Perhaps you’ve never heard of Jesco White. White is a tearaway Appalachian mountain dancer, who struggles to follow in his father’s footsteps while battling drugs, booze, and the sort of general shitty existence that much of Appalachia is drowning in. The launch of White Lightnin‘, Dom Murphy’s semi-fictional take on White’s life, is this Thursday, 24 September, at 9 PM at the Rich Mix. We have a special interest in the film as its co-writers are our very own Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti. You can see the trailer here.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Dom Murphy and the film’s star, Edward Hogg. The screening is open to all – call the Rich Mix box office on 020 7613 7498 if you want to reserve tickets.

Here is a interview we did a few weeks ago with Dom.

Vice: Hi Dom, how did White Lightnin’ come about?
Dom Murphy: Well, this is the first feature film I have made. I have always wanted to make movies and always had film projects developing in my mind while I was working in TV and other commercial areas. The film came about because I met Shane Smith. And we decided we wanted to work together. He sent me this short story, based on the life of Jesco White, or “inspired by it”. Over a few years, we developed it into a screenplay. Eventually the UK Film Council saw the script and really liked it, that’s how it came about.

How did you meet Shane?
Just by chance. I was on holiday in Costa Rica with a mate of mine and [Shane] was on holiday with Gavin. Just by chance we crossed over. This was back just before Vice had moved to New York, they were still based in Montreal.

OK, so then what?
So I met these two insane guys, and we had a lot of fun. Shane got drunk at a party we were at and we were on the way home in the dark he fell off the side of the road and hurt his leg. We had to leave him to rest up in a hammock. We ended up lying there drinking and chatting into the night and came to talking about the idea of the film then.

When Shane first told you about the idea, did you know anything about Jesco?
Not a thing. I heard about him via the fictional short story that I was sent by Shane. And then, obviously, Shane went and met him and did more research. Eventually, I went down there to meet him too. We hung out with him for some time, got to know him a bit, and it was amazing getting to know this cult personality. When I first read the story I had no idea who he was.

What was it like to hang out with him?
He is a very sweet guy, very interesting, and very gentle. He is also very gentlemanly. But he does have the mad side to him. He lived out there in the woods, in a trailer, and it was really very wild. We got there and suddenly a busted up old Cadillac screamed up the drive and skidded to a halt next to us and a jar of moonshine was presented to us. It was like “Wahey! Time to party!” It was that kind of lifestyle.

How long were you with him for?
We spent a few days down there with him, but I saw him again in Texas, and a handful of times since then. Shane and Eddy spent far more time with him. He told them a lot of amazing stories for background stuff, some of which made it into the film, and some of which didn’t.

What sort of crazy stuff?
Some of the stories were not really fit to repeat. We did hours of recording. You can watch the old documentary stuff to find out his stories, I wouldn’t like to retell them.

What was the process of working out what you could and couldn’t include in the film? Did you go through it with him?
No. We went through that process after we already had the outline of our film, which was based on a re-imagining of his life. And he knew right from early on that the story was about more what he would have wanted to do than what he did, and we improvised with him around that. He liked the idea. There were a lot of background interviews, some details went in and some didn’t. But the outline of the story didn’t change.

How were Eddy and Shane involved in the film?
Well, they were very involved in the casting process. I set up some castings and they got involved in New York and LA. But they couldn’t make the London ones. We all collaborated on casting and obviously on the core ideas. But once we were shooting it was pretty much all me; they were in New York and were always very busy. So the filming was mainly me, but once I was cutting, I would show them any new takes or new edits, to see what they thought of it. They were as involved as they could be.

How long did the process of making the film take? From the initial meeting to completion?
From the very first time I saw the idea, it took about six years to get the script to a point where we were happy with it. We were all busy with our careers and other projects and so on. It’s not like we were working on it non-stop for six years. We would go off and spend a weekend together and do a lot of work, lots of writing, then end up getting drunk and losing our notes.

Bet that set you back a bit.
That tended to slow our progress a bit, yes. We ended up in a messy situation, but we were making progress. We would make notes, send them to each other, send them back, and so on. We eventually came to the point where we were trying to think about how we would get it financed, and there we had another problem. The extreme content of the film meant that it was hard to get it financed. During those last few years of writing the script we were looking around for finance vaguely. But when we stopped working on the script we had to start really looking for money. And it took us two years to get the financing. Then another two years to actually shoot it. So it took ten years in total to make the film.

Were there any other sticking points along the way? Apart from the funding issues?
There were no real disasters or calamities. In terms of the actual shooting, it was extremely tight. We had to do the whole thing in 30 days. So it was extremely hard work. We didn’t have time for calamities, we just had to shoot. People wanted us to water it down, make it more mainstream, or change the ending, whatever. One company suggested we make it about some teens who go to the woods and meet this amazing guy – they wanted it to be a teen movie, and wanted it commercialised. But we were intent on maintaining creative control, and keeping it as it was originally envisioned. We wanted to be uncompromising about the way the project ended up, and at points we thought that it was never going to be made, but eventually it worked out.

Are you happy with it? I guess you are glad you didn’t bow to the pressure to water it down?
I am really pleased we didn’t make any compromises. It has to be what it is. And it had to go as far as it does – it was always about extremes, and it had to reach them. It is hard to work out how things will turn out, but I am really happy with the film.

Has Jesco seen it yet?
No. I don’t think he has. I think Eddy and Shane are going to head down there when they get a chance to show it to him. Soon they will. I think he will love it, but who knows?

BRUCE LA VRAI