upfront
SVENGALI HITS
THE SILVER SCREEN
As his webisode story of a Welshman’s dream to be a music producer gets a feature
film makeover, Jonny Owen tells Claire Mahoney what audiences can expect.
H
eard the one about the Welshman who
moves to London to sign the best rock
band in the world? No? Well, you soon
will.
Svengali is a feature-length version of the culthit internet comedy series of the same name and
is due to be released later this month. Written by
and starring Merthyr-born Jonny Owen, it tells the
story of Dixie – a seemingly hapless valleys boy
who believes he has discovered the best band in the
world.
Having decided to move to London with his
girlfriend, Shell, and get his band of choice the
Premature Congratulations (or Prems to those in
the know) a record deal, Dixie tries to tap his old
mate Horsey (A&R man Brian Horse) for a favour.
But Brian is going up in the world and doesn’t want
anything to do with his dodgy Welsh past, or Dixie’s
demo tapes (yes, that’s tapes – not even CDs).
Brian’s colleagues and competitors, however, have
other ideas. They think the demo tapes that Dixie
carries round in his Tesco bag are charmingly retro,
BUZZ 14
and The Prems are indeed the best band ever.
Svengali harks back to a musical golden era when
bands caused riots and audiences didn’t watch them
through their camera phones. It is a touching and
wry look at the British music business, with a nod to
its own Svengalis such as Alan McGee (who stars in
the film), Tony Wilson and Malcolm McClaren.
The film, however, is also a love story – a love of
music, a love of girlfriend Shell (played by Vicky
McClure) and a love of Wales: “It’s a classic story
really,” says Owen, “about someone who goes to the
big city to find his dreams only to discover they were
on his doorstep all the time.”
The story of how Svengali came about is rather like a
case of art imitating life, imitating art:
“I’d love to say it was all part of a master plan, but
to be brutally honest I was making it up as I went
along,” says Owen. The first webisode was uploaded
to YouTube in 2008. “When I started Svengali there
was no Twitter, it was mostly Myspace and Facebook
was only a few years old. It used to take ages to load
onto YouTube.”
The series soon began attracting online attention
with actors such as Martin Freeman, now of Hobbit
fame, getting in touch with Owen and asking for a
role:
“Martin said in a really sweet, funny way that he was
a bit annoyed that he wasn’t asked to be in it. So I
met up with him in Soho and he said: ‘Can I play a
really snobby uber-mod who won’t listen to anything
post 1967?’. So that’s what we did.”Award-winning
actress Vicky McClure also came on board as Dixie’s
girlfriend after seeing the viral videos.
The cast features a number of Welsh actors,
including Roger Evans who plays Brian Horse, and
the late Welsh actor Brian Hibbard who plays Dixie’s
dad, Eric.
“I wanted to portray Wales in a more positive light,”
Owen explains. “Rather than have one token Welsh
bloke that behaved in a certain way, I wanted
three-dimensional Welsh characters and I wanted a
proper Welsh cast, not people just putting on Welsh
accents.”
The film was nominated for a Michael Powell