Pillion writer/director Harry Lighton and star Harry Melling share nine memorable events in the creation and release of their UK indie hit.
Harry Lighton’s debut feature – following shorts including the Bafta-nominated Wren Boys – is an unusual sort of romantic comedy. Adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’ 2020 novella Box Hill, Pillion stars Henry Melling as Colin, a shy, gay 35-year-old parking attendant who lives with his parents, played by Lesley Sharp and Douglas Hodge. His world is upended when he becomes the ‘submissive’ of Ray, a handsome biker played by Alexander Skarsgard.
Produced by Element Pictures, Pillion was shot in and around Bromley in southeast London, with members of the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club (GBMCC) playing Ray’s gang. Some of its leather-clad cohort attended the film’s premiere at Cannes, where the film won best screenplay in Un Certain Regard. Pillion then took best debut screenwriter and best British independent film at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs), and, the following day, won best adapted screenplay at the Gotham Awards.
Pillion was released in the UK and Ireland by Picturehouse Entertainment and Warner Bros, grossing $1.4m (£1.1m) at press time, and is Bafta-nominated for outstanding British film, British debut and adapted screenplay. In Lighton’s words, it all started “when Harry met Harry”. Here, Lighton and Melling recount their memories of making and promoting the film.
Alexander Skarsgard joining the production, and immediately rehearsing the wrestling/sex scene
Harry Melling: We had a week shooting the Christmas scenes with Colin’s family, while Alex was away shooting [Apple TV series] Murderbot. Alex arrived on the weekend, and we had a rehearsal for the wrestling scene on the Monday, so we met, shook hands and just jumped on each other, really. It was diving in at the deep end, but it was kind of wonderful. These characters don’t know much about each other when they meet, so it was a nice way of doing it.
Harry Lighton: There were some proper pro-wrestlers there to show you how to do it. It was intense – these six-foot-four people showing you a move called the Mexican Surfboard. I remember you guys had a bit of terror in your eyes, but you were incredibly quick to pick it up.
Melling: It was my musical theatre days kicking in. But I did feel a bit like I was a contestant on Gladiators.
Shooting and editing the scene in which Ray comes to dinner with Colin’s family
Melling: Up until that point, all the scenes were quite short, so that was the first time we spent a whole day doing just one scene. Before that, because I have a shaved head in some scenes and a wig in others, my day would be like – shaved head, wig, shaved head, wig, wig, shaved head. So it was great to have a whole day with just the shaved head.
Lighton: I planned just to do a locked-off single and let the scene run. On the second take, I remember thinking, “Well, there it is. I’ve got it. All these people have given great performances, and it’s got the kind of in-the-room response that I wanted. There are a couple of people crying in the crew. Smashed it.”
So thank god for my DoP Nick Morris, because he said we had to shoot coverage. And then in the edit nine months later it took a hell of a lot of working, because the way Colin and Ray’s relationship has played up to that point in the film affects what you need Colin’s parents to do in the scene. I think I learnt that you can’t always trust the response in the room. And now whenever anyone asks me about making a film, I say: “Shoot coverage.”
Filming the scene in which Ray instructs Colin to give him oral sex in an alleyway on Christmas Day
Lighton: It was interesting how much the scene changed in the shooting of it. It started out much more aggressive in terms of Ray taking control and taking advantage of Colin. I think there was a slap in there, and he was pushing Colin about a lot more. And we collectively realised it was becoming a bit too ‘assaulty’.
Melling: We had a few takes of the wide shot, and then we had a team talk, and said, “Maybe we should make Colin not the victim of it, but someone who’s partaking.”
Lighton: And ultimately enjoying it. Your performance, particularly, we made a lot more playful.
Melling: That was important in terms of allowing the audience into the early part of the relationship and going, “Actually, this is for Colin as much as it is for Ray.” Because otherwise, if there’s any kind of abusiveness to that encounter, you lose the audience.
Having four-hour Zoom conversations about prosthetic penises
Lighton: My house is next to a primary school, and my housemate works at home as well, so often I’d have to go outside to have these discussions about prosthetics with… I should stop calling him Dan ‘The Dick Man’ Martin, but that was how he was informally known. He would be on the screen, and he’d run off and come back with five different dicks, and I’d be putting my headphones on while the children were coming out to play next door.
I remember in prep, Diandra Ferreira, our hair and make-up designer, had a board with her schedule on it, and it was, like, “Monday: cock ring arrives. Tuesday: fake cum question mark.” It summed up that aspect of the film in one board.
Melling: It was crazy how normal those conversations became. I remember being on a Zoom with you, and we were talking about how much cum should be on my face during the alleyway scene. And should it be on my forehead? Should it be on my lips? It seemed like the most normal conversation in the world, but obviously… it wasn’t.
Shooting a picnic scene with Ray’s biker gang skinny‑dipping in a river, and the submissives lined up in a woodland clearing, waiting for sex
Lighton: We shot at a lavender farm, and the bit when they’re running naked into the river, it just so happened that it was lavender harvest day, so we had to put up some privacy screens.
Melling: It was freezing. We were in cold water for the whole day, 12 hours, and it ended up being two minutes in the movie. It was hell.
Lighton: The next day we were in the woods, at the top of a hill, and bees kept attacking people. We had done a tech recce, which was the very first time I’d met loads of the crew, and a bee got under my glasses and I got stung on the head. I remember having a real freak-out in front of all these people I didn’t know, and then my eye was swollen. It wasn’t the image I was trying to project.
The biker gang was a combination of people who were in the GBMCC and people on the London kink scene. Other than Jake Shears [co-lead singer of pop band Scissor Sisters], they were all people who hadn’t acted in films before, but they were real pros. And they really brought stuff to the scene. For instance, the details of how the pillions are kneeling, they were like: “This is how it’s done.”
Melling: Apart from the sex scene, it was quite an easy day, really, just bent over a trestle table.
Shooting Colin and Ray’s ‘day off’ scene guerilla-style in Bromley, with Melling and Skarsgard surrounded by real shoppers
Lighton: I was dead set on doing that, because I wanted the day-off scene to feel visually different, and to feel like their relationship, which had been quite enclosed and had an element of fantasy to it, was suddenly put out into the quote-unquote ‘normal world’.
But it was easier said than done. Nick Morris and his camera team created all these ingenious contraptions. There was a wheelie bin and a plant pot that had cameras hidden inside.
Melling: My favourite prop was a fake guitar amp that a fake busker had, with a camera inside.
Lighton: And sometimes it worked really well. The scene where Colin and Ray talk to two women on a bench was so well-disguised that random people started sitting on the bench and ended up joining in the conversation.
Melling: It was set at Christmastime, and we were shooting in August, so I loved watching local people being pissed off about the Christmas tree we’d set up. “Ridiculous! It’s not even winter! It’s getting earlier and earlier every year!”
Lighton: But there were two specific characters in Bromley who cottoned onto the fact we were filming, and kept running into shot. There was one who was dressed as Spider-Man.
Melling: And the other guy was dressed in this camo outfit. We had to ask him to leave, and then he came back in a completely different outfit, and pretended he hadn’t been there before.
Going to Cannes for the film’s premiere, along with members of the GBMCC
Melling: Cannes was like a whirlwind. I flew in from wrapping something else, I slept, woke up, went straight to the premiere. I hadn’t seen the finished film, and then with all the bikers there and the reception, it was an out-of-body experience.
Lighton: It was definitely the most terrifying part of the film. I don’t really like 20 people watching a film of mine with me, let alone 2,000, but the reaction in the room was really special. And then having all these bikers run down and put their pup masks on, getting the sense that the people from the community we had represented in the film were proudly owning it, it felt both naughty and sincerely lovely.
Having a party in chain bar Simmons after Pillion’s UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival
Lighton: The afterparty was all quite last minute, and Simmons [just off Oxford Street] was the only place we could find, so we had the weirdest afterparty ever. We had a table with enough room for four people, and there were about 150 of us, including a couple in leather, right next to the general public – by which I mean loads of teenagers getting their first snog on a dance floor. I look back on it fondly.
Melling: Getting to the bar was difficult because you had to fight your way through all the teenagers. But it grounded us. Cannes was a bit la-de-da.
Lighton missing an early morning flight to New York for the Gotham Awards, after celebrating his wins at the BIFAs the evening before
Lighton: Another great memory. The irony is that I had only been to the BIFAs once before when I was 25 with a short film, so when Pillion won the debut script award, I said, “Last time I got trashed, and this time it’s great to be able to remember the whole thing and soak it in, and not embarrass myself.” And then when we won best film I was like, “Fuck it!”
It was actually the team from Urchin who had an afterparty. I went there, and the hours went by, and suddenly it was five in the morning. I remember thinking, “Okay, I’ll set two alarm clocks” – and then waking up at 10 and seeing four missed calls from Alex [Skarsgard], who was also flying to New York.
But everyone was very sweet about it. Picturehouse booked me a new flight, and I made it to the Gotham Awards by the skin of my teeth. I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been late in my life, so it was unsettling. But it’s very rare to win something, so I don’t feel too guilty.
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