Dead Man’s Shoes Interview: Shane Meadows – ‘I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the best fun I’ve ever had’.

Around twenty years ago, writer and director Shane Meadows made psychological thriller Dead Man’s Shoes and it changed his life. The film premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2004 and has gone on to become a cult classic amongst film fanatics. Paddy Considine co-wrote the screenplay and also stars as Richard, a violent soldier who comes back to his hometown after years away. While he was gone, his vulnerable brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell) was targeted by a local gang fronted by drug dealer Sonny (Gary Stretch), so Richard is out for revenge. This year, Shane Meadows returned to Edinburgh to celebrate the anniversary with a retrospective screening, and I was delighted to chat with him beforehand…

How do you feel about the cult following and legacy that Dead Man’s Shoes now has, decades after it was made?

It’s mad and comes as a real surprise when something like that keeps earning fans. When it first came out, there was another film called Saw that came out literally at the same time. That ended up with sequels and was a bit of a revenge horror thing…so we ended up not being in the cinema for very long and didn’t really make a splash! Then it became one of those films that got handed around on VHS and DVD as the years rolled by. I don’t get recognised a lot but when I do, people want to talk about Dead Man’s Shoes. It’s kind of mind blowing.

How did the making of the film come about in the first place?

I made a film called Once Upon a Time in the Midlands that I’d not had the best experience on, and it came from sitting with the producer Mark Herbert, who I was going to work with for the first time and thinking about how we’d both had decent budgets and had no control. We thought ‘what’s the lowest budget we could work for and have complete control?’ I think that was the most important thing in some ways when you want to make something that’s got such hard scenes and is about such a hard subject matter.

But it can be very comedic too in some moments…

There’s funny bits in it from even the worst characters like when they’re sat reading the porno mags. I think that maybe set it aside a little bit because it throws people off. I also think that a lot of revenge things are set in big cities or have a huge grand backdrop with gangsters and cars, all of that, and the fact that this is about a group of pretty low level drug dealers from this really small place no one’s heard of…I think that maybe made it a little bit of a different revenge thriller.

You worked with the great Paddy Considine on this and he collaborated with you on the screenplay. I know you two are close but what was it like working closely with him back then, so early in both of your careers?

I was at college with Paddy when we were 16, 17 and we were both on this mad little drama course in Burton on Trent. I was doing Photography O Level and I met this guy on the drama course, and he was such an amazing performer and such an amazing improviser. I was always egging him on to do more characters in this weird way, and we kind of had this sort of director actor relationship but we were just messing about really. Obviously, now as you roll forward the years, you realise what a unique ability he’s got with improvisation, and to make improvisation seem like a really well written script – a very handy tool to have.

We’d made A Room for Romeo Brass together based on that college relationship I suppose but then when he came to do Dead Man’s Shoes, he’d done Last Resort with Pawel Pawlikowski and In America with Jim Sheridan so he’d kind of gone off and learned this whole new skill set. So, you know, Morell from Romeo Brass was almost like a character we grew up with whereas Richard, in Dead Man’s Shoes, is a character from a feature film. He took it to that next level and it was still as much fun to work with them again.

And Toby Kebbell is fantastic in the film as well in what must’ve been a very challenging portrayal to get right…

I tell you what, all credit to Toby because I wished I could say I did some, like, crazy technique, but it was all him. Richard was originally going to have an older brother so it was a very different dynamic. Long story short, that guy couldn’t do the shoot for personal reasons so about a week out from the shoot I called Toby. He’d come in before for a different part so me and Paddy sat down and decided to change it to a younger brother and get him back in. We thought that in a way, it’s better that way because Richard was away in the army so wasn’t there to look after him, so he feels that responsibility.

I’d had a brief conversation with him about the character on the phone, about his additional needs and how Richard had gone and I told him to have a think about it. Anyway, he turned up and knocked on our door and he was that kid – it was unbelievable. In a one hour train journey on the way down, he’d created the character by himself.

You’re known for your DIY approach to filmmaking that comes through a lot in the dialogue, and also for working with non-professional actors. Has this style been almost harder to pull off now that you’ve got the reputation you have today?

Yeah it is but I think This is England and Dead Man’s Shoes did me a lot of favours because I think if you look at so many of the people that were in that, you know, like Jack O’Connell, Vicky McClure, Stephen Graham, though he had obviously been in films already, I think people thought their performances were down to me but they weren’t. It was down to their skill but ultimately, I think because their careers kind of blossomed, you find you can do that at a certain budget level.

If you start to get into Game of Thrones money, you have to have the draw of the names but there’s this idea of people doing it for the first time that I think investors find quite exciting as long as it’s not too crazy on the budget, because they can potentially launch careers. I think if I was trying to make some kind of science fiction thing for $100 million, I doubt they’d let me get away with casting up in Grimsby [laughs]

Now that you mention sci-fi, I wanted to ask you about genre. You’ve touched upon Western pastiche and did a period piece on television recently with The Gallows Pole but is there a genre that you would like to work in that you haven’t yet?

I’d love to make an actual Western. My love of films was born out of watching Westerns with my dad. He used to be long distance driver so a lot of the time he was working away, but when he was back on a weekend, we’d get four or five Westerns on tape and we’d sit and watch them together.

Dead Man’s Shoes has a Western feel to it in some ways, with a stranger coming to town with the landscape and the posse but I’d love in my career to actually make a proper Western and possibly like they did with the Spaghetti Westerns out in Spain. I’ve always had a love affair with them.

I do like sci-fi but when I say science fiction, I’m talking more about those kind of George Orwell sort of things. I can’t see myself doing a sci-fi about some germ that’s been released that’s eating everyone’s mushrooms at breakfast.

Going back to Dead Man’s Shoes, what were the biggest challenges you faced in getting it made?

It was such a good experience. It’s really funny because, you know, me and the producer, Mark, we hadn’t worked together before and it sounds mad, but we had the opportunity to do it for quite a bit more money to make it with a different financier. It would’ve been low budget by American standards but it was like 4 million quid, but we ended up doing it for somewhere just over half a million quid and that was the best decision. You think that would cause you problems but strangely all the things that could’ve been challenges weren’t because people just embraced it. At lunchtime, I don’t think there was catering of any kind but I think someone would turn up with like bags of sandwiches and it turned out to be the best experience. There’s a brilliant photograph that Jo Hartley took of me and Paddy at lunch having a kip in his car and both just lying in the backseat together. It’s that weird thing that it sounded like it should have been a nightmare, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the best fun I’ve ever had.

I spoke to a director called Nick Rowland a while back after he had directed Calm with Horses, and said he almost thrived with the restrictions of a low budget because he said he had less options to choose from so it made his decision making process simpler in a way…

Spot on, yeah. I loved that film! Amazing movie. What happens with having a lot of money is that it gets eaten up the things you can’t see – things sat on a lorry that are being paid for on hire and not being used. What ends up happening is if you’ve got track, you’ve got dolly, you’ve got loads of lights, you’ve got gaffers and electricians and all of that, and you end up just lighting everything. On Dead Man’s Shoes, we said whenever we’re in the countryside, in Richard’s arena, we’d use a tripod and whenever we’re in town it would be handheld. It sounds like the most mundane decision ever but Nick (Rowlands) got it spot on because with a low budget, 90% of your normal decisions have gone.

You’ve been working in TV for the past while with The Virtues and The Gallows Pole. Are you going back to film soon?

I want to do a film, yeah! I’ve not got anything I could announce yet but I’ve got a couple of projects that I’m thinking about. The honest answer is as I’m talking to some financiers at the moment about doing a feature film – I haven’t got the budget signed off or anything yet but yeah, that’s my aim…I love the idea of maybe going back to my roots a bit and making a feature film that doesn’t cost the earth but hopefully packs a punch.

What does it mean to you to be back in Edinburgh with Dead Man’s Shoes, the same city where it had its premiere all those years ago?

It’s massive to be back with Dead Man’s. It’s incredibly special in itself, but slightly more than that, because this was the first festival I ever went to. When I was making these shorts on the dole, I made this film called Small Time in 1996. I’d only been making short films for about 12 months, and I came up here and my mum came with me, and she’s now passed away, so it holds a very special place in my heart. I was like Crocodile Dundee, wandering around like a bumpkin in the big city and doing interviews. They put us in this beautiful accommodation and it was just magic. Smoked salmon was something I’d heard about and champagne was something I’d seen being drank at Uttoxeter racecourse by posh people with Range Rovers, and we were throwing it around like candy…but yeah, with my mum coming and it being my first one, it’s a really special place for me. One of my ambitions was to win the Michael Powell Award which, fortunately, Somers Town won a few years later.

I have to ask about Stephen Graham too because I love the work you have done together…

He’s unbelievable. He’s like Gene Hackman or something where everything he’s in is so, so watchable. He’s one of those people that can be doing nothing but you’re drawn to him. It’s like with Paddy and Vicky McClure too – they’re people you want to work with again and again but they set such a high bar that when we do something together again, you want it to be a character that really makes us push ourselves. I’m desperate to work with them all again.