Shane Meadows' coming-of-age comedy/drama gets lottery boost for wider distribution
Somers Town, the new film from award-winning director Shane Meadows, is one of several films to receive support from the UK Film Council's Prints and Advertising Fund, which continues to provide funding for the distribution of art-house, foreign and classic films to give audiences more choice.
LONDON – 28 August 2008. Somers Town, the new film from award-winning director Shane Meadows, is one of several films to receive support from the UK Film Council's Prints and Advertising Fund, which continues to provide funding for the distribution of art-house, foreign and classic films to give audiences more choice.
Optimum Releasing received £140,000 for BAFTA-winning director Shane Meadows' black and white comedy/drama about the friendship that grows between a runaway teenager from the Midlands (Thomas Turgoose) and a Polish boy whose father is working on the construction of the new St Pancras. The award widened the film to 60 screens and enabled an enhanced advertising campaign in the lead up to its release on 22 August. The film won the Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Revolver Films received £170,000 for Jonathan Levine's The Wackness, the funny and charming offbeat drama starring Ben Kingsley which tells a universal story of first love and broken hearts to a hip hop soundtrack. The film won the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the funding has doubled screen numbers from 50 to 100, with additional 35mm prints and digital copies, and will increase publicity and advertising around the film's release on 29 August.
Metrodome received £43,418 for The Chaser, a slick Korean serial-killer thriller from director Hong-jin Na, to pay for additional prints, digital distribution and advertising costs; and £5,000 to widen the distribution of Santosh Sivan's Before the Rains, a beautifully photographed film about an English spice merchant who settles in Kerala during British colonial rule in 1937.
Awards were also made to broaden the availability of the following films:
Bloom Street Productions received £5,000 for Karl Francis' Hope Eternal, a complex and emotive film that explores issues of African civil war and human trafficking through the story of a Madagascan nurse working at a child hospice in the Congo who falls in love with a Welsh doctor.
Artificial Eye received £5,000 for The Banishment, Andrei Zvyagintsev's stunningly shot follow up to the acclaimed The Return; £5,000 for Reha Erdem's Times and Winds, a poignant story of best friends struggling with the strict discipline of a traditional Turkish upbringing; and £4,976 for Romance of Astrea and Celadon, a pastoral love story set in fifth century Gaul from director Eric Rohmer.
Momentum Pictures received £5,000 for Nic Balthazar's Belgian hit Ben X about a bullied teenager suffering from autism who finds refuge in playing online computer games. Inspired by true events, the film explores the blurred lines between virtual reality and real life.
Lions Gate UK received £5,000 for Angel, François Ozon's first English language film set in Edwardian England about the only daughter of a widowed grocer who is determined to escape her impoverished life by becoming a famous author.
Trinity Filmed Entertainment received £5,000 for Ulrich Seidl's Import/Export, a story of harsh lives surrounded by violence and sexual exploitation. A Ukrainian nurse searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed Austrian security guard heads East for the same reason.
The Works received £5,000 for Baltasar Kormákur's Jar City, a gripping Icelandic crime thriller about a seemingly routine homicide investigation that unearths a far bigger conspiracy.
Slingshot Productions received £5,000 for Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti's Heavy Metal in Baghdad, a raw and unsentimental music documentary about the lives of the four members of Acrassicauda, Iraq's first - and to date, only - heavy metal band.
P&A Fund awards
The Wackness
£170,000
Somers Town
£140,000
The Chaser
£43,418
Angel
£5,000
The Banishment
£5,000
Before the Rains
£5,000
Ben X
£5,000
Heavy Metal in Baghdad
£5,000
Hope Eternal
£5,000
Import/Export
£5,000
Jar City
£5,000
Times and Winds
£5,000
Romance of Astrea and Celadon
£4,976
A list of the UK Film Council's National Lottery awards can be found on our website at www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk
For more information contact:
Tara Milne/Caroline Nagle
UK Film Council Press Office
T: 020 7861 7901/ 7508
E: tara.milne@ukfilmcouncil.org.uk /
caroline.nagle@ukfilmcouncil.org.uk
Notes to Editors:
1. Prints and Advertising Fund
The UK is one of the most expensive countries in the world in which to release films, and this can lead to limited choice for cinema-goers. While blockbusters such as Harry Potter are often released in the UK with more than 1,000 film prints, the average number of prints for a foreign language specialist film is under ten.
The UK Film Council has created a single fund, the UK Film Council's Prints and Advertising Support Fund, also known as the P&A Fund, with an annual budget of £4 million. This fund also offers support to more commercially focused 'British' films that nevertheless remain difficult to market.
This fund is not intended to substitute pre-existing investment but rather is seeking to add value to the investment already being made by distributors in each film.
The fund aims to benefit audiences by:
widening access in terms of the range of films available;
widening opportunities to view such films across the UK; and
widening audience awareness of the range of films potentially available.
Wednesday 21 January 2009
UKFilmcouncil.org - Lottery Funding for This is England
Lottery-funded This is England takes BAFTA for Best British Film of the Year
This is England, written and directed by filmmaker Shane Meadows, produced by Mark Herbert and co-funded by the National Lottery through the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund has been named Best British Film at this year's BAFTA awards.
LONDON –Sunday 10 February 2008. This is England, written and directed by filmmaker Shane Meadows, produced by Mark Herbert and co-funded by the National Lottery through the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund has been named Best British Film at this year's BAFTA awards.
The semi-autobiographical film about a boy growing up in 1980s post-Falklands war Britain was co-funded by the UK Film Council in partnership with Film4, the regional screen agencies EM-Media and Screen Yorkshire, Ingenious Media and Optimum Releasing. The New Cinema Fund previously supported Meadows and Herbert with their Cannes selected film Once Upon a Time in the Midlands.
John Woodward, Chief Executive Officer of the UK Film Council, said: "I am delighted for Shane Meadows, one of our most talented filmmakers, that he has won this award with This is England. His films touch the heart and soul of British people and their lives, and in telling their stories he makes a major contribution to British film culture.
"The success of Working Title, the filmmakers and talent behind Atonement, pays further tribute to Britain's flourishing pool of film talent and shows the ambition of our filmmakers to create films which British audiences want to see and which also attract audiences worldwide. We can be rightfully proud of the talent working in the UK film industry."
This is England, written and directed by filmmaker Shane Meadows, produced by Mark Herbert and co-funded by the National Lottery through the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund has been named Best British Film at this year's BAFTA awards.
LONDON –Sunday 10 February 2008. This is England, written and directed by filmmaker Shane Meadows, produced by Mark Herbert and co-funded by the National Lottery through the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund has been named Best British Film at this year's BAFTA awards.
The semi-autobiographical film about a boy growing up in 1980s post-Falklands war Britain was co-funded by the UK Film Council in partnership with Film4, the regional screen agencies EM-Media and Screen Yorkshire, Ingenious Media and Optimum Releasing. The New Cinema Fund previously supported Meadows and Herbert with their Cannes selected film Once Upon a Time in the Midlands.
John Woodward, Chief Executive Officer of the UK Film Council, said: "I am delighted for Shane Meadows, one of our most talented filmmakers, that he has won this award with This is England. His films touch the heart and soul of British people and their lives, and in telling their stories he makes a major contribution to British film culture.
"The success of Working Title, the filmmakers and talent behind Atonement, pays further tribute to Britain's flourishing pool of film talent and shows the ambition of our filmmakers to create films which British audiences want to see and which also attract audiences worldwide. We can be rightfully proud of the talent working in the UK film industry."
Tuesday 13 January 2009
Interview with Stephen Graham from This is England
This Is England is the latest film from acclaimed working class storyteller Shane Meadows. It's a rite of passage tale about bullied 13-year-old Shaun Fields (the name a deliberate reference to the director) who finds an identity in a skinhead tribe. Out of his depth in a world of hormones, violence and extreme-right politics, Shaun is taken under the wing of Combo, a racist played by Stephen Graham.
The Snatch and Gangs of New York actor talks about his new film...
This Is England is a period piece about youth culture in 1983 - the Falklands, Thatcherism and Blockbusters on the TV. How relevant is that era to today?
It's the story of Shane Meadows' experiences growing up, but it's turned out to be a mirror image of what's happening today in many ways. There's not just the wars but the racial thing wars raise, and the tension about immigrants.
There was an incident in Liverpool where a young lad called Anthony Walker was killed while waiting at a bus stop with his cousin and his girlfriend, because he was black [reported on BBC News here]. I took a clipping of that into work when we were filming, just to make the young people who were working on it aware that these things are still happening today.
Skinheads are one of the most reviled youth movements in history, but This Is England shows a more human side...
The gang of kids at the beginning are lovely - I would have loved to have been in a gang like that when I was a kid. That lot are fun, and I could see them helping an old woman with her shopping bags. I don't think that kind of thing happens today. At the beginning of the film you're taken on this beautiful journey. We all remember being a kid and being part of something. Not necessarily going around smashing windows, of course, but stuff like feeling part of a gang and having your first girlfriend.
Your character, Combo, ruins all that when he comes out of prison and joins the gang. But there's still something appealing about him...
Shane said he wanted to create "a skinhead that no-one had seen before", who didn't just do violence for violence's sake. Combo, although he's frightening, can be very charismatic and Shaun looks up to him because he's lost his dad in the Falklands. Combo's a leader, but he's thwarted. His feelings towards Milky [the black member of the gang] are caused by a lot of jealousy and a lot of pain. I'm mixed race myself, and we made Combo that way in the film.
What was it like working with Shane Meadows?
Absolutely amazing. I'd seen everything Shane's ever done, and it's the reason I wanted to become an actor in the first place. Everything's improvised. You'll have a set structure, and for a week before filming we did intense workshops where you develop a whole background history for your character.
Do you agree with the people who say he's the next Mike Leigh or Ken Loach?
I'd agree a million per cent. I believe Ken Loach works a very similar way with his actors.
You were in the Arctic Monkeys' Scummy Man video, weren't you?
I've just done another one for 'em too, where I play a clown who's really a copper. It's a bit mental and quite violent. It's fighting all the way through with just me and a bunch of stuntmen so it was fun to do.
How are things different for kids of the Arctic Monkeys' age, compared to the kids in This Is England in 1983?
There've been steps forward, but also major steps back. I'm an optimistic person but I don't think there's any respect for life anymore, with all these kids of fifteen and sixteen stabbing one another. When we were kids you'd play out in the street until half ten at night and everyone knew where you were - doors were always open. There was a sense of community. I think that's gone, especially in inner cities.
What do you think about the BBFC controversially giving This Is England an 18 certificate, claiming that its "vicious racial language... might give out the wrong message to an impressionable audience"?
I was gutted about that. I think it should be shown in schools. Maybe if those two lads that had killed Anthony Walker had seen the film, maybe they'd have thought again. I think it's ridiculous that some of the cast aren't old enough to see it. These people who are classifying films, are they telling me that kids don't swear nowadays? It's a part of everyday language.
The Snatch and Gangs of New York actor talks about his new film...
This Is England is a period piece about youth culture in 1983 - the Falklands, Thatcherism and Blockbusters on the TV. How relevant is that era to today?
It's the story of Shane Meadows' experiences growing up, but it's turned out to be a mirror image of what's happening today in many ways. There's not just the wars but the racial thing wars raise, and the tension about immigrants.
There was an incident in Liverpool where a young lad called Anthony Walker was killed while waiting at a bus stop with his cousin and his girlfriend, because he was black [reported on BBC News here]. I took a clipping of that into work when we were filming, just to make the young people who were working on it aware that these things are still happening today.
Skinheads are one of the most reviled youth movements in history, but This Is England shows a more human side...
The gang of kids at the beginning are lovely - I would have loved to have been in a gang like that when I was a kid. That lot are fun, and I could see them helping an old woman with her shopping bags. I don't think that kind of thing happens today. At the beginning of the film you're taken on this beautiful journey. We all remember being a kid and being part of something. Not necessarily going around smashing windows, of course, but stuff like feeling part of a gang and having your first girlfriend.
Your character, Combo, ruins all that when he comes out of prison and joins the gang. But there's still something appealing about him...
Shane said he wanted to create "a skinhead that no-one had seen before", who didn't just do violence for violence's sake. Combo, although he's frightening, can be very charismatic and Shaun looks up to him because he's lost his dad in the Falklands. Combo's a leader, but he's thwarted. His feelings towards Milky [the black member of the gang] are caused by a lot of jealousy and a lot of pain. I'm mixed race myself, and we made Combo that way in the film.
What was it like working with Shane Meadows?
Absolutely amazing. I'd seen everything Shane's ever done, and it's the reason I wanted to become an actor in the first place. Everything's improvised. You'll have a set structure, and for a week before filming we did intense workshops where you develop a whole background history for your character.
Do you agree with the people who say he's the next Mike Leigh or Ken Loach?
I'd agree a million per cent. I believe Ken Loach works a very similar way with his actors.
You were in the Arctic Monkeys' Scummy Man video, weren't you?
I've just done another one for 'em too, where I play a clown who's really a copper. It's a bit mental and quite violent. It's fighting all the way through with just me and a bunch of stuntmen so it was fun to do.
How are things different for kids of the Arctic Monkeys' age, compared to the kids in This Is England in 1983?
There've been steps forward, but also major steps back. I'm an optimistic person but I don't think there's any respect for life anymore, with all these kids of fifteen and sixteen stabbing one another. When we were kids you'd play out in the street until half ten at night and everyone knew where you were - doors were always open. There was a sense of community. I think that's gone, especially in inner cities.
What do you think about the BBFC controversially giving This Is England an 18 certificate, claiming that its "vicious racial language... might give out the wrong message to an impressionable audience"?
I was gutted about that. I think it should be shown in schools. Maybe if those two lads that had killed Anthony Walker had seen the film, maybe they'd have thought again. I think it's ridiculous that some of the cast aren't old enough to see it. These people who are classifying films, are they telling me that kids don't swear nowadays? It's a part of everyday language.
UK Film Distibution
Distinguishing features:
A foreword to the FDA Guide to UK film distribution
The creative process of making a film, from developing the script, through casting and pre-production, then shooting, editing and all the stages of post-production, often lasts for years.
But when a completed film is brought to market, it's usually just one of eight or nine titles opening that week alone. It has barely three days - its first weekend - to make a strong impression and hold its place in cinemas.
We filmmakers rely greatly on our professional distribution colleagues to navigate the most advantageous path for our products into and through the brutally competitive market place.
Having worked with many distribution teams, I've long admired the brilliant designers who can condense a feature film into a single poster image, distinguishing it memorably from the pack. Likewise the skilled media and publicity planners, who can devise effective campaigns that inspire people to see a particular new release.
This business is becoming ever more complex. As the internet plays an increasingly central role in many daily lives, traditional mass media channels continue to fragment. And as our society grows more diverse, the vast array of 'content' on offer is likely to expand further - even though few of us have more spare time to consume it.
As an industry, we succeed only when the stories we tell reach and move the audiences for whom they were intended. I believe that dedicated, passionate, innovative distribution and marketing, connecting films with their audiences both in the UK and worldwide, are absolutely vital to the film industry.
I'm delighted to introduce the 2007 edition of this FDA guide, which invites you to explore the essential life of a film after its production phase.
A foreword to the FDA Guide to UK film distribution
The creative process of making a film, from developing the script, through casting and pre-production, then shooting, editing and all the stages of post-production, often lasts for years.
But when a completed film is brought to market, it's usually just one of eight or nine titles opening that week alone. It has barely three days - its first weekend - to make a strong impression and hold its place in cinemas.
We filmmakers rely greatly on our professional distribution colleagues to navigate the most advantageous path for our products into and through the brutally competitive market place.
Having worked with many distribution teams, I've long admired the brilliant designers who can condense a feature film into a single poster image, distinguishing it memorably from the pack. Likewise the skilled media and publicity planners, who can devise effective campaigns that inspire people to see a particular new release.
This business is becoming ever more complex. As the internet plays an increasingly central role in many daily lives, traditional mass media channels continue to fragment. And as our society grows more diverse, the vast array of 'content' on offer is likely to expand further - even though few of us have more spare time to consume it.
As an industry, we succeed only when the stories we tell reach and move the audiences for whom they were intended. I believe that dedicated, passionate, innovative distribution and marketing, connecting films with their audiences both in the UK and worldwide, are absolutely vital to the film industry.
I'm delighted to introduce the 2007 edition of this FDA guide, which invites you to explore the essential life of a film after its production phase.
Friday 9 January 2009
BBC Interview of Shane Meadows
Despite being born in Staffordshire, Shane Meadows has put Nottingham on the cinematic map. He's made five features and numerous shorts since emerging in the mid-90s with the street-smart short Smalltime and debut feature TwentyFourSeven (1997). All of his movies could have been titled Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, so it's ironic that the one which was - the 2002 "tinned spaghetti western" - was actually the least personal of his movies.
Midlands was to prove the turning point in Meadows' career as he's subsequently chosen to work on smaller budgets which led to less pressure to perform at the box office. For although his films depict working class life in a humorous and humane way - usually with an adolescent at the core of the drama - they've never crossed over into the mainstream.
In black and white: This Is England director Shane Meadows
Critics have been calling new drama This Is England his best work yet. Set in 1983, in the aftermath of the Falklands War and during the height of Thatcherism, the movie stars newcomer Thomas Turgoose as a bullied kid whose life is given meaning when he's befriended by a group of skinheads. Before you can say "Oi!" he's taken under the Crombie of Combo (Stephen Graham), a National Front-supporting extremist.
In the video Shane talks about the joys of working on a low budget feature, and how eBay saved him thousands during the making of This Is England.
This Is England is released in UK cinemas on Friday 27th April 2007.
Midlands was to prove the turning point in Meadows' career as he's subsequently chosen to work on smaller budgets which led to less pressure to perform at the box office. For although his films depict working class life in a humorous and humane way - usually with an adolescent at the core of the drama - they've never crossed over into the mainstream.
In black and white: This Is England director Shane Meadows
Critics have been calling new drama This Is England his best work yet. Set in 1983, in the aftermath of the Falklands War and during the height of Thatcherism, the movie stars newcomer Thomas Turgoose as a bullied kid whose life is given meaning when he's befriended by a group of skinheads. Before you can say "Oi!" he's taken under the Crombie of Combo (Stephen Graham), a National Front-supporting extremist.
In the video Shane talks about the joys of working on a low budget feature, and how eBay saved him thousands during the making of This Is England.
This Is England is released in UK cinemas on Friday 27th April 2007.
Guardian Review of Once upon a Time in the Midlands
A stocky figure in a baseball cap and a Hawaiian shirt so noisy it shrieks, Shane Meadows doesn't fit conventional ideas of the glamorous young film director. Amid the chi-chi bustle of Soho, he looks less a Wardour Street meteor than an uncomfortable day-trip tourist - which is pretty much what he is. Shane does not much care for London - 'this fucking place' as he refers to it at one point - and apart from six months in the capital when he was 'miserable as sin', he's remained true to his East Midlands roots.
Uttoxeter, Burton on Trent, Nottingham, Sneinton, Calverton - washed-up mining villages, chintzy suburbia, forgotten chunks of rust-belt Britain - have been the unpromising backdrop for every Meadows film, all 40 of them if you include the numerous no-budget shorts that announced his arrival as a fresh force in British cinema a few years ago. He's back there again for his new film, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, the third part of what he jokingly terms a 'Midlands trilogy' begun by his 1997 debut, TwentyFourSeven, and the follow-up, A Room For Romeo Brass (1999).
More upbeat than its predecessors, with a starry cast that includes Robert Carlyle, Kathy Burke, Ricky Tomlinson and Rhys Ifans, it is the film that Meadows hopes will finally bring box-office returns in proportion to his feted profile in the media.
'I wasn't planning to make another film in the Midlands,' he says, 'but neither of the other two had much commercial success, and we [he and his co-writer and lifelong friend Paul Fraser] wanted to have one more go and plant the flag. I'm waiting for the key to the city: out of the four major films made in Nottingham - there's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - we've made three.'
Given that Midlands is, like its predecessors, populated by losers, low-lives and semi-detached dreamers, one wonders whether Meadows isn't in danger of making the same film over and over again, a feeling not helped by the appearance of a knockabout fight scene recycled from an early short, Where's the Money Ronnie? In fact, Midlands marks a clear shift onwards from the claustrophobic TwentyFourSeven and the dark-hued Romeo Brass into more colourful, comedic territory.
It is, as Meadows knows all too well, a desperately needed shift. Despite critical praise and boasting Bob Hoskins in the lead role, TwentyFourSeven barely covered its modest £3m budget. Romeo Brass, released on a scant run of 10 prints, did even worse - a great shame considering the resonance of its black-humoured but pensive study of suburban psychosis and incipient paedophilia.
This time round, Meadows is clearly relying on his stellar cast to lend him some commercial muscle. That they are happy to do so, despite being on 'very low wages', is for Shane 'a compliment; even though my films haven't been widely seen by the public, it's gratifying to discover that people like Rhys and Robert knew my work'.
While his cast turn in splendid performances - Burke, in her swansong role as a thespian (or so she claims), is particularly and scarily fine - Midlands doesn't have quite enough story or script to be a great movie.
The western angle, played out chiefly through Ricky Tomlinson's country singer, proves to be a piece of decoration rather than an intrinsic theme. But if the plot - a love triangle which has the swaggering Carlyle pitted against a gauche Ifans for the love of the perpetually red-eyed Shirley Henderson - lacks mileage or surprise, the characters are an amiably nutty reflection of millennial Britain.
Will it keep Meadows in business? It deserves to. Although he seems to have been around a long time, he's still just 30, and one of the few original voices to emerge from British cinema in the past decade. In person, he is also one of the industry's fastest talkers and most unassuming characters. 'I've made three films and in terms of making my next, I'm no further forward, reputation-wise, than I was when I started - probably further back,' he says ruefully.
Though this film will probably save Meadows, it could not save its distributors, Film Four, from extinction. Ironically, Film Four's demise will probably help the film, as they pull out the stops for their last hurrah. Still, 'it's a disheartening time for the British film industry', he reflects, before running down an all too familiar list of complaints; a lack of backers, a lack of imagination, and the stranglehold of Hollywood, which out-muscles home-grown product with its budgets and asphyxiates it at the multiplexes which it controls.
'How do you compete with budgets that start at $30m? The only way is with character-driven stories. People complain that's all they get from British films, but we are forced to work around intense performances. I'm not complaining personally, as £3m is still a lot of money, but the budgets to promote American films here are routinely higher than what we get to make a film.'
The current downward spiral of British film, following unrealistic hype about its prospects, follows a regular pattern and, in his opinion, hasn't been helped by what he terms 'minute-made fiascos that sucked up huge amounts of available money... Without being rude to filmmakers here, a lot of people were given funds before they were ready to make a film, people with a one-page treatment and a short made at film school. It seems like everyone decided, let's make a gangster film, or a Full Monty style comedy.'
Meadows argues that he served his own apprenticeship making dozens of shorts using borrowed equipment and friends for actors. He looks back on the experiences of a few years ago with some incredulity.
The first week of directing TwentyFourSeven, confronting an army of technicians and several tons of equipment, was, he says, 'the most terrifying seven days of my life - I was lucky to get away with it'.
Since then he feels he's 'lived three lifetimes in a few years'. That he's a more sanguine, less excitable character these days he attributes to marriage, which has 'stabilised' him, while he has acquired a few professional skills along the way. 'I work on instinct without much technical knowledge, so when I got my break some people thought I was a chancer and blamed their own failings on me. I've built up my own team with each film. I've also learnt to get more focused. After TwentyFourSeven I was so exhausted I could hardly move for a month. I realised I had to hold something back, because the cast demand something from you on set. When you're working with unknowns you can busk it, but when you have Robert Carlyle and Kathy Burke on your cast, you can't.'
He makes a few commercials (for booze and McDonald's) to keep his bank account in credit. Even Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, he remarks, are not above knocking out adverts for the multinationals (Loach and McDonald's? I gasp. Surely not). 'A couple of those commercials mean I can make the films I want to make.'
Exactly what sort of films those might be is not yet clear. Meadows groans at most of the scripts that are pushed his way. He may yet go off to Hollywood to make Dino Bites or some big-budget sci-fi spectacular. Don't bet on it, however, or on him leaving the Midlands.
'I'm still thinking about something medieval, maybe even Robin Hood. Whatever I do next I'd rather fail with something my heart's in because it's with you for the rest of your life. So if someone doesn't like my films it doesn't bother me - I know I did them for all the right reasons.'
Uttoxeter, Burton on Trent, Nottingham, Sneinton, Calverton - washed-up mining villages, chintzy suburbia, forgotten chunks of rust-belt Britain - have been the unpromising backdrop for every Meadows film, all 40 of them if you include the numerous no-budget shorts that announced his arrival as a fresh force in British cinema a few years ago. He's back there again for his new film, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, the third part of what he jokingly terms a 'Midlands trilogy' begun by his 1997 debut, TwentyFourSeven, and the follow-up, A Room For Romeo Brass (1999).
More upbeat than its predecessors, with a starry cast that includes Robert Carlyle, Kathy Burke, Ricky Tomlinson and Rhys Ifans, it is the film that Meadows hopes will finally bring box-office returns in proportion to his feted profile in the media.
'I wasn't planning to make another film in the Midlands,' he says, 'but neither of the other two had much commercial success, and we [he and his co-writer and lifelong friend Paul Fraser] wanted to have one more go and plant the flag. I'm waiting for the key to the city: out of the four major films made in Nottingham - there's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - we've made three.'
Given that Midlands is, like its predecessors, populated by losers, low-lives and semi-detached dreamers, one wonders whether Meadows isn't in danger of making the same film over and over again, a feeling not helped by the appearance of a knockabout fight scene recycled from an early short, Where's the Money Ronnie? In fact, Midlands marks a clear shift onwards from the claustrophobic TwentyFourSeven and the dark-hued Romeo Brass into more colourful, comedic territory.
It is, as Meadows knows all too well, a desperately needed shift. Despite critical praise and boasting Bob Hoskins in the lead role, TwentyFourSeven barely covered its modest £3m budget. Romeo Brass, released on a scant run of 10 prints, did even worse - a great shame considering the resonance of its black-humoured but pensive study of suburban psychosis and incipient paedophilia.
This time round, Meadows is clearly relying on his stellar cast to lend him some commercial muscle. That they are happy to do so, despite being on 'very low wages', is for Shane 'a compliment; even though my films haven't been widely seen by the public, it's gratifying to discover that people like Rhys and Robert knew my work'.
While his cast turn in splendid performances - Burke, in her swansong role as a thespian (or so she claims), is particularly and scarily fine - Midlands doesn't have quite enough story or script to be a great movie.
The western angle, played out chiefly through Ricky Tomlinson's country singer, proves to be a piece of decoration rather than an intrinsic theme. But if the plot - a love triangle which has the swaggering Carlyle pitted against a gauche Ifans for the love of the perpetually red-eyed Shirley Henderson - lacks mileage or surprise, the characters are an amiably nutty reflection of millennial Britain.
Will it keep Meadows in business? It deserves to. Although he seems to have been around a long time, he's still just 30, and one of the few original voices to emerge from British cinema in the past decade. In person, he is also one of the industry's fastest talkers and most unassuming characters. 'I've made three films and in terms of making my next, I'm no further forward, reputation-wise, than I was when I started - probably further back,' he says ruefully.
Though this film will probably save Meadows, it could not save its distributors, Film Four, from extinction. Ironically, Film Four's demise will probably help the film, as they pull out the stops for their last hurrah. Still, 'it's a disheartening time for the British film industry', he reflects, before running down an all too familiar list of complaints; a lack of backers, a lack of imagination, and the stranglehold of Hollywood, which out-muscles home-grown product with its budgets and asphyxiates it at the multiplexes which it controls.
'How do you compete with budgets that start at $30m? The only way is with character-driven stories. People complain that's all they get from British films, but we are forced to work around intense performances. I'm not complaining personally, as £3m is still a lot of money, but the budgets to promote American films here are routinely higher than what we get to make a film.'
The current downward spiral of British film, following unrealistic hype about its prospects, follows a regular pattern and, in his opinion, hasn't been helped by what he terms 'minute-made fiascos that sucked up huge amounts of available money... Without being rude to filmmakers here, a lot of people were given funds before they were ready to make a film, people with a one-page treatment and a short made at film school. It seems like everyone decided, let's make a gangster film, or a Full Monty style comedy.'
Meadows argues that he served his own apprenticeship making dozens of shorts using borrowed equipment and friends for actors. He looks back on the experiences of a few years ago with some incredulity.
The first week of directing TwentyFourSeven, confronting an army of technicians and several tons of equipment, was, he says, 'the most terrifying seven days of my life - I was lucky to get away with it'.
Since then he feels he's 'lived three lifetimes in a few years'. That he's a more sanguine, less excitable character these days he attributes to marriage, which has 'stabilised' him, while he has acquired a few professional skills along the way. 'I work on instinct without much technical knowledge, so when I got my break some people thought I was a chancer and blamed their own failings on me. I've built up my own team with each film. I've also learnt to get more focused. After TwentyFourSeven I was so exhausted I could hardly move for a month. I realised I had to hold something back, because the cast demand something from you on set. When you're working with unknowns you can busk it, but when you have Robert Carlyle and Kathy Burke on your cast, you can't.'
He makes a few commercials (for booze and McDonald's) to keep his bank account in credit. Even Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, he remarks, are not above knocking out adverts for the multinationals (Loach and McDonald's? I gasp. Surely not). 'A couple of those commercials mean I can make the films I want to make.'
Exactly what sort of films those might be is not yet clear. Meadows groans at most of the scripts that are pushed his way. He may yet go off to Hollywood to make Dino Bites or some big-budget sci-fi spectacular. Don't bet on it, however, or on him leaving the Midlands.
'I'm still thinking about something medieval, maybe even Robin Hood. Whatever I do next I'd rather fail with something my heart's in because it's with you for the rest of your life. So if someone doesn't like my films it doesn't bother me - I know I did them for all the right reasons.'
Critical response and award for This is England
BIFA Awards Won2006: Best British Independent Film
2006: Most Promising Newcomer (Thomas Turgoose)
BIFA Nominations2006: Best Director of a British Independent Film (Shane Meadows)
2006: Best Performance by a Supporting Actor or Actress in a British Independent Film (Stephen Graham)
2006: Best Technical Achievement (Ludovico Einaudi)
2006: Best Performance by a Supporting Actor or Actress in a British Independent Film (Joseph Gilgun)
2006: Best Screenplay (Shane Meadows)
2006: Most Promising Newcomer (Thomas Turgoose)
BIFA Nominations2006: Best Director of a British Independent Film (Shane Meadows)
2006: Best Performance by a Supporting Actor or Actress in a British Independent Film (Stephen Graham)
2006: Best Technical Achievement (Ludovico Einaudi)
2006: Best Performance by a Supporting Actor or Actress in a British Independent Film (Joseph Gilgun)
2006: Best Screenplay (Shane Meadows)
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