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A
Room for Romeo Brass It’s
early fall in Georgetown and the tourists are out wandering the streets,
stopping to window shop or a munch at one of the many posh eateries along M
Street. I pass them all by as I head for the Four Seasons on the edge of this
upper-crust District of Columbia enclave, a stone’s throw from the Potomac and
meeting point for today’s visitor, Shane Meadows, to our nation’s capital.
He loves the city and its cosmopolitan flavor, noting how part of it is very
much like Stratford-on-Avon. After our short chat he would have an hour or so to
prance along the sidewalks, browse the antique shops, and buy a souvenir or two
for his new bride, but for the next half hour Shane is mine. Or vice versa. His
debut feature, twentyfourseven, is a
British homage to Raging Bull. And
it’s fitting that his favorite director is Scorsese. Shane is beating the
press junket trail for A Room for Romeo
Brass, a subtle, small film, close to his heart and loosely based on events
surrounding his childhood back in England. He’s a few years shy of thirty and
his head reflects the warm morning sun that’s beaming into the back of the
dining room. Coffee arrives shortly after Shane has plopped down on a love seat,
stretching his frame over the length of the couch. He’s as casual as his last
film; blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt. The simple gold wedding ring matches the
two cushions he’s propped under his right arm, bent so his head rests on his
open palm. Mr. Cool. Elias
Savada:
Your first time here (in D.C.), yes? Shane
Meadows:
(hiding a wry grin) Yes, but I came down here for a secret meeting with the
President once. ES:
(playing along) Ah, which President would that be? SM:
(rubbing his eyes, perhaps a secret signal) It was Reagan. I was playing him in
an American play [with a British accent, no doubt] and I needed to talk to him
about stuff. I didn’t get to see anything. They had put a bag over my head.
They took my fingerprints off and threw me into the streets. ES:
[Good grief, what kind of guy is this?] Oh, they did that to a lot of people
back then, especially Democrats. For
the record, your birthplace and birth date? SM:
Uttoxeter, Davis Drive Flats, 26th of December 1972. Nearly Jesus. ES:
The mother roles for Tim (in twentyfourseven)
and Romeo are painted as characters bordering on sainthood, the dads as abusive,
mean-spirited sons of bitches. Was that your family growing up? SM:
No.
Not at all. Romeo’s mom isn’t certainly not on a saintly level, as the boy
has eaten her chips and she’s threatened to make him leave. My dad had to be
on the road a lot; he was a long distance lorry driver. At the time we didn’t
realize how much the moms were forced to hold things together. I went into
making the film wanting to make the women were really positive -- to give them
credit for what they did as we were growing up. ES:
Gill and Arthur, your
mom and dad, get grouped among those receiving "special thanks" in twentyfourseven.
How much support did they give you growing up? Did they "produce" any
of your early works? SM:
No, no. They always let me be myself. I was never oppressed in any way. They
embraced whatever performance angle came from me. Whether it was ridiculous
impersonations of TV celebrities or having sixty people mull about the house. My
mom liked having me and my friends around; at least she could keep an eye on me.
Our house was the neighborhood hangout. My mom’s pretty levelheaded. And she
was pretty young, too. When I was eleven, she’s my age now [twenty-seven]. ES:
Do you have brothers
and sisters? SM:
A sister. Slightly older. I had a good family life as a kid. The ups and downs
came more from the community than from my home. And that’s what ends up in my
films. ES:
Most of your short
films dealt with crime. I assume those ups and downs relate more to the criminal
element in your town? SM:
Absolutely. ES:
Your last two films both deal with unsentimental personal struggles within and
without the market-town working class family unit. Self esteem plays an
considerable role. Does your earlier work, and I regret not seeing them except
for twentyfourseven, involve similar
themes? SM:
Our town was one of those supported by a single industry. In our case it was a
biscuit factory. Much of my early work looks at small time crime, not the lock,
stock, high end diamond heists. My films concentrated on the people robbing
Snickers, biscuits, dog food, breast pumps, and sandwiches. ES:
Breast pumps? SM:
It was an honest crime. There was a girl up the road, a single parent, who
couldn’t get a babysitter because her baby could only feed on natural milk.
She couldn’t afford the sixty dollars [playfully, a New York Goodfellas
accent surrounds the dollar amount]. In a Robin Hood way, I agreed to pinch it,
but I took her boyfriend along with me. And he’s the worst thief in the world.
A horribly obvious lookout. I was hungry, too, like Romeo Brass. I’ve always
had a problem with food [His baggy sweatshirt covers an only slightly overweight
frame]. I know now I’m hyperglycemic, but as a kid I was always just hungry.
So I figure if I’m stealing a pump, I might as well pinch a sandwich. If I’m
caught, the penalty’s going to be no worse. As luck has it, they only saw me
pinch a chicken sandwich. If I had left with just the breast pump, I would have
been just fine. As for the boyfriend, the cops thought he was disabled. He
literally couldn’t talk. Just indecipherable grunts. He had pinched a
christening gown, which I didn’t know about then, for his son. The police come
in the room and growl at us "Where’s the christening gown?" I
hadn’t a clue and my friend couldn’t communicate. The patted him down but
couldn’t find the thin cotton item. Later, in his holding cell, they noticed
him chewing on the gown’s label. He had wanted to swallow it so if they found
the gown on him the evidence couldn’t prove it was the stolen gown. He ended
up singing "Love Me Tender" the rest of the day. I’m as calm as
ever, having been in prison on and off for petty crimes -- a pinched item here,
a street fight there. My friend continues to flip out, as in court he asks for a
solicitor, while I just want to admit to the crime and move on. He booms out
that he wants representation and gets fined seven times more than me for being a
pain in the ass. That’s the kind of crime that inspired me. When I robbed dog food, I pushed it through town in a
shopping cart with a coat over the top. It tipped over on a curb and the tins
started rolling down the street. That’s in one of my films, Small Time. ES:
Have you put together a reel of all your shorts? SM:
I’ve got seventy shorts. ES:
How closely does art imitate life in your new film, the quasi-autobiographical Room
for Romeo Brass? SM:
It’s difficult to quantify how much is mine. A lot came out of rehearsals. The
friendship, the relationship, the kid with the bad back, the guy that came
between them. That’s all real. I hung out with a group of older guys, while my
friend next door was stuck in bed for nearly two years. In the film, it’s not Dances
with Wolves, and we compress that to months for the nature of dramatization.
We felt audiences would pick up the turning point, without the need to
elaborate. Of course, having someone else (Paul Fraser) help you remember the
"truth." ES:
Paul’s also credited as choreographer? SM:
Yes, that’s his training. He took the same type of characters I have in my
films into his dance. Because of all his experiences [while waylaid] in bed, he
some lonely characters there. But it was never "I am art. Art is me."
It would be a blind fisherman on a river bank, not classical at all. Great
pieces. He’s a really talented choreographer and a great writer. What we put
together to do is outside both of our realms. Although he has now written two or
three features in the last eighteen months, including one called Darts,
a road movie about a guy on a darts team whose wife leaves him. ES:
Do you ever plan on making a film outside Nottingham? SM:
Yes. While the next film will hopefully be the final chapter of the trilogy that
encompasses twentyfourseven and A
Room for Romeo Brass. Some critics think Small
Time should be grouped with my two features, but it really just inspired
them. There’s an energy in Small Time
that I absolutely adore. But I consider my first film twentyfourseven. Small Time
was merely a sixty-minute featurette, although it would be great to have all
three on a single DVD. It would be three stories from a place no one ever makes
films about. And characters that people never talk to. It’s either London or
Scotland or Ireland. People never go into the center of the country -- to Darby
or Coventry or Leicester -- it just never happens. Manchester and Liverpool
maybe. ES:
In twentyfourseven I was particularly
impressed by the rough look of the film. (Director of Photography) Ashley
Rowe’s contrasty feel to that film -- especially the waltz segment with Auntie
Iris -- adds a wonderful dimension to the work. How did you manage to latch onto
one of England’s most respected DP’s? SM:
Well he had never made a black-and-white film. And that was an attraction for
others as well. Producer Stephen Woolley and his company, as well as Bob
Hoskins, had never done a black-and-white feature. Honestly, it made a bit of an
impact. I don’t think Ashley was quite as happy on my second film. It’s
color and didn’t need a hook. It’s all based on simplicity. ES:
Which brings up my next question. How differently did you approach the
directorial and visual style of Romeo Brass? SM:
I was more confident with Romeo to go
my own way and keep it incredibly simple. I don’t think I have a tracking shot
in the entire film. The whole idea of trying to tell a story honestly about
childhood is left to the kids’ performances. After the first week’s rushes I
realized the look needed to change, so we stopped using any tracks; I don’t
think any of that early footage ended up in the film. ES:
Music is almost like an added character in your two features. SM:
Yes, I’d go along with that. ES:
In twentyfourseven it nearly envelopes
the entire soundtrack. There are numerous montage sequences (camping in Wales,
Darcy nursing Fagash) were the songs completely overwhelm the dialogue. The
dynamite selection of Van Morrison, Tim Buckley, Sun House, The Charlatans is
overpowering and intoxicating. In Romeo you have an even wider selection, including two of my
favorites Fairport Convention and Donovan Leitch. How do you incorporate the
music into your final product, and how early in the filmmaking process do you
consciously pick some of the songs you use? SM:
More so, now I control the soundtrack. When I made Small
Time one band did all the music for that, yet a style was developing where I
don’t underpin dialogue very often with music. In my films you can strip away
to the bare rushes, pick any scene, and see the cast is acting.
It’s believable. When people saw the rushes from Romeo,
as opposed to what they normally get, they didn’t have to bear up with
comments that "the sound needs something put on here." After working
for years with video camcorders, where the sound needs to be right on the take,
my training (and budget) didn’t allow for post-production enhancements. So
music always became a sixth sense -- a different character in the film -- which
I use as a way of gathering and passing through emotion. Sometimes I play music
with the rushes, sometimes I don’t. There’s no pattern, as it is with my
rehearsals. Sometimes I’ll sit in rehearsals with my people on a Monday
morning, and we’d go over a scene for a bit or all day, whether it was
scripted or improvised. On the next day, they’d come in and I’d just play
them CD’s and listen to music. It’s how I feel on any day. When I started
rehearsals for twentyfourseven I had just split up with a girl. I was gutted. I’m
not professional, so I didn’t cover anything up. I told everyone exactly how I
felt -- that I had been crying all morning listening to Simon & Garfunkel.
So I played some CD’s for the cast as my stomach was ripping itself out. While
I’ve never been affected by songs that say what I’m feeling, for some reason
Bleeker Street, which talks about a
fog "rollin’ in off the East River bank like a shroud it covers Bleeker
Street," took me to a time and a place and that’s how the cast found me
those first days. They take me as they find me. In the same respect, I
understand that people and actors aren’t robots. They’ll have days where
they can’t stop pissing at themselves laughing. It’s frustrating, but it
happens to everybody. Making a film doesn’t stop life from happening around
you. I try to embrace that as much as I can. And use it to my advantage. ES:
You’ve use the same casting director, Abi Cohen, on your last two films, so
let’s segue into your relationship with your actors. Veteran Bob Hoskins
provides the central spark for twentyfourseven,
yet you decided to go with three unseasoned actors in Romeo Brass. Paddy Considine’s Morell is an impressively memorable
bully. What makes you decide how to cast a film? How do you extract so much
energy people who might have limited experience before the camera? SM:
There are two camps, really. What I try to create is a melting pot. I don’t
purposefully look at the different levels where people are at say I need someone
with no experience. What tends to happen is that I always choose someone who I
think is right for the part. (A director’s instinct, no doubt.) Take Paddy
Considine, who was chosen first. I believed in that guy since from when we were
in college. He had never acted, although we had taken a course together, but
what he thought acting was, wasn’t. The one play he did in school he walked
onto the stage with an axe and chopped down a tree. (Hmm, was he playing George
Washington?) He got into photography and just as he’s earned accolades in that
profession, I ring him up and mention I’m casting a new film. He had seen my
earlier work, so he realized the missed opportunity had he been in Small
Time or twentyfourseven. He read for the part and I gave it to him on the
spot. I then took him to the casting sessions when I was looking for the kids.
What I found that some amazing youngsters look great on their own, but when put
together with another kid, Paddy (in his Morell character), and one of the dads,
it didn’t always work. I found often the opposite to work to my advantage. A
boy that didn’t work well on his own would click when surrounded by others.
You have to cast people on how they work together. Why have actors sit in a room
reading from a cold script? It’s beyond me. ES:
How much room do you allow your actors to improvise above the scripted
constraints of your screenplay. I’m thinking of the first boxing match in twentyfourseven,
where the loser for the 101 Warriors begins to cry, which wasn’t scripted. SM:
I let actors speak in their own rhythms. Yes, it’s difficult. Generally I know
what I want in a scene, and I can’t break down what is scripted and what might
erupt at the moment. People don’t read from a script, but the actors don’t
leave that scene until I’ve got what I want. I might sit the cast down at a
table and have a discussion about soccer and within a minute or two be at a
certain point, one of them may end up flubbing because England couldn’t beat
Finland. Also, on the set I’m always flipping between people, and I might go
up to one and change everything at the last minute. Like in real life, the other
actor comes in expecting something else. It makes them angry sometimes. When
Romeo walks into Morell’s flat and the nutter jumps out from behind a cupboard
with a stocking on his head, we had actually rehearsed that as just a passing
through shot. The kid reacted quite differently than in practice. Paddy took it
to further extreme than I intended, insulting the youngster as if a soldier
talking down to a cadet. ES:
Well it comes across as one of the most powerful scenes in the film. SM:
Yes. When it works. It’s a chemical mix. Sometimes I won’t change a thing,
but the cast isn’t quite sure what to expect. ES:
Are there any actors you’d like to work with? You’re favorite director? SM:
James Earl Jones. Martin Scorsese. And in my own country, Gilles McKinnon (Hideous
Kinky, Regeneration, Trojan Eddie) is terribly underestimated. I really love his work. Click here to read Elias Savada's review. |
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