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Neds

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Peter Mullan's third feature as a writer and director, returns him to the 1970s Glasgow of his youth. A confident and studious John McGill just as he's about to start secondary school, where he fully expects to continue his so-far glittering academic career. But there are dark clouds on the horizon. His friendship with middle-class Julian shines a light on both his poor background and the dysfunction of his home, where his father is drunk, violent and ineffective, his mother is troubled and repressed and his elder brother is always in trouble with the law.

 

Interview with Actor Peter Mullan

 

Q) : Were you ever told to show your hands? Was that something that happened to you?

(Peter Mullan): Oh god, yeah. Corporal punishment in Scottish schools stopped when I was 21, so 30 years ago it stopped. But prior to that everybody got strapped, everybody, and it became a point of honor. If you didn’t get the strap that wasn’t good. You had to get the strap. To be a man you had to get the strap. It wasn’t difficult; we all got it. But some guys were a lot more vicious than others, and some teachers, there were a couple of really vicious ones they would at any given opportunity take the strap out and would gladly belt you with this thing.

And we had a real strap on set, and we had all these kids who had no idea what this thing was. So before we did the scene I said to the kids “Line up,” and they all lined up. And there are three prongs and I took on prong and each one I gave a tiny little tap. And they designed these things where, I don’t know what leather they used, but it fucking stings. It stings like a nettle. So I did this tiny little tap and the kids, every one was like “Ahh.”

Then I took out the real strap and I had the kids all sit down and I said “Now this is how you would have gotten it when you were younger than you guys,” and then I did it to the desk and I whacked the desk and they were fucking horrified and they were like “No way.” And I said “Yeah, and you’d get six of those.” And what they’d do is they’d make sure you rolled up your sleeves so it would hit you there, and your veins swelled up.

(Q) : It’s a very sensitive area.

(Peter Mullan) : The first feeing you get is nausea, because once the second one hits you, no matter how tough you are you feel nauseous, you think you’re going to puke. And of course the rest of the class is all looking at you because you can’t show it. But as soon as they looked away it was like fucking hell because it was wounding. But it was great for the kids to see it because all their parents had told them this is what used to happen, so it was great for them to see it because then they’d go “Shit, it really did happen.

It wasn’t something Mom and Dad made up.” Because part of the problem was at the time everywhere seemed violent. The police were violent; still are. The priests were violent; still are. The schools were violent. Your parents were far more violent. It was just part of the working class, Scottish, Irish kind of culture. It was just there. It was the way you dealt with kids.

(Q) : Was it frustration because of lack of work?

(Peter Mullan): It was primarily cultural. You have to remember, even the basics of feminism didn’t penetrate the working class culture until the mid-1980s. Not really. I mean it used to be talked about like “Oh, she’s a feminist.” Nowadays it’s changed unrecognizably for the good. In those days not that long ago even the basic concept of for instance marital rape, it’s only been on the legislature in Scotland I think just in the last 10 years. So up to 10 years ago you couldn’t technically rape your own wife. You couldn’t rape her because she was your wife; you owned her, how could you rape her?

(Q) : And domestic violence?

(Peter Mullan) : No, you couldn’t prosecute. And that’s only in the last 10 years. We’ve made huge advances, but we were pretty backward. But not anymore backward than any other working class cultures. I don’t think we were in any shape or form unique.

(Q) : You also wrote the script. Was there any autobiographical element?

(Peter Mullan): Yeah. I’ve always said the film was personal, it’s not autobiographical. By that I mean I don’t pursue everybody’s perspective as influenced or prejudiced on their behalf. I made no attempt to pursue a factual truth. There are elements that I remember happening to me or happening to others or things I’d heard about or even things I’d read about. In terms of things that actually happened to me I would say about 40% of it’s true. Particularly the first third of the film is true in the sense that it’s not all factually correct but it’s pretty much so.

I was held back in school because of the activities of my brother. I was told if I went to the big school I was going to get attacked. My brother sorted it out and I went into school feeling I was the victim of a big injustice. I think you feel that way anyway when you’re 13. You look for injustice when you’re that age. You’re desperate for a parent to be nicer to a sibling so you can say “You love him more than you love me!”

You’re always looking for drama, and that definitely affected me. And then I was told to hang around with what this teacher said was people of equal intelligence. He said “During the summer hang out with boys of similar intelligence.” So I met this lawyer’s son and he and I became friends, and then inexplicably one day I went to the door and she said “Don’t.”

(Q) : So that really happened?

(Peter Mullan): Yeah, and it really hurt me because no explanation was given.

(Q) : Did you really see him in the window?

(Peter Mullan): Yeah. And I met him years later, years later. It was really interesting. There’d been an interview and he read the story and he was horrified. He was a lawyer himself at that time and he was utterly horrified, and he said – he’d forgotten that he was at the window. I hadn’t – and he said he challenged his mother and said “Did you really do that to him? Did you say for no good reason ‘I don’t think you should come back here again’?” And she said “I don’t remember, but probably.” In other words, I don’t think I was the only one. She was protective.

She was very middle class. But that night if I had taken a right from his house you walked down a hill and you went more to the working class area. If I had taken a right, which I should have done, I would have gone straight home. I knew that the park had the bad boys. For whatever reason I took a left and I met the bad boys. And I knew the minute they came up to me, because they were all tooled up and they were going to do me in, and I knew this is some fucking day.

He’s just told me to fuck off, this lot is going to kill me, and I had the provident check and they took it out, and then one of them recognized me. My brother, Lenny, who cast the film, and Lenny was a bad boy, and they said “Are you Lenny’s brother?” and I said “Yeah.” And I thought about it. I thought should I say yes, should I say no? Because if I said yes they may have went “Well we hate him. You’re getting it.” As it turned out they feared him; he was one of the older gang members. And then literally just said “Do you want to join us?” And I remember thinking fuck it, yeah, why not? Because middle class don’t fucking want me, working class don’t seem to fucking know, here’s the under class; fuck it, fine, I’m with you guys.

(Q) : For us "Tyrannosaur" and this film were back to back. Obviously, they weren't the same for you, but when you see the two of them they are very much two sides of the same coin. Different perspectives but still addressing the same working class, the issues of alcohol, men who can't express their feelings who have grown up with violence towards women. Can you talk a little bit about working on the two films?

(Peter Mullan): That was great. I finished "Neds" on a Friday and then I started work with Paddy on the Monday. And I did exactly the same with "Orphans" and "My Name is Joe." I finished "Orphans" on a Friday and started work with Ken on a Monday. It was brilliant in the sense that it's great to go from being the director, where it's 24/7 and then you're just the actor so you let someone else do all the worrying and stuff. And Paddy and I are really good mates anyway and Paddy as an actor I never, ever tell a director or even suggest what they should do, because I don't fucking care. It's none of my business; I'm just an actor.

You work with some actors and they're going "Is he really going to put the camera there?" And you're thinking "What the fuck? If you want to fucking direct it go. Don't sit there and undermine. He's the director. If he tells you to run over the fucking hill you run over the hill whether you want to or not." But Paddy was brilliant. Where it was useful for having done "Neds" was Paddy would ask "Did you experience this on 'Neds'?" So what was nice was my being able to say "Yeah."

Because the worst thing when it's your first feature is you're constantly haunted with the idea that you're doing the whole thing back to front or you're doing it completely the wrong way. So it's always nice to have someone around, whoever that may be to tell you no, that's just fine, that's just the way it is. So the two of us managed to sort of help each other out. Performance wise it was a joy because all I had to do was act, and acting's fun. So that's all I had to do.

(Q) : Could you talk about the process of casting Conor McCarron? This is his first film, right? That was quite amazing how you were able to find him.

(Q) : And also the two boys.

(Peter Mullan): Young John and older John, yeah. We just got really lucky, to be honest. We put an ad in the newspaper and 350 kids showed up, and I was a bit disappointed. I thought we would have gotten more kids because we did say my name, not that that's a big deal, but we did say "If you're over 16 and you want to be in a film and you're male and it's a Peter Mullan film," not that that's important.

But we thought they might think well it's legit. It's a proper movie kind of thing. And we got 350. As a comparison, the "X Factor" in Scotland about two weeks previous got I think it was 13,000 in Glasgow showed up to sing. This was the thing that really annoyed me was that it's interesting and I still think the working class they thing acting's a middle class sport. They still haven't got the confidence in themselves, even though there's James McAvoy, there's Kevin McKidd. Loads of role models. Kelly Macdonald and Shirley Henderson. They still think it's for others, whereas singing, "I could fucking sing," and it's TV.

I think they think it's more accessible. So I was disappointed in the numbers but of that 350 Conor was one of them and most of the other lads were there. So we went from 350 to 50 and then to about 35, and they're all in the film, all 35 of them in some capacity or other. Conor stood out very early on. The audition we had was really simple; we had to keep it really simple. No reading of script and shit like that, it's just "Hi, how are you?" And I didn't go because we thought that would intimidate the kids. So it's just my brother behind camera and Paul Donnelly, who's in the film.

And the kids would come in and Lenny would explain "Look, I'm going to tell you I'm going to kill you and then you just react. You tell me what you're going to do to me," and that was it, that's all they had to do. And this kids would stand and Lenny would go "You're fucking dead," and they'd go "I'll fucking kill you," or whatever. Some kids were really funny, they used that American thing "I'm going to stick your head so far up your ass you're going to be licking your fucking tonsils." You're looking at them thinking I would have killed you by now. You're so busy fucking going "I'm going to fucking…" you're dead.

Why waste energy? Whereas other kids knew that you don't have to do anything. For that moment you have to look someone in the eye and go "No, I'll kill you." And as long as you mean it with intent it's scary. I walked around a lot with murderers and stuff in a drama capacity. The scariest guys you ever meet are the smallest, the chubbiest, the ugliest, the most ineffectual. But when they tell you they're going to kill you and eat you, you think I believe you.

(Q) : The kid with the glasses I thought was the most volatile character. He's the one you have to look out for. He didn't get into that gang because he's good looking.

(Peter Mullan): No, he gets in because he can do things that are useful.

(Q) : Lenny is your brother. Is Lenny in Benny?

(Peter Mullan): Oh no Benny was like all of them they're kind of amalgams of characters.

(Q) : And he's your casting director?

(Peter Mullan): Yeah. So Lenny cast "The Magdalene Sisters" and he cast "Orphans." Where Lenny's brilliant is he completely demystifies the process. You've got to remember a lot of casting directors the first thing they'll do is get a fucking table like this. They'll queue actors out there and they love going "Send the next one in." And they come in and they "Look, I don't want you to panic; I'm just going to film you. What's your name, what have you been doing?" Now I'm sorry, if that doesn't fucking panic you nothing will. You're not going to get the best out of anybody.

Whereas what Lenny does he keeps it nice and natural, kids walk in, they think he's a dick and they tell him so and that's fine, and he goes "Thanks very much," and they go "Fuck you," and they walk away. And that's what it should be, because you're not there to impress them you're there to get the best out of them. And where that really worked was on set and I do exactly the same thing. Kids should be slightly disappointed on a set. In fact actors should be disappointed when they walk on a set. It shouldn't be anything like they were imagining. You want to get rid of those fucking lights, keep the camera nice and discreet, and then you just relax.

And then you play around with a scene and then you do it. The bigger the deal you make out of it the less of a performance you're going to get. And where a lot of big films fall down in performances is that there's so much of the machine. It's not that the actor's lazy or overpaid, it's because usually, nine out of 10 times he or she is uninspired, because no actor thinks they can justify this. When you're got £3 million worth of kit and it's pointing on you you're going to panic, you can't justify 3 million quids worth and then another £2 million worth of talent behind these machines and they're all looking at you expecting you to do something magical.

It just doesn't work. By trickery, by lying, by whatever means possible you keep that shit away from an actor and you let the actor feel it's no big deal. I was coming up through Broadway this morning and I know a couple of guys that are in the shows, and Daniel's in one and Brian Cox is in another. I know when they first walked by there when you see a poster that size of you and you're on stage that night, if you even look at that poster you're not going to put on a good performance. You're not eight foot tall, you're not the fucking Lion King, you're not Mary Poppins; you're not and you know you're not.

(Q) : Did you find the "Potters" because it's so much of an ensemble did it have more of that experience?

(Peter Mullan): The reason that David I think was given the last four "Harry Potters" is for exactly that reason, because David keeps the most relaxed set you've ever been on ever, and a really clever thing they do on the "Harry Potter" set is kids come every day. Every day there's a little gallery of kids and they always were near me and of course they're always going "And who the fuck's he? Sorry, who are you?" And they're quite right. "I don't fucking know; I'm just playing a part."

And you get this great atmosphere. And I really noticed Ralph had a beautiful big scene at the beginning of that last one and it was five days to shoot one scene, whereas I was still working on "Neds." We were shooting five scenes a day and they would get five days for one scene. And it was Ralph walking around a table at the beginning of the film with billions of yap, and I really noticed on one of the days the group of kids came in and Ralph racked up the performance threefold because you've got an audience, it's theater. As an actor you're always going to improve when you're got an audience, particularly the target audience.

Those kids were all chewing sweets and drinking juice. When he did his whole Voldemort that all sat back terrified. You could feel it and he was getting bigger and bigger. It was beautiful. And that's really clever, because kids are never welcome on set. Nobody welcomes kids on set. They tell you they do, "Bring your kids," and then it's like "Could you keep them in the fucking trailer and keep them away from set because it's health and safety." The truth is they make noise and they don't like it, whereas "Harry Potter," for all its money and its confidence creates such an easy kid atmosphere. Kids are welcome. I thought I'm going to use that. If ever I direct a kid's film I'm getting kids in every day because it's great because actors will improve.

(Q) : Did you bring your kids to set?

(Peter Mullan) : My kids to the "Harry Potter" set? Yeah.

(Q) : And to "Neds"?

(Peter Mullan) : They came down one afternoon but there was not much that was suitable for them to see. I wouldn't want my kids seeing that.

(Q) : How old are they?

(Peter Mullan) : My youngest is three, then I've got a 10 year old, 14 year old, and a 21 year old.

(Q) : What made you decide on the subtitles?

(Peter Mullan) : I didn't have a choice really. That was given.

(Q) : It is so much a different language.

(Peter Mullan) : Yeah, it's difficult.

End.