Fellow: “Is this Heaven?”
Hoshuu: “No. This is Wales. Now hand it over.”

We grabbed that nice chap Chris David Richards from his job at – well, we don’t know what his job is. We know he spends an inordinate amount of time writing witticisms and hidden movie truths at the Mildly Interesting Films blog, though. Go and check it out. Chris believes the film Monsters is better than voles (the great fool) and is well-known in the film blog community for bringing on the funny. But we digress. We stole him away from his – job? – and got him to give us the skinny on Talk to Hoshuu, a short film with a plot that’s not unlike a Neil Gaiman produced Studio Ghibli anime if it was real-life and made by a handful of British university students.

What inspired you to make Talk to Hoshuu?

It’s the third in a series of fantasy-comedy things I made at university. I’d written a few scripts, and decided to make them myself, since nobody else was going to do it for me. This involved learning everything from scratch, and mostly making it up as I went along. I wanted to make a few stories with the running thread of this sarcastic, malevolent god-person. I like surreal things, things that seem a bit off and don’t entirely make sense. Half the people who watch Talk to Hoshuu quite like it, the other half don’t get it all. Which is nice.

What’s more fun for you – scripting, or getting behind the camera? Or in front of it?

I’m definitely more of a writer man than anything else. Most of the fun comes from the ideas and the writing. Directing’s good though. Involves a lot of pointing.

What were the joys and pitfalls of creating it?

Nobody involved in the project was the slightest bit professional. We just traipsed up a mountain with a little camera, a microphone, and a piece of paper for keeping the wind off it (which doubled as the script). Making something with no budget and just convincing your friends to help you is the best way to get something done. It might make it a bit rough around the edges, but the film gets made. And that’s the most exciting thing.

Any projects in the pipeline?

At the moment I’m putting the finishing touches (as in writing the end of) a screenplay for a proper long film. It includes lots of things I couldn’t do with just a camera and a stick, so I’ll hand it over to someone else. Let them deal with all the pointing.

If we wanted to stalk you, how would we go about it?

All posts on my Mildly Interesting blog are cryptic messages detailing my everyday whereabouts. Possibly. The other films are on there too, along with How to be God, a web series about confused students.

Is there anything we should have asked you, but were too selfish to do so?

You didn’t ask me if I had an appropriately-artistic favourite foreign film. I need one to be a legitimate artist. It’s Heima. Yes.