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Transcript

#5 - PAUL MCGUIGAN · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  Hello, my name is Billy Barnell and I'm very pleased to say that joining me today to talk about his film Ganks No. 1 is Retta Paul.
• 0:07
  We're doing good.
• 0:09
  We're doing great.
• 0:11
  I did that on purpose.
• 0:13
  I said it on purpose.
• 0:14
  So Paul, I was wanting to sort of take you back to the very sort of inception of the project because this project before you came on to it.
• 0:21
  It had quite a troubled production history.
• 0:23
  At one point, it was going to be directed by Jonathan Glazer and Melis and David Shinto were headwritten to stage play.
• 0:28
  It was based on and they were putting it together and then they had difficulties with the production and then they ended up walking away from it.
• 0:36
  And I was basically wondering where you came on.
• 0:38
  Did you know anything about the difficulties that have beforehand for you?
• 0:43
  Yeah, I mean, look, I had just done a film called Acid House, which was my first movie, which was a sort of three short stories put together as one movie written by Irvin Weils, who just had written Train Spawning.
• 0:57
  And I got a call from Film Force and looked.
• 1:00
  They were really interested because there was a Film Force project, Acid House.
• 1:04
  They said the director had had had left the project or there was a problem with director producer were getting on.
• 1:12
  Do you want to come in for a meeting on it?
• 1:14
  So I went in for a meeting with Shinto and Melis and Paul Webster, who the time was the head of Film Force.
• 1:21
  And you know, the guys were fine and they were interested in my work. They liked Acid House.
• 1:27
  I didn't really know much about the background of why Jonathan had left.
• 1:31
  I really liked Jonathan with Glazer, by the way.
• 1:34
  So this is no slight on Jonathan because he's a fantastic filmmaker and a next person.
• 1:39
  But what happened was not really my, I wasn't really interested in what had gone before.
• 1:44
  I was more interested in what was, you know, and get my next gig.
• 1:47
  I really loved the script. I thought, I mean, they're great, they're great writers, you know.
• 1:51
  They're right and it's very emotive and very cerebral and I was really interested in that.
• 1:56
  And then so, so they left the project and Film Force had the grace and the kind of good will to say, right, well, let's just do it and we'll find another right.
• 2:08
  It's just still need a bit of a polish, you know.
• 2:10
  And we weren't allowed to use the ending. They had just written an ending that was really fantastic.
• 2:15
  Most of that was the character they were holding up saying, well, our deal with Film Force, she's out with her deal.
• 2:24
  We've rewritten the ending, but we're not going to tell you what it is.
• 2:28
  And so we had to have a reattlement and do the ending.
• 2:31
  And I think that's the kind of weakest part of our film really ends up just because their ending was fantastic.
• 2:37
  And then Norma Heyman was a producer of his, a fantastic producer, old school producer. She's David Heyman's mum.
• 2:44
  And we just got on with it.
• 2:46
  You know, and that was quite young that I was, I was only 30, two or something.
• 2:51
  I was quite young, you know, when I did gangster. So, you know, I was quite naive.
• 2:55
  I didn't really know what was happening. I didn't really know.
• 2:58
  Because, because acid house was born out of everyone, well, should actually get in contact with me directly and saying,
• 3:04
  I've got this short film. Do you ever fancy doing a drama? And I'd never directed a drama before. And I was like, OK.
• 3:10
  And it was called the grand star cause. And there was just going to be a short film for Channel 4, because he'd such a big success with train sport and he had a green light to do that.
• 3:18
  And I wasn't really, I was just kind of making up as I went along, but I was having fun. You know, I was, I was, I was, I was a photographer before then.
• 3:25
  And I was a documentary filmmaker. And I was quite successful as a photographer. I worked for Vogue and all these big magazines and face and stuff.
• 3:32
  And so, I knew visually what I wanted to do. You know, and then acid house was a very visual film.
• 3:38
  And then gangster was much more about performance and more about the very cerebral kind of intellect to it. And also the relationships between gangster and Freddie Mays and actually gangster and himself, if you like, you know.
• 3:52
  So I found that really fascinating and the changes of time and the timeline was really fascinating to me.
• 3:58
  So I just got my head down and just got on with them. I had the same kind of approach that I had with acid house. I wish somebody had occasionally I wish somebody just put their hand on my shoulder and went, OK, calm down a bit.
• 4:09
  Every shot doesn't need to be a brilliant shot every moment doesn't need to be visually arresting you know, cause I was quite into the visuals of it, you know.
• 4:19
  But then I did sit down for a minute and I thought, OK, who am I going to cast in this film? So I am probably talking through all your questions.
• 4:27
  There is brilliant. I mean, I'll actually about to move on to the casting process because it's such an extraordinary cast. I mean, there's some some actors who have gone to be huge stars, you know, in their first sort of major starring roles.
• 4:39
  But I just wanted to quickly touch on. So originally the film before it was a movie, it was a stage play, which meant ascension to written. And I was just curious whether you, when you came on, had you any awareness of the stage play?
• 4:50
  You seen it. And if you had, did that make you more passionate to do that? Get the gig.
• 4:54
  They sent me what went along with the script, they sent me the screenplay, the stage play. Sorry, they sent me the stage play.
• 5:01
  And I hadn't seen it, but they also sent me some video of it as well, because I live up in Scotland. So London, you know, I think it was the Almeida, it was that, and I had a short run there with Peter Bowles playing the part of gangster, which he did amazingly actually in my opinion.
• 5:24
  And I think that that that was one of the problems was the casting. I think Jonathan Glazer and the writers wanted a certain cast member, and I can't remember who, who was or if I did, I probably wouldn't see anyway, but you know, they wanted somebody in that role. And I think that the producers were at odds with that, you know, so I think that's how it ended up.
• 5:47
  They're not doing the thing. So casting is always really important. I mean, it's to me, it's everything really.
• 5:55
  And this was, so I hadn't seen the stage play, but I saw it on video, and then I also read the text, as well as the script. So I was quite sort of up to speed with everything, you know.
• 6:09
  And I felt, you know, obviously during the stage play, it was a one-man show really. And so the film, obviously, you're, it's a different animals, completely different animals, as you can imagine.
• 6:22
  My job was to figure out, well, my main question to myself and to, and everyone was asking me was, how are you going to do the old gangster and the young gangsters, you know, which approach on that?
• 6:36
  And I thought about it quite a bit, as you can imagine. And obviously, it felt like it had to be two separate actors to me. You know, we weren't doing the CGI version of this, we were doing a low budget kind of approach to it.
• 6:50
  And then, and then I thought about old gangsters first, to be honest.
• 6:56
  And I thought, right, who's, who's my favorite actor of that generation and immediately Malcolm McDow came to mind? Actually, no, it wasn't.
• 7:08
  The club where Orange did it for me was more if, you know, when he did, if I loved the way he looked at the camera, I loved the way he broke forth wall there and he was always kind of roaming around and visualizing them, you know, looking at everything and observing everything.
• 7:21
  And I thought that's really interesting because the script was really, it came from, there's very much gangsters point of view of the world.
• 7:28
  And so therefore, there was no voice or reason, you know, and so you have to have someone who captivates you and takes you along in this nightmare, right? You know, and so I went up to a Norma Heyman, I had an office in, in so square and at this time in Norma said, right, who should we go for?
• 7:48
  And I said, look, I think we should go for Malcolm and we sent it to Malcolm and he was interested.
• 7:54
  And then I remember Norma giving me a ticket, a plane ticket to go and get Pierre Sober, who was also the director of photography.
• 8:06
  Norma said to me, right, who's your favorite DP, you know, and Pierre had just done Donnie Brasco, and I loved that movie, and I loved the way he approached the sort of internalizing of characters and the idea of the guy who knows he's double crossing someone else and I thought it was so extraordinary and visually really extraordinary.
• 8:25
  And so I said, Pierre Sober, and she went, okay, here's a, here's a return ticket, I want you to go to New York, early and get both Pierre Sober and Malcolm McDowell, of course it was an economy ticket.
• 8:43
  And I remember, Pierre and I gone very well and he was very gracious and he became one of my lifelong friends.
• 8:50
  He just died recently, passed away recently and we did five movies with each other together.
• 8:55
  So that was a friendship that grew and grew and grew and a very important part of my life.
• 9:00
  And then Malcolm, I remember I was to meet him at a restaurant in Santa Monica, he was there and he was lovely, he was so brilliant and he was so enthusiastic with the script.
• 9:09
  And then I remember Malcolm at one point excused himself, I'm going to the toilet, and then about, it's coming up and it's later the toilet door burst open.
• 9:18
  And there was a couple of old sort of older ladies that lunch, you know, it's sitting there, it was fancy restaurant sitting there, and he, he, he, he owned the, he kicked home the door and he's like, what are you looking at?
• 9:29
  And he walked away and sat there next to me and went, is this something like that, you're looking at that and he's a, he's, he's truly a quite remarkable one.
• 9:39
  And so that was great. So I was, I was a very successful trip. So once you, once you start putting the pieces together, you know, for me,
• 9:48
  older gangster and the DP were really important for me, and then obviously, how do you marry up young gangster with older gangster?
• 10:01
  And Paul Benny came in one day and this happens sometimes as a director, you, you, you just stop in your tracks and you just smile internally because you're, you're listening to him doing his piece and doing his scenes and I'm just thinking, I could have stopped him after two minutes and went, you're the guy.
• 10:20
  I mean, it was, it was simple, is that? And he walked in and also he looks to Malcolm, but unfortunately, he's a foot taller than Malcolm. So I was like, okay.
• 10:30
  So I was like, okay, how does this work?
• 10:32
  He's shrunk of age, he's shrunk of age.
• 10:34
  Well, here was my kind of take on it because you have to think of some right when you're talking to people about this.
• 10:39
  And I thought, well, you know, when you're older, you always look back at yourself as more handsome and funnier and more intelligent tall or even.
• 10:49
  And so you always have a different idea of yourself, you're younger than what you actually were as you're older.
• 10:55
  I'm sure if you're around your grandparents or you died or whatever, you know, they all talk about, oh, when I was a young guy, I was a great footballer.
• 11:02
  They probably weren't, right? But we always have those stories to tell. And I think that I kind of, I kind of leaned on that a little bit because that's what the story was about.
• 11:11
  It was about exercising about wanting to be someone else, wanting to be that guy, wanting to be the number one guy, wanting to be that person, wanting to be Freddie Mayens, you know.
• 11:19
  And so in a way, we had a lot of artistic license there because there was that internal voice.
• 11:25
  There was the engine of the script that you could lean on to and you could understand that that was the rhythm of the script as well came from that voice.
• 11:34
  And so it was this idea of how you present yourself and the clothes and and taking off the clothes and it was all very almost ceremonial, you know.
• 11:47
  And so yeah, that's that's how I got around that in my head is a filmmaker. I was like, no, not work.
• 11:53
  And I thought that the the blindness of both of them and the and just the way the people knew of Malcolm and he was younger, I thought really played into Paul Betney's strengths as well, you know.
• 12:04
  And then obviously David Phyllis came along.
• 12:07
  And so I had to really pestle David because I was a massive fan of his like a massive fine.
• 12:13
  And there's a bit embarrassing, you know, I was like, I actually end up getting Malcolm to come to ask him to come and have some tea so that we could.
• 12:22
  So we could chat about it because David I did want to I would didn't want to make I didn't want David to age up as well because I felt that that that then also makes the the changing gangster much, much more of a deliberate take on it, you know.
• 12:38
  Whereas if everyone else is aging up around him, but he's a different character when he comes out of prison, he's older, I thought that was interesting.
• 12:45
  So it took about convincing for David, but I mean, he wasn't bored, but he loved the script, but he was such a big, big part of what we did because he was the leader of the gang, you know, because we did.
• 12:57
  Then the casting all came from a lot of young actors who have now gone on to to greater things.
• 13:02
  David really really cemented all those people together, he really was the gel between everybody.
• 13:07
  And he created out that kind of gang, you know, and the body language and everything just came out from him, so we did a better rehearsal.
• 13:17
  So the access to me are everything is everything that I didn't really know because I saw my second movie and I didn't go to film school, so I wasn't really.
• 13:26
  I wasn't really sure how to work with actors, you know, acid house, we did a lot rehearsal in the law, great Scottish actors and that as well.
• 13:34
  You and Bremner and Kevin McKid, the show will miss and I really hadn't learned properly how to talk to actors, you know, in a way, I guess I've never really learned that other than just be yourself and try to do and try to communicate with them what you want, you know, because I just want to be directed, they just don't want to be applauded, you know, that comes later.
• 13:56
  So, so it was a learning curve, it always was a learning curve with me and then going into making a natural movie because I hadn't really done that was three short films still actually do a film, you know, and deal with budgets and dealing with a bigger crew, you know, and expectations that was always hard.
• 14:17
  I mean, yeah, it's it, I mean, the cast is absolutely extraordinary as you're saying, you've got all these people who are just sort of not, if not starting out sort of getting their first big sort of starring role like Bettany and Eddie Marzan and Andrew Lincoln, as well as obviously gone on to, you know, to the Walking Dead and Jim.
• 14:32
  I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean
• 15:02
  I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean
• 15:32
  I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean I mean nothing's right! I mean, real bad! Just listen to some. Listen to some. It really depends on my mom. Work like that. Maximum sleep. такое.
• 16:02
  all his understanding of those characters, you know, of his experience of those characters,
• 16:06
  and he just made it feel very natural rather than overdone, you know. But there's always that
• 16:12
  thing in Malcolm, he always does dial up a bit, but you know, and this one, there was a sort of
• 16:17
  pathos about him that I felt was interesting, you know, and a sadness to it, really.
• 16:22
  Absolutely, yeah. No, it's true. And for a lot of people, and historically kind of, you know,
• 16:29
  the fact that the world kind of got introduced to Paul Bettany through this film is extraordinary,
• 16:32
  because his performance is absolutely, I mean, as I say, I was watching again the other day,
• 16:37
  and it's, and people talk about, like, you think of, like, great psychopaths in films, and you
• 16:41
  think of people like Dennis Hopper and Blee Velvet, and you think of these guys who are, you know,
• 16:45
  terrifying, and they are. But you get Bettany in this, and he's just absolutely, I remember the
• 16:51
  first time seeing it, and the the silent sort of screaming makes in the car, just absolutely
• 16:56
  cutting straight through me and going, you know, this is something else entirely. And I was just,
• 17:00
  so I just kept, so I was interested to ask you, like, what, what were the conversations you had
• 17:04
  with Paul? Because, yeah, he didn't, he didn't television in a few supporting roles, but this was
• 17:08
  his first major role, and yeah, what kind of conversations do you have about the character?
• 17:12
  It was about commitment, you know, it was about committing to it, and it was about,
• 17:18
  it was up to me to kind of make him understand what I was doing visually as well,
• 17:23
  with the character and how we're filming it, how we're shooting it. And Paul, like I do with most
• 17:30
  actors, if I see they've got it, I'll leave them alone, you know, I don't feel, I don't feel the
• 17:35
  need to keep talking to actors a lot, you know, I think, I think there's a school of people
• 17:39
  thinking the directors always have to be directing or pretending to direct. I don't know, there's
• 17:44
  something that, you know, you're not the actor, you're the director, so to me, directing is almost
• 17:50
  about letting it happen, you know, I would say my best days are the days I hardly even speak,
• 17:57
  because I'm just listening and I'm watching and I'm enthralled, you know, because you know,
• 18:01
  that's, that's, it's going right, you know, they're on the right path, and Paul got it straight
• 18:05
  away, you know, and Paul's got this very, he's incredibly structured, you know, he's, he's,
• 18:11
  he's very elegant, you know, and we did talk about body alarms, and I said, you know,
• 18:16
  keep that elegance, because that's the thing that makes you stick out for Freddie May as, you know,
• 18:21
  that's what he's seasoning, he's seasoning the elegance, because that's what he is, he's elegant,
• 18:25
  you know, with his suits and, you know, and his ties and his gold tie pins and all that stuff,
• 18:30
  you know, his cufflinks and whatever, his shoes, his leather shoes. I really wanted that,
• 18:35
  and I wanted him to mirror Freddie in a way, you know, I wanted him to be quite, and so David and
• 18:40
  Paul hung out quite a lot, and, and they, they kind of, and I think Paul watched David more
• 18:47
  than he watched Malcolm in a way, even though Paul was there for Malcolm stuff, because he wanted
• 18:51
  to sort of see what Malcolm was doing obviously. I don't think Paul's performance came from Malcolm,
• 19:00
  and I don't think it came from Freddie, I think it was a bit of both, and then for me, I just wanted
• 19:05
  him to be quiet and silent, and that's always scary to me, you know, the people that
• 19:11
  shout the loudest, it's a manifestation of their fear, it's not, it's not something, I don't
• 19:17
  feel threatened when people shout to me, you know, I just feel, I just feel like it's them being
• 19:22
  unsure of themselves, you know, and that's why it is a director I never shout on sick, is
• 19:27
  even though you want to have the time to worry up, you can, because you've got to be in control,
• 19:33
  and you've got to be seen to be calm and collected, and that's what I like to be Paul's performance,
• 19:39
  you know, it was harrowing because it was the silent scream, that's exactly what you said,
• 19:43
  it was all interior, it was all inside him, but outside he was calm, and he was, you know, even when
• 19:48
  he was killing Lenny Taylor, I remember that was a big one, I remember what I did to Paul,
• 19:54
  I don't, I don't, I'm not really into manipulating access to do anything, but I remember taking his
• 19:58
  cigarettes off of me, he smoked a lot in those days, he doesn't smoke anymore, but he smoked a
• 20:03
  lot in those days, and I took all these fags off him, and I remember saying to everyone in the
• 20:08
  crew, if I find anyone giving them a cigarette, you're going home, and I could hear him stocking
• 20:13
  around the set, kicking the set, saying, Greg, you can't, you can't, you can't, you just
• 20:19
  get themselves riled up, and then we got him into that scene where he's got the vest on, and he's
• 20:24
  he's stopping a little Lenny, and I remember being quite scared of him myself, and I remember the
• 20:35
  script supervisor, she, she started crying because she was worried that Paul was,
• 20:41
  there was mentally disturbing him, and she was reward him, so he went to places that I think he
• 20:49
  knew he had to go there, he enjoyed the kind of frivolous moments of, of being with the gang,
• 20:55
  and all that stuff, but he knew he had to build up to certain moments where he becomes really,
• 20:59
  really violent and incredibly unstoppable, you know, it's a source of great maturity to Paul where
• 21:05
  you know, the camera kept moving in on him when he's, because there's a lot of the internal
• 21:09
  dialogues coming from him, well it's all from him, right, so my camera is, he's not saying anything,
• 21:15
  but he's had to say everything without saying anything, if you know what I mean, so that's
• 21:20
  tough, so he was able to do that, and I think he's, he had great fun doing that, and I know he did,
• 21:24
  because we always talk about it, it's been quite a joyous kind of project, you know, in one
• 21:29
  number very proud of, hence the fact I'm talking to you about it, because I'm very proud of it,
• 21:34
  because I was younger then, and also everyone was on the same page, I think we had the same,
• 21:40
  I think we were all sort of singing the same song, we were all on the same totally well, kind of
• 21:44
  when you, we knew what this film required, you know. What you were saying there about how Paul's
• 21:51
  performance, it's more what isn't said, and what's, you know, it's show not tell, most of it,
• 21:57
  and I was put in mind about seeing in the club when they sit down and Karen cut into the picture,
• 22:02
  and Karen, you know, it's her age at the saffron where she's seen, where she sings the song and
• 22:07
  fuel us, absolutely, you know, Paul's had over heels and love, and Ganks is just sitting there,
• 22:11
  looking at him, and he knows, he knows what's going on, and he's absolutely hating every single
• 22:16
  second of it, and I was, as I was watching the movie back again, I did think the way Paul plays that,
• 22:22
  there is almost like you could read into that like a subplot, like a lot, there is a kind of love
• 22:25
  triangle going on. Absolutely. And was that something that you guys talked about the fact that,
• 22:30
  but you know, it's almost like does he want to just be Freddie Mazer, does he want to, you know,
• 22:34
  is there another side to it, you know, that was something that I was wondering about.
• 22:38
  We did, we talked about that quite a lot, and you're absolutely right to observe that, you know,
• 22:42
  and there's also when Ganks and Karen are having the conversation a bit Freddie, and she's
• 22:48
  spits on them, you know, because he's like, no, no, Freddie's mind, you know, he belongs to me,
• 22:53
  because that's basically what he's saying. He doesn't say it, but that's basically saying,
• 22:57
  because he's like, because he's like, you're well, you're well, and he's like, you'll get ready,
• 23:00
  he'll be with me, and that's a big part, that's a very important part of the story, because yeah,
• 23:05
  I mean, he falls in love with Freddie, you know, and even at the end when he's like throwing money
• 23:10
  at me and all that, he realizes that Freddie looks at him, like he looks at himself, but pathetic,
• 23:16
  you know, and that that says love of his life, you know, that's because Ganks, they don't even know
• 23:20
  his name, you know, it's quite literally all he loves for us to be Freddie Mazer, to be with him,
• 23:26
  he knows he can be with him, so he wants to be him, you know, yeah, no, there's a big sort of,
• 23:33
  and I wouldn't call it homerotic is more, again, I use the word cerebral, but it's more about that,
• 23:38
  you know, and there's a jealousy that that that rages through through Ganks, that when Karen comes
• 23:44
  on to the scene for sure, and that's well observed, because you know, when he's dancing with
• 23:49
  other girl, he's got a really close, and he's looking over to Freddie, and you know, and he's pushing
• 23:53
  her close to it, it's like he's almost squashing the burger, that was that was all talked about,
• 23:58
  you know, we all talked about that, but without being too explicit about it, you know, because
• 24:03
  there was no need to be explicit about it, because that that's just a part of, I think friendship
• 24:09
  between men as well, especially those guys who find it hard to express themselves as much, you
• 24:14
  know, express their feelings, especially if they're all suppressed into violence, then people
• 24:20
  are like that, who are violent by nature, are usually quite, I mean, they're quite unable to express
• 24:28
  themselves, you know, so the only way, the only outlet for it is violent is the violence, you know,
• 24:36
  and I was thought it was interesting, you know, I grew up in a very working class environment
• 24:43
  in Scotland, I mean, I didn't say it was a violent upbringing, but you know, like any working class
• 24:50
  society, there's lots of fighting and drinking and whatever, you know, but I remember thinking
• 24:58
  that there was a great friendship between guys, you know, between men, and pubs, you know,
• 25:05
  there was a big culture in bars in Scotland, you know, and I remember when I was a kid looking at
• 25:10
  men and how they used to cuddle each other and put around each other, and hold each other,
• 25:14
  and I always felt that was kind of interesting, you know, but then they would never do that with
• 25:19
  their kids, you know, there'd always be quite, so maybe I'm in some kind of therapy right now,
• 25:23
  but my dad was always very cuddley with me, but what I'm saying is that I think there's that kind of,
• 25:30
  that was that, especially in that generation, it was hard for men to really express themselves
• 25:36
  on any other way, you know, unless they were drunk or, you know, and then they could afford
• 25:43
  themselves to be a little looser, you know, and so I think that kind of tapped into that whole
• 25:51
  sort of macho male thing, you know, which has a homo-eroticism to it in certain ways,
• 25:56
  you know, the physicality of it, and the way that the gangster in the car when he's in Freddy's
• 26:02
  DB5, he's looking at Freddy and he's looking at his cufflinks, that's one of my favorite scenes
• 26:07
  because it really does play into what we were just talking about, you know, it really does set
• 26:12
  up this dynamic between them, you know, that you could see that he just wants to be him, you know,
• 26:18
  and he fetishizes about it, he, you know, he starts wearing his clothes, you know,
• 26:25
  and it's interesting that, as you say, he doesn't understand himself, so it's big, and because it
• 26:30
  doesn't understand himself, it erupts, this, you know, there's no, the thing that is made
• 26:35
  explicit is, is the violence, and that is his only real way of expressing how he's feeling in
• 26:40
  a sense, and you do, and you get the POV assault scene with Freddy Taylor, which will combat it,
• 26:44
  so there's a lot, I really want to dive into that, but it's almost like an anti-love scene,
• 26:48
  because you've got the romantic song playing, and it, for him, that is kind of sensual, it is almost,
• 26:53
  you know, it's his expulsion of all these feelings, but...
• 26:56
  When I did documentaries before I did gangster, I did this show called Walking Wildside,
• 27:02
  which was a sort of channel for documentaries, you see, is about this in franchise youth,
• 27:08
  you know, there were, there were computer hackers, there was fire starters, there was
• 27:12
  girl gangs, there were all sorts of people, but there was no voice or reason behind it,
• 27:16
  and I did, I did one on fire starters, you know, these kids who burn things, you know,
• 27:22
  and then the watching, and you realise it was a very sexual thing that was happening there, you know,
• 27:27
  there was kind of an outlet of the sexuality, because, you know, there would masturbate or some
• 27:31
  watching the police come, and they would, they would like to cause chaos, and that would sort of
• 27:35
  generate something in them, you know, that gave them a high, you know, and that, that was interesting
• 27:40
  to me that the violence can, can, can be a sexual thing, you know, and again, we didn't want to be
• 27:50
  too explicit about that, because we felt that was something that needed another movie, you know,
• 27:55
  I mean, so, but I think you always have to be aware of that, I think, because when you're looking
• 27:59
  at someone that you don't know their names, you don't know their backgrounds, you don't know
• 28:02
  where they come from, there's nothing that begangs to do, you know, other than, we'll be
• 28:07
  shown in his relationship with, with Freddie Mason, you know, everything he does is for Freddie,
• 28:13
  everything that he does is either to become the king, to become, to do throne Freddie, or to help
• 28:19
  Freddie, or, or when he gets older, as he just waits for Freddie coming out of jail, it's all
• 28:25
  about Freddie, that's the love of his life, you know. And I think it's interesting that, you know,
• 28:28
  as you say, it is a kind of joke in the movie that like, you know, you've got this incredibly
• 28:33
  mature masculine subculture, gangster subculture, but then it's being picked, that you're picking
• 28:39
  at it, you're picking at it in the sense, you know, underneath that match, what is underneath that,
• 28:43
  and there's a vulnerability and a kind of, and yeah, and the fact that it's something that is
• 28:46
  seen, especially at that time, in the 60s, is being so not mature. And if you look at like
• 28:51
  Malacentian toes, there's other two films in this sort of, you know, trilogy, you know,
• 28:55
  Sexy Beans, then 44-inch chest, it's something that comes through an old breed, it's a, it is
• 28:59
  done with humor, and it's done with sensitivity as well, which I think is really interesting.
• 29:03
  Yeah, that's what I'm saying, the brilliant writers, because they tap into that, they understand it,
• 29:09
  they totally understand that, they understand that, that dynamic, you know, but then again,
• 29:14
  you know, I think in, especially in English culture, and forgive me because I'm Scottish, but
• 29:24
  I think there's a certain thing in Englishness, I think there's a, there's an intent, there's a
• 29:30
  sort of identity to gangsters for some reason, and I think it's because England, England doesn't
• 29:35
  really have much cultural base, they don't really have a cultural identity because they've spread
• 29:41
  themselves too thin, you know, because they're culture, the culture of imperialism and going to
• 29:48
  other countries and taking, you know, and all that kind of stuff, whatever, but, and I think that's
• 29:53
  diluted their own culture a little bit, you know, and so therefore the gangster movie was always
• 29:59
  something that the English working class people could really identify with, you know, and it was
• 30:05
  something that was happening around them as well, and, and, and so I think Melis and, and Shinto got
• 30:12
  that and it happened to that thing, you know, and, and, and, and, and to see the vulnerabilities and
• 30:18
  to see the challenges, because, you know, at that time, when we did gangster, there was a lot of
• 30:22
  gangster movies about, there wasn't just sexy beast, I mean, there was love on and a bear that
• 30:27
  was honestly, there were, I don't know, there was all sorts of ones that were out, you know,
• 30:31
  good or bad, I mean, I don't really have an opinion on that, but, and so we, we were really worried
• 30:36
  that we would get, that we were put into that kind of, it's just another gangster movie, you know,
• 30:43
  whereas I think a, a Melis and Shinto kind of elevate that because they, they have more interested
• 30:48
  in the, in the, in the cerebral quality behind the gangsters, you know.
• 30:53
  Hmm, absolutely, yeah, and in fact, this is something my next question is kind of about that,
• 30:58
  because, um, if you read the interviews of them, it comes across that they weren't really inspired
• 31:03
  so much by gangster movies, as by, well, they talk a lot about painting, they talk a lot about
• 31:08
  how we've sexy beast, David Hopney was like a big influence visually and, um, and on 44-inch
• 31:12
  trip chest, it's, um, agreed. And on gang, when they were writing gangster, it was
• 31:17
  frantic bacon and how, you know, you've got these, sort of, these screaming, you know, these,
• 31:21
  these incredible screams. And I was wondering, like, you know, so when they were, they would
• 31:25
  think about when they were writing the script. And so, obviously, that comes through in the film
• 31:28
  with Betty's performance. And I was wondering when you were making it, did you, were you looking at
• 31:31
  those things as well? Like, Francis Bacon's paintings? Oh, I've always been the Francis Bacon
• 31:37
  family. I've always, I went to see, as I mentioned, I was 16, then London, and, and no, I mean,
• 31:42
  I don't tend to take, I mean, as a photographer, so I tend to take my infancies from photography
• 31:48
  and film, you know, um, not so much painting as much, but maybe, I mean, I always say it's always
• 31:54
  subconscious anyway, you know, like, as a writer, I can see how maybe, you know, you go to a gallery
• 32:00
  and you see a Francis Bacon, and you go, right, I would love to sort of visualize that and put
• 32:06
  that in the script and see that, you know, and there's a, there's a filmmaker as well, but I didn't
• 32:10
  see like that. I didn't see it paintingly at all. I mean, I'm quite surprised to hear that to
• 32:14
  yours. Like, you know, I mean, I always am, it takes art and, and it's, it's hard when you do gangster's
• 32:19
  to kind of get away from the gangster cliché, you know, and because half the time it's not a
• 32:26
  cliché, it's real, you know, that's, and then gangsterism always comes from the George Raff films,
• 32:32
  you know, where he dressed up with a, with the two-tone shoes and the three-piece suits and the
• 32:37
  hats and then he was the guy slapping about all the women and all the guys and everyone was scared
• 32:43
  of them and he played that role very well on, on film and then gangster's got a hold of it and
• 32:48
  they were like, that's how I'm going to dress, because George Raff dressed like that. That's what
• 32:51
  the craze did. I mean, the craze even had George Raff, that there are nightclubs and opening up
• 32:55
  their clubs and stuff like that, you know, so it's, it is a bit like Hollywood is always big a big
• 33:01
  influence in the way that outwardly how, how, how gangsterism is portrayed, you know, that's,
• 33:06
  you can't really get away from that because that is a truth of it, you know, there's always that
• 33:10
  getting suited and booted and, you know, showing yourself to have a bit of money and flashing the
• 33:16
  cash and all that stuff, that does exist. What you have to do is then go deeper and as a writer,
• 33:22
  I think that Melis and Shinto really get that and then, you know, and I tip my heart to that,
• 33:27
  they really understand how, it's also shown the pain of it, you know, and how hard it is to,
• 33:35
  because it's all a front path of time, right? Whereas gangster, you don't know if it's a front
• 33:39
  or not, but you do, you realize at the end, it is a total front, you know, when he's on that riff,
• 33:44
  you realize it's nothing, and Freddie says it, what's, what's it all about? What does it mean?
• 33:49
  Nothing, you know, any day, it means nothing. And I think that that kind of realization that your
• 33:55
  life has been empty and been hollow and it's been, you haven't, the reason why they didn't give
• 34:01
  them my name is because he had no identity that was his own, you know, his identity was
• 34:05
  lived through Freddie Mears, you know. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and going back to what you
• 34:11
  was talking about with, so as you say, your second film, you know, well, I mean, your
• 34:15
  acid house was free short from, as well as your first feature. I just like to dive into a
• 34:20
  couple of scenes, if that's the case, because to start off with the, I think one of the most
• 34:26
  talk about scenes in the film, which is the Paul Bettany Eddie Marsan sit down, if you like,
• 34:31
  in the kitchen, which is just an incredible, I mean, what you would say it talked about earlier,
• 34:35
  how with this film, you know, you were, it was more about directing actors and the performance.
• 34:40
  I mean, that scene, I mean, you're just such a great textbook example of just like your actors
• 34:45
  having added acting. And, you know, it's all just about their performance. And I was just
• 34:49
  curious, like, you know, what do you remember about, you know, what was that scene like to shoot?
• 34:53
  What was what was the experience on that day? You know, this was over 20 years ago, so you got to
• 34:58
  kind of, excuse my memory a little bit, but what I don't remember is deciding that I was going to
• 35:05
  operate the camera. And I wanted very little people in there. I wanted very few people in there,
• 35:12
  because I knew that Eddie and Paul were going to do some quite extraordinary, I just knew it,
• 35:19
  I just could feel it, you know, and this scene was really well written, it was a well written scene,
• 35:24
  but I remember we talked a lot about Paul being very quiet, and it's so scary when somebody,
• 35:30
  so I mean, I was talking that before, you know, that scene would have been totally wasted if he
• 35:35
  went in like a barking dog, you know, come on, you know, that's what, that's what a lot of those
• 35:39
  gangster films are, and it's like, oh, I can kill you, I'll chip you if I get it, and it's like,
• 35:43
  you know, that stuff. But this was more about, you know, even at one point during that scene,
• 35:48
  I remember he comes Eddie down, he comes Eddie's list, all right, Eddie stop, it's all right,
• 35:53
  it's all right, it's all right, it takes the kids thing off of the thing, and that was,
• 35:59
  I mean, that was my idea, it was like, you know, to have the kids stuff around, and the pictures,
• 36:04
  because that's a threat, you know, to any father or any family person, you know,
• 36:09
  and Eddie Marsden got it, see Eddie Marsden comes from that background, I mean, Eddie's,
• 36:13
  Eddie's from the, you know, he's from a very working class family in the East End, and I think
• 36:18
  is East End, it might be said, I'm not sure. And so he gets, he totally gets that character,
• 36:22
  and the way he walked, the way he kind of walks, and when they were following him, I just loved
• 36:27
  the way Eddie kind of is always looking around, and walking in yet, that somebody right behind him,
• 36:32
  I'm like, I'm about to, about to chop his head off, if he doesn't do it. And I was, I was
• 36:36
  interesting, and I liked, I liked the rhythm of how the, the kind of jazzy score, the Johnny
• 36:43
  Dyke, what did, and then we're following him up through, there was those concrete flats,
• 36:48
  and then, but then when you get that, it's all like, oh, Eddie, you're doing man, you're all right,
• 36:54
  it's all really, but you know, you just know right, because it's great, because you know,
• 36:58
  it's an audience that, oh, this isn't going to go well, you know, this isn't going to go well.
• 37:02
  And then yet, the way that Paul doesn't jump out of the traps quick, he just really slow,
• 37:09
  and you know, he pushed it, actually, he goes, what's that? He says, that's my ax Eddie, and he's like,
• 37:13
  oh, shit. And then when Eddie started crying, he cried from his nose, you know, the snort came out,
• 37:21
  it's extraordinary. I just remember like, taking the camera and doing it, so I thought it was
• 37:24
  such an intimate scene that I didn't even, I never started on the way, though, I know that,
• 37:29
  I do that anyway, but I just wanted to get right into it. And so I got the camera on my shoulders,
• 37:33
  and it was just me and them, and some guy, you know, and the other actor playing the role, and
• 37:41
  and I just remember thinking, this is extraordinary. I remember the time, I'm in the middle of this,
• 37:46
  this is extraordinary, you know, and there was from that day on that I decided to really change
• 37:51
  how I direct and be more involved in the middle of it with the actors, so I can feel what it's like
• 37:57
  to be in the middle of a scene, you know, rather than sitting behind a monitor somewhere and,
• 38:02
  or next door somewhere, not really feeling out that the actors, you know, always be around the
• 38:07
  actors is my advice to any, any young filmmakers always feel it, feel what that's like,
• 38:13
  feel what it's like to, to have somebody like Marzen or Betney talk to you, you know, and
• 38:21
  perform in front of you, and you make sure you're much better direct, because you,
• 38:25
  you don't need to go a hundred times, you don't need to keep thinking, or I just need to go,
• 38:29
  because something makes it stick, you're actually going, you see all the little nuances of
• 38:34
  Paul's performance, the Eddie's, I mean, Eddie's great, he's always looking at the door, he's always
• 38:38
  thinking somebody's kind of coming help him, or, you know, hit worth, and as an audience, you know,
• 38:44
  you just feel so incredibly tense, and I haven't seen guys for a while, but when I did watch it,
• 38:51
  remember that scene was the one scene I'm glad you mentioned, that scene was the one scene I was
• 38:54
  like, it's probably one of the best scenes I've ever been a part of, you know, as a director,
• 39:00
  and then as you go on directing other things, you always tap into those moments like that,
• 39:05
  and you go, right, I need this to be as good as this, and how do I do that? How do you achieve that,
• 39:09
  you know, so you have to get your actors around you, you have to keep trying to get the best
• 39:14
  performance out of everybody, or when I say best performance, I mean, the performance that matters
• 39:18
  for that moment, you know, and those two actors weren't trying to overact, they were trying to
• 39:24
  underact, they were trying to actually go into it as if they don't know what's going to happen,
• 39:30
  that's for the audience, so like, what's going to happen here? Well, I think what's amazing about
• 39:33
  it is, as you say, it's so stripped down because you've got this, so the film, if you take the film
• 39:39
  as a whole, you've got this, because you're a very visual director, and then like all throughout
• 39:42
  your sort of body of work, you know, whether it's Sherlock or film stars and then Liverpool or
• 39:46
  Acid House, you've got an incredible visual sense, so you really enjoy it, you clearly seem to
• 39:50
  really enjoy playing with the image and putting, you know, stuff in the image and sort of mixing
• 39:55
  up, but with that, and gangster, I think there's a lot of that sort of visual style in there,
• 39:59
  but then you get to that scene, and it suddenly becomes so claustrophobic and stripped down,
• 40:04
  and it's really, and it's so, as you say, so simple, because it's basically, you know,
• 40:08
  shot, shot, Eddie Paul, and you feel absolutely, as the audience watching it again, you feel
• 40:14
  absolutely just confined in that little flat, that little space of the frame and the flat,
• 40:18
  and the fact that I think as well, the brilliance, the other brilliance of that is the fact that you've
• 40:22
  got a third party there, you've got Roland, who is just a silent third party, but the fact that
• 40:27
  you've got a witness there who you can cut back to, where you can see that, you know, Roland's
• 40:31
  obviously, you know, one of these guys, you know, he's, you know, and he's no innocent, but then you,
• 40:35
  you can see him reacting to what Paul's doing, and it cuts so much deeper in the fact that
• 40:41
  Paul's playing it so, you know, it's not that he hasn't got a sense of humor, because he does,
• 40:45
  and it does come through in that scene in his performance, but like, it's just absolutely
• 40:48
  stone-cold at the same time, and you can tell because it's so, as you say, it's so quiet, it's so
• 40:53
  quiet, and yeah, it's all about that look at my eyes thing, he has that kind of, well, one he's
• 40:59
  got amazing eyes, but also he, it's a character, and his character says that one other time as well.
• 41:03
  I remember what I do remember is thinking to myself, we're, what's the heart of this scene,
• 41:08
  and then that's why I went into close-up straightaway, and quite literally, there was Paul and the
• 41:14
  camera behind him here, and then there was Eddie, me shooting Eddie, and then the same for Eddie,
• 41:18
  the camera would be right behind Eddie, with a bit of Eddie in it, and I would quite literally
• 41:22
  be that close to both of them, you know, and I could feel the spit coming off them, I could feel
• 41:27
  the tension coming off it, and that, and that was a good example of to get to the heart
• 41:33
  this scene sooner than layer, you know, because don't let the actors overplay it, because, you know,
• 41:37
  if the actors are on board, and they get it, go into the meat of it, don't go and do a big wide shot,
• 41:43
  or, you know, try and figure out something fancy, just get right into it, that's what I would do anyway.
• 41:49
  And so that scene was a great education for me, and in the way that it evolved and became a better
• 41:58
  scene than any of it was probably would ever imagine, and that happens occasionally, you know, where
• 42:04
  you think, oh, this is going to be a great scene, and sometimes that doesn't work out as well,
• 42:07
  but it's the ones that take you by surprise at the ones that you have to learn from, you know.
• 42:13
  That was sort of the one of the big scenes I wanted to talk about, the other one which we touched
• 42:16
  on earlier is the Lenny Taylor assault scene, which is just, you know, like I say, yeah, I've got,
• 42:22
  you know, quite, I'm really interested to ask about this, because, you know, as we were saying,
• 42:27
  you're such a visual director, and when it comes to the way you sort of, you know, you're putting the,
• 42:31
  you know, what's going on on screen, you've got such visual flair. So I was curious,
• 42:36
  the decision to shoot it from the POV of the victim, which I think is a such a fascinating
• 42:41
  approach to it. Where did that idea come from? It was from the idea of, it was actually, you know,
• 42:48
  looking at films like The Godfather, and when you see very little, but you think you've seen
• 42:52
  everything, you know, and I knew it had to be gruesome, and I was like, well, sometimes when you see
• 42:57
  something to, to explicit your imaginations, sort of, as blanked out, and all you get is what
• 43:04
  you see, right? So I wanted to do the opposite of that, which is, you know, like The Godfather,
• 43:09
  when the booth, and the shoot, the car up, and he's in the car, but you never see him, you just
• 43:14
  see this car being splattered, and the blood coming from inside. And I thought, you know, I would
• 43:20
  quite like to, you know, those are the James Khan moment, you know, and I thought I would quite
• 43:24
  like to do something that showed how scary this guy was, and what it would be like to be killed by
• 43:31
  someone in the point of view of the person being killed. So that keeps our main character in every
• 43:36
  shot, and I thought that would be interesting to see how violent this man can be, and how evil,
• 43:42
  and how destructive, and how he goes into another place, you know, how he has another level of violence
• 43:49
  to him. And I thought, the only way to do that is by having your camera on him as much as you can.
• 43:55
  So, and then, of course, the tartan me, the director tartan me was thinking, it'd be really fun to
• 44:01
  have thrown things into the camera and smashing up. So we build this whole set with, with breakaway
• 44:07
  glass, you know, so that I could throw the stunt person who had a, so we had a helmet made with,
• 44:14
  because although those days, you know, it was, it was pre-digital, so we had little 16-mills
• 44:20
  app cameras that you used to put inside of airplanes, you know, and we had those built,
• 44:27
  and we had one on a crash helmet sort of down here. I pointed you so that, you know, the camera was
• 44:35
  going looking around, and then I'd be thought, we're really great if we picked them up and threw
• 44:40
  them into the drinks cabinet. So we had this whole drinks cabinet made with breakaway glass,
• 44:44
  but you know, so the camera would go into the drinks cabinet or you'd get the table smashed over
• 44:49
  you. And it is quite, it's quite a resting, isn't it? And then we had little jets, we had jets made
• 44:55
  so that the blood could squirt on action, you know, when, when he was doing the thing with these
• 45:00
  machete and all that. Yeah, and the corpse grey, and he was doing that stuff. Yeah, it got a little
• 45:05
  bit, it got a little bit of a hand because at one point the cut of that was 20 minutes long.
• 45:09
  We had a lot of, I remember my American, I just got an American agent and he came to the cut
• 45:16
  and I showed them the 20-minute cut and I remember him looking at me like, what, who have I
• 45:19
  signed on? This guy's a psychopath. He was like, he was in shock, it took him 10 minutes to
• 45:26
  get out of the seat. He was like, oh my god, are you going to show that? I think you could see my
• 45:31
  career completely destroyed. I was actually going to ask, like, was it ever longer?
• 45:38
  Was it ever, did you have to bring it, like, tone it down? Oh my god, I mean, what you see is
• 45:43
  probably a third of what we shot. Andrew Hume, who's, who's a brilliant editor and
• 45:48
  brilliant filmmaker, and he was a editor and Andrew put together at 20 minutes, it was 20 minutes,
• 45:54
  it was 20 minutes, from him walking in and taking his clothes off to cover himself in
• 45:58
  blood, that was 20 minutes of torture. And every tool was, had a, had a, had a moment.
• 46:07
  I wasn't very good at self-editing at that point. I was like, yeah, it just shits it.
• 46:11
  Let me show every single bit that he used and take for every take his clothes off and then
• 46:17
  cover him in blood. And yeah, that was great, I think. And then we had this, we had this nice idea
• 46:23
  of putting, they put your soul by this lovely idea of putting lights up in the ceiling so that it
• 46:27
  kind of created this little halo around them at one point, you know. But we sure that whole scene,
• 46:32
  not knowing what we actually had after we shot it, because we didn't, it wasn't a digital camera,
• 46:37
  so it was film camera. We had no way of knowing if these lab cameras even worked.
• 46:43
  We hadn't tested it. So we did two days of filming kind of shitting ourselves that
• 46:50
  nothing was coming out, but of course Peter got it. And then, yeah, that was a very satisfying
• 46:55
  sequence, you know, because I felt that we got exactly what we talked about.
• 47:01
  And I think that sometimes you have to be bold at that, you know, if you're going to make a visual
• 47:08
  statement, cinematic statement like that, we've all seen deaths, we've all seen people being killed
• 47:13
  and murdered, but this was a slightly different way of approaching it, you know. And I think it
• 47:19
  works. And it wasn't just, we didn't just do it for the sake of it looks cool, we did it because
• 47:24
  we really wanted to keep in his head and we wanted to rather than being his point of view of the kill,
• 47:29
  the person being killed, I didn't feel that was like any action sequence or any fight sequence,
• 47:34
  you've got to have an emotionality connection to it, you know, there's got to be an emotional
• 47:38
  connection to something. So if you've got your main character there and you can see how disturbing
• 47:44
  is by what he's even doing to him, you know, I think that's quite fascinating.
• 47:49
  I think the fact that he is shot in the victim's point of view is the fact that you're all
• 47:53
  back to identify with the victim, you don't identify with the perpetrators. So it's sort of violence
• 47:57
  cuts, it doesn't feel, you know, trivial or gratuitous or just even though, you know, it is a
• 48:03
  violent scene, it doesn't feel, you know, too dimensional. It's like what we were saying earlier
• 48:08
  about the Eddie Mars and you know, scene is the fact that you're awake because it's so close and
• 48:11
  contained and you can't escape from it. And with this scene, it is kind of like the absolute,
• 48:16
  you know, externalisation. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. We're killing the audience basically.
• 48:23
  I thought we were showing the audience how violent this man is because he's quite literally
• 48:28
  looking down the lens of the camera. And I think what's interesting is that like you say,
• 48:33
  if you didn't see now, it would all be digital and you could have like playback and you could
• 48:36
  have it all there. But the fact that you're shooting it on Super 16, which I think even though that
• 48:40
  was, it sounds like that was all you had to use for that particular shot, the fact that you suddenly
• 48:46
  cut from 35 into 16 millimeter means that you're when you're watching it, you automatically put
• 48:52
  into that perspective. The format change works really, really well, I think, when you're watching it,
• 48:57
  you know, it was just, it was, it was, even though that was all you, as you say, it was all you had
• 49:01
  to use really. Yeah, because these little zoom cameras, you can only get, you can only get the little
• 49:05
  boolex lenses on them, you know, the little screw-in lenses, you know, and so you're right, you know,
• 49:10
  you get an automatic change of format and you get more grain in the frame as well. So yeah,
• 49:19
  no, I think, I think textually as well, that was interesting. Yeah, we tried, we tried quite a few
• 49:24
  kind of different visual ideas there, you know, and that was the one that we came down on,
• 49:29
  which we thought was interesting. And it was great to have a partner like Peter Sover, who
• 49:34
  is a big part of gang's number one, you know, he has that elegance to him, you know, he's, I mean,
• 49:39
  the way he likes is like a big Hollywood movie, you watch that thing, it's, you know, you watch
• 49:43
  the box match at the beginning, you watch Freddie Mason's apartment, it looks amazing, it looks,
• 49:48
  it looks incredible, you know, and then you still have that rawness of being able to do stuff.
• 49:53
  No, we did like split diopters, which is really old-school stuff. And Peter was really into that,
• 49:58
  you know, he did down Donnie Brasco, he did it, good morning Vietnam and stuff like that. So,
• 50:02
  you know, he was a total, he'd done 20 odd Hollywood movies before he came to work with me.
• 50:07
  And so, you know, when we ended up doing five films, he'd hit together and he's such an elegance
• 50:14
  about the way he frames and films and fights, you know. And so, I was so lucky to have that
• 50:21
  team of top tier people, you know, they're really well, they're amazing bunch of people.
• 50:27
  I was going to talk about this actually, but I want to ask you a bit about it, because it was,
• 50:30
  as we say, you know, you've got such a visual sense to your, there is such a visual sense to your
• 50:35
  work, whether it's on Sherlock, you've got the text effects on the screen, which kind of
• 50:40
  became the standard for so much of film and TV after, you know, like how do you show a text on
• 50:44
  screen, you do it like this. And then you've got like film stars that have done Liverpool,
• 50:48
  which has got such beautiful, the language of that where you have these amazing, talking about
• 50:52
  different time periods, you know, you have those amazing transitions where one character like Jamie
• 50:55
  Bell goes and sit for a door and get into a completely different space, you know, in time. And
• 51:00
  that's something that I've always really admired about your work. And watching back gangster,
• 51:03
  I was very aware that, you know, you have all these elements, like you have the cubic sort of
• 51:07
  frames within frames, well, like the frame is kind of almost shattering into pieces, you have
• 51:11
  the split actors and the split screens. And, you know, you've got all these different elements
• 51:15
  coming together. And I was wondering like, when you were making it, did you feel like you were
• 51:19
  getting a chance to really sort of flex your muscles kind of visually in this sort of stylistic
• 51:23
  sense when you're making it? Oh, yeah, I mean, I was really lucky to have partners like film four
• 51:28
  and who really back directors, you know, they really kind of encouraged them to do what the,
• 51:34
  what the air vision is, you know, sometimes, you know, when you get to be working in television
• 51:39
  wherever, you know, you realize that sometimes people just want you to do a certain thing, you know.
• 51:45
  So I was very lucky in those early films to be able to express myself visually and creatively,
• 51:50
  you know, and nobody ever said to me, Paul, that's too much. And nobody ever, maybe they should
• 51:55
  have, you know, but nobody ever kind of stopped me because they were so interesting what I was
• 52:00
  doing. And luckily it came off, you know, but that's what I'm saying. I think that comes from also
• 52:05
  not having fear really. And that's such an arrogant thing to say, but it's not really, it's more a naive
• 52:11
  thing where you don't feel the pressure of, oh, this has got to be a blockbuster or this has
• 52:18
  got to be successful. That's why places like film four are very, very important to us, you know,
• 52:22
  is a film nation, you know, is that we have to look after those who can't let the government
• 52:29
  take over film four. We've kind of gone to a channel four. We have to keep that autonomy because
• 52:36
  it's really important that the young directors are giving the chance to show what's really in
• 52:43
  their heads and what they can do because normally what happens then you get shaped into something,
• 52:48
  you know, something once it's interesting. You go to Hollywood, people go, I love that movie,
• 52:51
  but that's not what I want you to do. I want you to do this. And you're like, oh, okay. So why
• 52:55
  get me in, you know, so it's one of those things. It's a strange dichotomy where you're known for
• 53:00
  doing sort of very creative things and very visual things. And then occasionally you'll be told,
• 53:05
  no, no, you don't want to do that. So when I did share look, there's the first TV I've done actually,
• 53:11
  apart from a pilot in America. And so I was quite determined to make it very visual and get
• 53:17
  another brilliant script, Stephen Moffat's on Genius in Mark Gays. And I thought, right,
• 53:24
  like Agster, I have to be in the head of Sherlock. I have to, I have to be very, very religious and
• 53:30
  very annoying about always being in his head and seeing what he sees so that I share with the audience.
• 53:36
  So the audience can understand because sometimes, you know, when you have an intellect like that,
• 53:40
  the audience feel a bit away from him. They feel a distance from the main character. I wanted
• 53:45
  the audience to feel like they understood him a little bit. So and then as far as the text is
• 53:50
  concerned, that's just because in the script it said, I cut away a phone and I was like, oh my god,
• 53:54
  there's 40 cutaways of a phone in one hour of television. I was like, this is going to be so dull.
• 53:59
  So I went to my editor and I was like, to Charlie Phillips. And I was like, Charlie, what the hell are
• 54:04
  you going to do about this? And then I went, you know, let's try just put in text up. Let's
• 54:09
  fuck it. We'll just go for it and see if anyone's a bit really disturbed anybody. And that's
• 54:15
  what I was born out of. But that also comes from having the confidence to go, this will work, you
• 54:19
  know, knowing your audience and understanding what your audience might want to see, like what I
• 54:24
  would like to see, you know, because I'm a great fan of film and photography and the visuals of
• 54:29
  things. So yeah, so so gangster, I was very much encouraged to to be creative. And then, you know,
• 54:36
  because to be fair, none they didn't see acid house and there was nothing and acid house other
• 54:40
  than just this big showy kind of madness, you know, and it's a pretty, it's a pretty crazy show.
• 54:47
  But, you know, so I came from that with full of confidence that I knew how I wanted to portray
• 54:52
  this, but you're always learning, you're always kind of, and then this up to you to sort of
• 54:57
  then calm yourself down a little bit. As I said earlier, you know, not every shot has to be
• 55:01
  a world better, not every shot has to somehow create this amazing moment, you know,
• 55:07
  to see if you go back to the Eddie Marzine stuff and the Paul Berney one, you know, that there's
• 55:11
  nothing in that. It's just a camera and two amazing actors and those two amazing actors will blow
• 55:17
  the camera away at any point. And that's, and that's what you've got to learn. You've got to learn
• 55:21
  how to temper yourself a little bit, you know, because I was just full of like, yeah, let's do this,
• 55:26
  let's put the camera upside down and throw it through the glass and just, you know, I was all
• 55:30
  for throwing stuff through glass for some reason, because Andrew Lincoln's guys, because Chuck
• 55:34
  threw the glass, I was like, which is Chuck the thing through the glass? They were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
• 55:40
  I was always wondering for like trying stuff. And I still am, you know, I've just, this project I've
• 55:44
  just done, you know, I'm always doing things that people are like, whoa, I've never seen that done
• 55:49
  before. And I think it comes from a kind of theatrical thing as well. I quite like, you know,
• 55:53
  film stars don't die in Liverpool. I think that's quite theatrical, but I really wanted this
• 55:57
  idea of memory to be instant, you know, non-cinematic, because memory in a cinematic kind of
• 56:04
  language is always like establishing a place, a time, you know, the characters. It's always got like
• 56:10
  1974, then you go back to 1963 and you go to an exterior of a house or something, you know,
• 56:16
  whereas I was like, no, no, no, this can't be this way. This has to be an instant thing about
• 56:20
  these characters. And it has to be a moment that Jamie Bell was thinking about, well, I remember when
• 56:24
  she was happy and I remember when we were making love and then suddenly, he's back in Liverpool and
• 56:29
  and it's all sadness and it's all her being sick. And I thought, I need to get there quick.
• 56:33
  And so we designed with Eve Stewart as my designer and we just designed these sets so that we're
• 56:37
  back to back. So actually, Jamie did actually walk through one set to another and the lights
• 56:42
  would all change and Ella Pontekas, there was an amazing DP and she created this lighten changes
• 56:48
  and we all did it. And then the crew were pushing beds around and I was pushing the beds around.
• 56:53
  It was great. And everybody in Papua, broccoli was even there, you know, just so born and she was
• 56:57
  like helping us, you know, change people's clothes really quickly. And it's brilliant. It's like
• 57:02
  a really great sort of way of getting the whole crew together, you know. I reckon that
• 57:06
  anyone, it's try to do things through the camera as much as you can because as much as I love
• 57:11
  CG and I do, I love CG, but use it, use it creatively. Sometimes we just, it's a fallback,
• 57:16
  you know, it's like we'll fix it later. It's like fixing something. But it's no point fixing
• 57:21
  something that isn't broken, you know, try and try to do things. And I'm talking to you because
• 57:25
  hopefully this will be shown to some filmmakers, you know, and really I'm always about through
• 57:33
  the camera and that makes you have to think about, oh, how are we going to do this? How are we
• 57:39
  going to get Jamie from a beach into his house in Liverpool in one shot? Oh, I tell you what,
• 57:46
  we'll take the house in Liverpool to the beach, you know, and we'll build the beach in the studio.
• 57:50
  You know, Barbara, do we have enough money for that? She's like, oh god, here we go.
• 57:54
  Okay, we'll try to, you know, just problem solving, isn't it?
• 57:58
  Sure. I mean, and it works so well. I mean, I remember the first time I saw film stars
• 58:02
  don't done them before when it came out and just being really sort of suckered in by that visual,
• 58:06
  just that, that language that you sort of, that you put together for the film. And also with like,
• 58:10
  obviously, sure, I mean, Sherlock was the first thing he was like, I saw, and I know that we're
• 58:13
  talking about gangster, but like, but just touching on Sherlock, like, just some of mate, those in,
• 58:17
  like you say, the in-camera transitions, I always really, you know, whether it's like film or
• 58:22
  comic books or, or any kind of medium, I always appreciate like a good trend, effective transition.
• 58:28
  And the way that you would put elements in like the, in Sherlock, the Scandal of Mel gravy,
• 58:32
  you know, the, the bed comes up and that was just such an amazing image and, you know,
• 58:35
  come a patch sort of, leans back against the bed and he's suddenly in bed. It's just all these
• 58:39
  different elements. So, we never saw it. Literally a bed in the field. Yeah, literally.
• 58:43
  You know, what a pneumatic kind of, you see, can you see, I think it's online, you can see it in
• 58:48
  mate. Yeah, I know, I think that I've always been really interested in transitions. I think that's
• 58:52
  something that I've been working on a lot recently in my work, because I'm glad you say that,
• 58:56
  because I think people do appreciate that you put the working, but also it's to do story.
• 59:00
  And it gets people's attention and it's the same with with Sherlock when the first 10 minutes of
• 59:05
  Sherlock, when the press conference and all this text comes up like wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,
• 59:12
  it's all different fonts and everything like that. And I remember showing it to the BBC and
• 59:16
  the BBC going, this could be great or it could be terrible. We don't really know. And I felt the
• 59:21
  same way. I was like, I don't know. But, you know, let's go for it because once you establish a
• 59:26
  visual language, I think the audience are really go for it. I think they really, I think especially
• 59:29
  now, I think that they're so sophisticated in their viewing habits that I think they understand
• 59:35
  it and I think that it treats them the way they want to be treated, which is with some intellect
• 59:41
  and fun. You know, Gagstar number one was the beginning of that for me. It taught me that my
• 59:47
  sensibilities are shared by other people. There's like-minded people like me out there that watch
• 59:52
  like the film and that and appreciate it, you know, like yourself and appreciate this conversation
• 59:57
  because, you know, it was a long time ago, but I appreciate that another generation's come along
• 1:00:02
  and really like it as well, you know. And I remember when it first came out, the first review,
• 1:00:08
  a red of it was from a magazine that I had actually worked on, which was the face magazine
• 1:00:13
  and it said, and of course, this was in the glot of all these gangsters who said,
• 1:00:16
  fuck, fuck, can't, can't, fuck, fuck, fuck, who gives a fuck? That was a review.
• 1:00:22
  I was on the train going down to London and so those days, they had no internet. So,
• 1:00:28
  this was the only review I'd ever read in my film and because it was an advanced review,
• 1:00:33
  because the magazine is a month before. I was like, oh my god, I have made the worst movie,
• 1:00:39
  ever made so much so, like I can't even be bothered reviewing it. This is like, okay. And I
• 1:00:46
  actually went home and I cried. I thought, oh, this is going to be terrible. And then, of course,
• 1:00:52
  the other reviews came in and it wasn't so bad. So, you know, it just shows you, it's like,
• 1:00:58
  you know, you can't please everyone, I guess, all the time.
• 1:01:02
  I wonder if, I don't know if you'd say journalism is different now, but I wonder if for a
• 1:01:06
  review, like, you know, the observer would allow for, you know, just like, that's sort of you,
• 1:01:12
  that's sort of you, you know. I'm sure some reviewers would love to just do that.
• 1:01:18
  But this person obviously didn't really watch the movie. It was more interested in the fact
• 1:01:23
  gangster movies were kind of just a glut of them. And, you know, there was a lot of these kind of,
• 1:01:31
  I don't know. I mean, I quite enjoy. I mean, I enjoy every movie. I appreciate every film,
• 1:01:35
  because I know how difficult it is to make. So, you don't really hear me to disin any films,
• 1:01:41
  you know, because it's hard to do that when you know how much people don't go out to make a bad
• 1:01:45
  movie, you know, it just happens. Yeah, it's absolutely everyone always says, you know,
• 1:01:54
  the movie, you know, it's the hardest thing to make, you know, a great movie is almost impossible
• 1:01:58
  to make, and a bad movie is nearly impossible to make, you know. It's difficult. I mean,
• 1:02:04
  I mean, I've made some films that people didn't like, you know, the viewers never liked it,
• 1:02:08
  the cranks didn't like, to this day, people come up to me in the like, it's one of my favorite
• 1:02:13
  films ever. Like gangster, you know, was one of those movies, you know, I've had, I've had them
• 1:02:17
  with Victor Frankenstein recently, you know, people, the viewers hated that film, but I get so much
• 1:02:24
  love for that film, you know, and James McAvoy and I are good mates, and we talk about a lot,
• 1:02:29
  and how we did our best, and we love it, you know, Daniel and James and I were like, yeah, it's great,
• 1:02:35
  you know. This is my it's important for me to talk to people that love film and to film size and
• 1:02:43
  film skills, you know, I don't do them often, but I like to talk about it because I think it's
• 1:02:47
  important that, you know, people look at me and go, well, if he can do it, I can do it, you know,
• 1:02:53
  because I didn't know what I was doing to start with, really, you know, and, but then you do,
• 1:02:58
  you do realize that you've got a certain skill for something, and therefore, you know, you can't
• 1:03:04
  be, you can't stop yourself doing something because you're worried that somebody might not like it.
• 1:03:09
  That's my mantra, really. Don't stop yourself from being brave, because you'll regret it,
• 1:03:16
  because if you try to play safe, then you're not really playing, you know, and you'll always
• 1:03:20
  regret it. I've done it before, and I've regretted it, you know, if I was thought I could have done
• 1:03:24
  that better, you know, that's it, really. There's that sort of Steven Spielberg quote about how
• 1:03:33
  the hardest part of being a filmmaker is just getting out of the car in the morning,
• 1:03:37
  and just like, just getting out and just going and doing it.
• 1:03:40
  I mean, I did, when I did Sherlock, you know, I got a call from Steven Spielberg, actually,
• 1:03:45
  you know, I ended up working with Steven on a pilot. He produced, he called me, and that was one of
• 1:03:50
  my biggest thrills, was he called and said, how much he loved Sherlock and my work in it,
• 1:03:55
  and when I come and do an episode of one of his shows for him, and I did that, and they made
• 1:04:00
  it up, making a pilot with each other, and every day I got to speak to him, talk about
• 1:04:04
  Kakarion movies, whether you know, you love the Kakarion films, and it's things like that that
• 1:04:10
  you just kind of realise that, you know, when you do something that kind of puts his head above
• 1:04:15
  the parapet a little bit and sticks his head out and says, this is what I am, this is, you know,
• 1:04:20
  with Sherlock, you know, we did make a show that was quite, I mean, before we even shot a frame
• 1:04:25
  of it, I already had hate mail, because we're, you know, because, how dare you put Sherlock
• 1:04:31
  Holmes in a modern setting, you know, and they thought we would have him in a, in a loft
• 1:04:37
  apartment with a big white screen tele and, you know, whatever, I don't know, pop in some moves,
• 1:04:43
  or some, I don't know what they thought we were going to do, but, you know, and so we knew that
• 1:04:47
  show had to have a modernity too, but the modernity had to be rooted in what people were comfortable with,
• 1:04:52
  which was the Victorian of it, you know, so we kept that, you know, the Baker Street was the big set
• 1:04:58
  that we had to keep familiar in the rest of it, we could go with, but I was always encouraged by
• 1:05:02
  Steven off it and to really, really think out the box and really be creative, because Steven and
• 1:05:09
  Mark's scripts were incredibly creative, and I had to be as good as those scripts are, you know.
• 1:05:15
  Well, it was one, just again, like, touching on Sherlock, like, Sherlock was one of those things
• 1:05:19
  for me, where it was like, you know, I very rarely, I feel like, you know, my tastes very rarely,
• 1:05:24
  a lot, a line, the planets there were a line in terms of, like, my tastes and sort of mainstream,
• 1:05:29
  what's popular at that moment taste, but when Sherlock obviously took off and became this huge mega hits,
• 1:05:34
  but as someone who's like a fan, it was like, oh, you know, people, other people are watching,
• 1:05:38
  what I'm watching, and it was nice as well, because it was one of those things that kind of informed
• 1:05:42
  my, I mean, I was quite young when that first series came out, and it was a really informed,
• 1:05:47
  I mean, I now live in London, you know, I'm a, I suppose I'm a Londoner now, but at that time,
• 1:05:51
  it really, I lived, I grew up in Sheffield and in South Yorkshire. So seeing London sort of depicted
• 1:05:56
  the way you shot it and the way it was framed and the way it felt so sort of vibrant and cosmopolitan,
• 1:06:00
  there was something in the way that the city was a character in the show, and it was so,
• 1:06:05
  it felt so vibrant and very cosmopolitan and just humming with activity. Whenever I came to London,
• 1:06:09
  it would always be kind of colored by that. That was, it kind of helped form my sort of image of London,
• 1:06:15
  which is now the city I live in and work in, and there's, you know, so it was a real sort of, you know,
• 1:06:19
  beyond just being a great, you know, narrative show, it was a, it was a one, it,
• 1:06:23
  it sort of formed my image of my own. I'm a tourist in London as well, you know, I live in
• 1:06:29
  Glasgow and I've always had that, you know, but then in the big smoke and all that, I've always
• 1:06:33
  been excited, even to this day, you know, I worked there a lot, you know, I always loved going to
• 1:06:37
  London and yeah, it was a big part of, of the show, you're right, the character of that. Plus,
• 1:06:42
  we wanted to make the show very international, you know, we wanted to make sure that Americans enjoyed
• 1:06:48
  somebody from Costa Rica or enjoyed it or whatever it is, we could get people to watch it, you know,
• 1:06:53
  and, you know, Sherlock Holmes has always had that connection to London as well, you know,
• 1:06:58
  but I shot it through like taxi rides and, you know, reflections and I wanted to make it quite
• 1:07:05
  intriguing and sexy in that way, you know, that, that, that, you know, people were intrigued by it,
• 1:07:10
  you know, and that's a certain heightened element to it, which we always loved as well.
• 1:07:16
  But I think there anything like that, you know, it was interesting because, you know, gangster was
• 1:07:20
  London, but we never really made a big deal of it. No, that I think about it. We never really
• 1:07:24
  showed London as such, but that's probably a budget thing, because it's so expensive to try to
• 1:07:30
  do an egg-a-ray, you know, 60s London, Edgar did very well with his soul film, you know.
• 1:07:36
  So going back to Gainesville one, because it's obviously, you know, we were talking
• 1:07:40
  about, you know, the, the, you know, the Lenny Taylor scene and it's such a, you know,
• 1:07:44
  it's such a violent visceral film, but like, yeah, there is a lot of humor in it, and I was wondering
• 1:07:48
  when you guys were making it, like, were there many laughs on set? Was it a fun set to be a part of?
• 1:07:53
  Was it with jokes? Oh, yeah, you know, a lot of these young actors are quite kind of cocky
• 1:07:58
  and all that, you know, and they, I think to be an actor, you have to have a certain amount of
• 1:08:04
  of a self-confidence, you know? So a lot of them, I remember they were a lot of the young actors,
• 1:08:09
  I mean, there's a lot, there was those party scenes, they're all dancing about and having a good
• 1:08:13
  time and they can improvise with that. There was lots, so yeah, no, there was lots. I mean, David,
• 1:08:17
  there's a great wealth of stories and funny stuff and his Ken Kraneman as well. I mean, so yeah,
• 1:08:23
  Malcolm McDowell, you know, he's just a laughing minute. So yeah, no, there was definitely,
• 1:08:26
  I mean, I would say that was the overriding thing, was it was a lot of fun, you know?
• 1:08:30
  Mark Medell tells this anecdote about how, you know, because of course, you know,
• 1:08:34
  every 10th word in the script has come. And so, you know, he'll be on set doing a scene and
• 1:08:40
  he'll be, you know, going through it and it'll be like, you know, you, but then you said he
• 1:08:42
  describes how there's this script girl. You know, the Scott, you know, this very sort of apparently
• 1:08:47
  very Scottish proper, you know, script girl and he would say, he would go through his lines and
• 1:08:52
  he would go, you know, you fucking cat line. Or is that true? Did he do that a lot? Yeah, yeah,
• 1:09:00
  he's a naughty boy. And you know, Malcolm really liked the movie, which is great. That was a great
• 1:09:04
  honor as well when he got in touch with me and he was like, well done, you know, he likes that film,
• 1:09:09
  you know, he's done a lot of movies. Yeah, no, he's fun and I think that I think you've got to have
• 1:09:14
  fun on the set, you know, I mean, I think I was probably less fun because again, it was my second
• 1:09:20
  movie. I was quite uptight, you know, I was quite an uptight director to start with because you're always
• 1:09:25
  worried and, you know, trying to show, I mean, I wasn't a shout-out to guy, but I was quite sort of,
• 1:09:30
  I could, I'm sure they could all see it in my face a bit later. Oh my god, you know, because you're
• 1:09:34
  always worried about time and money, you know, that kind of stuff, you know, hopefully I've got a bit,
• 1:09:38
  a bit, a bit looser now, but I can still appreciate having those guys on the set and having the laugh
• 1:09:44
  and I'm, you know, anyway, I'm going to go out and be boat right now. So cool. Well, thank you so
• 1:09:51
  much for talking to me, Paul. I know we've gone on for a long time. Yeah, it's been very,
• 1:09:55
  it's been very, I hope you'll add it to this by the way. This is what I do, mate. It's what I do,
• 1:10:00
  I've got a, yeah, but thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Likewise, thank you
• 1:10:05
  so much for your time and also thanks again for, you know, for Sherlock, film stars,
• 1:10:10
  at Royalwork, and particularly thanks for getting number one because it's a real favourite of a
• 1:10:13
  moment. Thank you for talking to me that way. Thank you, man, I like it. Thank you so much.
• 1:10:18
  Paul, don't you layer. Cheers, mate. Bye-bye. Take care.