Darling dearest was shot across the north Yorkshire Moore’s and County Durham.
It is a story about love and time, it became something of a manifestation of my frustrations with the complexities of relationships. The ebb and flow of time, the doubts we have, but the affections we so often feel in spite of our insecurities.
Surprisingly which I wasn’t expecting was for it to be a personal experience. By that I mean the film is ad-libbed and when we make films like this we can so often be surprised by what we reveal about ourselves. It is a longing for something so close and intimate, yet the realisation and understanding that life and love are never linear. That even the most loving couple are not sheltered from the ravishes of time. This is a personal story, for what is loved and lost, and even what was never achieved – but the underlying message is always love. That sometimes, it can prevail.
Outside of Jason and I’s experimental grunge underground work which rejects censorship and all that is pleasant , we have over fifteen years dropped by to drop something raw off.
We did with Last Chance at Paradise in (2013) , an arthouse film about two young men after the apocalypse, only left with their love. Again in (2019) we released Stranger Than Us, a story about two men meeting for the first time and their truths and fears unravelling – wondering if they’ll accept one another. In 2026 we have returned with Darling Dearest. We have left the vibe of youthful love behind and moved to the other end, under the microscope, love and time. I am far from the boy in Last Chance at Paradise, and the new film is indicative of that journey. It is about the other end, where two people in love have long left behind the halcyon days of honeymooning and falling in love. It’s about the quiet that creeps in, the distance that comes between, and it is about the realisation of how you save that – if you want to!
Outside of our more intense work, I’m proud to have these 3 films , led by only two characters. They aren’t born to entertain you minute by minute. They are for silent reflection. They ask you to remember the time when you fell in love. The time when your heart first broke. The time when you knew you needed to save love or to let it go.
I dreamt up these productions of two male led films to make people almost sit and watch the minute by minute exchange of the couples. They are my deepest dreams, and my darkest fears.
Time. What do you do with time?
If you are lucky enough to be stood side by side with someone who loves you, what will the two of you do with that time?
Jason, Lewis and I, spent the first night driving for six hours, purely just to create a music montage that let the world into the two men’s true love story. The second evening Jason captured the ambience outside to match the mood, and Lewis and I went through the pace by pace scenes of exploring a night of truth and realisation.
The men are both fundamentally floored, we are all fundamentally floored. Nothing in love is linear, we cannot force it, and we cannot run from it. Even those who do run are not free, they just ask themself ‘what if?’.
Our characters William and Joshua have moved through the motions of relational experience. They have had thoughts that we all do, but love still remained. Darling Dearest is stark confrontation of the stressors and emotions that drive a wedge between many couples – it is the bravery to say the unsayable. It is the need to be open and honest and see what comes next.
When we finished shooting the film, I really wasn’t sure about it. I sat with it for a while and realised the slow nature of the film, and its conversational spotlight is indeed its strength – but not for everyone! I think this moment of film can be reflective for those who have loved, those that still love, and those that regret what they have let go.
Reflection is fine. I’ve reflected everything.
the YouTube cut is now online for free – a DVD will follow with the uncut version and original soundtrack.
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