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| 'Intense, brilliant, truthful drama' ... Alan Clarke's Scum |
Alan Clarke
The lost leader
The first Alan Clarke film I ever saw was Sovereign's Company, an old Play for Today from the early 1970s about a young man who joins his grandfather's regiment and is so fearful of being unmasked as a coward that, in the end, he beats another soldier to death. I was 15 years old, and I can still remember today the sense of shock and anger that I felt as I watched it. Later came Made in Britain, Elephant, Scum, Contact, The Firm - a string of the most intense, brilliant, truthful dramas ever seen on British television. These were groundbreaking films that chronicled the Thatcher years and uncovered the terrible cost of the Troubles. As a director, it seems to me that Clarke had it all - he had range, he had vision, he put energy on the screen, he could tell a story, he discovered fantastic actors and got great performances from them, and he could use a camera like a dream. He remains, in my eyes, quite simply the greatest British director of my lifetime.
It was very liberating shooting The Firm. We shot the whole film on Steadicam, and very often Alan wouldn't do separate shots for close-ups, so the actors had a lot of physical freedom. It made a huge difference in the performances - that was paramount for Alan. I remember shooting the scene where Gary Oldman's character comes home to his wife (played by me) and they argue and fight and he forces her to the floor to have sex, and you think, this is awful - he's raping his wife. But in fact she starts to giggle and you realise that this is their "thing". This scene was cut for censorship reasons, but I remember shooting it in one long take. It was amazing - not acting in short bursts trying to maintain emotion, but performing it from beginning to end. The acting was everything for Alan, and extraordinary though it may sound, that is rare in a director.
I produced Alan Clarke's film Elephant for BBC Northern Ireland in 1989. There wasn't much producing involved, apart from making sure Alan's per diems were paid promptly. Instead, I got the chance to pick the brains of a genius director. His advice was pragmatic: "Get plenty of coverage as editing solves everything, and stop reading the Guardian - everything you need to know and everything you don't want to know is in the Sun."
Scum was the film that made me want to be an actor. I went to see it at the Prince Charles in London five or six times. I thought, if these guys could be actors, then I could, too. You got the feeling they were people he'd lifted off the streets. When he put me in Made in Britain, I'd never worked in front of a camera; I had no idea about it at all. From him I had a crash course in film-making. After that I assumed all films were made on Steadicam - it wasn't until I did a film with Mike Leigh that I realised that you could have a fixed camera. The fact you could follow the actors around and do long takes made Steadicam so attractive to him. You were limited only by the amount of film in the camera. With Alan, though he pushed you to immerse yourself in the character, it was never the Method, or any other particular system. When anyone asks me what my favourite experience was as an actor, I always hold up Made in Britain. I was as raw as I could possibly be. It was my first job, the one where I lost my virginity.
"When I catch up with the dog in my brain, I'll let you know," he would say. Alan was a walking stream of consciousness in his zip-up jumper, worn trousers and dishevelled hair. He'd walk and talk you down a hundred paths of how he might make the film. We walked and talked miles. Paratroopers in Northern Ireland, teenage drug addicts, football hooligans, hopeless unemployment - this was his world. He was brilliant to be around, ever-changing, ever-alive. And he fought hard. They were tough films to make and to get made. He pushed himself very hard. He wrestled the films out of himself. They did not come easily. He lived and breathed work. He was a man of contrasts, so warm and open, so quiet and solitary. His last fight - with cancer - was his hardest. He bore his pain with grace. He died so young with so much more to say. There was no one to touch him.
He had a different perspective from the rest of us and forced us to open our eyes to the society and culture he saw. I brought Alan to LA to spend a few months looking for ideas and stories that might be made in the US. He soon checked out of the comfortable hotel in Beverly Hills, moved to a small hotel on Hollywood Boulevard full of junkies and prostitutes, and then disappeared without trace for two months. We became friends, saw each other regularly, and eventually I had the good luck to produce Rita, Sue and Bob Too. Alan's losing battle with cancer brought many of his friends together for the last few weeks of his life. We met every evening in Alan's room at the nursing home, drank, smoked some dope, exchanged stories and managed to find things we could all laugh at. It made us all more human.
The absence from the cultural landscape of a true giant like Alan is immeasurable. Culture moves through such remarkable people. Painting never looked the same after Picasso. Gangsters never looked the same after Coppola. Comedy never looked the same after the Marx brothers or Chaplin. These artists - and the cliche holds - had that most rare thing: true vision. Alan was such a visionary, plain and simple. Though many have tried, no one has replaced him. And I can't think of one British film-maker in recent years who hasn't been affected or influenced by Alan. I feel privileged to have been associated with him.
Alan once lived in a basement flat in Almeida Street with the writer David Yallop. He said it was so messy it was the only address in Islington where the bin men delivered. Alan and I worked on many projects - Russian labour camps, machinations of multinational corporations, interrogation and torture, and more. Even at the most serious moments, you were never far from a laugh. That I miss. The way we worked together - we were always together, we did all the research together. He would walk and talk. I think we covered every street in Geneva for Beloved Enemy. Once I'd written it, he wanted me to be there on set and during rehearsals. If an actor asked a question he couldn't answer, he'd say, "Dave, you've got a minute to answer, or I'm cutting it." He wasn't afraid to say he didn't know, until he got the answer that worked for him.
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