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)
Shane Meadow's response to 18 certificate
It's almost two years since we started shooting This is England and at last the film is nearly out, hitting cinemas here this weekend. I suppose it's my most personal film to date as the main character, Shaun Fields is loosely based upon me at a time in my childhood.
Shaun is a 12 year-old growing up in Thatcher's England when Rubik's Cubes, Doc Martens and political upheaval were all the rage. Shaun gets involved with a local skinhead gang after his father dies in the Falklands war and This is England tells of the repercussions that follow.
Everything has been going brilliantly. Last autumn the film won the special jury prize at the Rome Film Festival and best film at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs), beating BAFTA winner The Queen. Thomas Turgoose, who plays Shaun, won the best newcomer award at the BIFAs too. We've had some amazing press and great reviews and everything was looking really positive.
Then, earlier this year, we heard that the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) had decided to give the film an 18 certificate for its use of "realistic violence and racist language". This means that the film is now unavailable to the audience it will benefit the most.
It's like I've somehow overachieved. By having one piece of violence and one piece of really acute verbal violence I've managed to get an 18 certificate, whereas someone else can slay thousands of people in a single film and that's OK. To be honest I don't understand it because, yes, the film is affecting but I think it's something that someone of 15 can cope with. It's not like it's a film about the 80s that has no value; it's incredibly relevant politically. It's as much about Iraq as it is about the Falklands. It's as much as about England in 2007 as it is about England in 1983.
The good news is that Bristol city council has overturned the BBFC's decision, giving the film a 15 certificate. We're hoping that more councils will follow shortly as there is a lot of support for the movie and incredulity at the BBFC verdict. Whether or not it will be accessible to the audience who need to see it the most remains to be seen.
As for me, I have a new deal with Warp Films, the production company behind This is England and my last film Dead Man's Shoes. My producer Mark Herbert and I have just had a great meeting with Film4 and EM Media about future projects. There are lots in the pipeline and we're all looking forward to getting started on the next one.
I hope you enjoy the film. You can read the article I wrote about it for The Guardian on Saturday here.
Shaun is a 12 year-old growing up in Thatcher's England when Rubik's Cubes, Doc Martens and political upheaval were all the rage. Shaun gets involved with a local skinhead gang after his father dies in the Falklands war and This is England tells of the repercussions that follow.
Everything has been going brilliantly. Last autumn the film won the special jury prize at the Rome Film Festival and best film at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs), beating BAFTA winner The Queen. Thomas Turgoose, who plays Shaun, won the best newcomer award at the BIFAs too. We've had some amazing press and great reviews and everything was looking really positive.
Then, earlier this year, we heard that the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) had decided to give the film an 18 certificate for its use of "realistic violence and racist language". This means that the film is now unavailable to the audience it will benefit the most.
It's like I've somehow overachieved. By having one piece of violence and one piece of really acute verbal violence I've managed to get an 18 certificate, whereas someone else can slay thousands of people in a single film and that's OK. To be honest I don't understand it because, yes, the film is affecting but I think it's something that someone of 15 can cope with. It's not like it's a film about the 80s that has no value; it's incredibly relevant politically. It's as much about Iraq as it is about the Falklands. It's as much as about England in 2007 as it is about England in 1983.
The good news is that Bristol city council has overturned the BBFC's decision, giving the film a 15 certificate. We're hoping that more councils will follow shortly as there is a lot of support for the movie and incredulity at the BBFC verdict. Whether or not it will be accessible to the audience who need to see it the most remains to be seen.
As for me, I have a new deal with Warp Films, the production company behind This is England and my last film Dead Man's Shoes. My producer Mark Herbert and I have just had a great meeting with Film4 and EM Media about future projects. There are lots in the pipeline and we're all looking forward to getting started on the next one.
I hope you enjoy the film. You can read the article I wrote about it for The Guardian on Saturday here.
The Guardian Interview
Shane Meadows continues his fast and fluent film-making career with this quasi-autobiographical picture about skinheads: a movie with hints of Alan Clarke's Made in Britain and, in its final image, the haunted disenchantment of Truffaut's The 400 Blows. It is a sad, painful and sometimes funny story from the white working classes of 1980s Britain, the cannon-fodder caste alienated from Falklands rejoicing on the home front and not invited to participate in the nation's promised service-economy prosperity.
This Is England
Release: 2006
Country: UK
Cert (UK): 18
Runtime: 100 mins
Directors: Shane Meadows
Cast: Jo Hartley, Jo Hartley, Joe Gilgun, Stephen Graham, Thomas Turgoose
More on this film
Meadows boldly attempts to reclaim the skinhead from the traditional neo-Nazi image, explicitly distinguishing his characters from a separate racist influence, and presenting them as an anarchic youth tribe that idolised West Indian music. He sees their susceptibility to the extremist right as a poignant and even tragic part of their fatherless culture, literally and figuratively orphaned by the times.
There's a winning lead performance from 13-year-old newcomer Thomas Turgoose playing a put-upon lad called Shaun in the run-down Grimsby of 1983. His dad was a serviceman killed in the Falklands and he's perennially getting picked on for this, and for his horrible flared jeans which make him look, as one bully cruelly puts it, like Keith Chegwin's son. Sloping and moping his way home after a standard-issue school day of humiliation, Shaun gets waylaid by some skins in a dodgy underpass, but instead of yet more battering, the gang give him sympathy and understanding; they become Shaun's only friends, and with a new Ben Sherman shirt and number one cut, Shaun has new pride and a new identity.
The gang's leader is Woody - a cheerful, sparky performance from Joe Gilgun - and they have an African-Caribbean member facetiously nicknamed Milky, played by Meadows regular Andrew Shim; Shaun even finds romance with one of the group's girl-punk fellow travellers: a languid and rather elegant older woman called Smell (Rosamund Hanson) who earnestly explains to Shaun's mum that she is called that simply because it rhymes with Michelle. The idyll is soon destroyed with the highly unwelcome appearance of Combo, a ferocious and sinister skin warrior just out of prison, played by Stephen Graham. He demands the group join his National Front cell, and turn out for an NF meeting in a tatty pub, addressed by one of the movement's suit-wearing officer class, played in cameo by Frank Harper.
Turgoose is the picture's heart and soul, and it's a terrifically natural, easy and commanding performance. Turgoose's open face radiates charm, and then, when he goes over to the dark side of racism, a creepy, anti-cherubic scorn: almost like one of the little blond kids in Village of the Damned. But Meadows is always concerned to preserve a sympathetic core to Shaun, and in fact to all the skins. Even the deeply objectionable Combo is shown to be suffering from emotional pain.
Like Meadows' earlier pictures, Dead Man's Shoes and A Room for Romeo Brass, This Is England is about younger, vulnerable figures being taken under the wing of older, flawed men, and this personal theme here finds its richest and maturest expression yet. As to whether we should buy its implied leniency about skinhead culture: that is another question. The West Indian influence is advanced as proof that skins were not necessarily racist: yet it can't cancel out Combo's hate campaign against South Asians, the "Pakis" who "smell of curry", a campaign which goes quite unchallenged or even unremarked upon by any of the skins, good or bad.
The skinhead identity is, after all, obviously supposed to be more aggressive than that of other tribes: I remember as a 10-year-old cowering on the terraces of Watford football club in the early 70s, as the Luton boot boys got stuck in, and my father grimly telling me that the reason they shaved their heads that way was so the coppers couldn't grab them by the hair. Whether or not that is true, it certainly made the wearer's head look like a big, third clenched fist. And it's still difficult to get a handle on them.
Meadows appears to want to find emotional truths behind the bravado, to find reasons for the male rage. It's a valid quest, and there are telling and touching moments, particularly between Turgoose and Rosamund Hanson. I found myself wishing that their love story could occupy more of the film, maybe for the same reason that the Shane Meadows film I have enjoyed most is the one his real fans loathe: the comedy Once Upon a Time in the Midlands. But from the get-go of this drama, it is obvious that things are heading only one way: towards a climactic flourish of violence, and it's a glum business wondering to whom and from whom this is going to happen. This is a violent subject, and these are violent people, and yet I couldn't help feeling that Meadows is, as so often, more comfortable with machismo than with the humour and gentleness which play a smaller, yet intensely welcome part of his movies. However agnostic I confess to still feeling about his work, there's no doubt that Meadows is a real film-maker with a growing and evolving career, and with his own natural cinematic language. When I think of his films, I think, for good or ill: this is English cinema.
This Is England
Release: 2006
Country: UK
Cert (UK): 18
Runtime: 100 mins
Directors: Shane Meadows
Cast: Jo Hartley, Jo Hartley, Joe Gilgun, Stephen Graham, Thomas Turgoose
Meadows boldly attempts to reclaim the skinhead from the traditional neo-Nazi image, explicitly distinguishing his characters from a separate racist influence, and presenting them as an anarchic youth tribe that idolised West Indian music. He sees their susceptibility to the extremist right as a poignant and even tragic part of their fatherless culture, literally and figuratively orphaned by the times.
There's a winning lead performance from 13-year-old newcomer Thomas Turgoose playing a put-upon lad called Shaun in the run-down Grimsby of 1983. His dad was a serviceman killed in the Falklands and he's perennially getting picked on for this, and for his horrible flared jeans which make him look, as one bully cruelly puts it, like Keith Chegwin's son. Sloping and moping his way home after a standard-issue school day of humiliation, Shaun gets waylaid by some skins in a dodgy underpass, but instead of yet more battering, the gang give him sympathy and understanding; they become Shaun's only friends, and with a new Ben Sherman shirt and number one cut, Shaun has new pride and a new identity.
The gang's leader is Woody - a cheerful, sparky performance from Joe Gilgun - and they have an African-Caribbean member facetiously nicknamed Milky, played by Meadows regular Andrew Shim; Shaun even finds romance with one of the group's girl-punk fellow travellers: a languid and rather elegant older woman called Smell (Rosamund Hanson) who earnestly explains to Shaun's mum that she is called that simply because it rhymes with Michelle. The idyll is soon destroyed with the highly unwelcome appearance of Combo, a ferocious and sinister skin warrior just out of prison, played by Stephen Graham. He demands the group join his National Front cell, and turn out for an NF meeting in a tatty pub, addressed by one of the movement's suit-wearing officer class, played in cameo by Frank Harper.
Turgoose is the picture's heart and soul, and it's a terrifically natural, easy and commanding performance. Turgoose's open face radiates charm, and then, when he goes over to the dark side of racism, a creepy, anti-cherubic scorn: almost like one of the little blond kids in Village of the Damned. But Meadows is always concerned to preserve a sympathetic core to Shaun, and in fact to all the skins. Even the deeply objectionable Combo is shown to be suffering from emotional pain.
Like Meadows' earlier pictures, Dead Man's Shoes and A Room for Romeo Brass, This Is England is about younger, vulnerable figures being taken under the wing of older, flawed men, and this personal theme here finds its richest and maturest expression yet. As to whether we should buy its implied leniency about skinhead culture: that is another question. The West Indian influence is advanced as proof that skins were not necessarily racist: yet it can't cancel out Combo's hate campaign against South Asians, the "Pakis" who "smell of curry", a campaign which goes quite unchallenged or even unremarked upon by any of the skins, good or bad.
The skinhead identity is, after all, obviously supposed to be more aggressive than that of other tribes: I remember as a 10-year-old cowering on the terraces of Watford football club in the early 70s, as the Luton boot boys got stuck in, and my father grimly telling me that the reason they shaved their heads that way was so the coppers couldn't grab them by the hair. Whether or not that is true, it certainly made the wearer's head look like a big, third clenched fist. And it's still difficult to get a handle on them.
Meadows appears to want to find emotional truths behind the bravado, to find reasons for the male rage. It's a valid quest, and there are telling and touching moments, particularly between Turgoose and Rosamund Hanson. I found myself wishing that their love story could occupy more of the film, maybe for the same reason that the Shane Meadows film I have enjoyed most is the one his real fans loathe: the comedy Once Upon a Time in the Midlands. But from the get-go of this drama, it is obvious that things are heading only one way: towards a climactic flourish of violence, and it's a glum business wondering to whom and from whom this is going to happen. This is a violent subject, and these are violent people, and yet I couldn't help feeling that Meadows is, as so often, more comfortable with machismo than with the humour and gentleness which play a smaller, yet intensely welcome part of his movies. However agnostic I confess to still feeling about his work, there's no doubt that Meadows is a real film-maker with a growing and evolving career, and with his own natural cinematic language. When I think of his films, I think, for good or ill: this is English cinema.
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Shane Meadows - A Biography.
Shane Meadows was born on 26th December 1972 in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, England. Shane's break into the world of Cinema was when he persuaded a local video production company to allow him to borrow their equipment to make short films, whilst in return he would work for them free of charge. Armed with video equipment, he and his friends and family were soon co-opted into his short films that would be shown at open nights in a small local cinema. It is one of the shorts, called "Where's The Money, Ronnie?" that brought him to the attention of Channel 4 TV, who commissioned Shane to make a documentary. The project called "The King of The Gypsies" a short documentary about a bare knuckle boxer who, like Shane, was also born in Uttoxeter and who Shane had known for many years.
This commission in turn led to Shane's first step onto the "commercial" rung of the film ladder when he was given £5,000 by The BFI (British Film Institute) to help him complete an extended short movie, that he had been making with his friends who had appeared in his previous shorts. This hour long film turned out to be "Small Time". Small Time together with the completed short of "Where's the Money, Ronnie?" was shown at various film festivals and it garnered much interest from the industry, so much so that Shane was able to finance his first proper feature film.
In 1997 with £1.5 million secured from the BBC for "Twenty Four Seven", he made a film about Alan, a man trying to help local youths from a rough estate to find some purpose and direction in their lives by starting up a boxing club. The man Shane persuaded to play Alan was Bob Hoskins. With a great performance from Hoskins, an excellent script and a refreshing approach to film making, this black and white film meant the film garnered much critical and popular praise alike and went on to win many awards and nominations.
In 1999 Shane Meadows started work on his next feature "A Room For Romeo Brass". The film was loosely based on his childhood friendship with the film's co-writer Paul Fraser. Whilst it again managed to gain some favourable reviews it did not manage to maintain the critical interest that had been afforded the previous film (despite the film introducing the world to the talents of debutant Paddy Considine).
In 2002 Shane's next film marked a considerable departure from his previous body of work with "Once Upon a Time In The Midlands" - a spaghetti western transplanted into the heart of a council estate in the Midlands. With a considerably increased budget, Shane chose to cast some big names to lead his movie including Robert Carlyle, Ricky Tomlinson, Kathy Burke, and Rhys Ifans. Despite the film's accessibility, the move into the "big league" was not entirely satisfactory and was considered a backward step in some circles.
In 2004 Shane Meadows began to rise again with the critically acclaimed "Dead Man's Shoes". The film was made on a shoestring budget (reputedly £750,000) that allowed him to retain complete control of the movie he wanted to make, and from the time of first discussing making a movie to the completion of filming was only a matter of three months (a truly remarkable feat). "Dead Man's Shoes" received much critical and popular praise, and gained a much wider audience than any of his previous films.
Shane Meadows latest film is entitled "This Is England". A loosely auto biographical story set in 1983 surrounding an isolated young boy growing up in post Falklands conflict England, that falls under the influence of a gang of skinheads. This film looks certain to be Shane Meadows biggest success so far, as it was extremely well received in international film festivals at the end of 2006, and its UK release in early May 2007 has seen receipts exceed those received for all of his other films put together.
Most of Shane Meadows films have a consistent quality to them. He has remained loyal to this area of the Midlands and indeed his films have all thus far been set in the Midlands. His "schooling" in making lots of short films (which he continues to do) has stood him in good stead in terms of both unobtrusive camera work and his ability to obtain superb performances from both experienced actors and new comers alike. Indeed his approach to casting seems similar in approach to that of Ken Loach, in that "local" talent is preferred in order to preserve authenticity. Whilst his parochial settings may at times hinder the ability of his films to translate to a mass worldwide audience (America) his films particularly Dead Man's Shoes continue to shine like a beacon for the ethics of quality over style, and story over budget. He also shows particular mastery in his choice and use of music in his films, indeed the soundtracks of his films are absolutely superb.
Of the new wave of British Directors Shane Meadows has had maybe the hardest journey to bring his work to the screen, but his work is ultimately the most rewarding of any of his peers, and with his recent offerings, "Dead Man's Shoes" and "This Is England", his films are finally beginning to receive the mass exposure that they deserve.
He is undoubtedly the most gifted British director of his generation, and he is fast joining the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh for the integrity and mastery in bringing his stories to the big screen.
Sept 2007. Shane Meadows has now been honoured with a UK box set release of his films. Entitled This Is Shane Meadows the set includes the films TwentyFourSeven, A Room For Romeo Brass, Dead Man's Shoes and the critically lauded This Is England. Its lack of exclusive extras content means this is a release aimed at new fans of Shane Meadows rather than those who already have all of his films on DVD. Also released on 3rd September is This Is England which is released as a two disc edition with tons of fantastic extras. Both of these are available to by from our very own Shane Meadows UK Store or Shane Meadows USA Store in association with Amazon.com.
April 2008 - Shane Meadows official site has been updated with details of his forthcoming projects - both of which started life intending to be shorts. The first is Somers Town written by Shane's long term writing partner Paul Fraser. The story revolves around a young Polish boy (Marek) who comes over to London with his father to live and work in Somers Town. Marek meets a young lad who has run away from a Sheffield care home and an unlikely friendship begins, as as they both fall in love with a French girl who works in the local cafe. The film has been shot in the UK plus Paris and Warsaw.The cast will include Thomas Turgoose, Kate Dickie, Andrew Shim and Perry Benson. The film has already been accepted into the prestigious Berlin FIlm Festival. The 70 minute film looks set to be broadcast on TV sometime before the summer (video recorders at the ready then). Check Shane Meadows Official site for more info.
Also announced is 'Le Donk' starring Paddy Considine. The story centers around Le Donk a builder, rock drummer and roadie played by Paddy Considine, and who roadies for The Arctic Monkeys. The feature length film looks set to be released on DVD this year. A 'Le Donk' teaser trailer for has been posted up on Youtube. (Think the personal story behind the scenes at Spinal Tap but wi' more mushy peas).
The long awaited project 'King Of The Gypsies' looks like its finally going ahead. In interviews the wonderful Mr Meadows has often talked about his dreams of making this project a reality, but to do the story justice he required substantial finance for the story. This story is about the life of bare-knuckle boxing champion Bartley Gorman (who will be played by Paddy Considine). This again started off as a 10 minute documentary in 1995. Shane's official site has the original 10 minute King Of The Gypsies documentary posted on it.
Shane Meadows was born on 26th December 1972 in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, England. Shane's break into the world of Cinema was when he persuaded a local video production company to allow him to borrow their equipment to make short films, whilst in return he would work for them free of charge. Armed with video equipment, he and his friends and family were soon co-opted into his short films that would be shown at open nights in a small local cinema. It is one of the shorts, called "Where's The Money, Ronnie?" that brought him to the attention of Channel 4 TV, who commissioned Shane to make a documentary. The project called "The King of The Gypsies" a short documentary about a bare knuckle boxer who, like Shane, was also born in Uttoxeter and who Shane had known for many years.
This commission in turn led to Shane's first step onto the "commercial" rung of the film ladder when he was given £5,000 by The BFI (British Film Institute) to help him complete an extended short movie, that he had been making with his friends who had appeared in his previous shorts. This hour long film turned out to be "Small Time". Small Time together with the completed short of "Where's the Money, Ronnie?" was shown at various film festivals and it garnered much interest from the industry, so much so that Shane was able to finance his first proper feature film.
In 1997 with £1.5 million secured from the BBC for "Twenty Four Seven", he made a film about Alan, a man trying to help local youths from a rough estate to find some purpose and direction in their lives by starting up a boxing club. The man Shane persuaded to play Alan was Bob Hoskins. With a great performance from Hoskins, an excellent script and a refreshing approach to film making, this black and white film meant the film garnered much critical and popular praise alike and went on to win many awards and nominations.
In 1999 Shane Meadows started work on his next feature "A Room For Romeo Brass". The film was loosely based on his childhood friendship with the film's co-writer Paul Fraser. Whilst it again managed to gain some favourable reviews it did not manage to maintain the critical interest that had been afforded the previous film (despite the film introducing the world to the talents of debutant Paddy Considine).
In 2002 Shane's next film marked a considerable departure from his previous body of work with "Once Upon a Time In The Midlands" - a spaghetti western transplanted into the heart of a council estate in the Midlands. With a considerably increased budget, Shane chose to cast some big names to lead his movie including Robert Carlyle, Ricky Tomlinson, Kathy Burke, and Rhys Ifans. Despite the film's accessibility, the move into the "big league" was not entirely satisfactory and was considered a backward step in some circles.
In 2004 Shane Meadows began to rise again with the critically acclaimed "Dead Man's Shoes". The film was made on a shoestring budget (reputedly £750,000) that allowed him to retain complete control of the movie he wanted to make, and from the time of first discussing making a movie to the completion of filming was only a matter of three months (a truly remarkable feat). "Dead Man's Shoes" received much critical and popular praise, and gained a much wider audience than any of his previous films.
Shane Meadows latest film is entitled "This Is England". A loosely auto biographical story set in 1983 surrounding an isolated young boy growing up in post Falklands conflict England, that falls under the influence of a gang of skinheads. This film looks certain to be Shane Meadows biggest success so far, as it was extremely well received in international film festivals at the end of 2006, and its UK release in early May 2007 has seen receipts exceed those received for all of his other films put together.
Most of Shane Meadows films have a consistent quality to them. He has remained loyal to this area of the Midlands and indeed his films have all thus far been set in the Midlands. His "schooling" in making lots of short films (which he continues to do) has stood him in good stead in terms of both unobtrusive camera work and his ability to obtain superb performances from both experienced actors and new comers alike. Indeed his approach to casting seems similar in approach to that of Ken Loach, in that "local" talent is preferred in order to preserve authenticity. Whilst his parochial settings may at times hinder the ability of his films to translate to a mass worldwide audience (America) his films particularly Dead Man's Shoes continue to shine like a beacon for the ethics of quality over style, and story over budget. He also shows particular mastery in his choice and use of music in his films, indeed the soundtracks of his films are absolutely superb.
Of the new wave of British Directors Shane Meadows has had maybe the hardest journey to bring his work to the screen, but his work is ultimately the most rewarding of any of his peers, and with his recent offerings, "Dead Man's Shoes" and "This Is England", his films are finally beginning to receive the mass exposure that they deserve.
He is undoubtedly the most gifted British director of his generation, and he is fast joining the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh for the integrity and mastery in bringing his stories to the big screen.
Sept 2007. Shane Meadows has now been honoured with a UK box set release of his films. Entitled This Is Shane Meadows the set includes the films TwentyFourSeven, A Room For Romeo Brass, Dead Man's Shoes and the critically lauded This Is England. Its lack of exclusive extras content means this is a release aimed at new fans of Shane Meadows rather than those who already have all of his films on DVD. Also released on 3rd September is This Is England which is released as a two disc edition with tons of fantastic extras. Both of these are available to by from our very own Shane Meadows UK Store or Shane Meadows USA Store in association with Amazon.com.
April 2008 - Shane Meadows official site has been updated with details of his forthcoming projects - both of which started life intending to be shorts. The first is Somers Town written by Shane's long term writing partner Paul Fraser. The story revolves around a young Polish boy (Marek) who comes over to London with his father to live and work in Somers Town. Marek meets a young lad who has run away from a Sheffield care home and an unlikely friendship begins, as as they both fall in love with a French girl who works in the local cafe. The film has been shot in the UK plus Paris and Warsaw.The cast will include Thomas Turgoose, Kate Dickie, Andrew Shim and Perry Benson. The film has already been accepted into the prestigious Berlin FIlm Festival. The 70 minute film looks set to be broadcast on TV sometime before the summer (video recorders at the ready then). Check Shane Meadows Official site for more info.
Also announced is 'Le Donk' starring Paddy Considine. The story centers around Le Donk a builder, rock drummer and roadie played by Paddy Considine, and who roadies for The Arctic Monkeys. The feature length film looks set to be released on DVD this year. A 'Le Donk' teaser trailer for has been posted up on Youtube. (Think the personal story behind the scenes at Spinal Tap but wi' more mushy peas).
The long awaited project 'King Of The Gypsies' looks like its finally going ahead. In interviews the wonderful Mr Meadows has often talked about his dreams of making this project a reality, but to do the story justice he required substantial finance for the story. This story is about the life of bare-knuckle boxing champion Bartley Gorman (who will be played by Paddy Considine). This again started off as a 10 minute documentary in 1995. Shane's official site has the original 10 minute King Of The Gypsies documentary posted on it.
Channel 4 Interview of This is England
The director tells us about bullying, racism, skinhead culture and the BBFC's controversial decision to grant the film an 18 certificate
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When Shane Meadows' This Is England won Best British Film at the 2008 BAFTAs it was a further vindication for a director whose future in the film business looked shaky after his 'sell-out' movie Once Upon A Time In the Midlands bombed at the box office.
His follow-up, the vigilante thriller Dead Man's Shoes, changed all that; though not a financial success, its critical reception and subsequent cult status restored his faith in filmmaking, making a star of Paddy Considine, and bolstering Meadows' reputation as one of the most vital British directors working today. Set in 1983, This Is England tells the story of a fatherless 12-year-old called Shaun, played by Thomas Turgoose, who falls in with a bunch of skinheads. When the racist Combo (Stephen Graham) arrives on the scene, the group is torn apart, culminating in the vicious beating of black skinhead Milky (A Room For Romeo Brass's Andrew Shim).
In March 2007, the British Board Of Film Classification saddled the film with an 18 certificate, decreeing that its use of "vicious racial language... might give out the wrong message to an impressionable audience". Such a move not only precluded Turgoose from seeing his own film, but also prevented Meadows from screening it to 15-year-old schoolchildren, as planned, to "show the dangers of bullying, peer pressure and racism to young people". As producer Mark Herbert said at the time, "It's insane to deny them that."
You must have been delighted by the film's reception when it premiered at the 2006 London Film Festival.
I felt like I'd won the World Cup! You know when people drive around in open buses? It felt like that - incredible! I've been to the LFF three or four times before, but now it feels like there's a heart to it, a warmth to it.
Next page • "It was the equivalent of punk. All I need is a bass, a guitar and some drums"
Comment on this feature >
When Shane Meadows' This Is England won Best British Film at the 2008 BAFTAs it was a further vindication for a director whose future in the film business looked shaky after his 'sell-out' movie Once Upon A Time In the Midlands bombed at the box office.
His follow-up, the vigilante thriller Dead Man's Shoes, changed all that; though not a financial success, its critical reception and subsequent cult status restored his faith in filmmaking, making a star of Paddy Considine, and bolstering Meadows' reputation as one of the most vital British directors working today. Set in 1983, This Is England tells the story of a fatherless 12-year-old called Shaun, played by Thomas Turgoose, who falls in with a bunch of skinheads. When the racist Combo (Stephen Graham) arrives on the scene, the group is torn apart, culminating in the vicious beating of black skinhead Milky (A Room For Romeo Brass's Andrew Shim).
In March 2007, the British Board Of Film Classification saddled the film with an 18 certificate, decreeing that its use of "vicious racial language... might give out the wrong message to an impressionable audience". Such a move not only precluded Turgoose from seeing his own film, but also prevented Meadows from screening it to 15-year-old schoolchildren, as planned, to "show the dangers of bullying, peer pressure and racism to young people". As producer Mark Herbert said at the time, "It's insane to deny them that."
You must have been delighted by the film's reception when it premiered at the 2006 London Film Festival.
I felt like I'd won the World Cup! You know when people drive around in open buses? It felt like that - incredible! I've been to the LFF three or four times before, but now it feels like there's a heart to it, a warmth to it.
Next page • "It was the equivalent of punk. All I need is a bass, a guitar and some drums"
Futuremovies information
Interview with Shane Meadows
Shane Meadows has always classed himself as a regional filmmaker. Even before his 1997 feature debut, Twentyfour Seven, when he was making short films like Small Time and Where’s The Money, Ronnie? Meadows set about establishing his filmmaking playground as the East Midlands area where he grew up. Following Twentyfour Seven with A Room for Romeo Brass in 1999 and his “tinned Spaghetti western” Once Upon a Time in the Midlands three years later, Meadows swiftly became recognised as one of the most distinct British voices working in cinema.
After his 2004 revenge drama Dead Man’s Shoes, Meadows returns with his boldest film yet, This is England. Already the winner of the Best British Independent Film at the BIFA awards, this 1983-set tale of one boy’s induction into a gang of skinheads is anything but a nostalgia trip. Seen through the eyes of 11 year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), whose own father has been killed in the Falklands conflict, This is England is a poignant state-of-the-nation address that shows Meadows at his most mature. Below, he talks about how he drew from his own experiences for the film.
This is England is yet another film made outside of London. Is it difficult to continue doing this?
Shane Meadows: I suppose the dream was always about existing outside of London. Obviously the film world ten years ago, when I first kicked off, was a very different landscape. Meeting anyone for a job on the crew, and on the cast, always meant a trip to London for me. But it’s changed quite dramatically. You can’t completely exist outside of what’s down there, but things have changed massively. On a technical level, I can edit at home. Computers, compared to what they were then…you don’t have to hire a big system in London. And on a casting level, now I have five films behind me, I have this team of people I can rely on and work with again and again. Obviously you don’t give a person a part they’re not perfect for, but we’re starting to build this assembly of people. And it was a big moment when I met Mark Herbert from Warp Films, because his idea was to make their base in Sheffield. So I found a kindred spirit in Mark. Then there are relationships like the one I’ve had with Andrew [Shim] and Vicky [McClure]…but if you check the names on all my films you’ll notice people cropping up in and out of them throughout the course of my career.
So it’s changed for the better for you, as you’ve become more independent?
Shane Meadows: Completely. I’m obviously first and foremost a British filmmaker on a global scale, but when it comes to narrowing it down, I really feel like my voice is in the Midlands and outside of London. Obviously, when you’re raising money, you have to go down there and play the game. But it feels quite different. You do feel independent. In London, there must be thousands of people in the business of making films, whereas in Nottingham or Sheffield, you’re probably talking about below a hundred. So there aren’t thousands of people scrapping for the same money and for the same jobs. I went out in Nottingham the other night and there’s a really beautiful community of people who are really supportive. It’s not this back-stabbing thing, high-rent, high-cost, high-tension. Up here we are independent filmmakers and there’s a lovely sense of camaraderie.
But do you think This is England is a specifically East Midlands story?
Shane Meadows: Probably more than any of films to date it’s the hardest to place anywhere. I’d made three Nottingham films, but This is England and Dead Man’s Shoes have become less specific and less identifiable. This is England, just in the title, is a much bolder film. Though to make any film with big issues, it’s still the characters that draw you in. I knew there’d be big themes running through this, but I couldn’t lose the characterisation that’s gone through all my other films. I did know right from the beginning that this would be a step-up. It’s not that microcosm anymore. This was about the people from all around. It’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever make to a political film.
Certainly the inclusion of the Falklands War shows that. Did that make a great impression on you when you were young?
Shane Meadows: Well, it still carries on today. As an adult, I look back at who led the country up to that point. But when you started going through this footage from the 1980s, Thatcher was the first to be media savvy. Turning up on working class estates, going into a classroom of kids and playing on a computer…I don’t seem to remember anyone before doing that. She did embrace that. This thing of the Falklands, and when you look at the footage, and see the campaign as the unemployment figures hit 3½ million, it does make you incredibly suspicious as to what paratroopers were doing fighting 16 year-old kids from Argentina. It was an incredibly suspicious war, in the same way America and the UK got involved in Iraq. People can see that now. Obviously there were more people against going into Iraq than there were going into the Falklands…but the shame I carry as a British resident, was that it was a war handled in the media as if it were a World Cup summer. Like when England go into the World Cup, there are Union Jacks on the papers, and you can look at headlines from the time and it sounded just like that. Ultimately, I was privy to footage from ITN archives – that wasn’t shown on television – of the people we were fighting, and it was shameful. It was bullying. It was really horrible. How could we have been proud of winning that? It was the equivalent of putting Mike Tyson in the ring with a 7 year-old kid from an infant school. So that was always running in the back of this film – the root level of that horrible racism, that bullying and violence that exists in someone can also be inherent in a nation without us knowing it.
Ironically, it is Combo, the film’s racist figure, who expresses these views against the war in the film. He’s certainly not a stereotypical skinhead…
Shane Meadows: Like a lot of those people, Combo is affected and damaged by his own life. What tends to happen with characters is that they’re not fleshed out, but in my films people tend to bring their own stories to the film. Stephen Graham, who plays Combo, he has a mixed race heritage. He has a Swedish grandmother, a fully Jamaican grandfather and brothers who look black, but Stephen is just very fair skinned. So when I offered him the part, he rang me one night at one o’clock in the morning, and he was beside himself. He said, ‘You’ve asked me to play this extreme right-wing character. But I need to tell you that my Dad’s black.’ And I didn’t have a clue.
You had no idea at the time?
Shane Meadows: I had no idea. So because he wasn’t as dark skinned as his brothers, he was never quite sure if he fitted in. And I thought it was very brave of him to bring it forward and use that complication for his character. So if you watch that scene with him and Milky at the end, knowing that, that that’s what he was thinking, you can see jealousy in his eyes – he’s jealous the guy is black.
Before I saw it, I was expecting a Romper Stomper-style Neo Nazi film…
Shane Meadows: Yeah, everyone was expecting ‘The Football Factory meets Romper Stomper.’ The violence in the film isn’t down to them being skinheads. The violence at the end is about personal torture. Ultimately, the skinhead side of the film is what I wanted it to be, which is to show skinheads as they really were and as I saw it from the inside. Basically as a Ska-Trojan-Reggae embracing culture that through the course of the 1980s moved from Oi! music to bands like Screwdriver, that took on that white power mantle. So you could see how easy it was for kids to slip through…people who became skinheads didn’t understand where it came from. They thought it was always a racist thing. The Eighties was still a time when the skinheads I hung around with understood where they were from. They knew they were second wave skinheads and they knew they weren’t original 1969 skinheads but they wanted to be true to that. It was always a working class thing. There were no middle class skinheads where I came from. Everyone thought the working classes were fucked, but we were really proud of being working class and were going to wear the equivalent of work-boots, jeans, a white shirt and some braces, which we can all afford, and are going to create an image of something so powerful. So as a kid I was very drawn to that idea and was made to feel very proud of working class. It was political but it was never extreme, one way or the other. Some would be left or right wing – as in terms of labour or conservative rather than militant or fascist – and the bands were much the same.
Did you find it was still an era of racial intolerance back then?
Shane Meadows: Then, there was very little in the way of ethnic minorities. There might have been one family running a Chinese restaurant, and one Asian or black family…even on the newspapers or on TV, things were very different. I can’t even say the words that were being used on TV. If you say one of those words now, in any city centre, and you’ll be lucky if you get away with it.
Did you have a Milky in your life back then?
Shane Meadows: Not until I was a bit older. I met a fantastic black guy called Lenny, who really educated me. He was a fantastic friend. I came from this crappy working class predominantly white town, and I was saying things like, ‘Coloured people’ and was getting it all wrong. This was a guy who pulled me up and said, ‘I know you don’t mean it, but if I’m coloured then so are you. You ain’t white – you’re pink and I’m not black, I’m brown. If you’re white, I’m black.’ I thought ‘coloured’ was the PC word, but he was really upset by it. So I learnt a lot.
Were you also, like Shaun in the film, hanging around with a gang who were older than you?
Shane Meadows: Oh, completely. My sister, who was older than me, was going out with a skinhead who was older than her. I was 11, she was 14 and her boyfriend was 16 – and all of his mates were older than him. So I was always the youngest person. I got sent up the garden with a girl called Smell, because I was doing everyone’s head in. Everyone was snogging, and getting off with each other, and I was like, ‘Where’s my girl?’ She was a bit too developed and experienced for me, but it seemed to work for a bit. All of those things happened. I went hunting with them. There was a lad called Gadget who was one of me best friends, and we were always competing against each other because we were the youngest. It’s totally biographical.
So it’s probably the most personal film you’ve made then?
Shane Meadows: Completely. It’s a prequel to everything. A Room For Romeo Brass happened after that process. I went from being this scruffy haired kid and was literally transformed. I remember being given my first Ben Sherman by a guy called Woody, which was way to big for me. And someone else gave me a Crombie that wouldn’t fit a two year-old child, so I had this massive shirt and this tiny Crombie! But it was part of the uniform. I still have the cross tattoo – on the same hand and the same finger as Shaun. It really as close to the bone as you can get. But at the same time, you have to make a film and make it interesting, so you can’t have a shot of you cleaning your teeth just because you did that. It’s boring!
Have you any idea why there’s a sudden nostalgia for the 1980s?
Shane Meadows: If you look back on the period, the 1980s has never been seen as cool. You think of the music, and it always has a kitsch quality to it because everyone looks so ridiculous. Even the Nineties, with The Stone Roses and other bands, was cool before the Eighties. It really missed the boat! The Sixties was always cool, even then. That was my Dad’s era and I was always jealous of that. But now, as an adult, looking back, we were part of this mental time. It was the most enormous amount of tribes that could have ever existed in one place. In the Sixties, it was mods and rockers, and hippies and casuals, whereas in the early Eighties, there was Goths, punks, mods, skinheads, New Romantics, casuals, metal heads…the streets looked completely different. You go into town now and you can’t tell one kid from another – you don’t know what they’re into. You can sort of tell a skateboard kid because his trousers are half way down his legs, but that’s about it. Back then, people wore their hearts on their sleeves. It was a really bold time. CDs were being made, video recorders were coming in…the landscape was changing. No-one knew if they had a future. It’s not like now. There was no satellite. Kids were still out on the streets playing all the time. For me, it was the last great hurrah! People don’t take those chances anymore. Everyone’s far too reserved. Men look like women, women look like men.
The National Front scene feels very authentic. Did you ever witness something like that?
Shane Meadows: Yes, I did witness something like that. I actually went to a meeting, in a house. I never signed up to join. I was like Shaun – I got it but at the same time I was thinking, ‘Why haven’t I got a comfortable chair? My back’s hurting!’ So I wasn’t really mesmerised by it. But the thing that stayed with me was that it wasn’t just skinheads. It was local farmers who came. That’s what I hate about people’s selective memory. They think the National Front was just skinheads, but it wasn’t. It was much more widespread than that. I tried to relate that on the screen.
In many ways, the film is a surrogate father-son story, with Combo and Shaun. Is that the emotional core of the story?
Shane Meadows: Yeah. I think it was about that idea. Every kid comes to a point in his life, where you listen to your Dad, but then you go into the street and you start listening to the views of other people. You’re looking for role models. It’s like that moment when you step out. Obviously Shaun is more invested in looking for a father figure because he’s lost his own father. The core of the film is Shaun by himself, beginning and end, and then in the middle with these two very strong and very different people. Woody has a really good heart and Combo has a massively complicated heart. As much as he wants to help this kid, he’s far too fucked up himself to be able to do it. And he ends up damning him.
Did the script change much over writing it?
Shane Meadows: I don’t place much emphasis on scripts. I write a script because I have to – I knew the story in my head but it was a very rough guideline. But initially there were probably a few more obvious defining skinhead fights at discos that, once I got onto making it, I weeded out and put far more personal details in there. It was the same with the music. When I first wrote it, I was going back through the soundtrack, and there was far more Oi! and aggressive punk music written into the script. But as it evolved, the music turned out to be far more subtle and sensitive.
Do you think that your unhappy experiences on Once Upon a Time in the Midlands fed into making Dead Man’s Shoes and This is England?
Shane Meadows: Once upon a Time in the Midlands, when I did it, it wasn’t until a few months later that I realised how disappointed I was with what I’d made – through not having a genuine final cut for the first time and also having to get audience figures. It was a horrible experience politically. I had this aim of trying to get a wider audience and the complete opposite happened. It ended up being the least like my films. So Dead Man’s Shoes was a massive reaction to that. You can take £3.5 million and shove it; I’ll take £750,000 and try and make the best film I’ve ever made.
One person we haven’t talked about is Thomas Turgoose, who plays Shaun. How did you find him?
Shane Meadows: It was one of those situations where we were getting quite close to the wire, and we’d been all over the place – Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham. And we’d found all of the cast except him, which was quite worrying. I rehearsed over three or four months with people trying different things, but during the last ten per cent of that we were still looking. We ended up getting a specialist casting director, Des Hamilton, who had cast the kid in Ratcatcher, and had this technique of working where he went into community centres, council estates, arcades, shopping centres, and would go and find the roughest, most real kids. He finds kids who’d sat around the streets smoking and drinking and had no interest in being in a film, though the result of that search turned out to be the most fruitful thing that could’ve happened. He is the film, after all.
So how was Thomas to work with?
Shane Meadows: He’s pretty much flawless. As a director, your job can range from having to lean on someone to get a performance out of them, to someone being so built for the part that all you have to do is make them feel confident and comfortable and assured of what they’re actually doing, and you just wind them up and watch them go. The only thing I had to do with Tommo, was make him believe. Like he hated wearing all the really wank clothes at the beginning, as there were girls standing around watching and on a personal level he found it really embarrassing. So I had to chat to him saying, ‘For the transformation to work, you have to look like a dweeb!’ So bizarrely it was the most different actor-director relationship I’ve ever had. It was basically like working with myself at that age. He was in school a lot less when we first started, so he had a lot of things to overcome. He went from doing an hour or two a day in school to 12 hours a day on the film-set where he was in every scene bar three.
Does he have a background similar to Shaun’s?
Shane Meadows: Yeah. He was estranged from his father at the time – his Mum and Dad had split up when he was young and two brothers lived with his Dad while he and his eldest brother had lived with his Mum. So there were a lot of similarities, which is probably why he was so comfortable with the part.
Do you have another feature film in mind?
Shane Meadows: I’ve got six! But I always wanted to do King of the Gypsies, which is my boxing film. But I do need a certain amount of money. People think I’m putting it off but I’m not. If This is England went massive, I might be able to turn around to Channel 4 saying, ‘I want £10 million but I don’t want any famous people in it’, which is not a good equation for them!
Shane Meadows has always classed himself as a regional filmmaker. Even before his 1997 feature debut, Twentyfour Seven, when he was making short films like Small Time and Where’s The Money, Ronnie? Meadows set about establishing his filmmaking playground as the East Midlands area where he grew up. Following Twentyfour Seven with A Room for Romeo Brass in 1999 and his “tinned Spaghetti western” Once Upon a Time in the Midlands three years later, Meadows swiftly became recognised as one of the most distinct British voices working in cinema.
After his 2004 revenge drama Dead Man’s Shoes, Meadows returns with his boldest film yet, This is England. Already the winner of the Best British Independent Film at the BIFA awards, this 1983-set tale of one boy’s induction into a gang of skinheads is anything but a nostalgia trip. Seen through the eyes of 11 year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), whose own father has been killed in the Falklands conflict, This is England is a poignant state-of-the-nation address that shows Meadows at his most mature. Below, he talks about how he drew from his own experiences for the film.
This is England is yet another film made outside of London. Is it difficult to continue doing this?
Shane Meadows: I suppose the dream was always about existing outside of London. Obviously the film world ten years ago, when I first kicked off, was a very different landscape. Meeting anyone for a job on the crew, and on the cast, always meant a trip to London for me. But it’s changed quite dramatically. You can’t completely exist outside of what’s down there, but things have changed massively. On a technical level, I can edit at home. Computers, compared to what they were then…you don’t have to hire a big system in London. And on a casting level, now I have five films behind me, I have this team of people I can rely on and work with again and again. Obviously you don’t give a person a part they’re not perfect for, but we’re starting to build this assembly of people. And it was a big moment when I met Mark Herbert from Warp Films, because his idea was to make their base in Sheffield. So I found a kindred spirit in Mark. Then there are relationships like the one I’ve had with Andrew [Shim] and Vicky [McClure]…but if you check the names on all my films you’ll notice people cropping up in and out of them throughout the course of my career.
So it’s changed for the better for you, as you’ve become more independent?
Shane Meadows: Completely. I’m obviously first and foremost a British filmmaker on a global scale, but when it comes to narrowing it down, I really feel like my voice is in the Midlands and outside of London. Obviously, when you’re raising money, you have to go down there and play the game. But it feels quite different. You do feel independent. In London, there must be thousands of people in the business of making films, whereas in Nottingham or Sheffield, you’re probably talking about below a hundred. So there aren’t thousands of people scrapping for the same money and for the same jobs. I went out in Nottingham the other night and there’s a really beautiful community of people who are really supportive. It’s not this back-stabbing thing, high-rent, high-cost, high-tension. Up here we are independent filmmakers and there’s a lovely sense of camaraderie.
But do you think This is England is a specifically East Midlands story?
Shane Meadows: Probably more than any of films to date it’s the hardest to place anywhere. I’d made three Nottingham films, but This is England and Dead Man’s Shoes have become less specific and less identifiable. This is England, just in the title, is a much bolder film. Though to make any film with big issues, it’s still the characters that draw you in. I knew there’d be big themes running through this, but I couldn’t lose the characterisation that’s gone through all my other films. I did know right from the beginning that this would be a step-up. It’s not that microcosm anymore. This was about the people from all around. It’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever make to a political film.
Certainly the inclusion of the Falklands War shows that. Did that make a great impression on you when you were young?
Shane Meadows: Well, it still carries on today. As an adult, I look back at who led the country up to that point. But when you started going through this footage from the 1980s, Thatcher was the first to be media savvy. Turning up on working class estates, going into a classroom of kids and playing on a computer…I don’t seem to remember anyone before doing that. She did embrace that. This thing of the Falklands, and when you look at the footage, and see the campaign as the unemployment figures hit 3½ million, it does make you incredibly suspicious as to what paratroopers were doing fighting 16 year-old kids from Argentina. It was an incredibly suspicious war, in the same way America and the UK got involved in Iraq. People can see that now. Obviously there were more people against going into Iraq than there were going into the Falklands…but the shame I carry as a British resident, was that it was a war handled in the media as if it were a World Cup summer. Like when England go into the World Cup, there are Union Jacks on the papers, and you can look at headlines from the time and it sounded just like that. Ultimately, I was privy to footage from ITN archives – that wasn’t shown on television – of the people we were fighting, and it was shameful. It was bullying. It was really horrible. How could we have been proud of winning that? It was the equivalent of putting Mike Tyson in the ring with a 7 year-old kid from an infant school. So that was always running in the back of this film – the root level of that horrible racism, that bullying and violence that exists in someone can also be inherent in a nation without us knowing it.
Ironically, it is Combo, the film’s racist figure, who expresses these views against the war in the film. He’s certainly not a stereotypical skinhead…
Shane Meadows: Like a lot of those people, Combo is affected and damaged by his own life. What tends to happen with characters is that they’re not fleshed out, but in my films people tend to bring their own stories to the film. Stephen Graham, who plays Combo, he has a mixed race heritage. He has a Swedish grandmother, a fully Jamaican grandfather and brothers who look black, but Stephen is just very fair skinned. So when I offered him the part, he rang me one night at one o’clock in the morning, and he was beside himself. He said, ‘You’ve asked me to play this extreme right-wing character. But I need to tell you that my Dad’s black.’ And I didn’t have a clue.
You had no idea at the time?
Shane Meadows: I had no idea. So because he wasn’t as dark skinned as his brothers, he was never quite sure if he fitted in. And I thought it was very brave of him to bring it forward and use that complication for his character. So if you watch that scene with him and Milky at the end, knowing that, that that’s what he was thinking, you can see jealousy in his eyes – he’s jealous the guy is black.
Before I saw it, I was expecting a Romper Stomper-style Neo Nazi film…
Shane Meadows: Yeah, everyone was expecting ‘The Football Factory meets Romper Stomper.’ The violence in the film isn’t down to them being skinheads. The violence at the end is about personal torture. Ultimately, the skinhead side of the film is what I wanted it to be, which is to show skinheads as they really were and as I saw it from the inside. Basically as a Ska-Trojan-Reggae embracing culture that through the course of the 1980s moved from Oi! music to bands like Screwdriver, that took on that white power mantle. So you could see how easy it was for kids to slip through…people who became skinheads didn’t understand where it came from. They thought it was always a racist thing. The Eighties was still a time when the skinheads I hung around with understood where they were from. They knew they were second wave skinheads and they knew they weren’t original 1969 skinheads but they wanted to be true to that. It was always a working class thing. There were no middle class skinheads where I came from. Everyone thought the working classes were fucked, but we were really proud of being working class and were going to wear the equivalent of work-boots, jeans, a white shirt and some braces, which we can all afford, and are going to create an image of something so powerful. So as a kid I was very drawn to that idea and was made to feel very proud of working class. It was political but it was never extreme, one way or the other. Some would be left or right wing – as in terms of labour or conservative rather than militant or fascist – and the bands were much the same.
Did you find it was still an era of racial intolerance back then?
Shane Meadows: Then, there was very little in the way of ethnic minorities. There might have been one family running a Chinese restaurant, and one Asian or black family…even on the newspapers or on TV, things were very different. I can’t even say the words that were being used on TV. If you say one of those words now, in any city centre, and you’ll be lucky if you get away with it.
Did you have a Milky in your life back then?
Shane Meadows: Not until I was a bit older. I met a fantastic black guy called Lenny, who really educated me. He was a fantastic friend. I came from this crappy working class predominantly white town, and I was saying things like, ‘Coloured people’ and was getting it all wrong. This was a guy who pulled me up and said, ‘I know you don’t mean it, but if I’m coloured then so are you. You ain’t white – you’re pink and I’m not black, I’m brown. If you’re white, I’m black.’ I thought ‘coloured’ was the PC word, but he was really upset by it. So I learnt a lot.
Were you also, like Shaun in the film, hanging around with a gang who were older than you?
Shane Meadows: Oh, completely. My sister, who was older than me, was going out with a skinhead who was older than her. I was 11, she was 14 and her boyfriend was 16 – and all of his mates were older than him. So I was always the youngest person. I got sent up the garden with a girl called Smell, because I was doing everyone’s head in. Everyone was snogging, and getting off with each other, and I was like, ‘Where’s my girl?’ She was a bit too developed and experienced for me, but it seemed to work for a bit. All of those things happened. I went hunting with them. There was a lad called Gadget who was one of me best friends, and we were always competing against each other because we were the youngest. It’s totally biographical.
So it’s probably the most personal film you’ve made then?
Shane Meadows: Completely. It’s a prequel to everything. A Room For Romeo Brass happened after that process. I went from being this scruffy haired kid and was literally transformed. I remember being given my first Ben Sherman by a guy called Woody, which was way to big for me. And someone else gave me a Crombie that wouldn’t fit a two year-old child, so I had this massive shirt and this tiny Crombie! But it was part of the uniform. I still have the cross tattoo – on the same hand and the same finger as Shaun. It really as close to the bone as you can get. But at the same time, you have to make a film and make it interesting, so you can’t have a shot of you cleaning your teeth just because you did that. It’s boring!
Have you any idea why there’s a sudden nostalgia for the 1980s?
Shane Meadows: If you look back on the period, the 1980s has never been seen as cool. You think of the music, and it always has a kitsch quality to it because everyone looks so ridiculous. Even the Nineties, with The Stone Roses and other bands, was cool before the Eighties. It really missed the boat! The Sixties was always cool, even then. That was my Dad’s era and I was always jealous of that. But now, as an adult, looking back, we were part of this mental time. It was the most enormous amount of tribes that could have ever existed in one place. In the Sixties, it was mods and rockers, and hippies and casuals, whereas in the early Eighties, there was Goths, punks, mods, skinheads, New Romantics, casuals, metal heads…the streets looked completely different. You go into town now and you can’t tell one kid from another – you don’t know what they’re into. You can sort of tell a skateboard kid because his trousers are half way down his legs, but that’s about it. Back then, people wore their hearts on their sleeves. It was a really bold time. CDs were being made, video recorders were coming in…the landscape was changing. No-one knew if they had a future. It’s not like now. There was no satellite. Kids were still out on the streets playing all the time. For me, it was the last great hurrah! People don’t take those chances anymore. Everyone’s far too reserved. Men look like women, women look like men.
The National Front scene feels very authentic. Did you ever witness something like that?
Shane Meadows: Yes, I did witness something like that. I actually went to a meeting, in a house. I never signed up to join. I was like Shaun – I got it but at the same time I was thinking, ‘Why haven’t I got a comfortable chair? My back’s hurting!’ So I wasn’t really mesmerised by it. But the thing that stayed with me was that it wasn’t just skinheads. It was local farmers who came. That’s what I hate about people’s selective memory. They think the National Front was just skinheads, but it wasn’t. It was much more widespread than that. I tried to relate that on the screen.
In many ways, the film is a surrogate father-son story, with Combo and Shaun. Is that the emotional core of the story?
Shane Meadows: Yeah. I think it was about that idea. Every kid comes to a point in his life, where you listen to your Dad, but then you go into the street and you start listening to the views of other people. You’re looking for role models. It’s like that moment when you step out. Obviously Shaun is more invested in looking for a father figure because he’s lost his own father. The core of the film is Shaun by himself, beginning and end, and then in the middle with these two very strong and very different people. Woody has a really good heart and Combo has a massively complicated heart. As much as he wants to help this kid, he’s far too fucked up himself to be able to do it. And he ends up damning him.
Did the script change much over writing it?
Shane Meadows: I don’t place much emphasis on scripts. I write a script because I have to – I knew the story in my head but it was a very rough guideline. But initially there were probably a few more obvious defining skinhead fights at discos that, once I got onto making it, I weeded out and put far more personal details in there. It was the same with the music. When I first wrote it, I was going back through the soundtrack, and there was far more Oi! and aggressive punk music written into the script. But as it evolved, the music turned out to be far more subtle and sensitive.
Do you think that your unhappy experiences on Once Upon a Time in the Midlands fed into making Dead Man’s Shoes and This is England?
Shane Meadows: Once upon a Time in the Midlands, when I did it, it wasn’t until a few months later that I realised how disappointed I was with what I’d made – through not having a genuine final cut for the first time and also having to get audience figures. It was a horrible experience politically. I had this aim of trying to get a wider audience and the complete opposite happened. It ended up being the least like my films. So Dead Man’s Shoes was a massive reaction to that. You can take £3.5 million and shove it; I’ll take £750,000 and try and make the best film I’ve ever made.
One person we haven’t talked about is Thomas Turgoose, who plays Shaun. How did you find him?
Shane Meadows: It was one of those situations where we were getting quite close to the wire, and we’d been all over the place – Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham. And we’d found all of the cast except him, which was quite worrying. I rehearsed over three or four months with people trying different things, but during the last ten per cent of that we were still looking. We ended up getting a specialist casting director, Des Hamilton, who had cast the kid in Ratcatcher, and had this technique of working where he went into community centres, council estates, arcades, shopping centres, and would go and find the roughest, most real kids. He finds kids who’d sat around the streets smoking and drinking and had no interest in being in a film, though the result of that search turned out to be the most fruitful thing that could’ve happened. He is the film, after all.
So how was Thomas to work with?
Shane Meadows: He’s pretty much flawless. As a director, your job can range from having to lean on someone to get a performance out of them, to someone being so built for the part that all you have to do is make them feel confident and comfortable and assured of what they’re actually doing, and you just wind them up and watch them go. The only thing I had to do with Tommo, was make him believe. Like he hated wearing all the really wank clothes at the beginning, as there were girls standing around watching and on a personal level he found it really embarrassing. So I had to chat to him saying, ‘For the transformation to work, you have to look like a dweeb!’ So bizarrely it was the most different actor-director relationship I’ve ever had. It was basically like working with myself at that age. He was in school a lot less when we first started, so he had a lot of things to overcome. He went from doing an hour or two a day in school to 12 hours a day on the film-set where he was in every scene bar three.
Does he have a background similar to Shaun’s?
Shane Meadows: Yeah. He was estranged from his father at the time – his Mum and Dad had split up when he was young and two brothers lived with his Dad while he and his eldest brother had lived with his Mum. So there were a lot of similarities, which is probably why he was so comfortable with the part.
Do you have another feature film in mind?
Shane Meadows: I’ve got six! But I always wanted to do King of the Gypsies, which is my boxing film. But I do need a certain amount of money. People think I’m putting it off but I’m not. If This is England went massive, I might be able to turn around to Channel 4 saying, ‘I want £10 million but I don’t want any famous people in it’, which is not a good equation for them!
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