Jim Cartwright on working with Alan Clarke in 1987
2014 interview by Nick Wrigley
Alan Clarke’s Road was made for BBC2's Screenplay strand in 1987. It was shot on film and is 63 minutes in length. Based on Jim Cartwright’s debut play of the same name (written when he was in his twenties), it was first produced for the stage the previous year. Cartwright was conspicuously absent from Richard Kelly’s marvellous Alan Clarke volume (an oral biography and remembrance of Clarke, published in 1998) due to tight deadlines and Cartwright’s heavy workload at the time. Nick Wrigley tracked down the elusive Lancashire playwright — 27 years after Road was first broadcast on TV — to discuss his experience working with Clarke.
NW: Many people speak very fondly of Alan Clarke. David Leland said he was “the actor’s dream, one of those directors who would go all the way for you”; Tim Roth described Clarke as “A bloody good director, captain of the ship”; critic David Thomson said he was “A poet for all those beasts who pace and measure the limits of their cages”; and Stephen Frears famously wrote “He became the best of all of us.” I’ve always been interested to know what your experience was like working with him on ROAD…
JC: For me, Alan was a prince. He had a strong vision for the film and you respected him for that strength but also respected him for the fact that he was always inclusive of me and the others involved. He made the whole process vibrant and exciting, dangerous even, I can’t really describe the atmosphere he created around a project, except everyone was fired up and dedicated to him, trusted him, and gripped on tight as he just bloody went for it, even if it was white knuckle at times.
I’ve worked with a lot of brilliant and impressive talents through my working life, but there was something about Alan and his work, tender and tough, savage and sensitive, beautiful and brutal, a poet with a broken nose.
I remember the editing, first time Alan invited us all in to see what he’d done, David Thompson, George Faber, and me. There was a lovely editor doing it called Bill Wright, a big fella, and I remember looking over at him as one of the scenes played out and he had tears in his eyes. It moved me how everyone in there cared so much about the work, Alan engendered that kind of commitment. At the end, Alan turned to us and said “What do you think?” and he meant it. Any suggestions we had he tried for us, there and then. He wasn’t afraid to sling the piece all over the place and back again. It was not ponderous film making, but immediate, hands on, in there, alive as hell.
NW: Did you visit the set when it was being filmed?
JC: Yes, I went up one day, to Easington (County Durham), where he’d found these rows and rows of condemned terraced houses, it was a long trip. I arrived when he was doing that scene with the party in the broken down church hall, I went in and it was all up and running, a crowded scene, everybody in there… “Jim! Come here!” he shouts, “Come here!”, I went over towards him. John Ward’s stood there with his Steadicam on, Clarkey puts his arms round John, gets me to put my arms round him, so we’re like a conga line, and he’s like “Right, go!” It was wild buckaroo filmmaking… the muscularity of it… during that actual scene, camera bloody rolling, I was holding onto Clarkey, whipping through the crowd, he’s laughing his head off, it was intoxicating, like he was high on filming itself. I think he just loved making films and every single thing about it.
NW: It looks really special as a film, with the severe wide angle lens and constant Steadicam throughout…
JC: I wanted ROAD to be shot on film. The BBC wanted to do it on video at first. I don’t know how I had the guts, but I told them “No. If you do it on video, I’m not doing it.” I’d only written one play, I was in my twenties, I was skint, had nothing except a wife and young baby, but I didn’t give a fuck, I said “I’m not having it on clunky old video. If we’re doing it, we’re doing it properly.” You’ve got to know video was not the quality it is today, it might have been flexible and cheap but it flattened everything. I’m glad I pushed, particularly later when they got Alan on board, I think film ended up being the best material to realise the abstract nature of the vision he came up with.
NW: His work isn’t shown now on television…
JC: It’s sad his stuff has not been shown at all on tele since he died. A whole generation has missed out.
If we took ROAD to the BBC now I suspect it would be a hard sell. For whatever reasons, it’s a different environment now. Whenever they showed his stuff back then though, the public reaction was often “Fucking hell! This is brilliant!” — people couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
NW: Commissioning something like CONTACT, CHRISTINE, ELEPHANT, THE FIRM, or ROAD would probably be a sacking offence in the current BBC climate. There’s no-one like him currently working in TV is there?
JC: He was a one-off that’s for sure. He had so much heart, very tough, but had this massive heart. All the actors on ROAD were devoted to him. Women loved him, women fell in love with him all the time, all the actresses on the set were crazy about him. He was very demanding of everyone and wouldn’t let anyone off the hook. He wouldn’t let anyone do less than their best, he wouldn’t let anyone duck it, or rely on tricks. He’d always be watching.
He wasn’t afraid to change plans if suddenly he had a better idea. They initially built this fantastic set in a studio at the BBC and then he had a re-think and decided he wanted to film it outside. He always said something like: “It’s not about changing my mind, it’s about getting it right”.
NW: Can you remember the reception ROAD received when it was first shown on TV?
JC: It had a real impact. There was even a bloody panel discussion broadcast the day after transmission, with phone ins and all sorts. One guy phoned in and said that he had lit a cigarette when it started and was so transfixed he forgot to lift it to his mouth and burnt his bloody finger!
NW: The actors in ROAD are a pretty incredible bunch, all starting out — Jane Horrocks, David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Moya Brady — to name a few, all young and great…
JC: He liked to give new people a chance and tried not to cast the same people too many times. It’s like a select club, among actors, if they have worked with him, a kind of Clarkey club. He had such an influence on so many people, and so many actors young and old. Whenever you meet someone who knew him their eyes light up whenever they talk about him, everyone’s got a Clarkey story.
NW: It’s widely reported that Clarke was unpopular within the BBC, for the subject matter he was drawn to, his unorthodox working methods, desire to cast unknowns, having writers on set whilst shooting, etc…
JC: But he loved filmmaking and his films are great. He was fearless, he’d take anyone on, and that fearlessness comes through in his films. The respect for him in the profession, to this day, is just phenomenal. Everyone who knew him or worked with him bowed to him, he was streets ahead of everyone.
NW: Alan would’ve been 80 next year and 2015 also marks 25 years since he died so tragically young. Everybody I know who’s seen his films want more people to see them…
JC: Everybody wanted to work with Alan Clarke. I never really got to be his friend or anything, but I miss him. I’d have liked to have done more work with him, there was nobody like him. You do something now and you think “Oh, Clarkey would’ve been great for this..” but you can’t turn to Clarkey because he’s not there. That’s not to say there’s not others in something of the same mould at least out there. I wonder if the same risks are taken now in giving a maverick like him a chance? Just think if all those years ago someone at the BBC hadn’t taken a risk on a risk taker like him, what would television and film have lost? Oh, and one last thing about Alan Clarke, he was one of the funniest men I ever knew, if he’d read this interview, he’d have no doubt sent us up mercilessly and had us doubled up in hysterics to boot.
[END]
