Carnage - Swallowing The Past

It is the year 2067 and animals are no longer considered as food. The mere thought of eating dead flesh repulses the now vegan utopia in this brand new mockumentary film, Carnage - Swallowing The Past. Written and directed by the very funny Simon Amstell, the film premiered in London on Tuesday night and, of course, TVmaze were there for the exclusive screening.

The film aims to break the taboo around Britain’s animal eating past, whilst showing compassion for a generation, now seeking therapy to cope with the horror of their unthinkable actions. Carnage combines archive with original drama and is narrated by Simon Amstell, who gives a unique comedic peek into a future where animals live equally amongst humans.

The film stars Martin Freeman, Joanna Lumley, Dame Eileen Atkins, Lindsay Duncan, Alex Lawther, Gemma Jones, Linda Basset, Mawaan Rizwan and John Macmillan. Playing themselves are Kirsty Wark, JME, Lorraine Kelly and Vanessa Feltz

So, is it any good, I hear you ask? Actually, yes it is! Prior to going to the screening, I did a bit of research about the film and I must admit, it sounded very weird & I wasn't really sure what to expect. I absolutely wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was! The cheese scene had me roaring in laughter :)

After the screening, there was a Q&A with Simon Amstell, hosted by Mark Kermode...

When you started making it, was your primary objective to make something that would change people's minds, or to make something that was funny first, with the message being secondary?
It just had to be funny. Otherwise, the whole thing would stink. The problem with everything that you ever hear is that it's a bit preachy and annoying & there's a superiority to it. So the intention was to make something kind of self deprecating and funny enough that you didn't mind when a new bit of information was presented. You wouldn't mind too much when we told you that male chicks get gassed or shredded.
We had loads of great footage of vegan celebrities that we found, but it was just too sincere to work in this film.

When it came to casting, did the people agree to it because they liked the script? Did you go to them with an initial idea, saying you'd like them because of their reputation? How did you get them on board?
There were a few people I've worked with before on the sitcom Grandma's House. The first person that came on board was Joanna Lumley. Daniel, the producer, had her email address and told me to just email her. She emailed me back and said she absolutely would do it. As soon as she agreed to say in the film "Why do you keep making me ejaculate?", it became quite real.

How many people involved in the project are either vegan or vegetarian or had any discussions with you about the message of the film?
One vegan, at the end of the project, on the last day of the edit. The catering that was made for us was vegan. We did things like that.
All I wanted to do was make something funny, that people could watch, and so it didn't really matter. If Martin Freeman was gonna say yes, I want to do this, I wasn't going to say you mustn't eat pork. Eat whatever you want, so long as you say the words well.

So Simon, how long have you been a vegan?
I was a vegetarian beforehand. I was in Thailand when I was about 23, and I felt calm for maybe the first tie ever. I thought, maybe it was the Buddhism & then I saw a monk on the plane home, and he looked calm. I read a boook called "Taming the Monkey Mind - A Beginner's Guide to Buddhism" and it said that Buddhist's don't tend to drink or eat animals. I thought to myself that I didn't want to become a Buddhist, but I could do those other things. So, that was the beginning and then I became a vegan about 5 years ago.
I prefer the idea that maybe I was born a vegan, but my parents didn't know.

Did you get any inspirations from other films?
I don't know, really. I think because it was a pretend documentary using various genres. It just had to be what it was supposed to be. So, Newsnight had to look like Newsnight. The Lorraine show had to look like the Lorraine show. It was supposed to be like a television documentary, so it's not really inspired by cinema.

Do you think of it as being science fiction? Do you have that genre in your head?
Someone said it was like a Sc-Fi vegan comedy and I just thought that sounded awful. I just thought, it's a mockumentray. It just has to be funny documentary. The compassionate angle was the thing that I thought was the saving grace. We had an idea at the beginning that there would be like some kind of war crime tribunal, like putting in prison all the people from the past, like Jamie Oliver.

How close it it to what we see on screen to what you wrote?
It's shorter. We wrote a lot more. We had a vegetarian climax where the country went vegetarian and then we had this vegan climax. It climaxes twice and then, by the second one, you're wondering why this hasn't all been sorted out by now. So, we just cut all that out. A few of the scenes orders got changed around a bit in the editing, where stuff originally just from the beginning got dispersed throughout the film.

How much, when we see those blissful compassionate scenes that open and close the film, how much of that is meant to be satirical?
To me, that's just a political utopia. A lot of people think it's just a bit funny. I wanted them to have this intimacy. I told them to touch each other, feed each other and stroke each other and stuff. I just wanted them to feel calm in each other's presence. I just tried to get them to be quite friendly with each other.

When you see it now on the big screen, are you proud of it & what's the bit you're most proud about it?
I think I am proud of it. Just that we did it. There were so many moments and I just thought "This is....What is this?". It was a very ambitious project with the visual effects on a BBC budget. Just to find costumes for everyone was an incredible achievement.
There were moments when I thought it was gonna be an embarrassing disaster.

This concluded the Q&A.

Carnage will premiere exclusively on the BBC iPlayer March 19th and follows on from the success of previous iPlayer film premieres such as the critically acclaimed Fear Itself, Adam Curtis’ HyperNormalisation and The Rack Pack.