By Evan Baxter-Carr (he/him)

Know your ending – it is a rule every filmmaker understands. A bad ending is not just a disappointment; it is a betrayal. Hours of time spent just to fumble at the final moment, a poor conclusion is enough to scare away an entire audience from stepping foot in the cinema again.

Budding director Jamie Puckett knows the risks, but he is not so concerned. Fresh out of City of Glasgow College, the media student is busy crafting his own film, Drunk and Orderly, but the ending is not high on his list of priorities. “I’ve come up with a few different endings, but I’ve taken them all out,” he said with a nervous laugh. “They were all a bit subpar.”

Despite having no plan for how to wrap up the project, Jamie has countless ideas for the plotline of Drunk and Orderly. Framed as a classic murder mystery, detectives Frank ‘Drunk’ Wilson and James ‘Orderly’ McAllester serve as our quick-witted protagonists. “I’m aiming to a bit more for the comedy side of things,” Jamie said. “I find it easier to come up with jokes that could work rather than more serious dialogue. It just doesn’t come very naturally to me.”

It was in the middle of a party when Jamie and his friend Adam concocted the idea for the film. Based on an offhand joke while they were both drunk, it only makes sense that Drunk and Orderly ended up as a comedy. Jamie said: “I don’t know how it came about, but there was a picture of us taken, and we started joking that it was a poster for a buddy cop film, so I made one.”

Adam recalls the night with more clarity: “We just started adding small characteristics to the two leads, Drunk and Orderly,” he said. “We kept adding things until Jamie said he had actually begun writing it. I’m not much of a fan of writing, so I’m primarily letting Jamie work on the script… Editing is my primary focus.”

Decades-old sitcoms and serial killer dramas have formed the foundations for the project. From Mindhunter to Red Dwarf, numerous shows have served as their creative fuel, but none more than Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. Regarding the show, Jamie said: “It’s a lot of intentional mistakes. They’re making a sort of parody of old ‘80s sitcoms, so they will deliberately have a line overdubbed, or flying things on strings that you can clearly see. Low effort, low budget. It has a certain charm to it that I would like to ideally capture.”

Filmmakers are prone to gloat about their work, but Jamie is quite the opposite. Despite working as the main writer on the film, he was in no mood to brag about his role. “Most of my writing ends up being nonsensical. The plot sort of falls away two-thirds in because I don’t know how to end things … But no matter what, there will always be another person who can come in and smooth things over.”

Whether it is Adam or his other college friends, Jamie already has a tight-knit team to help out on the project, but he is still on the search to expand his crew. With a quick sigh and a long pause, it was clear he did not enjoy this part of the process. “Communication has always been a problem with me,” he said. “Once people know me, I pick up how to talk to them; they pick up how to talk to me. Back in my college short film, there was an actress, and watching her felt like a conversation with a brick wall. As a director, I probably should have been more vocal about my concerns. That’s why I prefer to work with friends.”

Despite Jamie’s concerns, Adam spoke certainly about his hope for the film. Having first met in college, the two have become creative confidants, leaning on one another for inspiration. “Jamie is very passionate,” he said. “He’s very skilled with the camera and cinematography, which I’m excited to see brought into our new film.”

On the topic of camerawork, Jamie seemed to brighten up. His modesty melted away, and in its place came pride, remarking about the camera with a never-ending smile. He became lost in his words, mesmerised by his adoration for cinematography. “Do you ever get a new phone, and you’re just excited to see what all the buttons do, and check all the fun settings?” he said. “I love getting my hands on a camera … It’s like playing with a toy. You just feel like a little kid.”

Diving deeper into his history with the camera, his passion for filmmaking dates back to his early childhood. Recording tense battles between Lego characters, Jamie has been a self-employed cameraman from as young as three years old. “It’s a lifelong passion,” he said. “There was definitely some sort of interest since I was a kid, so I think I’m doing what will make me the happiest.”

Jamie’s mother, Yvonne, vividly recalls his film-making infancy. “He always had a fascination with moving images,” she said. Narrating her son’s experiments with a flip camera and his scratch-off poster of films to watch, since nursery, Jamie had the passion of a young Martin Scorsese.

However, the film industry has not always been his focus. Studying civil engineering in university, working full-time in the NHS, and even taking an interest in video game design, Jamie’s life has been an odyssey of different career paths. “I was miserable at times,” he said, “doing a course I wasn’t actually enjoying… I was feeling constantly down, and then my mum reminded me that I used to make films as a kid.”

It was because of that simple reminder that Jamie turned his life around. After dropping out of university and searching for a course in TV production, the filmmaker turned his childhood passion into his adult purpose. “He had a real interest in film,” Yvonne said, “so to be honest, it was a real shock for me when he turned around and said he wanted to be an engineer. I felt so sorry for him because he had obviously made a decision I think he was pushed into by the school … I kind of felt he fell on engineering. I really wanted him to please himself, to do something he had genuine interest in.”

Since then, cinema has been Jamie’s calling. Drunk and Orderly is one of many passion projects the filmmaker has been a part of, embracing every moment in the industry. “Anything I have done professionally, I’ve had such a great time,” he said, “even if it’s rubbish [film] work. I work a retail job – that is rubbish work. I can’t express how much more I enjoy filmmaking.”

Although Jamie takes every opportunity he sees, he clearly has his preferences. Speaking about the state of cinema, his voice darkened with disappointment as the topic turned to Hollywood. From the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the myriad Universal franchises, he had no words of praise for the blockbuster titans. “Cinema itself has been trending very poorly down the way,” he said. “Hopefully there’s a rebound… In Hollywood, you hear about a director having these ideas, and the studio says no. You’re under a lot more pressure with big studio films. They like to play it safe.”

Pressure in Hollywood has been higher than ever in the past few years. With frequent strike action, box office failures, and controversies in every production, stepping into the film industry has never looked riskier. Regardless, Jamie seems nonchalant about his future. “Your risk is always financial in cinema,” he said. “The more creative you are, the bigger the financial risk. They’re directly proportional. If you’re not passionate enough to take that risk, I don’t think you care about it enough.”

In the process of making Drunk and Orderly, the Hollywood strikes are the last thing on his mind. “I just don’t feel nervous about it. I’m so confident that this is what I want to do with my life that I will just take whatever is thrown at me and make it work.”

So, while knowing your ending is always useful, Jamie Puckett is proof that it is not always necessary. Stepping into an industry full of uncertainty, he could not sound more confident that cinema is where he belongs. The state of Hollywood may be unpredictable, and Drunk and Orderly may not have a conclusion, but Jamie knows one thing for certain: his life as a filmmaker has only just begun.

Evan Baxter-Carr

My name is Evan (he/him). I am currently studying English and journalism at Strathclyde University, and regularly host a show as part of the Fusion Radio society. Outside of Strath, I write novels and run Doombox Music, a music journalism website where I write weekly reviews and conduct interviews with up-and-coming musicians.