James and Harrison Newman, last featured on DN for their infidelity art exhibition comedy Do Not Touch, return to our pages with another cringe-inducing short which this time takes shots at the exploitative world of the gig economy. Amigo, directed by the two brothers and written by James and fellow No Context Productions co-director Tom Waterhouse, puts forth a pointed examination of the commodification of human connection, but of course with lots of laughs. The film’s well-executed satire shines through perceptive character observation, astute storytelling and a brilliant performance from returning collaborator, comedian Seann Walsh. Their cinematographic approach eschews technical showboating in favour of a grounded realism that makes the absurd rent-a-friend premise feel uncomfortably plausible. This visual honesty serves the thematic content perfectly – technology’s promise of seamless human connection at our fingertips reduced to the mundane reality of a branded hi-vis wearing cyclist struggling through ultimately vacuous interactions in the hope of a 5-star rating. Amigo’s structural compression, distilling six planned series episodes into ten minutes, forces every moment to earn its place. The film operates in four distinct acts, each gear change deliberately jarring to mirror the protagonist’s fecklessness within his circumstances and results in a comedy that deftly interrogates the exploitation of the working class for the convenience of the upper classes and profiteering of big tech without ever losing its sense of humour. Welcoming the No Context trio back for Amigo’s premiere, we speak to them about navigating the challenge of lampooning the gig economy without becoming preachy, the process of distilling six web series episodes into a ten-minute short film and their philosophy of working with limited budgets while maintaining high production values.
Every good story has to start somewhere, where did this one begin?
James Newman: The project first began back in 2017, when I was working at Stolen Picture with my good friend Annabelle Robertson, who was the general manager at the time. We were chatting about ideas for TV shows and landed on the concept of a ‘rent-a-boyfriend’ service. I took the idea to my co-writer, Tom Waterhouse, and together we started developing it further. I wanted to explore the concept through the lens of the gig economy, and that twist eventually led us to the idea of a male escort who could be hired through an app. Tom and I wrote a pilot for a TV show around this, but it ended up sitting on our hard drives and didn’t gain much traction on the script competition circuit.
After a break from writing and following the premiere of Do Not Touch with DN, I started thinking about what to do next. That’s when we revisited this idea. What stood out to me – what made me laugh and feel something – wasn’t the sex work itself, but the ways people might not use the app for its intended purpose. They might hire the guy to hold their spot in a queue, or to bulk out a sparse funeral crowd. That kind of innocence and misguided naivety from the users was what gave the idea its charm.
We decided the best way to get it out into the world was to turn the pilot into a short film.
How did the story then evolve to where it is now?
JN: Instead of a rent-a-boyfriend or a prostitution app, we reimagined it as a rent-a-friend platform. From there, we wrote six 10-minute episodes for a web series. Everyone we pitched it to said, “You need to make this now before someone else does.” We tried to move forward with a producer, but the shopping agreement they sent included a clause that would have handed over the IP – without a release clause – so we walked away. If anything, that made us even more determined to make it ourselves. We decided the best way to get it out into the world was to turn the pilot into a short film. After parting ways with the previous producer, I showed the short to Guy Lindley, who came on board to produce. We submitted the project to the Talkies Short Film Commission, won, and suddenly had a deadline. So Tom and I dove back in, adapting the pilot into a short. We shot it over three days in January 2024, on a tight budget of just £4,000.
There is a darkness to the comedy entrenched in the shittyness of the gig economy and the extremes people have to go to. How did you approach satirising this world without becoming too preachy or obvious?
JN: What we wanted to explore was the human service element of technology. There’s the fancy tech platform, and then there’s the reality of the service, which is that of a bloke on a bike, who’s shattered and grumpy from having to cycle everywhere. I think with satire, you need to make your own mind up, and not just take the line of whatever political identity you identify with. I think it becomes boring and predictable when you don’t treat the world with the ability for multiple ideas to be true at the same time; you’re just ramming a Guardian article down the throat of the audience. Life is complicated and messy.
Tom Waterhouse: The gig economy is based on mutual judgment. Your Uber score is taken into consideration, just as the Uber driver relies on ratings for future work. It creates a situation where we both judge one another for the betterment of our experience. We thought that would be funny applied to friendship but at the cost of an inauthentic, paid relationship. But we didn’t want to judge – I would much rather my friends were funnier, not funnier than me, obviously, but a baby bear type situation. And I’m Goldilocks. I’ve forgotten the question.
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Harrison Newman: We used this theme like a lens, we allowed it to distort the viewer’s perception of the way Dustin saw the world. While many thrive within the gig economy, others use it to slack more and this is where Dustin fits in. His selfish nature drew him to it, as he could choose when to work, he could control his life more. Then coming to the rude awakening when his girlfriend forces him out of the house on a job. I think it was more the progression of the technology we’re trying to interrogate. As in, where would these companies go if there were more relaxed restrictions? It’s looking at where Uber would be if you could rent people. Similar to the profession in Japan, where you can rent a person for a day. In the western world it would be at your fingertips and at the buyer’s convenience.
How did you identify which elements were essential to preserve the core story when compressing all the material you had for the web series?
JN: I think it was an amalgamation of its best ideas, which ideas were sticking with us that naturally fit the structure of the short film. The film does feel like a mini showcase of what the series could be. There’s a lot that never made it, but the ideas that did make it into the short really played with the rent-a-friend app.
HN: We tried to find a story that distilled the essence of what we were trying to create in the web series. At its heart, Amigo is about Dustin, and we took the underlying story of the protagonist and manipulated it into a short film. Quite a tough leap.
We used this theme like a lens, we allowed it to distort the viewer’s perception of the way Dustin saw the world.
The rent-a-friend concept could easily become a showcase for absurdity but Seann is so level in his performance. How did you ensure he remained relatable rather than slipping into a comedic caricature?
JN: We’ve worked with Seann a lot now and we’ve always played for truth and let him and the scene, or the situations do the heavy lifting. Seann is brilliant and he will naturally find the beats of the scene and know what’s funny to happen to the character without being overtly funny in the scene. I think as soon as someone tries to be funny, you lose the verisimilitude, and the comedy should come from characters acting and reacting to their situations.
TW: Seann definitely has to take a lot of the credit. He has an incredible knack of coming across as likeable despite being desperately pathetic. In the film.
HN: Seann brought a lot of that to the character. He knew that the situation is ridiculous in its nature and that the best way to play it is straight. Let the absurdity of the situation run itself. He was finding moments to play off, which especially in his last monologue he brought fantastic performances.
I know that this brilliant, polished version of the edit isn’t the first. How did you distinguish between scenes that were nice to have versus absolutely essential? What was your litmus test?
JN: Through the test screenings, anything that didn’t get a laugh was out. Everything unnecessary that didn’t push the characters the scene story forward was gone. I think with comedy, it should be as long as it needs to be and edited like you’re embarrassed for the length of it, especially with shorts.
TW: Test screenings really are a game-changer. We saw the film die on its arse early on and knew it needed major surgery. James and I had just seen the Gibbons’ Brothers discuss their work on Alpha Papa and how they’d had a terrible test screening and realised the piece had too much ‘air’ in it and they needed to suck that air out and make it as punchy as possible. That helped a lot. And, even more so moving forward.
HN: There were no scenes dropped, we just trimmed down all the air and pulled out what we deemed unnecessary dialogue. When the crunch is on like that it becomes purely what progresses the story.
We need to set up the concept in 30 seconds, see the reality of the concept play out in like a minute and then go into the story, so the short is essentially in four acts.
You’re now writing it as a spec TV pilot again. How has making the short film informed your approach to the series format?
JN: In writing, you’re guessing people’s reactions and that happens in a silo. And as a different format you have the luxury of time, where with this, it was like we need to set up the concept in 30 seconds, see the reality of the concept play out in like a minute and then go into the story, so the short is essentially in four acts, and I think you can feel the gear changes a bit more with the amount of stuff we have to get through in such a short time. But with the pilot now, everything has time to breathe, and you can explore parts with more depth with more time. So, everything in the short could be turned into themes of an episode or series, as this short is probably too dense.
Your budget and the ultimate quality level of the short are something to aim for!
JN: We have to credit Harrison, Guy Lindley, Ben Halford, and the cast and crew who gave up their time to get this made, and all the kind people who backed us, as well as the Talkies Film Commission and the locations. Ben did an excellent job as DOP. He made it look way more expensive. Guy was a great haggler and very determined in the way he approached things – he really stepped up our production in terms of what we accessed and accomplished.
TW: James won’t do it, but he deserves equal credit for this. Without his vision and headstrong determination, none of this would have happened, along with the other films we’ve made. He is the master of making magic happen out of nothing. This boy can really polish a turd.
HN: We are lucky to have an incredible network through our networks that we can pull an awful lot of favours and kind people we know.
The project spans from 2017 to 2024. Did your perspective on the gig economy and social apps evolve during that time? Have real-world developments changed your approach to the material?
JN: Great question. Yes, I was fearing an actual Amigo app would come out before we’d done anything with it, making this project no longer satire. I was on the tube platform and I saw an ad for “Amicable,” which is a divorce application – so the opposite of Amigo, I guess.
There’s a reason why it’s sticking around in the back of your mind, or there’s a reason why you’re drawn to it. It may just need slight tweaking to make it work where it feels like it’s the obvious form.
Looking back on those years of development, what advice would you give to other filmmakers sitting on scripts that “didn’t gain much traction”? When is it worth revisiting old material, and when should you move on?
JN: For this story, I’m going to say it was me, but it wasn’t me, it was someone I used to work with, but it sounds better, trust me… So I was in a lift with Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, showing them to an edit suite, and I asked them for advice and they said, “Never throw anything away”. I think that’s valuable advice because there’s always value in anything, even if it doesn’t work in the instance you think, there’s a reason why it’s sticking around in the back of your mind, or there’s a reason why you’re drawn to it. It may just need slight tweaking to make it work where it feels like it’s the obvious form. I think the biggest change with the 2025 pilot is that we’ve now figured it out, the kinks of the short and what it should have been… You see much better, and I’ve filled out the word count.
HN: I don’t think either has a time-based expiration. I think it’s a feeling. If it’s no longer fun if it doesn’t spark something in you. Give it time to breathe, don’t get so caught up in making something now.
What is fresh and cracking right now on your roster?
JN: We’ve got the Ladder, which is a short that’s part-funded, and writing more pilots, features, and shorts.
TW: Alongside Amigo, No Context Productions has two other films currently on the circuit (Mum’s the Word & Imagine Me and You), while we develop Amigo into a 30-minute pilot (as mentioned).
