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THIS IS ENGLAND — Shane Meadows's 2-Toned look at skins and ska (w/ Jack O'Connell) · MUBI Podcast

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Heads up, this episode includes adult language, a mention of sexual assault and spoilers.
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When I was a young teen in the '80s, a lot of kids I looked up to were punks, and they and the punk music they got me into,
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were super clear about one thing: Skinheads sucked.
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were super clear about one thing: It wasn't a tough call.
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were super clear about one thing: Skins were also into punk, but they were a bunch of racist neo-Nazis.
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were super clear about one thing: They came to punk shows looking ominous and identical.
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were super clear about one thing: Shaved heads, button down shirts, jeans, suspenders, Doc Marten boots.
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were super clear about one thing: They started fights.
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were super clear about one thing: I didn't know where they'd come from or why they were like this, but righteous bands like the Dead Kennedys told us exactly what these Nazi punks should do.
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were super clear about one thing: Fuck offNazi punks, Nazi punks, Nazi punksFuck off So years later, in 2007, when I hit play on a movie about skinheads, I'd stumbled across on this new thing called Netflix, I thought I knew what I was in for.
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were super clear about one thing: A probably violent story about these monsters running amok.
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were super clear about one thing: It was Shane Meadows',This is England.
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were super clear about one thing: Set in 1983, and it actually starts quietly in the spartan bedroom of a lonely teen named Shaun.
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were super clear about one thing: He's poor, keeps a picture of his dead dad by his bed.
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were super clear about one thing: Later, at school, a jerk named Harvey picks on him for wearing lame thrift store jeans.
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were super clear about one thing: But then that afternoon, he mopes past a gang of skinheads.
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were super clear about one thing: - Alright, mate.
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were super clear about one thing: - Alright.- Ey up, what's the matter?
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were super clear about one thing: - Nothing. Who invite him to hang.
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were super clear about one thing: Oh, come and sit down, mate.
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were super clear about one thing: I feel bloody sorry for you.Just come and sit down, five minutes."Ah" I thought,"here's where the kid gets sucked in by the evil racists." Except these skins don't seem so evil.
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were super clear about one thing: Their leader, a guy named Woody, is funny.
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were super clear about one thing: Just wants to cheer Shaun up.
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were super clear about one thing: So what's this?
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were super clear about one thing: Who's picking on you, lad?What's his name?- Harvey.
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were super clear about one thing: - Harvey?What sort of a bloody girl's name is Harvey?"Hello, I'm Harvey, and I've come to give you gyp."I've got one of these for you, Sonny Jim."I've got one of those for you.
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were super clear about one thing: My name is Harvey." It's kind of sweet.
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were super clear about one thing: And then I noticed one of Woody's gang is Black.
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were super clear about one thing: - Where the frig have you been?
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were super clear about one thing: - Bloody Ada! The character's name is Milky, and he was played by actor Andrew Shim.
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were super clear about one thing: When Shane said I was gonna be a skinhead in it, I was like, "What?" Like, you do realize that I am a Black dude, you know?
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were super clear about one thing: And then that's when I realized and learned that the skinhead movement- was born out of a love for reggae.
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were super clear about one thing: - Yeah.
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were super clear about one thing: And I remember when he brought me a book and I was looking through this book, and I remember the first time I saw a Black skinhead.
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were super clear about one thing: It was just the coolest black and white picture.
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were super clear about one thing: But they were stood just on a street somewhere in the UK, and they just looked so cool.
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were super clear about one thing: And I couldn't believe that I was-- That there was such a thing as a Black skinhead.
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were super clear about one thing: I'd never, ever, ever heard of it.
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were super clear about one thing: Neither had I. Or that once upon a time, white skins dug Black music.
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were super clear about one thing: For me, it was just the first of a lot of mind blowing revelations from a movie that's really about how kids and cultures get torn apart.
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were super clear about one thing: And that's also a subtle ode to music that tried to bring them together again.
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were super clear about one thing: I'm Rico Gagliano, welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
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were super clear about one thing: MUBI's, the global film company that champions great cinema.
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were super clear about one thing: On this show, we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
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were super clear about one thing: Today we wrap up Season 11.
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were super clear about one thing: We've been calling it Needle On The Record, Side Two, the sequel to our season a while back, all about needle drops.
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were super clear about one thing: Those moments when filmmakers take a tune, drop it in their movie, and magic happens.
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were super clear about one thing: This time around, we've been focusing on UK music of the '80s, and possibly my favorite ever use of that stuff in a movie is This is England.
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were super clear about one thing: Shane Meadows looked back at an era when kids in English music tribes were getting invaded by a nationalist tribe.
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were super clear about one thing: We all grew through the sounds of the music together, but some of our friends would go off to these meetings with their uncles and started signing up for the National Front.
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were super clear about one thing: And its a movie that went on to become UK cinema's most unlikely franchise.
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were super clear about one thing: So we have a director who's made a film meant to be a standalone piece, and then he goes on to create three television series that follow it up.
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were super clear about one thing: I can't think of another British film that has actually done that.
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were super clear about one thing: This is a story and a soundtrack that really moved people, is what I'm saying.
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were super clear about one thing: So to learn all about both, I talked to This is England's producer, Mark Herbert, actor Jack O'Connell, who went on to stardom in movies like Sinners and whose debut this was.
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were super clear about one thing: I remember the wrap party because it was one of the first times I got really, really drunk.
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were super clear about one thing: And Neville Staple, frontman of legendary ska band The Specials, whose songs sent a unifying message on screen and in real life.
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were super clear about one thing: The music captured them first with that energy, energy.
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were super clear about one thing: Then they'll listen and then they can hear what we're saying.
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were super clear about one thing: We're not preaching to them.
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were super clear about one thing: It's in the music.
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were super clear about one thing: So strap on your Docs and prepare to mosh as we drop the needle onThis is England.
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were super clear about one thing: I'm going to start this story in the cinema scene of early '90s Britain, a moment British filmmakers would probably rather forget.
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were super clear about one thing: It was very, very kind of depressed.
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were super clear about one thing: There wasn't very much going on.
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were super clear about one thing: That's Sarah Godfrey, she's a film and TV professor at East Anglia University, and she co-wrote and edited the book.
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<i: Shane Meadows>Critical Essays. And then in sort of 1994, 1995, you have Four Weddings and a Funeral, followed shortly by Trainspotting.Choose life. Choose a job.Choose a career. Choose a family.Choose a fucking big television. And we enter this period where there's a lot more excitement, which is quite typical of British cinema.
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<i: Shane Meadows>You have these moments of sort of a big film, and there's like a big sort of rush of films, and then it goes again.
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<i: Shane Meadows>For film fans like me watching from the States, it definitely felt like a rush.
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<i: Shane Meadows>Suddenly in the mid '90s, there were all these UK movies like Trainspotting, super fast paced, super colorful, fueled by glam or Britpop soundtracks, and a lot of times about young working class men behaving badly, doing drugs or crimes or both.
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<i: Shane Meadows>Because why not?
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<i: Shane Meadows>I chose not to choose life.I chose something else.
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<i: Shane Meadows>And the reasons?There are no reasons.Who needs reasons when you've got heroin. You have Trainspotting, you have things likeLock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
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<i: Shane Meadows>And it was coming out into a culture that was dominated by Blur, Oasis or sort of laddish culture going on, right?
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<i: Shane Meadows>The UK lad mag Loaded debuted and epitomized the vibe.
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<i: Shane Meadows>It was dedicated to, "life, liberty and the pursuit of sex,"drink, football and less serious matters." But in the middle of all this came a different kind of movie where men behaved differently.
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<i: Shane Meadows>The debut feature from Shane Meadows, a comedy drama calledTwentyFourSeven.I think it's time that we had a match against another club. Shot in black and white and set in a working class town, it stars the late, great Bob Hoskins.
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<i: Shane Meadows>Bob Hoskins' character Darcy is an alcoholic.
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<i: Shane Meadows>Basically, the story is he's trying to set up a boxing club to give the young unemployed lads, two groups of boys that sort of don't get on, trying to bring them together by creating a boxing club.
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<i: I've got two rules>No pot.No lady friends and no drinks after midnight.That's three, knob. It was very much a counterpoint to a lot of the other films that were going on at the time.
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<i: I've got two rules>TwentyFourSeven was much more sincere.
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<i: I've got two rules>It did not have the kind of tongue in cheek, the insincerity.
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<i: I've got two rules>And I think, you know, there's a lot going on there about negotiating.
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<i: I've got two rules>What does it mean to be a working class English man?
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<i: I've got two rules>Right from the start of his career, Meadows dared to suggest it meant you might be tough and vulnerable or sad or broken.
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<i: I've got two rules>His lad boxers literally cry on each other's shoulders, and it's easy to see.
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<i: I've got two rules>Meadows knows the feeling.
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<i: I've got two rules>There was a Hells Angel friend of my dad called Chris, who hadthe biggest pirate collection you've ever seen, and he hada secret department for Westerns... That's him in 2023, delivering BAFTA's annual David Lean lecture.
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<i: I've got two rules>He's just five minutes in, talking about watching pirated movies on VHS as a kid, when he chokes up.
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<i: I've got two rules>...and my dad's a huge fan of Westerns, and I think that wasthe first time I fell in love with film, was watching Westerns...Sorry. With...
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<i: I've got two rules>Sorry. With my dad.And, because he worked away a lot and--Fucking hell, Shane, come on, baby. He really is just an absolute diamond of a man.
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<i: I've got two rules>Andrew Shim met Meadows at age 14 when he landed the title role in his second feature,A Room for Romeo Brass. In all honesty, and I don't say this lightly, there aren't many other people that I've met who kind of like reach Shane's level as a genuinely nice, amazing person.
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<i: I've got two rules>He really is.
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<i: I've got two rules>He wears his heart on the sleeve.
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<i: I've got two rules>Which is doubly amazing considering Meadows' childhood gave him every reason not to.
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<i: I've got two rules>He grew up in a very small town called Uttoxeter.
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<i: I've got two rules>And Uttoxeter, you know, there's not a lot going on.
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<i: I've got two rules>There's a lot of poverty.
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<i: I've got two rules>With poverty comes crime, you know, far, far, far from having, money.
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<i: I've got two rules>His mum was a shop assistant.
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<i: I've got two rules>His dad was a lorry driver.
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<i: I've got two rules>His dad was actually a suspect in a murder case for some time when Shane was young, although he was subsequently cleared.
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<i: I've got two rules>But that impacted a lot on Shane's kind of experience when he was growing up.
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<i: I've got two rules>There was all this media coverage, so Shane got sent off to live with an aunt and one day after wandering from her house, two local boys bullied him and one sexually abused him.
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<i: I've got two rules>In 2019, he told The Guardian newspaper he buried the memory for years but subconsciously looked for some kind of safety protection and at age 11, he found it when his sister started dating a skinhead.
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<i: I've got two rules>And that was the first thing I'd ever really got--Wanted to become a part of. This is Shane in a bonus interview on the first US DVD release of This is England.
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<i: I've got two rules>You know, I was, not a geek, but I was a bit of a nobody.And then the transformation to sort of seeing these skinheads one dayin the shopping center, you know,walking through the precinct and thinking, you know,they looked like, almost like, marines or something to methey were unbelievable.So smart yet, you know, so aggressive. He shaved his head, joined the crew, and then got a cultural education.
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<i: I've got two rules>Because these particular guys prided themselves on being old school skinheads with a look and musical tastes that dated back to the moment Caribbean workers first showed up in England on a boat called the Empire Windrush.
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<i: I've got two rules>So the original skinhead culture was part of the Windrush era, sort of around in the 1960s.
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<i: I've got two rules>It emerged out of spaces where West Indian communities and English working class men largely worked alongside each other in factories, shipyards and so on.
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<i: I've got two rules>And what's really, really interesting is that this is a very multicultural moment.
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<i: I've got two rules>White Brits heard their Black workmates, island music, natty Jamaican rude boy fashion collided with British mod style and soon it all fuzed.
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<i: I've got two rules>I want all you skinheads to get up on your feetPut your braces together and your boots on your feet Here's my favorite example.
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<i: I've got two rules>This is a UK band called Symarip.
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<i: I've got two rules>That's "pyramid" spelled backwards, almost.
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<i: I've got two rules>And their 1969 songSkinhead Moonstomp.So let's start getting happy nowReady?Yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah These were Black West Indian musicians playing reggae who put a photo of five white guys on their album cover wearing what was already the proudly working class skinhead uniform, a kind of crisp mod version of what they already wore on the factory floor.
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<i: I've got two rules>There was a sort of utilitarian look.
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<i: I've got two rules>You know, you've got jeans, you've got the Ben Sherman shirts, you've got the DM boots.
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<i: I've got two rules>They're workwear, right?
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<i: I've got two rules>And then the hair, the sort of shaving of the hair is also an interesting one because in one sense, it's a rejection of the sort of softness of the hippie aesthetic.
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<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, they had long hair.
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<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, exactly.
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<i: I've got two rules>So it was like a kind of"we are not them," but it's also, on a very practical level, having long hair, if you're working in a shipyard or a factory is a real pain.
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<i: I've got two rules>So you had white and Black workers with cropped hair and modified work gear, dancing to a mix of reggae, ska and soul right alongside other subcultures.
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<i: I've got two rules>I'm a '60s baby and I grew up in East London in Hackney, East London.
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<i: I've got two rules>That's Sugary Staple, best name ever.
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<i: I've got two rules>She plays music with her husband Neville, who you'll hear from later, and she runs the annual UK ska festival, Skamouth.
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<i: I've got two rules>I grew up around skinheads, mods...
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<i: I've got two rules>We had sound boys, we had a very big mix on a council estate and we all got on.
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<i: I've got two rules>We just all got on and the skinheads used to go into the sound systems.
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<i: I've got two rules>We all danced together.
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<i: I've got two rules>We all grew through the sounds of the music together because it was rebellious music.
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<i: I've got two rules>It was music from the street.
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<i: I've got two rules>And then I would say probably in the kind of early '70s, and I was only a young kid at the time, but some of our friends would go off to these meetings with their uncles and their dads, and then we literally saw some of them just change.
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<i: I've got two rules>It was like an overnight change.
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<i: I've got two rules>Well, first it was gradual, but then suddenly, bang.
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<i: I've got two rules>They were just different.
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<i: I've got two rules>The ordinary British people now have no voice leftto speak up for them except the National Front. They'd been taken to local meetings of the National Front.
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<i: I've got two rules>Britain's proudly racist far right nationalist party who had zero tolerance for immigrants, their culture or their kids.
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<i: I've got two rules>The fact that they are born here doesn't make them British.They must be repatriated, along with those who have actuallycome into this country, whether they are born here or not,makes not the slightest difference. The Front had been recruiting working class whites since the '60s and in the early '70s sounds like they started really targeting skinheads.
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<i: I've got two rules>We said they'd turned into boneheads.
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<i: I've got two rules>We wouldn't even call them skinheads because, like I say, the original skinheads to us were our mates.
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<i: I've got two rules>So we called them the boneheads, and they were the ones who just went off and started signing up for the National Front and going on marches and all kinds of stuff.
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<i: I've got two rules>I looked up old footage of these National Front marches online.
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<i: I've got two rules>You don't want to know what that did to my YouTube feed for a while.
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<i: I've got two rules>Anyway, a lot of them turned into brawls between The Front and anti-fascists.
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<i: I've got two rules>Which is kind of what happened in skinhead culture into the '80s.
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<i: I've got two rules>A battle for its soul between old school traditionalists and boneheads.
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<i: I've got two rules>And in 2004, Shane Meadows decided to make a movie about what that felt like.
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<i: I've got two rules>If you were a boy like him who didn't have much except being a skin and had to pick a side.
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<i: I've got two rules>Hey, Big Daddy.Where you been?
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<i: I've got two rules>Where you been?Getting a drink. The pivotal scene inThis is England happens about a half hour in.
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<i: I've got two rules>The hero Shaun, played by Tom Turgoose, has been totally accepted by Woody and his crew of friends, who by the way, aren't just skinheads.
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<i: I've got two rules>There's also a New Wave girl named Smell with super huge '80s hair.
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<i: I've got two rules>At a party, Shaun admits he fancies her.
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<i: I've got two rules>You're a little sweetheart, aren't you?It's making me emotional. They go out back, kiss.
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<i: I've got two rules>You get the feeling it's the greatest night in this kid's life.
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<i: I've got two rules>- Look at the sky.
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<i: I've got two rules>- This is perfect, this is.The moonlight.
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<i: I've got two rules>It's beautiful like you. But when they go back inside, the vibe has shifted because someone new has shown up, an old pal of Woody's named Combo.
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<i: I've got two rules>Big guy, full of simmering aggression and just out of prison.
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<i: I've got two rules>Listen to me now.This dude here spent three years in the pen for me.He never said nothing.If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be with you guys now.So the utmost respect, and I mean it, I mean it. Except Combo, played by Stephen Graham in one of his greatest roles is hardly respectful himself while he tells a story from his prison days.
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<i: I've got two rules>I mean, for three weeks, right?
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<i: I've got two rules>This fucking... right? He drops a racist slur right in front of the Black guy, Milky.
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<i: I've got two rules>Sorry, mate. Sorry.Didn't mean nothin' by it.
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<i: I've got two rules>You know what I mean. But he can't seem to help himself.
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<i: I've got two rules>And as he keeps telling his still pretty racist tale...
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<i: I've got two rules>"White boy, give me your pud-pud"...half the kids crack up, including Shaun, while the faces of Woody, Milky and others, just fall...
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<i: I've got two rules>You know what I mean?Proper big cigar fingers and all that all over me, fucking......and mournful piano music by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi, drowns out Combo's words.
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<i: I've got two rules>The boneheads have arrived.
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<i: I've got two rules>The rest of the story is basically Shaun deciding between father figures and a tribe.
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<i: I've got two rules>Woody's tolerant crew or Combo and the National Front.
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<i: I've got two rules>It was not your typical skinhead tale.
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<i: I've got two rules>I think there is a...
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<i: I've got two rules>There's a beauty to it, yeah?
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<i: I've got two rules>Mark Herbert producedThis Is England, but his first work with Meadows was on the movie right before this, Dead Man's Shoes, a revenge thriller as violent as This Is England mostly isn't.
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<i: I've got two rules>Some people came expecting this kind of romper stomper, aggressive skinheads fighting, you know, and what Shane did was just not that.
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<i: I've got two rules>That is-- The world, is that but it's just this amazing story about people battling for this young boy's soul and what he learned through it.
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<i: I've got two rules>Still, to recreate that 1980s world was going to need a budget a little bigger than the£800,000 they'd got for Dead Man and typical for Meadows, there was only the general blueprint of a script.
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<i: I've got two rules>Most of it would be improvised.
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<i: I've got two rules>He just sort of said to me, I want to do a film about this period of my life and about this gang that he grew up with.
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<i: I've got two rules>He showed me some references.
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<i: I've got two rules>In fact, I went to Cannes.
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<i: I've got two rules>Weirdly, I was thinking about this in relation to music.
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<i: I've got two rules>I went to Cannes and all I had was some skinhead images, a two page synopsis from Shane, and on my old fashioned clickwheel iPod, I had some of the songs that we're gonna talk about.
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<i: I've got two rules>So I literally was pitching it to people.
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<i: I've got two rules>I was like, listen to this.
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<i: I've got two rules>Look at these cool black and white stills of these skinheads.
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<i: I've got two rules>Read this. This is the film.
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<i: I've got two rules>And so the music was even from the very, very first financing thing was a huge part of this movie.
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<i: I've got two rules>Most of those songs ended up in the final film.
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<i: I've got two rules>And yeah, you could argue they get across the point of it as well as any script could.
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<i: I've got two rules>We dive into the classic Two Tone grooves of This is England with the help of Neville Staple.
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<i: I've got two rules>That's coming up in just a minute.
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<i: I've got two rules>Stay with us.
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<i: I've got two rules>Alright, everybody.
19:23
<i: I've got two rules>MUBI is the global film company that champions great cinema, bringing it to you wherever you are, in as many ways as we possibly can.
19:29
<i: I've got two rules>We stream movies, we produce them, we distribute them in cinemas, movies from any country, from legendary auteurs to to brilliant first timers.
19:36
<i: I've got two rules>We've always got something new to discover.
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<i: I've got two rules>And hey, if you're a fan ofThis Is England or about to become one, you're going to want to discover a legendary film in the same kind of gritty, heartbreaking mode, a movie called Kes. The 1969 classic directed by the great British director Ken Loach.
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<i: I've got two rules>It is the story of a working class kid with a tough home life who finally finds some happiness when he adopts a type of falcon called a kestrel and lovingly trains it.
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<i: I've got two rules>In the next act, you're going to hear a little about Shane Meadows' process, which really gets the actors involved in creating the characters to get the sense of realism that's just uncanny.
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<i: I've got two rules>Loach does something similar, Meadows gets compared to him a lot, actually.
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<i: I've got two rules>More importantly,Kes is just a beautiful film and a great introduction to Loach's stuff.
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<i: I've got two rules>It is now streaming on MUBI in the UK, Ireland, Italy, several other countries.
20:23
<i: I've got two rules>Subscribe to mubi.com to start watching.
20:26
<i: I've got two rules>And even if you're not in those countries, you should go back and listen to my MUBI Podcast interview with Loach.
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<i: I've got two rules>We go over his whole career, his life and his politics.
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<i: I've got two rules>Guy's really a legend.
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<i: I've got two rules>You can listen to that in any country.
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<i: I've got two rules>We'll have a link to it and all the other links and info you need in the show notes of this episode.
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<i: I've got two rules>Speaking of which, let's get back to the episode and wrap up this season of the show.
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<i: I've got two rules>Testing. Testing.
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<i: I've got two rules>One, two, three.Is it working, Kev?Stick it up, mister! So, This is England opens with a montage.
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<i: I've got two rules>Quick hits of documentary footage from 1980s UK.
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<i: I've got two rules>Space invader video games.
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<i: I've got two rules>Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher doing a photo op in an army tank.
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<i: I've got two rules>But instead of some '80s New Wave hit, Shane Meadows scores it all with this.
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<i: I've got two rules>- I said yeah- I said yeah- What they say- Listen what they say Toots and the Maytals reggae classic,54-46 Was My Number from 1968.
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<i: I've got two rules>Producer Mark Herbert says that was partly for obvious reasons.
21:28
<i: I've got two rules>He wanted to go,"No, these skinheads--" He remembered the ones that are really into their music.
21:32
<i: I've got two rules>They were listening to Black music.
21:33
<i: I've got two rules>You know, they were listening to reggae.
21:35
<i: I've got two rules>They were listening to-- You know, that was-- That was important as a statement, I think.
21:39
<i: I've got two rules>But also if you listen close, the song sets up the tone and concerns of the movie and the music to come, because upbeat as it seems.
21:45
<i: I've got two rules>54-46 is about a Black guy getting racially profiled for a crime he didn't commit.
21:53
<i: I've got two rules>I mean, it's his prison number, isn't it?
21:55
<i: I've got two rules>Isn't it his prison number?
21:56
<i: I've got two rules>And it is just the lyrics are so perfect because obviously we deal with racism quite head on.
22:00
<i: I've got two rules>And it's also a song that kind of embodies the movie, I feel like, because on one hand it's nostalgic, it feels like a party, but it's grappling with issues that are hardcore.
22:10
<i: I've got two rules>Exactly.
22:10
<i: I've got two rules>And that's what the film is.
22:11
<i: I've got two rules>You know, if you think about the film, you're dropped into this gang that you want to be part of this gang.
22:15
<i: I've got two rules>- They're fun. And then it changes.
22:15
<i: I've got two rules>- Yeah.
22:18
<i: I've got two rules>And the sinister side of what was going on in the country, and that's like the opening sequence, because if you watch that opening, it starts off funny.
22:24
<i: I've got two rules>It's got body popping and like bad clothes and, you know, and sort of like video games and, and then you start to see a bit of the political landscape, the Thatcher, and then you start to see some of the violence and some of the protests and some of the racism.
22:38
<i: I've got two rules>So throughout that sequence, what starts off as being really fun gets darker and darker and darker.
22:44
<i: I've got two rules>And there's one band on the soundtrack that represents that vibe better than almost any I can think of.
22:49
<i: I've got two rules>A band that sonically, politically, and even visually makes the light and the dark by design.
22:55
<i: I've got two rules>This is your original rude boy Neville Staple from The Specials.
22:59
<i: I've got two rules>Neville Staple grew up listening to music with a social conscience.
23:03
<i: I've got two rules>As a Jamaican born kid living in the UK city of Coventry.
23:06
<i: I've got two rules>We used to listen to a lot of ska music because at the time we didn't have newspaper, we had a transistor radio, I remember that, but we didn't have newspapers.
23:17
<i: I've got two rules>If you needed to know anything, you would hear it through artists singing and singing about it.
23:23
<i: I've got two rules>Eventually, in the 1970s, he started toasting, kind of the Jamaican precursor to rapping over reggae records his cousin spun at basement parties through some pretty serious loudspeakers.
23:33
<i: I've got two rules>We used to call them Soundbox is a mega big heavy plywood.
23:38
<i: I've got two rules>And to lift one of the speakers, I mean the big ones, you probably needed about 4 or 5 of you.
23:43
<i: I've got two rules>That's how heavy it was.
23:45
<i: I've got two rules>And when you turn that up and you hear the bass tell me, it was loud, you can imagine, oh, you know how loud.
23:53
<i: I've got two rules>So it must have been surprising when one day, circa 1978, they had that basement sound system bangin', and Neville still managed to hear a local band rehearsing next door, playing ska music, but with punk rock speed, attitude and volume.
24:07
<i: I've got two rules>So that's when I said,"Oh, that sounds different." So I pop my head around.
24:11
<i: I've got two rules>Saw it was one Black guy on drums, bass player, white guy, singer white guy, and Jerry.
24:19
<i: I've got two rules>That last guy would have been keyboardist Jerry Dammers, who put together the group.
24:22
<i: I've got two rules>It was a band of Black and white guys playing a mash up of Black and white music.
24:27
<i: I've got two rules>At the time, they called themselves the Special A.K.A, and it was Neville's first look at a musical movement Dammers was calling Two Tone.
24:39
<i: I've got two rules>In a way, it was like the original skinhead movement of the '60s, a cultural fusion, but where that just sort of happened, Two Tone was a conscious response to the anti-immigrant racism that was all over '70s and '80s England.
24:52
<i: I've got two rules>The lyrics of Specials songs like Concrete Jungle painted the picture.
24:56
<i: I've got two rules>I have to carry a knifeBecause there's people threatening my lifeI can't dress just the way I wantI'm being chased by the National Front I have to carry a knife'cause people threaten my life.
25:11
<i: I've got two rules>Can't dress the way I want.
25:13
<i: I've got two rules>I'm being chased by the National Front.
25:15
<i: I've got two rules>Concrete Jungle, all of them, they were literally the story of the streets at that time.
25:19
<i: I've got two rules>That's Sugary Staple again, Neville's wife and bandmate.
25:22
<i: I've got two rules>I mean, there were places where you just wouldn't go out.
25:25
<i: I've got two rules>I had Black friends who wouldn't go to certain areas because they knew they'd probably get their heads kicked in just for being Black.
25:31
<i: I've got two rules>But more importantly, also, the Black kids had to be careful of the police because they would literally round you up, kick the crap out of you, and then shove you back on the estate, all battered and bruised.
25:41
<i: I've got two rules>In fact, police violence partly inspired the black and white checkerboard design of The Specials logo, and the logo for Dammers' record label, also called Two Tone.
25:50
<i: I've got two rules>He decided, you know, to have the black and white check to relate to unity.
25:55
<i: I've got two rules>Black and white unite through music.
25:57
<i: I've got two rules>He used the black and white check because the police had- black and white check on their--- Oh yeah.
26:01
<i: I've got two rules>On their hats.
26:02
<i: I've got two rules>Like a checkerboard band on their hat brims.
26:04
<i: I've got two rules>Yeah.
26:05
<i: I've got two rules>So the police had all these powers and they were doing terrible things with it at the time.
26:10
<i: I've got two rules>You take their checkered imagery and you turn it into something else, you know?
26:14
<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, Two Tone bands like The Specials and The Selecter turned it into cool, inspiring righteousness.
26:20
<i: I've got two rules>Dressed in pin sharp suits, usually black and white, of course, they sang socially conscious lyrics over upbeat, galvanizing jams.
26:28
<i: I've got two rules>This was politics you could party to.
26:30
<i: I've got two rules>The music captured them first with that energy, energy.
26:33
<i: I've got two rules>Then they'll listen and then they can hear what we're saying.
26:38
<i: I've got two rules>We're not preaching to them.
26:38
<i: I've got two rules>It's in the music.
26:41
<i: I've got two rules>But once Neville joined The Specials as their resident ridiculously high energy toaster, he learned fast.
26:47
<i: I've got two rules>Not everyone at their gigs liked what they were saying.
26:52
<i: I've got two rules>Anti-Racist punk rockers, mods and OG skins showed up to dance.
26:56
<i: I've got two rules>Aggro boneheads showed up for trouble.
26:58
<i: I've got two rules>I used to get hassled on stage.
26:58
<i: I've got two rules>I used to get spat at.
27:01
<i: I've got two rules>They would spit at you on stage.
27:03
<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, you used to get them spitting at you...
27:05
<i: I've got two rules>And like, in German,"Sieg Heil, seig heil" They'd like do Nazi salutes in the...?
27:11
<i: I've got two rules>- Yeah yeah yeah.
27:11
<i: I've got two rules>- In the audience?
27:12
<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, that's what they used to do, Nazi salute.
27:15
<i: I've got two rules>At one gig, Neville grabbed his band mate, Lynval Golding's guitar, leapt off the stage and started swinging it at these guys.
27:21
<i: I've got two rules>And a lot of times the band's supporters got a similar idea.
27:24
<i: I've got two rules>The original skinheads that were in the crowd, and the rude boys, would sort it out.
27:28
<i: I've got two rules>I mean, often it was them.
27:29
<i: I've got two rules>They didn't even wait for the bouncers.
27:30
<i: I've got two rules>They would grab them and they would kick them out or, you know, give them a bit of a punch up and get rid of them.
27:35
<i: I've got two rules>It was all inspiration for a Specials song that, to me anyway, is right at the heart of whatThis Is England is about.
27:48
<i: I've got two rules>Do the dog It's a cover, kind of, of Rufus Thomas' funky 1963 dance track, The Dog.Do the dog But typical of The Specials, it gets reworked with a hard ska beat and new lyrics.
28:02
<i: I've got two rules>Instead of telling the various factions in their audience to do a dance, The Specials tell them to stop doing something.
28:09
<i: I've got two rules>All you punks and all you tedsNational Front and natty dread All you punks and all you teds.
28:18
<i: I've got two rules>National Front and natty dread.
28:21
<i: I've got two rules>Mods, rockers, skinhead.
28:24
<i: I've got two rules>Keep your fighting'til you're dead.
28:26
<i: I've got two rules>Keep on fighting til you're dead.
28:28
<i: I've got two rules>Basically like stop ruining everything with your violence.
28:31
<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, keep your fighting to yourself.
28:33
<i: I've got two rules>It's a call to reject violence and hate and unify against the man.
28:37
<i: I've got two rules>But now check out how it's used in the movie.
28:40
<i: I've got two rules>Hey, Big Daddy.Where you been?
28:42
<i: I've got two rules>Where you been? It's in that pivotal party scene I talked about earlier.
28:47
<i: I've got two rules>When Shaun asks out Smell, his New Waver crush Woody and the gang actually haveDo the Dog playing on the stereo the background when trouble knocks.
28:56
<i: I've got two rules>It were just a bit funny that you never actually--What the fuck's that?That sounds like the coppers, that does. Panicked, they kill the music and start hiding the intoxicants thinking it's their traditional enemy, the cops.
29:10
<i: I've got two rules>But of course, it turns out to be one of their own...
29:18
<i: I've got two rules>Combo, just out of prison, who enjoys scaring the daylights out of them.
29:22
<i: I've got two rules>And minutes later he's telling that racist tale and cracking Shaun up.
29:27
<i: I've got two rules>"White boy, give me your pud-pud." A scene before this, Shaun was happily partying to a song about rejecting hatred and resisting infighting.
29:38
<i: I've got two rules>Now suddenly, he's laughing along with hatred, and the gang's about to split into camps.
29:44
<i: I've got two rules>To me, in this movie, Two Tone is the unspoken moral compass, and the second the needle gets ripped off that Two Tone record is the moment Shaun starts to lose his way.
30:01
<i: I've got two rules>Music is pretty important in this film, is what I'm saying.
30:04
<i: I've got two rules>So it's maybe no surprise it played a big role on the set as part of what, by all accounts, is a filmmaking process like no other.
30:12
<i: I've got two rules>Just ask this guy.
30:14
<i: I've got two rules>Jack O'Connell. I am an actor.
30:17
<i: I've got two rules>I play Pukey in the film This is England.
30:19
<i: I've got two rules>Like a lot of the cast ofThis is England, Jack O'Connell was plucked out of the Nottingham Television Workshop, a legendary training spot for young actors from non posh backgrounds.
30:28
<i: I've got two rules>He'd never been in a movie, but he could still tell, this one wasn't typical.
30:33
<i: I've got two rules>Fourteen, fifteen. First film ever.
30:36
<i: I've got two rules>There was no script.
30:37
<i: I've got two rules>I knew what a script was, and I knew that they were quite fundamental in the process of filmmaking.
30:44
<i: I've got two rules>So it was novel to me, and it was all about improvising a lot.
30:49
<i: I've got two rules>A lot of what we did was spontaneous.
30:51
<i: I've got two rules>Mark Herbert says that meant steeping the actors in the world of the film, starting with the tunes.
30:56
<i: I've got two rules>They were being played during the shoot.
30:58
<i: I've got two rules>So there was almost like a playlist that Shane put together, stuck it on the old iPad with a clickwheel.
31:03
<i: I've got two rules>So there was some certain songs that were just there from day one, like Do The Dog, Toots, Symarip.
31:10
<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, I think Skinhead Moonstomp was a big one.
31:14
<i: I've got two rules>I recall Stephen Graham singing it to himself in the trailer as he was getting his tattoos put on.
31:20
<i: I've got two rules>Anything by Toots and the Maytals was massive.
31:23
<i: I've got two rules>People going here, people going there What song is that now?
31:26
<i: I've got two rules>It's A Jam In The Streets.- I forget by who.
31:29
<i: I've got two rules>- It's by John Holt.
31:32
<i: I've got two rules>And it ended up in the movie's trailer.
31:34
<i: I've got two rules>People going here, people going therePeople going out, people coming in Anyway, once Meadows got that stuff bouncing in the background, he and his crew plunged the cast into the other important details of the 1983 skinhead world.
31:48
<i: I've got two rules>Starting with the most obvious.
31:49
<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, I think we got our heads shaved pretty much the same day.
31:52
<i: I've got two rules>Very ritualistic as you can imagine.
31:55
<i: I've got two rules>I remember a couple of the girls would have, like, really long hair, very, very long hair, and they had to part with that.
32:02
<i: I've got two rules>So, I imagine that's not easy.
32:04
<i: I've got two rules>The world was-- Yeah.
32:05
<i: I've got two rules>Everything from we shoot on location, there's no studio.
32:08
<i: I've got two rules>So you feel, it feels right.
32:10
<i: I've got two rules>The-- You know, you'd even see the way the actors, when they put on their clothes, they stood differently.
32:15
<i: I've got two rules>They became those characters, you know, Docs, you know, like, even when Shaun put that really cool Ben Sherman and his jeans on for the first time, he just he held himself differently.
32:24
<i: I've got two rules>Until finally the gang in real life wasn't behaving all that differently than the gang on screen.
32:29
<i: I've got two rules>Apparently, right down to petty squabbles.
32:31
<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, I remember Tommo getting a, mini moto for his birthday, and, I was really fucking jealous.
32:39
<i: I've got two rules>This would be the Tom Turgoose who plays Shaun.
32:42
<i: I've got two rules>Really, really fucking jealous.
32:43
<i: I've got two rules>They bought him a mini moto and he was just cruising around the base camp and this tiny motorbike I was stood there thinking, where's my fucking mini moto?
32:52
<i: I've got two rules>I'm looking at you.
32:54
<i: I've got two rules>It's like you're reliving it as we speak, man.
32:56
<i: I've got two rules>- Oh yeah.
32:56
<i: I've got two rules>- That wound goes deep.
32:59
<i: I've got two rules>Until I get my own Mini moto from Shane.
33:02
<i: I've got two rules>That's the only thing that will equalize it.
33:06
<i: I've got two rules>Actually sounds like the film's UK premiere kind of made up for it.
33:10
<i: I've got two rules>It was at the London Film Festival, October 2006.
33:14
<i: I've got two rules>I think it was on Southbank somewhere.
33:16
<i: I've got two rules>We're talking over 20 years ago.
33:18
<i: I've got two rules>And yeah, man, enormous.
33:18
<i: I've got two rules>Enormous.
33:20
<i: I've got two rules>We're in a film.
33:20
<i: I've got two rules>It was cut together.
33:23
<i: I've got two rules>Noel Gallagher was there, which meant the world to me.
33:28
<i: I've got two rules>As a 15 year-old, you're just kind of watching this.
33:31
<i: I've got two rules>You just, you know it's cool, you know it's amazing.
33:34
<i: I've got two rules>You know, it's brilliant.
33:36
<i: I've got two rules>But you didn't you had no way of knowing the sort of buzz that it would end up catching.
33:41
<i: I've got two rules>The film was released.
33:43
<i: I've got two rules>It kind of released on...
33:43
<i: I've got two rules>I've never known this, where a film...
33:46
<i: I've got two rules>You know, normally you start off on 300 screens and you kind of whittle down and three weeks later you're on 50 screens.
33:51
<i: I've got two rules>This went the other way.
33:54
<i: I've got two rules>And it built up word of mouth.
33:54
<i: I've got two rules>The music was getting-- So it was getting talked on radio, on music radio, on chat shows, and people started talking about Doc Martens.
34:03
<i: I've got two rules>And there was This is England posters in Fred Perry shops and, you know, and it became iconic.
34:10
<i: I've got two rules>Amazingly, that wasn't only true in England.
34:13
<i: I've got two rules>Andrew Shim, Milky, caught up with his costar and then girlfriend Vicky McClure at the Rome Film Festival.
34:19
<i: I've got two rules>And the whole auditorium just was standing ovation for the entire length of the credits and beyond.
34:28
<i: I've got two rules>And I'll never forget the next day, me and Vicky were sat at a coffee shop and this woman came screeching up on a little Vespa.
34:37
<i: I've got two rules>She was saying something in Italian.
34:39
<i: I've got two rules>She got back on her Vespa, sped off, and we were like, "What?" And then she came back with a disposable camera to take a picture with us.
34:48
<i: I've got two rules>This is England earned close to five times its budget at the box office and then in the UK, Sarah Godfrey says it started a crazy afterlife.
34:57
<i: I've got two rules>The fact that it sold just under 300,000 DVDs is massive for a British film, but I think more significantly, we then go on to have these TV shows, which is...
35:09
<i: I've got two rules>I can't think of another film that has, another British film, rather, that has actually done that.
35:16
<i: I've got two rules>So we have a director who's made a film meant to be a standalone piece, and then he goes on to create three television series that follow it up.
35:25
<i: I've got two rules>When did we find out?
35:26
<i: I've got two rules>Dude, I can't remember, I cannot remember.
35:28
<i: I've got two rules>I just, I just do remember thinking to myself, this is going to be wild.
35:33
<i: I've got two rules>We were such good friends.
35:36
<i: I've got two rules>Were such, such, such good friends with every single cast member.
35:40
<i: I've got two rules>We're all mega good friends.
35:40
<i: I've got two rules>And this is gonna be epic.
35:47
<i: I've got two rules>Yeah, probably the main reason people like me return to This is England, and the TV spin-offs over and over again, is that.
35:55
<i: I've got two rules>It's about trying to find your tribe, and you can feel that this tribe really loves each other.
36:00
<i: I've got two rules>But for me, another is that it reminds me of an era that's a lot like ours right now.
36:05
<i: I've got two rules>But when, as Sugary Staple tells me, music culture could actually make a bonehead less boneheaded.
36:12
<i: I've got two rules>What I found is when The Specials came along and mixed up this ska and reggae and put it with the punk, the music together and the attitude and the style...
36:22
<i: I've got two rules>A lot of them came back.
36:24
<i: I've got two rules>- Oh, really?
36:24
<i: I've got two rules>- They moved back.
36:25
<i: I've got two rules>Yes.
36:26
<i: I've got two rules>They stopped being, you know, these hardcore kind of racist sort of National Front guys and they came back.
36:34
<i: I've got two rules>It took a little while, but it was just amazing how we saw that change.
36:37
<i: I've got two rules>I mean, do you think that music can play a role in this?
36:40
<i: I've got two rules>Oh, absolutely.
36:41
<i: I've got two rules>- Or is it just too far gone?
36:41
<i: I've got two rules>- No, absolutely.
36:43
<i: I've got two rules>When we see a lot of things online and there's a lot online, social media stuff, a lot of racial stuff and a lot of tension, we see Two Tone fans jumping in, and at our gigs and our shows, we also see that and they're bringing their kids and some of them, their grandkids.
36:59
<i: I've got two rules>And sometimes they've got banners up about, you know,"let's all be equal through the music.
37:04
<i: I've got two rules>"Let's all be united through the music." So I do, I think music will always have a massive part in sorting these sort of things out.
37:14
<i: I've got two rules>Maybe that's idealistic, but I don't know.
37:16
<i: I've got two rules>I don't really care.
37:18
<i: I've got two rules>I'm going to believe in people who can see things in black and white.
37:33
<i: I've got two rules>And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week and this season.
37:36
<i: I've got two rules>As always, it's been an honor telling the stories of these great movies and their great music.
37:40
<i: I've got two rules>We're already laying the groundwork for Season 12.
37:42
<i: I've got two rules>Follow us so you don't miss it.
37:42
<i: I've got two rules>While you're at it, speaking of reggae music, scroll back to our episode from 2023 about The Harder They Come, the midnight movie classic with a soundtrack that might be the most important reggae album of all time.
37:56
<i: I've got two rules>It said, here is a music you can take seriously.
37:59
<i: I've got two rules>It's not just there to make white people dance.
38:02
<i: I've got two rules>That episode features Paul Douglas, drummer for a band you heard a lot of people mention in this episode, Toots and the Maytals.
38:07
<i: I've got two rules>Follow us and take a listen.
38:08
<i: I've got two rules>You can also follow me on threads or Instagram at Rico Gagliano.
38:12
<i: I've got two rules>That's Rico G-A-G-L-I-A-N-O.
38:15
<i: I've got two rules>We can geek out on great political music over there.
38:18
<i: I've got two rules>And now let's roll credits.
38:20
<i: I've got two rules>This episode was hosted, written and edited by me, Rico Gagliano with the help of large amounts of coffee.
38:25
<i: I've got two rules>Ciara McEniff is our producer, along with assistant producer, Kat Kowalczyk.
38:28
<i: I've got two rules>Jackson Musker is our booking producer.
38:31
<i: I've got two rules>Mastering by Steven Colon.
38:32
<i: I've got two rules>Our original music was composed by Martin Austwick.
38:35
<i: I've got two rules>Thanks this week to East Anglia University's Livewire 1350.
38:38
<i: I've got two rules>Sonatune Studios in Nottingham, Persephonica Studios in Sheffield and Peter, Therese and Corrina Lesser.
38:45
<i: I've got two rules>This episode was executive produced by me, along with Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca.
38:50
<i: I've got two rules>And finally, to watch the best in cinema, subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com Thanks for listening.
38:57
<i: I've got two rules>Go watch some movies.
38:57
<i: I've got two rules>They matter.