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Made in Scotland: Interview with Sweet Sixteen screenwriter Paul Laverty
by Anna Battista
"During Land and Freedom, for six weeks, Ken made us re-shoot scene after
scene after scene. Ken is famous for his line 'Just one more time' and this
can go on for twelve, thirteen, fourteen or even fifteen times,"
screenwriter Paul Laverty recounts to the people gathered at the Glasgow
Film Theatre for a special event, a screening and debate of Loach's movie
about the Spanish Civil War, Land and Freedom (1995). "On the very last
day of shooting, when we had to do a very emotional scene, we planned a
little vengeance," he smiles and looks at Ken Loach sitting next to him,
acknowledging him with a nod, "We talked to the cameraman and beforehand we
bought 25 water pistols. We had pink, yellow and orange plastic guns, all
these water pistols in dramatic colours, and we stuck them on the back of
our pants. When we had to re-shoot the scene, halfway through it, we took
out the water pistols! It was Ken's birthday and this war went on for 20
minutes!" People laugh, more anecdotes follow, then questions and comments
on the film and on the Spanish Civil War.
"Court buildings are always good places for tabloid hacks to hang out. How
many times have we seen the picture of a teenager accompanied by a burly
police escort after sentencing? There's usually a tough swagger, but the
shiny suit and tie can never make up for the pinched white face. I'm sure
the old hacks are masters of the leading question that the judge inside
would never allow. 'How does it feel, son, to imagine the next fifteen
years behind bars?' Scowl, fury, expletive, and the obligatory 'two
fingers' up yours. Snap! Snap! Thank you very much and here we have a
spectacular full-page spread. Those two fingers, in response to the hack,
are now spectacularly directed at the reader; at civilised society." Paul
Laverty, Introduction to Sweet Sixteen - the screenplay
"The Glasgow premiere of Sweet Sixteen was very very warm," Paul Laverty
explains a few days after the Land and Freedom event, before leaving
Glasgow again to go back to Spain where he lives. He looks relaxed, he's
just had an informal chat with a group of Ken Loach's fans in the local
branch of Borders about Sweet Sixteen, the new Loach film he's written the
screenplay for. Starring Martin Compston as Liam, William Ruane as Pinball,
Michelle Coulter as Jean, Annmarie Fulton as Chantelle and Gary McCormack
as Stan, "Sweet Sixteen" is the first Ken Loach Scottish film after My
Name Is Joe (1998). "We wanted to do something very personal again, after
the big trade union film Bread and Roses," Paul explains. "It was good to
go back to do something on the home territory, in Scotland, I can
understand it better, I feel much closer to the community and culture, so I
wrote it much more easily. We actually also wanted to do something more
intimate. I have always been attracted to do something about teenagers
because teenagers have a tremendous courage and a tremendous energy and
they have great plans, their emotions are all up and down, around and
about. Being a teenager means living a very dramatic time, a critical time,
because, during that period of your life, you might make choices that might
affect the rest of your life. I was fascinated by some of the young people
I met while doing other movies. When we were doing My Name Is Joe, I
thought we hadn't examined properly Liam's character and other young
characters, because Joe's story took over that film. I wanted to go back
and look at the world of teenagers, because many of them seem to have to do
a lot of hard choices, they have to go and work for pizza parlours, fast
food shops or call-centres or they have to leave their home town and look
for jobs or they have to sell drugs for a living."
Sweet Sixteen is the story of Liam, a Greenock boy whose mother is going
to be released from prison on his sixteenth birthday. Liam tries hard,
helped by his friends, to change his life style and help his mother
escaping evil boyfriend Stan, but he seemed to be doomed from the start and
to have to succumb to a cruel destiny. When the movie came out in Great
Britain, the British Board of Film Classification, presided by Sir Quentin
Thomas, troubled by the language used in the movie (especially by the use
of the word "cunt") gave it an 18 certificate. The Inverclyde Council, the
area were the film was shot, suggested to give it a 15 certificate. David
Cairns, Labour MP for Inverclyde and Greenock, criticised the movie and
suggested Loach to choose other locations, rather than Scotland and
Greenock, as the set for such movies.
"A local member of the Parliament has
been very critical about us," Paul explains, never mentioning the name of
the MP he's referring to, "The wonderful thing about these new right wing
politicians is that they absolutely have magical powers because they can
actually tell what is in a film without actually seeing it. I always think
it is an advantage to see a film before commenting upon it. This Member of
Parliament accused us of 'swanning', of 'swanning down' in Greenock, of
'landing down' there, of shooting and leaving again. But we actually spent
months and months and months there. When I write I use all my experiences.
Usually I start with half a notion of what the film is about, then I try to
examine that notion and see if that holds true. What I do then is put some
ideas on paper and try to develop them. Then I dive and do a lot of
research."
"For Sweet Sixteen I met a lot of kids in children's homes, I
went to schools, prisons, clubs, street corners. I talked and listened to
kids on street corners which were greater than a lot of other places: just
listen to kids there, try to see the world from their point of view, that's
the secret, ask them how do they see the world from their point of view and
how do they see their own chances. I spoke to literally hundreds of kids,
hundreds of different people who were very generous and opened their homes
and shared their experiences with us. The film is not copied from them, but
informed by them, and what is very nice is that the people who actually
lived there opened their doors to their community and let us film there and
shared so much with us. I'm delighted and pleased by this."
"The main actor
Martin Compston is terrific, he is a great kid, he's got a great energy,
he's bright and sparkling. He's got a fantastic mum and dad and he's very
good at school. He's not really like Liam, but there are many of his
friends he lived close by who have a similar life to Liam. He hasn't lived
those terrible experiences Liam lives, but he has seen them around him and
maybe that's part of the reason why he's very good at playing Liam's part.
I think the MP I was talking about just jumped on the bandwagon and I also
suppose that what he doesn't want to see is the truth really. The truth is
that a lot of young kids in Greenock are now faced with very violent hard
choices. Thirty years ago they would have had proper jobs down the
shipyard, apprenticeships, they would have been paid at the end of the week
and they would have been able to start living their own life in the
community. They would have been able to work with friends and to have the
money to plan their lives properly and build their future. Now a lot of
kids don't have a lot of choices. Some of them escape to universities, but
many of them will have the kind of jobs they call 'flexible', they are so
'flexible' that they have been turned into rubber which means that their
employers can dump anybody they want to. Some of the kids have one day
contracts, one week contracts or one month contracts, the bigger employers
are call-centres. The local MP said we were giving the local area a bad
name, what he really wants is cheap jobs coming in. I suppose that cheap
jobs are better than nothing, but the idea that your only response to sort
out problems is to try to invite people in because your place is cheaper
than the rest, means that you're never going to build a sustainable
workable community."
"I think that his accusations are very shallow in the
end. People often say 'You're painting a very negative view of Scotland',
but I'm just telling a story about Scotland. If someone wants to make a
Woody Allen film about middle class people in Glasgow I'd be delighted, but
I don't wanna do it, I'd love to see it and I hope it's funny and sharp and
bright and tri-dimensional and good luck to them, but I don't tell people
what to do, so I don't really appreciate people trying to tell me what to
write. Sweet Sixteen is a very tough film, I don't think it will give
'hope' to those who go and see it, but I hope it will raise some questions
about what kind of community we are building and about what kind of options
we are giving to young kids, because young kids are demonised. That's why
I'm furious it has been given an 18 certificate. It's totally ridiculous.
It never even happened in Europe. They said that the language in the movie
is bad and rough and I think people who don't like that kind of language
should get a clear warning, but the idea that you ban people under 18 from
going to see it is absolutely ridiculous, it also means that a lot of the
people, a lot of the young kids who informed the story aren't going to see
the movie. This is censorship and class prejudice."
Censorship or not, Sweet Sixteen won Paul the Best Screenplay Award at
the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. "That prize was a poke in the eye! " Paul
exclaims, "It is very nice to have your work recognised at such a festival.
I think Cannes is a festival of the world cinema in a way that the Oscars
aren't. As a festival it is of course a platform that tries to compete with
American cinema, so it is very theatrical, you get to the stage, shake
hands with other people and stuff like that, you can't really escape this
sort of thing. I treated it seriously, it is important to be recognised
together with films that earn $25-30 million, though, at the end of the
day, I think that it's much more important how the film is received
elsewhere. Besides, a film is really a collaboration. That's why I shared
the award with my colleagues, with the people I collaborated with. So, in
one way it was lovely to get the award, in another way I treated it with a
pinch of salt."
Paul, who worked as a lawyer in Glasgow and later in Central America before
becoming a screenwriter and actor, wrote the screenplays for quite a few
movies directed by Ken Loach: Carla's Song (1996), My Name Is Joe (1998)
and Bread and Roses (2000). He's also starred in
Land and Freedom, by now he's a Ken Loach films veteran, "Ken is a very
open minded man. I got in touch first with him after working in Nicaragua
as a human rights lawyer. I just wrote him like anybody else would have
done, by post, and we met up and talked. It's very difficult and boring to
hear friends complimenting other friends because people do it in the media
industry all the time. But Ken is a real character, he's got a tremendous
curiosity for life really. If you saw Sweet Sixteen and you didn't know
who the director was, you'd swear it was done by a young director, because
there's a lot of energy in it and that reflects Ken Loach himself."
One of
Paul's latest collaborations with Ken Loach was for the collective movie
about 11th September 2001, 11' 09" 01, directed by Yussef Chahine, Amos
Gitai, Shohei Imamura, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, Claude Lelouch, Ken
Loach, Samira Makhmalbaf, Mira Nair, Idrissa Ouedrago, Sean Penn, Danis
Tanovic. "We did our shortcut through the eyes of a friend of us who lives
in London, Vladimir Vega, a Chilean who was shot on 11th September 1973 for
defending the democratic vote of the Chilean people," Paul explains..
"Vladimir was fantastic, he's so touching in the film. We just thought he
had a really good story to tell since on 11th September 2001 it was the
29th anniversary of this event and the 1st anniversary of the Twin Towers.
To be honest when the shortcut won the Fipresci Prize, the international
press award, at the 2002 Venice Film Festival I was really touched and I
enjoyed that more than the Cannes Award." In Italy during the Venice Film
Festival, Vladimir Vega's episode was accused by critics of being
anti-American. "There was a British journalist who writes for the London
Evening Standard who said that we had brought shame on the country," Paul
remembers, continuing, "You'd have to be heartless to say something like
that."
Paul seems to be such an easy going person and also so keen on talking to
young people that I wonder if he would ever go and teach screen writing
techniques. "I don't think I'd be able to do it!" he confesses, laughing,
"Writing is totally different from teaching. If I were put in front of
twenty young screenwriters I'd panic, I wouldn't know what to say!" Paul
starts laughing. His laugh is contagious and for a while he seems to be
less tense than when he was talking about the 18 certificate given to
Sweet Sixteen.
"Along with Liam, Pinball, Night-time … I'd like to add my own 'two
fingers' to the British Board of Film Classification …, and, as a
contribution to freedom of expression, and freedom to sit in a cinema with
a big noisy trough of popcorn and drive everyone mad, I'd like to attach
the infamous little word used with all the aggression I can muster," Paul
Laverty writes in the introduction to the Sweet Sixteen screenplay.
Perhaps he's thinking to these words while, smiling, he writes down
"Suerte" on a Sweet Sixteen postcard for me. Aye, he's definitely
smiling, perhaps happy about the movie, perhaps happy knowing that the
certificate will only push more teenagers to see the film notwithstanding
the ban. So "suerte" to Paul and above all "suerte" to all the teenagers
Paul met and, in his own special way, celebrated with their energy,
obsessions and deranged hopes in Sweet Sixteen.
Issue 12, January 2003 | next article
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