Welsh filmmaker Jamie Adams brought Quentin Tarantino, Kylie Minogue, and Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA to Porthcawl earlier this year to shoot Tangled Up in Blue.
Cameras rolled earlier in the year as Adams brought his heroes to his hometown for the production of Tangled Up in Blue. For Adams, that arrival felt like an out of body experience
.
In the movie, Tarantino portrays a veteran talent manager. The character has four decades of experience guiding icons. He ends up marooned at a hotel bar with an old flame on one side and a lost soul on the other.
The filmmaker shot the movie in a week. He used his improv style, where scenes are created spontaneously rather than being read from a pre-written script.
Filming at the Family Pub
Adams incorporated personal locations into the film. He used the tavern previously managed by his father.
Known then as the Ship and Castle, the venue featured a bar that is actually a boat brought from Weymouth. That is where the director was born.
Filming inside the pub created a surreal collision of worlds for the director. So I’ve got Quentin Tarantino having a pint with me in my dad’s old pub, talking to Neil, one of my old pals, who I’ve known since I was like eight years old,
Adams recalled.
Tarantino had never been to Wales before. He embraced the spontaneous filmmaking approach.
According to Adams, the director remarked that the process evoked the French New Wave film movement of the late 1950s through the late 1960s.
Minogue and RZA Join South Wales Ensemble
Minogue joined the project due to her ties to the area. Minogue has described herself as half Welsh,
with her mother, Carol Jones, and Welsh-speaking Nain Millie Jones, having emigrated from Maesteg, also in Bridgend county, to Australia in the 1950s.
She told Adams she was rarely able to visit despite these strong roots in the country, so she jumped at the chance.
The cast also includes Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA. He rounds out an ensemble assembled in south Wales.
Adams previously worked with Jennifer Grey on the 2019 film Bittersweet Symphony.
Targeting Summer 2027
The director is aiming for summer 2027. There is no current release date.
He has hopes that Cardiff can play host to a premiere with his star cast attending.
Months after filming at locations like The Parkway Hotel in June, the community continues to talk about the production.
They’re still talking about it down my local pub,
Adams said, describing the experience as a beautiful haze that brought people together in the story.