The Deadmeat story began in London in 1990, having left drama school where he trained with American Drama Coach Doreen Cannon at RADA, who taught the likes of Pierce Brosnan and many other well known Hollywood actors. Q found work as a film actor, with Ken Russell in Aria, and then with Bruce Beresford in Mr. Johnson, a drama set in 1920’s Africa. “Bruce had just finished Driving Miss Daisy with Morgan Freeman, and he told me that with the limited opportunities for black actors in Britain. I’d have a better chance if I wrote a book or a screenplay. I began Deadmeat soon afterwards and when it was finished. I used desktop publishing software to design it myself. I had the first part printed as a pocket-sized, 60 page booklet and started selling.” He converted his Ford Escort into a mobile Deadmeat billboard and sold the book in night clubs for £5 a copy. A lot of people I met thought I was crazy, but I eventually sold almost 4,000 copies.” The concluding booklet was followed by a cassette and videotape and Q gradually built up a cult following.
Fab 5 Freddy the host of “YO! MTV RAPS” saw Q selling books in a nightclub in London, and was so impressed that he interviewed him on the show and turned him into a “clubland maverick.” Q finally found a mainstream publisher, Sceptre, whose approach to marketing appealed to him and he wrote a “remixed” version, which a member of the West Yorkshire Playhouse recommended to director Jude Kelly and they turned it into a multimedia drama, which starred Sir Ian Mckellen of ”X-men” fame, who appeared as a manipulative art dealer, and they weaved digital film, photography, websites, rap, a live band, disc jockeys, poetry, gospel singing and audience participation onto a framework of a “straight” stage dialogue. Live, filmed and virtual characters appeared on the stage and the big screens. “Did Sir Ian McKellen need to do a project like this?” asks Q, “No, the fact that he was prepared to take the risk was a great statement in favour of what we were doing.”
Influenced by French films, such as Betty Blue and L’argent, Q set out on his quest to make Deadmeat into a movie, he was commissioned to make a pilot, he decided to make an interactive short film that was linked to the imagery of his website, the short was picked up by UIP in London and placed in front of the Keanu Reeves movie “The Watcher” in over 20 cinemas.
Q was discovered by the iconic fashion photographer Nick Knight when he accompanied a friend onto a shoot, and together they went on to shoot major campaigns for top fashion designers. He forged a personal friendship with designer Ozwald Boateng and did his fashion shows in London and Paris, and still wears his suits to this day. Ozwald has said that Q is the only person that looks better in his suits than him.
Q has continued to work as an actor appearing in prime time shows such as “Waking The Dead, Silent Witness and Ruth Rendell Mysteries.” Deadmeat the movie brings together a stellar cast of Britain’s best black actor’s and with the same flare as Spike Lee and Tyler Perry, it is written, directed and produced by Q.
The film has done a clean sweep of the black festivals in Los Angeles, namely The American Black Film Festival, The Pan African Film festival and now the Hollywood Black Film festival. It has won the Best British Feature at the Black Filmmaker’s Festival in London. It has won The Accolade Award For Excellence in California. Q was nominated for the best director of a first feature in the Pan African Film Festival.
“There is a new wave of Black British Talent who are working very successfully within the American movie industry, such as Idris Elba and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, that is what he aspires to do.
Q is pleased the primary film festivals in urban Hollywood have all made him feel welcome and have given Q the opportunity to showcase his work, network and meet their great talent in all departments of the business, it has changed the way he thinks about making films and it has raised the bar, what more could an aspiring filmmaker ask for?”
