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twentyfourseven
Shane Meadows has not led a perfect life. “Whenever a police car came up our road (in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire) every- one knew it was coming to our house. Mind you, I never got into serious serious trouble – just lots of small-time crookery.”
Meadows, just 30, sips an orange juice at Soho’s Groucho Club on one of his infrequent visits south of Birmingham. He ponders a misspent youth, wonders why his latest film, Once Upon a Time
in the Midlands, disappointed at the box office and talks with irre- pressible passion about his next project King of the Gypsies.
Meadows is a genuine 24/7 operator. He lives it to the hilt and used it as the title for his debut feature that won him, aged 24, the Venice Critics Prize for Young European Film Maker. To date, he’s made 70 shorts, five feature films and built a significant fan-base.
“As a kid, I got so much out of the way in such a short time,” he says. “Glue-sniffing at 12, I was the rogue who got mixed up with the wrong-uns. My ambition at the local sports-based compre- hensive was to get out fast and go to prison. I just blew it there.
“Off came the hair, on went the tattoos. I’d seen Raging Bull and was into John McVicar and Jimmy Boyle. I wasn’t built for sport and they didn’t go for artists or drama or film-makers. I just wanted to get inside people’s heads and tell stories.”
Which didn’t quite fit the fami- ly image. “My Dad earned his money in bare-knuckle pirate boxing. They called him Big Hearted Arty Meadows. I went along to watch him in the 70s
and 80s. He fought for a flamboy- ant gypsy leader called Bartholomew Gorman the Fifth – a magnificent character full of guile and charisma, the Muhammed Ali of Uttoxeter.
“He’s my King of the Gypsies. Sadly, he died recently of cancer at 57 but his story is just beautiful. I am edging my way towards telling it.”
Meadows, with financial inter- est from America, will spend the early part of the year researching Romany culture in Europe. He understands the Romany lan- guage and is off researching in Ireland, Albania, Romania, France with shooting later this year.
“It’s a new adventure for me,” he says. “My three recent films all came out of my head. I was telling stories about people I knew, places I knew.
“Quite honestly, Once Upon a Time was just a bit comfortable. When I made Twenty Four Seven I was scared to death. But that fear enabled me to get up every morning and fight for it. I can sense that fear again as I work my way towards King of the Gypsies.”
British writer/director Shane Meadows talks to John Morrell about glue-sniffing, bare-knuckle fighting and his schoolboy ambition to go to prison.
John Battsek’s
six of the best
Industry personalities hand out their very own BAFTAs
Best Music Supervisor
Liz Gallacher. We worked togeth- er on One Day In September and on Live Forever, and in both cases we have managed to secure the rights to songs that no- one has ever secured before. She always starts by saying to me, ‘look, John, we can’t do it’, but I always insist we set our sights high, and she always seem to come through.
Best advisor/mentor/ confidante/trouble-shooter That would be my brother, Daniel Battsek. He’s the MD at Buena Vista, and has been a guiding light for me in the business. The night we won the Oscar for One Day In September he called me on my mobile, this voice ringing the middle of the night in London saying ‘you’ve done it!’. He was so delighted for us.
Best Comedy Double Act (Inadvertent or Otherwise) Without any doubt I would say Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis.
Most Arduous Pastime
That would be what I as a pro- ducer have to go through in order to get the people I want to be in a film like Live Forever.
Persuading reluctant celebrities that there is something in it for them when none of them is really interested in talking about their past. I had to persuade them that they should, and it’s incredi- bly difficult. It takes forever, and you have to talk to about 500 dif- ferent managers.
Most Inspiring Film
When We Were Kings [about Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle] is the rea- son I went off to make documen- taries. I’d just finished The Serpent’s Kiss, no-one liked it and I felt I couldn’t go through that experience again. But seeing When We Were Kings made me realise that documentary was what I wanted to do next.
Most Underrated Aspect of the Film Business
The common complaint of pro- ducers and directors is that
‘we’ve all made masterpieces, and how come distributors can’t get big enough audiences for them and/or hang onto cinemas long enough for them?’. Filmmakers always feel that their films deserve to be in the cinema longer than they are. But the fact is distributors – particularly ones like Helkon SK, Optimum and dare I say it, my brother’s – do know what they’re doing and do the very best they can.
One time publicist and PR man John Battsek co-produced One Day In September, about terrorism at the 1972 Munich Olympics, which won Oscar and Emmy awards. His latest production, written and directed by John Dower, is the BritPop extravaganza, Live Forever, which will be released on 7 March.
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