Paddy Considine: Morning Alex. I love your film. It floored me.
Thank you, man. What can you tell me about the world that influenced all of this, that council estate atmosphere that seeped into you as you were growing up?
Well, it was just the world that I grew up in as a little boy—with men and the working-class culture, the drinking culture. These people who are unable to articulate their emotions and feelings, who are trapped. Growing up in a masculine world, it’s not all tribal, it’s not all about fighting and things like that. My childhood wasn’t about that sort of stuff. But it’s just having a knowledge of that world and seeing the destructive nature in people. It’s either having something that you’re close to and you understand, or this film Tyrannosaur is completely alien to you and you’ve no concept that people actually live their lives like this. But I was very aware that people lived their lives like this because I was around it. I was very aware that there was some underlying trouble and tragedy in people’s lives, be it family members, neighbours or parents of my friends. It’s just a fragile world, I guess, and people in those worlds succumb to ways of putting up walls and numbing themselves to what’s going on in their lives, and part of that is drinking. I think Joseph has a kind of disorder in his head, he can’t function around people, he can’t fit in to what the world expects of him. I don’t think he loves the world he lives in or loves himself, but it’s comfortable to him because it’s all he knows, it’s familiar. And he articulates his feelings with destruction. Paddy and Peter on the day they shot the film’s brutal opening scene. In terms of that anger, there was one conversation I had with you a few years ago and you were talking about repressed anger. You told me about someone giving you a funny look in the gym, and you said, “And then a month later I’m still thinking, ‘Why didn’t I pick that weight up and push it through his fucking face?’” And you said you didn’t know why you succumbed to such macho bullshit.
Yeah. You think those sort of things but you don’t act on them. Whereas Joseph does.
He does act on it. He acts on everything. To the point where he’s beating up kids, really. And I think that’s his realisation. “What am I doing?” He doesn’t want it. It’s like a curse, and I think it comes from not realising, not knowing another way of thinking or another way of life. The only way I can describe it for him is that he’s never been shown any other way, all he knows is that destruction and anger is eating him alive. It’s eating away his soul, his very existence is being challenged by it, and there’s only one way for him, and that’s down. I think there are lots of people like Joseph, they’re very regretful. It’s like they become possessed and the anger just gets too much. You’ve said that Eddie Marsan’s character isn’t a villain, he’s in turmoil. This reminded me of the debate over the riots last month: about where that all came from and the world that some of these kids have been brought up in. Different senses of morality, lack of empathy. There’s always something going on. There’s always a reason.
Oh, there’s always a reason for behaviour. I don’t think you’re born a certain way; sometimes you’re shaped a certain way. Eddie’s character, James, has had experiences that have been inflicted on him, shaped him, but he and Joseph are two very different characters. The morality is strange. People get confused by this movie because they end up loving Joseph, even though in the first minute he does a pretty diabolical act in most people’s eyes. And for me, that’s the trick of the film: it’s about perception and how we perceive people. James is more closed doors, he wouldn’t publicly do what Joseph did—it’s all a bit hush, behind the curtain, which is infinitely more dangerous, I think. If Joseph’s friend dies and he can’t articulate his emotions, then he’ll smash down his shed, he’ll put the blame on an inanimate object—in some ways he’s trying to get rid of the past and he’ll do it publicly in broad daylight. I don’t know, man, I don’t know. People in life deal with all kinds of different problems, different addictions, different fetishes. I don’t relate to James. I relate to Joseph very, very much, but I don’t relate to James and his sort of behaviour at all. I read that Joseph’s wife is based on your mum to a degree.
Yeah. Peter Mullan as Joseph. “He can’t function around people,” says Paddy. “He articulates his feelings with self-destruction.” It’s a soul-baring thing to do, to put that part of yourself into a screenplay. What’s it like to then have that as part of a film and have it discussed in that context? It must be surreal.
Yeah, it’s very strange to me. The people I have scores to settle with, or things to articulate, they’re dead. They’re not around any more. I think Joseph’s words, when he talks about his wife and says, “I thought she was dumb but she wasn’t, she was beautiful”—well they’re my words. I used to feel that way about my mum, I loved her, she was everything to me, but she was a very simple lady. And I just thought that her simplicity about everything and her capacity for forgiveness was just ridiculous, because people took advantage of it. People took advantage of her good nature. But now she’s gone I realise that she probably had a bigger soul than I ever did. She was more in the vein of Christ than I am! Because of course she just kept forgiving and forgiving, and that’s a very powerful thing to have. You put it in the mouths of characters, but I’m saying those things to her. But yeah, it’s strange, because the basics of cinema is entertainment, that’s why it was made. And I think that’s OK, that’s good, I’ve been entertained enough. But I have to believe that there’s still a place in cinema for expression, that it’s still an art form. Some people feel uncomfortable calling themselves artists. I don’t. I love artists. I’m talking about songwriters, filmmakers, everything. So I don’t think it’s wanky to call yourself that. And it means a lot to me to be able to do that, to use this medium as my means of expression. I’ve no control over whether people are interested or not. When the film started screening and a few people didn’t like it and wrote about it, I think I took for granted just how extraordinary the world where I was from was. I thought that everybody sort of knew that these people existed, that these circumstances existed, and it seems that people don’t. It seems to be that it’s a huge leap for me to expect people to understand Joseph or Hannah. Are you talking about the people, primarily in America, who thought the film was too brutal?
Yeah, it’s funny, I love that in cinema. Because the only thing that’s brutal is the truth. My violence—and I’d love you to put this in, bro. I don’t tell people what to do, but most times I talk to people and they don’t put things in, they just want me to swear and say silly things—the only thing about my movie is the truth. I’m not doing social realism, I think that Tyrannosaur is a little more gothic than that. The film at the end goes very gothic, it almost steps out the realm of what you may consider to be reality, and that’s exciting to me. I’m not a film-referency man, but it sort of goes a little bit Apocalypse Now. He says, “I went native, that’s what my mate Tommy told me. I went native.” And I think that sounded about right somehow, you know. People saying the violence is too much, it’s funny to me. I think that American cinema is so violent, it’s unbelievable. But often meaningless, without any weight to it.
Yeah, because they still use archetypes to define characters. So Rambo can go into the jungle and turn people to mincemeat, but it’s alright because he’s on some kind of crusade, and it’s a cartoon. I think when people are shown the truth they have a problem with it. Because people don’t want to know what the truth is. People want to believe that what’s happening to Hannah doesn’t happen, that it’s too extreme—why would you show that in a movie? For some people, that’s life. And someone’s going to watch my film Tyrannosaur and they’re going to say, “That’s me, that’s my life. I’m getting out.” That means a lot to me. Not people having a problem with the violence, or people writing online about the narrative, the coda, and all these terms and terminology. What does that mean? What the fuck does that mean? That’s when this stuff stops becoming expression and gets completely boring to me. “Oh, it’s a great film but the coda lets it down in the end.” What the fuck is a coda? Tell me. I wrote this film in seven days. I’ve never written a film before—what’s a coda?! One of the greatest things I’ve ever heard, it was in the U2 film Rattle and Hum, and they were working out a song with BB King, and BB King turns around to them and he says, “Well, I can’t do that bit, I can’t play chords.” And you go, “Well, of course you can’t play chords, you’re BB King.” Do you know what I’m trying to get at here? The last scene they shot. “Peter added this little detail where he pressed his nose up against the glass, and he went from this ridiculous gesture to being totally deflated back into himself again when the guy threatens to call the police.” Well, the film industry is a business and they’re obsessed with the mechanics.
They’re obsessed with the mechanics, and everybody feels that they have a say in it. Because it’s of commercial value and it’s entertainment in some way, everybody’s a critic and everyone feels like they’ve got an angle, and everybody feels that they can better a film by writing about it. But the process of doing it is an entirely different thing. The dangers of trying to apply science to magic.
Yeah, why apply science to it, why apply structure? I’m not interested. I’m interested in the truth of this film, and the thing that I’m proud of with Tyrannosaur is that it just tells you the truth. I’m not trying to morally guide you in any way. Just look at these people. What were the people like in and around the places where you shot the film?
The only place that I felt was a little bit of a madhouse was an estate in Leeds we shot a lot of stuff in, it was a little dangerous. The rest of it was great and the community were great, but it did get a little bit out of hand at times when we shot in this pub. What was happening?
There were a lot of kids outside, ten-year-old kids, pissed up in the morning. It was just disarming to see these forgotten kids, they were like vampires, there was no recreation for them. Their only recreation was getting drunk in the morning, and even down the alleyway, smoking heroin and all sorts of things. They were just kids interested in hanging around because we were just doing something different. At one time there was about 40-odd kids hanging about, all getting lairy. You just said to yourself, “Where are the parents?” It just seemed like there weren’t any adults around at all. And a cop car came through the estate at one point and they all just chased after it. It was just mad, dispossessed young kids with no direction whatsoever. It was tough around there. I guess those were the sort of kids who seized the day a few weeks ago.
Absolutely. It all relates to the same thing. Tyrannosaur is in cinemas nationwide in October.