The Story Behind Fish Tank
From shorts to screen for one of the best Brit flicks of the year...
BY Sep 10th 2009 8:08AMFILED UNDER: Features
Heartfelt, painful drama Fish Tank arrives in our cinemas this Friday.
We decided to take a look at the talented writer/director behind the film - Andrea Arnold - and explore her long, strange journey to making this, her second feature film.
She's gone from kids' TV to Cannes Jury Prizes in a short decade, and Fish Tank deserves your dosh at the cinema.
Come with us as we jump into the story of Mia...
1. In The Beginning…
It's not every director who can claim a credit on 1980s Saturday morning kids' show No 73, but Fish Tank's creator Andrea Arnold has that skeleton lurking in her professional closet.
Yes, she spent several years larking it up with Sandi Toksvig, Kim Goody and more as Dawn Lodge in a blend of variety performance, star interviews and crazed comedy shorts.
We also doubt that the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh - to whom her work has been compared - have a history as a dancer on Top Of The Pops, either. And if they do, we're not sure we want to see it up on YouTube.
But what she more likely shares in common with them is a drive to tell stories. When she was young, she jotted down ideas and filled notebooks with observations about the world, a habit she continues to this day, and something which helps fuel her scripts.
Her earliest cinematic experience? "I remember seeing Mary Poppins when I was about five. It was the first film I ever saw in a cinema and I was devastated by it. I just couldn't believe there was such a world, and I wanted to be in it.
"The local cinema must have closed down sometime after that because I didn't see a film in a cinema until much later."
Arnold's teenage years were spent fueling her film needs, taking a bus from her home in Dartford all the way to Woolich to watch the likes of Taxi Driver, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Midnight Express.
And upon turning 18, she moved to London, where "it was much easier to see films. I remember Apocalypse Now, Alien, The Elephant Man, My Life as a Dog, Blood Simple, Betty Blue, Blue Velvet."
No surprise, then, that she cites David Lynch and Alan Clarke among her large list of inspirational directors.
But it was the 1990s when she really locked into her ambition to make movies. She attended the American Film Institute and began to make shorts…
Next: Shorts story
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