by Dov Kornits
“I work for TLA Releasing here in the UK and my job is to acquire LGBT content for the UK, North America and France,” says Silver over zoom from London. “That’s my day job, so I’m very, very familiar with LGBT films.
“One of the films I bought a few years back was Jayson Bend: Queen and Country, which is a short film that Matt Carter made. I got to know Matt and we became very friendly. Matt contacted me and said, ‘Look, I’ve got another idea for a movie. This is loosely based on my experiences. Here’s the vague outline’. I said, ‘You know what? I really love your visual style. You’ve got an incredible eye and you’re multi-talented. This is a great opportunity to do something I wanted to do for a very long time, which is write’.”
Silver grew up in Melbourne, which is where his love for cinema was born. My friend Avi would come over and we’d watch films every weekend… A lot of Woody Allen,” he confesses reservedly. “We watched every single Woody Allen movie in chronological order. We also watched a lot of terrible horror movies, all the Howling movies and we used to go to the cinema all the time; we’d get to a point where there was literally nothing to see anymore. I remember seeing The Pagemaster with Macaulay Culkin because there was literally nothing else to see!”
Fast forward a few years, and Silver got a job working for Fairfax, working on the cinema listings section, which put him in contact with Palace Cinemas, where he would go on to work for a period of time.
Around 16 years ago, Adam was dating an actor, who moved to the UK to pursue his career. Adam followed, and although they are no longer together, everything has worked out fine, as can be seen by the wedding photo that is visible during our interview.
“That was just after we stood on the glass,” says Silver, referring to the Jewish custom. “We got carried on chairs just after that… That was just before the pandemic.”
But back to In From the Side, which any rugby fan will know refers to a penalty when a player joins the ruck from the side. The story follows an LGBT rugby team, and a secret love affair that develops between two players.
How much did Silver know about the LGBT rugby scene, and rugby in general?
“I have no experience at all. Zero, absolutely nothing,” he confesses. “Matt had all that experience. He was in a few rugby teams. He leveraged off that experience for the writing, I leveraged off everything else and also, I leveraged off my knowledge of LGBT content and what I knew people wanted to see in LGBT films and what they didn’t want to see in LGBT films, what I thought works as stories in LGBT films based on my experience, so I just brought all that together for this.”
And the million dollar question: what do people want to see in LGBT films? “I wanted to show the community in as positive a light as possible,” he answers, also referencing Bros and Fire Island as examples of that. “Obviously, a lot of the characters have flaws, but what I wanted to show is the joy of community that comes from the gay lifestyle.
“You see a lot of LGBT content where there’s a real struggle to come out to your family or somebody has an illness that prevents them from living a happy life or there’s suicide at the end or something. What we wanted to show more is the joy of being gay, the community involved and normal lives that we lead that don’t lead necessarily to illness, death, and struggle with family.”
Producing a film is a different discipline to sales and distribution, which Silver discovered very quickly. “I was involved in the casting process, so it was from beginning to end. It was so small budget and we were doing so much. As soon as the film started shooting, it was 15 hour days.”
The hard work and Silver’s experience in sales has paid off, though, with In From the Side opening on 60 screens in the UK, and sold to the US, Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, Latin America and Israel.
Although Silver won’t be coming to Australia for the screenings at the British Film Festival, his family will be turning up in spades to see his first writing/producing credit. Avi might even be there.
So, will Adam Silver turn to filmmaking rather than film sales now? “I’ve been doing sales and distribution and acquisitions now for a long time and I love it. I don’t want to give it up but also, the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done was working on this movie. Hopefully, there’s more of that in the future.”
In From the Side screens at the British Film Festival, October 19 – November 16, 2022
