TORONTO- "It was like a really long heart attack." That's how British director Richard Ayoade described what it was like to watch his film "Submarine" alongside an audience for the first time, at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Did it help that the audience cheered his movie? Did Ayoade's heart ease back to its regular pace, and did he feel relief?
"I don't necessarily know that there's a reaction that would dissipate all of the tension. I don't know what kind of reaction would do that," he says.
I tell him the audience laughed in the right spots; that's always a good sign.
"They did laugh," he says. But then Ayoade ponders future screenings and future audience reactions that -- he imagines -- may not be so positive. It could be an unending series of heart attacks.
He says the TIFF premier "could be a complete anomaly. It could be that everyone from here on despises it. It's very hard to know."
Ayoade's humour is self-effacing and dry like burnt charcoal. He's immune to compliments. When Ben Stiller, the film's executive director, stood on stage with Ayoade at the "Submarine" premiere and praised him, Ayoade acted like a victim of mistaken identity.
(This may also sum up his personality: As I interview him in a hotel restaurant, he delicately eats a cheeseburger with a knife and fork. He does this in the most unobtrusive way possible. After a short time, it's easy to forget the burger is even on the table. His manners are impeccable.)
But while Ayoade is unassuming, it belies his talent and the film's success. Based on writer Joe Dunthorne's book of the same name, "Submarine" tells the story of 15-year-old Oliver Tate. The boy is a self-regarding intellectual who struggles to lose his virginity while his parents' marriage fractures.
It's a comedy with moments of deep sadness, and there is a dreamy feel of timelessness. Ayoade, primarily known as a comedian back in Britain, has directed for television and done music videos for indie-rock bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But "Submarine" is his first full-length film.
He also wrote the screenplay himself, becoming deeply immersed in the source material. It shows in the film: there is a precise attention to detail. The boy considers himself an intellectual loner, and when the camera shows his bedroom, there's a glimpse of a movie poster for Jean-Pierre Mellville's French New Wave film "Le Samourai," about a lone-wolf hitman played by Alain Dolon.
"I love (French New Wave) films. I don't think it's necessarily improved other things I've done or might do, but particularly with this character, I felt that he was somewhat seeing himself as an Alain Delon figure and that he would think he had some gallant mystery about him," says Ayoade.
"So it seemed an appropriate way to frame it. Because the idea really is that the film is positioned from his point of view. It's filmed as if that's the way Oliver would like to appear."
Ayoade also chose to avoid any references to a specific time period. Oliver's parents watch television on a set from the 1970s, but clothing, cars and other objects are either much newer or older.
"The idea of trying to relate it to contemporary 15-year-olds seemed wrong to me," he says. "But neither did I want it to feel like it was some kind of satire of the 80s, or how ridiculous the 80s were, because that wasn't important either. I like that ‘Harold and Maude' doesn't feel like it particularly exists in a time-frame, other than the odd cut of the suit. It could be any time really. I like that in films. I think Truffaut films have a certain timelessness."
"And you know," he continues, "‘The Graduate' came out in the Summer of Love and looks like the early sixties -- everyone has thin ties and thin lapels. It could easily be a late-50s film, really."
Talking about films draws out the longest answers from Ayoade. But in Britain, he might be best known for his television roles in comedies like "The IT Crowd." In that show, he plays a tech support nerd named Maurice Moss who works in the bowels of a large company.
If you search "Moss" or "Ayoade" on YouTube, you'll find montages of his best lines in the show. Sometimes, Ayoade is stopped by Moss fans in the street. But despite the role, he hates calling himself an actor. "Not that I dignify myself by saying I'm an actor," he corrects himself at one point.
The role of Maurice Moss was actually written for Ayoade by the show's creator; he never auditioned for the part. And brief appearances in other British comedy shows like "The Mighty Boosh" or "Nathan Barley" were at the request of friends.
He says every comedian wants to be something other than a comedian.
"Being a comedian is a last resort -- most comedians want to be musicians or anything else," Ayoade tells me.
I ask him if he ever tried being a musician.
"I used to be in a band that was a pretty terrible band," he says. "Part of our problem is that we could never settle on a name. So we were virtually unbilled. In our only real live performance, someone said we were the second-least tight band they'd ever seen."
Now that he's become a feature-film director, Ayoade may have found something that fits him perfectly. But don't tell him that he's very good.
"I suppose it depends how this film goes -- whether I'm allowed to make anything else," he says.
