Filmmaker Lawrie Brewster shares his journey from a working-class Scottish childhood to directing award-winning horror films. In this personal piece, he reflects on the formative influences, early setbacks, and breakthrough moments that led to the founding of Hex Studios, an independent horror studio recently profiled for its bold vision. He also discusses the revival of Amicus Productions, a classic British horror brand brought back to life through his creative leadership.
Beginnings in Scotland
It is not the easiest thing to become a filmmaker born into a working-class background, especially in Scotland. I, Lawrie Brewster, was born in 1981 and spent my early life surrounded by the former epicentres of coal mining, textiles and linoleum manufacturing. These included the linoleum capital of Kirkcaldy, the once-popular Victorian seaside resorts of Leven, and the close-knit mining communities of Buckhaven and Methil.
As a child, like any with the creative bug, my greatest passions would come to life whenever I had a blank drawing pad and a set of pencils. That was when I was happiest, drawing comics inspired by the films I was allowed to watch: black and white creature features such as Godzilla, or the classics from the age of Universal Horror. My own inferior versions of those stories filled the square panels I drew, and amidst gasps for breath, I would feverishly create them, always relying on the ‘Made in West Germany’ metal sharpener I kept beside my pencils.
My parents were interested in a mix of theology, conspiracy theories, aliens, and other topics associated with the New Age movement, which had a surprisingly mainstream presence in the 1980s. So there were plenty of Tarot cards and amethyst crystals floating around too.
The Spark of Imagination
It did help to bring me up with a more inquisitive mind, one that sought rich streams of creativity and imagination in everything I did. Goodness knows, it also burdened me with a tendency towards distraction that no doubt infuriated my schoolteachers.
But I expect many of you who share creative dreams and aspirations can relate to the detached wanderings of the imagination, as one gazed out of a classroom window towards the clouds beyond.
The dreams of my adolescent self were not so ambitious as to imagine I could become a filmmaker, never mind creating Hex Studios! Though I did harbour a secret hope of meeting my teenage muse, Kate Bush. (Alas, she remained unaware of my plump teenage presence, and I doubt my collection of early blue-catalogue Games Workshop miniatures would have impressed her.)
I was, in some respects, a bit of an outsider at high school, though one by one I found a group of my own Kurosawa-esque Seven Samurai to knock around with. We made for a strange bunch, often existing on the periphery of the popular groups, the nerd fraternity, sports and so on.
I suppose that group of amiable outcasts, never fully accepted but regarded with a kind of warmth, would later evolve into a social ideology of sorts, which in time gave rise to the creative fraternity that produced the British Horror Studio.
Theology and a Change in Direction
But let’s not jump ahead just yet, because the dream of pursuing film was always out of reach in the environment I grew up in. People meant no harm when they dismissed my novel ambitions of becoming a filmmaker; they simply saw them as about as likely as becoming an astronaut or a Formula One driver.
Some did manage it, of course, but they rarely came from the working class. In British society, and arguably in the United States too, this has not changed.
So it might come as a surprise that I became a student of Theology at the University of St Andrews, with academic achievements that neither I nor my teachers had expected. During that time, it seemed I might one day become a sort of secular minister for the relatively secular national Church of Scotland. My professors even reassured me that I would still be allowed to have a wife.
I was a believer, but not in any specific religious doctrine. I believed in the goodness of people and the beauty of art. There is much beauty in some churches (and much that is not), much like the duality we find in all things.
It would take a series of fairly devastating personal setbacks to force me to re-evaluate the context of my life as a young man in my twenties. But once everything had been stripped away, it became clear what remained.
A love of my family. A love of my friends. And a love of film.
Buried deep, but still smouldering, that love of film.
Entering the World of Theatre
But even then, trying to find a way to make films, or to experience any sort of opportunity to develop myself as a filmmaker, was a bit like a fledgling medical student trying to find a pulse. Where could it happen, and where could I go to study more? There was no clear path available to me at the time, so I first ended up enrolling in a college course in Acting and Performance, with a primary focus on theatre rather than film. In fact, back then, there was no formal training one could pursue specifically for screen performance.
The so-called ‘traditional technique’ of British acting remains firmly rooted in theatre and rarely embraces any of the ideas developed by American schools of acting. No Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner or Stella Adler to be found.
When I produced my first short films, it was at college with my fellow students. In my second year, after unintentionally bringing the spirit of Puss in Boots to a production of Macbeth, my lecturers told me that my future likely lay in directing rather than performing. This was especially clear, as the shows we produced at college gave us the chance to write and direct segments for public variety performances.
I was not disappointed to hear this from my lecturers, although I was a little disoriented at first, having become comfortable being one of the actors among my fellow students. But it pointed me in the right direction.
I began sharing my short films with local community groups that had begun to appear, where enthusiastic amateurs would borrow cameras from the local council (as they were still too expensive to buy), shoot short films, and screen them occasionally at local gatherings.
It was fun, but as I entered my mid-twenties, I still felt far removed from the world of the film industry. I carried on, doing the closest thing I could find to filmmaking, which involved producing event videos for galas, weddings, and eventually corporate clients.
Meeting Sarah Daly
At this point, such activities were realistic for the environment I lived in. In the era of post-New Labour optimism, which encouraged interest in technology and the creative industries, it seemed to many that I was on the right track.
It was also around this time that I, Lawrie Brewster, met Sarah Daly, who would become my collaborator in life, across all of my, and eventually our, creative projects. We had, as the saying goes, bust the casino when we won various awards for the success of our company. Though modest in national terms, it was seen as representing the best that our home county of Fife could offer, given the scope and ambition we had.
But we could not spend our entire lives producing adverts, could we? The foundation of my collaboration with Sarah was a shared promise to achieve something greater than that, not in a material sense, but in a creative and spiritual one.
In many ways, our success in the corporate sphere had led us to gather obligations that entangled us more and more in a conventional business lifestyle. Once you adopt certain costs and commitments, like mortgages and so forth, the freedom to go out and be creative with minimal risk becomes almost impossible.
We had reached the precipice. Would we go on together down the conventional, safer route, treating creativity as a hobby between corporate and commercial projects? Or did life have something else in store for us?
What happened next proved that it did, with buckets and spades.
A Winter Turning Point
During the great winter of 2010, the entire country was snowbound. For many people in Great Britain, it felt as though life itself had come to a stop for several months. That was certainly the case for the vehicles in our town, which stood still like frozen monuments.
But I did not want that to be the case for me and Sarah, and neither did she. We had discussed the possibility of making our first proper creative feature film, but surrounded by our fancier corporate video gear, and the perceived need for crew and resources, it all felt overwhelming. This contributed to the continued delay and postponement of our plans.
It was only during that winter, armed with a modest digital SLR that Sarah Daly had received as a gift from her brother, that we finally took the plunge and began work on our first feature film, White Out. It was a modest production, but grand and ambitious in its storytelling. The film portrayed a disastrous calamity brought about by snow that never left, and a devastating virus that decimated the world, with some haunting echoes of the coronavirus pandemic that the world would face years later.
The film welcomed contributions from artists around the globe, who filmed video snippets of themselves recording survival diaries as the fictional world succumbed. This organic approach to filmmaking, combining their contributions with a main narrative filmed by me, Sarah, and a few brave souls trudging through the snow, culminated in a complete feature.
HitRecord and Sundance
It also reflected the spirit of an online community called HitRecord, which was run by Hollywood actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Around the time we completed the film, that connection would lead to a second breakthrough.
One evening, after attempting to cook dinner, I received a phone call asking for Sarah Daly. I handed her the phone, puzzled by the American accent on the other end. Who could it possibly be?
It was Joseph Gordon-Levitt himself. He wanted to produce a script that Sarah had written, and I joined the project to create animations, artwork, and, in spirit, co-direct many of its elements… something I was proud to be a part of.
This resulted in the film Morgan M. Morgansen being screened at the Sundance Film Festival, where Robert Redford watched it with great amusement. There is a charming video of the venerable legend sitting before a laptop, chortling at the slapstick comedy, the steampunk-inspired illustrated visuals, and the delightful nonsense-rhyme narration by Sarah Daly, which gives the film a resplendently Jabberwocky-esque quality.
Door to Door at Pinewood
Soon after, I took a bus to Pinewood Studios in London. After some pleading at the security gate, I was allowed inside the enormous complex, where I went door to door pitching my film to the various production companies and distributors based there, armed with a DVD in a clear envelope.
Sarah Daly had opened one very exciting door, and I felt it was now my turn to do the same. As luck would have it, and against all common sense and odds, I made a deal for my film. That deal would transform our humble prospects and lives.
The Birth of Hex Studios
Then Sarah Daly did it again, this time with another short film collaboration featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and now also Channing Tatum. We presented that film at Austin’s South by Southwest Film Festival, where it was warmly received. It gained positive coverage in Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and even on the US chat show Carson Daly, where I received a generous shout-out from Gordon-Levitt himself.
With funds from the sale of our film, and critical praise for the fruits of Sarah Daly’s imagination, our world had been spectacularly transformed. We had gone from surviving on a bleak diet of corporate videos to standing at the threshold of something much greater.
It was scary, but at least our overheads were low, and there was still a huge amount we did not know. That ignorance would prove to be a precious thing, because the film industry and its secrets are indeed dark and mysterious.
From that moment, I, Lawrie Brewster, dared to invest the funds we had managed to secure into establishing a new company called Hex Media, more commonly known as Hex Studios. Unlike our previous corporate video services company, which was soon retired, this new venture had a singular purpose.
It would exist to produce horror films. And there was just enough money in our bank account to bet it all on the making of our very first horror feature. But perhaps more important than that, it became the first stepping stone toward our even grander vision – bringing back Amicus Productions, which I discussed in this recent article.
Lord of Tears
And, so it was… that Lord of Tears was the film that would introduce the world to the Owlman, and change our lives forever.
In the next article, we will explore what happened after the founding of Hex Studios and the rise of the Owlman, as our lives were transformed by early success and then faced with unexpected threats and challenges.
You can also find out more about the British Horror Studio launched by Lawrie Brewster, and explore the revival of Amicus Productions right here.
You can also follow Lawrie Brewster’s personal blog for essays and reflections on the current goings-on in independent film, right here.
