Brian and Charles had the potential to be much darker.
The British comedy, which was released wide in the United States over the weekend by Focus Features, has been praised as a lovely slice of feel-good weirdness, starring David Earl as the wacky eccentric Brian Gittins and his strange and innocent 7-foot robotic invention Charles Petrescu (Chris Hayward, mostly hidden by cardboard boxes with a cardigan stretched over the top).
The two were regarded as an “awkward, endearing combo” in The Hollywood Reporter’s review, with the film’s performances being “terrifically lovely and real.” Despite its odd protagonists, the film, which just won the audience prize at the Sundance Film Festival in London, seemed to leave most moviegoers on a high.
But, as its director Jim Archer and producer Rupert Majendie concede, it could have turned out a lot differently.
“In one version of the cut, Charles died for ten minutes,” Archer explains. “There was a lot of material we pulled out that would have shifted the tone dramatically.”
The film’s early funders Film4 and the British Film Institute, according to Majendie, who also operated Charles’ humorously robotic voice (done off camera via a very crude sounding computer program), helped offer an early influence. After seeing the 2017 short film on which the film is partially based, as well as Brian and Charles’ early standup comedy appearances in the United Kingdom, they proposed a lighter tone.
Both Brian Gittins and Charles Petrescu had dramatically different personas in their early stand-up days, more aggressive, combative, and, fundamentally, more mature than depicted in the video. According to Archer, Charles “reflected how inebriated” Majendie was at the moment. “It’s kind of like the movie’s portrayal of them; they look the same but don’t have the same past.” They have virtually completely different personalities, although they have the same voice and spectacles.”
Much the 2017 short, which laid the foundations and concept for the feature, had some far darker moments, especially when Charles is banned from Brian’s farm and left alone in the freezing hills of rural Wales, only to return the next day, even more disheveled than normal.
