit will yer”.

PBD: Speaking of Neil Marshall, do you have any more collaborations with him in the pipeline?

LS: Who knows? Neil and I go back a long way now and we’re mates ultimately. Neil doesn’t owe me anything professionally and our friendship isn’t affected by whether we work together or not. With Straw Man (and to a lesser extent the Hammer flick BEYOND THE RAVE) I’m taking my first baby steps into the film world by myself, which I need to do. But yeah, who knows? Life turns on a sixpence. Always has, always will.

PBD: You've had a bunch of roles that really seemed like a load of fun to play in film so far, in a broad range of films within the horror genre. What has been the most rewarding or fun role for you?

LS: The next one. The things that I remember and love about any piece of work I’ve been involved in usually has very little to do with the roles I’ve played. I have no memory for roles. I always feel uncomfortable when people expect me to quote swathes of Shakespeare or Ibsen or whatever (or, erm, Terry) because once it’s finished, I wipe all memory. I’m the bear of very little brain, and I can’t afford to fill up my hard drive with stuff that I have no need for. Heck, I’m struggling to remember Straw Man for this interview and it was only a couple of months ago. But which job did I like best? All of them, ‘cos it’s the most fablious job in the world.

PBD: Describe what your dream role in a dream film would be. Would it be a horror film? If so, what horror elements would it contain?

LS: That’s a fairly easy question for me to answer. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a deep fascination with all things Faustian. The films that most affect me contain Luciferian symbolism. Angel Heart terrified me like no other film could ever do, and yet I still saw it about 10 times at the cinema; Brimstone & Treacle was another one. But it wasn’t simply the thrill of being scared, there was something very primal and real that I identified with intimately. And there are other films not directly connected, but still part of the cycle, such as Hour of the Wolf and Orphee. Murnau is the only film-maker to come close to bringing the original story to life with any legitimacy. So I’d have to say Faust. My problem would be which character to play? Faust or Mephistopheles? Harry Angel or Louis Cypher? Martin or, erm, no that one’s a no brainer (we’re back to zombies again!)… Ah, choices, choices.

I could always play both central characters - now there’s an interesting concept, selling the soul to one’s own dark half. Incidentally I’ve played Peer Gynt on stage, and he’s the Norwegian Faust!! Hurray!!

PBD: Aside from acting in film, you are part of a small theatre company; threeovereden. What kind of theatre does the company do? Do you have any upcoming shows or past shows you'd like to tell us about?

LS: threeovereden is an avant-garde physical theatre collective that I’m the joint director of.

For avant-garde read: No-one comes to see us.

It allows me to indulge my passions without being answerable to anyone. My partner in crime is an extraordinary artist called Bill Martin. Bill is in his seventies, which means our work comes from a generational clash. Bill brings refinement, I bring rawness. Bill brings wisdom, I bring viscera. Bill brings maturity; I bring, er, childishness? But somehow together it works. And yes, our work is very faustian, in case you were wondering. Playful,but very dark & faustian. Some people have described our work as Theatre of Cruelty, but we’re far from it. We’re nice boys really. We don’t follow a prescribed methodology. We make it up as we go along, always fumbling in the dark and falling over things. The only common thread that runs through all our work is a love of dressing up in women’s clothes and playfights.

We’re very lucky actually, because despite our reluctance to do anything populist or even interesting to the average theatre go-er, our work is supported wholeheartedly by the UK Arts Council. This year is our 10th anniversary so we must be doing something right.

PBD: You have another project on the side; an industrial black metal band called Axis of Perdition. The latest studio album, URFE, was released in December last year and has so far been described as a "descent into the dystopian maelstrom" with "diabolical atmosphere". I haven't heard it yet, but given this review by Terrorizer magazine, I think I really should get myself a copy. What can you tell us about this album, and your involvement with the band in general?


LS: Yes, it’s a very pleasant listen. Elevator musak if you will. I’ve known Mike Blenkarn from the band for quite a few years. He used to paint me in the nude at the local art school. I was fully dressed of course. Little did I know that this very unassuming, shy lad was making groundbreaking dark albums in his spare time. He got in touch last year to ask if I’d be happy to read some links between tracks on their latest venture, which at the time was an EP called GRIEF OF THE UNCLEAN. He wanted me to be Vincent Price doing a self written “… night of the living dead cat” type voice-over thingie. I thought it’d be a laugh so I said okay. I wrote a few things down involving a man sitting in the local shopping mall watching people going about their business, but he could see their still-born qliphoth bodies bobbing limply above them, their tongues hanging out, their eyes on stalks and the bruised astral threads wrapped tightly round their necks. We took it from there really; it was a case of marrying the well honed trajectory of the band with my own ideas. The EP quickly became a double album as I feverishly wrote the story – the mall scene was jettisoned early on (but will be included on the next album) and Urfe was born. For me, it was just an experiment in ideas, and there are things that I would have done differently on reflection, but that’s creating for you. And reviews from the major magazines have taken me by surprise. I was more concerned with using the voice as an instrument buried within the music and used words & phrases as sounds rather than as narrative to reflect that. But the process was extremely enjoyable and, along with Brooke Johnson (the other founding member of the band), we found we had lots in common musically. We’ll be starting work on the next Urfe album under cover of darkness in the very near future. It promises to be an even darker ride – I was just warming up on the first one. And after that, as things stands presently, the plan is to dismantle the Axis engine and start afresh, with my official initiation into an entirely new band. I want to do sunshine pop next. That’d be mint!


PBD: What's next for Leslie?

LS: Oh you know, fight a virgin, tickle a trout, the usual stuff. I’m very philosophical about my life & career. I wake up in the morning and see what Father Christmas has brought me. It’s usually a bag of cinders, but every now and then something interesting comes along like Straw Man. I’m hoping to be working with Tristan Versluis again very soon on his feature debut, a bizarre psychological slasher movie, but we’ll wait & see. And there are a few other irons in the fire which are taking some time to warm through.

I don’t think it’s healthy to chase a career, certainly not for me. If I’m meant to work in this profession, there’ll be nothing I can do to avoid it, and if I’m not, well, I could be attending auditions for 20 years, as some do, and never get a single job. I prefer to work on myself – looking after my brain is a full time job. So far it’s worked reasonably well.

PBD: Tell us something random.

LS: On the morning that I was born my parents were caught unawares. They didn’t have a phone or car and the nearest mid-wife lived a few streets away, so in a panic my dad was forced to deliver me himself on the living room floor. When I was pulled out my dad recoiled in horror. I was covered from head to foot in thick, matted black hair and my dad shouted out, ‘that’s not a human, it’s the bloody jackal!’

True story.

Dum da dum dum duuuuum!!

Ask my dad now though, and all you’ll get out of him is that I was the ugliest little b**tard on God’s green earth. Some things never change.

Check out a few exclusive photos from STRAW MAN below, and be sure to follow them through post on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and their official site. You can also follow Leslie on Twitter for frequent updates!