Hi Lack. Who are you and what do you do in comedy?
We're Jon Price and Belal Ladkani, writer performers who direct and produce our own comedy films and sketches. We're two of the founders of Core Of Monkos and are now launching our new group Lack Of Hinge. We've been friends for almost 20 years and that really comes across on screen. We're almost always on the same page when it comes to what's funny. Working together we take on the roles of writer, producer, director & editor meaning we're the complete package. We can stick to tight budgets but achieve high production values and feel our content fills a current gap in British Comedy for the dark, filmic and surreal.
Can you remember the first thing you wrote?
The first thing we wrote together was Time Bros. - A pilot for a sci-fi adventure mini-series that we plan to continue.
We'd been heavily drinking the night before and woke up with a stonking hangover. That morning we decided to write a script for the first time. Before that we'd worked from outlines and used a lot of improvised performance. We honestly can't remember how we came up with the idea but we wrote it and filmed it that day on camcorder. We were pleased with the results and it started a new era for us. This was the birth of Lack Of Hinge. From that point on we decided to up our game and take things more seriously. We advertised for a crew and have made several more shorts. We screened them around London, culminating in winning a competition with our film Dead & Breakfast judged by Steven Stamp of BAFTA winning People Just Do Nothing. He said, 'This was well plotted and nicely directed. Some great lines in there too'.
What is - or was - your favourite venue to perform in?
We regularly screen at Kino Open Mic film night and have developed a good fan base there. We love the crowd and creators who attend. There's a real mix of strangeness and we feel at home there.
What's your proudest moment, in terms of your comedy work?
Our proudest moment so far is reaching the number one spot on comedy streaming website Comedy Crowd TV based on number of fans with our group Core Of Monkos. This led to signing an exclusive deal with them to stream our content on their VOD platform and MX player with over 500 million global users. This has opened a few doors for us to discuss potential mini-series with them and got our content in front of a lot more people.
If you had £1m to spend on comedy, where would your money go?
We'd bribe our way into the industry. Just kidding. We'd quit our day jobs and dedicate ourselves to pursuing a career in comedy full time. We have several series ideas that we would develop further with the aim of shopping them around TV & streaming comedy commissioning editors to see if there's any interest. We'd also start working on a feature. As our style is cinematic we feel our comedy would work really well on the big screen. We currently make 10 minute short films that cost less than a grand that look high production value. We could make a million go far.
Where would you like to be in 10 years' time?
Making great comedy with great people we respect. When people think of British Comedy we'd love to be amongst the groups that people name. To be trusted creators who can come up with the goods. We hope that we would be several years into a successful series and a feature with several more in the pipeline.
If a genie offered you one wish, what would you ask for?
We'd ask for gills. We've always wanted to swim along the Thames riverbed and investigate trolleys.
Published: Friday 17th April 2020