From The Cutting Room Floor #1: The One Where Tom Puts A Hole In His Face


One of the tragedies of art is how much perfectly decent stuff is chucked away. The 300 hours of footage I shot for Janapar is a case in point. The finished film is 79 minutes long, so for every minute of footage I shot, another four hours were binned. (Admittedly, plenty of it was shite, but a lot of it wasn’t.)

Beginning today, then, I’ll be bringing the best of this extra material back to life. For those who’ve seen Janapar, these clips will explain a few things glossed over in the main feature. For those who haven’t seen it, they’ll be entertaining glimpses of life on the road in their own right.

The first clip answers the question of why Tom appears to be exhibiting the remains of a black eye in some of the Armenian winter shots.

This dramatic scene was included in the main feature until quite a late stage in the edit, but it needed to be quite lengthy to make sense, and so it stalled the momentum of the story, which at that point was resolving the earlier question of how Tom & Andy came to be separated.

We found that we could ‘hide’ the injury in later scenes and explain the conflict more concisely and poetically through Andy’s parallel love interest, and so it had to go. (This particular tale is fully recounted in the book, as it did become a significant turning point.)

As always, your questions and comments are very much welcomed. Next week’s clip will bring a touch of comedy in some rather unusual sleeping arrangements.

Comments (skip to respond)

8 responses to “From The Cutting Room Floor #1: The One Where Tom Puts A Hole In His Face”

  1. excuse my for the irrelevant response, but “I fell down a hole. faceplant to concrete” is a nice idiom, a great catch-phrase. I’m definitely gonna use it a lot.

    1. You’re welcome!

  2. Manuela avatar

    Hi Tom! Is there a library in London where I could find your book ? Thanks!

    1. You might be able to request a copy at your local library. Let me know how you get on…

      1. Manuela avatar

        I’m only in London for the next three days … I’ll try to order from Amazon then, thanks.

        1. If you’re in London, you might also find copies in Daunt Books…

          1. (And I might as well mention that you can request a copy at any UK bookstore!)

          2. Manuela avatar

            I went at Daunt books and although their computer was showing they should have a copy, they couldn’t find it in the store … Now I’m out of UK so I guess I’ll order the book online.

Something to add?