This article is part of IGN’s Fantastic Fest coverage and is a spoiler-free interview with Bookworm’s director Ant Timpson and star Elijah Wood.
Elijah Wood and Ant Timpson’s partnership is old hat at this point, with Wood starring in two of three of the director’s feature films (Come to Daddy in 2019, and now Bookworm). Their rapport is evident both onscreen and off as Wood falls into his complex characters in both films as easily as he chitchats comfortably with Timpson as I enter the room to discuss the charming Bookworm with the pair.
Bookworm follows the wildly precocious Mildred (Nell Fisher) and her deadbeat dad Strawn Wise (Wood) as they find their lives unexpectedly smooshed together while they hunt for the famed (and possibly mythological) Canterbury Panther after Mildred’s mother suffers a tragic accident. Mildred is whip-smart and self-sufficient while Strawn is a washed-up magician (illusionist, he insists) who has never followed through on much of anything in his life. The film is a cute, heartfelt romp held together by delightful performances by Fisher and Wood.
The aspect of Bookworm that I found most noteworthy is that, despite the fact that he’s a goober and a terrible father, you simply can’t help but root for Wood’s character, Strawn. Turns out, most of that comes down to Wood himself.
“The film's written for Elijah because he has this sort of inherent, deep likability, instant connection with the audiences,” Timpson explains. “We feel like we can kind of push that a little bit with those sort of insufferable traits, but still win [the audience] over because he has this warmth and humanity that shines through no matter how much we dress him up and hang all these neuroses and foibles on.”
“My challenge too, as an actor, is to find the balance between the more self-involved, unsavory aspects of the character and kind of the bluster and his self-defining characteristics that are sort of what makes him kind of an asshole and a little repulsive and a little annoying,” Wood adds. “It's about finding the balance of those things and the vulnerable human being underneath that's using those things as a skin to feel better about himself.”
It turns out that making a bad dad lovable wasn’t the film’s greatest challenge, though. Indeed, it’s actually kinda hard to film something in middle-of-nowhere New Zealand.
“This one took place like 90% in the wilderness,” Timspon says. “So you can't pivot. Because accommodation's booked, you can't just uproot and move elsewhere. It looks incredible when it works, and when it doesn't it's hell on earth.”
For that, Wood credited the crew for their grit on set (read: the middle of nowhere). “They were really incredible and resilient and dedicated,” he says. “And the conditions weren't always easy, but there was a realness. It was a small crew. It was a small group of us.”
It’s a joy to watch these two bounce off of each other, because it’s evident that both are so enamored by the other’s creative process. Timpson couldn’t say enough about Wood’s performance, but it turns out that wasn’t the only thing the former hobbit was responsible for bringing to the project.
“I know two [crew members] who took the film on because they worked with Elijah on [The Lord of the] Rings, and that's the only reason they took the movie. It wasn’t because of me,” Timpson says good-naturedly. “In a way it was a reunion for the core creative team [between Timpson, Wood, and co-writer Toby Harvard], but there was also a reunion of sorts for people who had worked 20 years earlier with Elijah, and had grown up from those [films].”
With this in mind, it became all but obligatory to ask Wood about his return to New Zealand to work there for the first time in over 20 years. (The actor has visited the country several times since filming on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy completed, but not to make films.)
“[It was] Incredible. Obviously for formative years of my life spent there, I have a real deep love and sense of connection with the country and its people,” says Wood. “And I hadn't been in nine years. It'd been probably the longest stretch of time having been away from it in my life since having been there for the first time.
“There was a little river down below and my son would want to say goodnight to the river every night,” Wood goes on. “I mean, just these beautiful experiences of just tramping through wilderness and being kids out in the wilds of New Zealand, and to share that with them was just really special. My wife had never been either, so it was just really [nice]. That was kind of part of the pitch early on. A year, or whatever, in advance of making it there was this idea [of the film], it takes place in the wilds of New Zealand, we could go down there and it could be this family adventure and we could make a movie at the same time. That's sort of what it was, which was lovely.”
Some quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
