Roy Boulter with Zac Efron in Hollywood (Roy is the one on the right)
Photo: Solon Papadopoulos
From Garston to Hollywood
Roy Boulter explains how a community writing project resulted in a critically acclaimed feature film, Under The Mud
So there I was with John Travolta, striding down the red carpet, heading into the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel, while trying to suppress a big stupid grin. He’s the legendary star of Grease, Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction – I’m the producer of Under The Mud, a feature film written collaboratively with a group of Liverpool teenagers that cost just £45,000 to shoot (less than a month’s fuel bill for Danny Zucko’s private jet).
Five years earlier, and a few thousand miles away in the slightly less glamorous South Liverpool suburb of Garston, Under The Mud started as a writing workshop at a youth drop-in centre. The area – politely described as ‘deprived’ – had the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe, but, despite potential ‘distractions’, we managed to attract a group of interested participants. At the first session I and my fellow producers Sol Papadopoulos and Julie Currie were disappointed by the group’s reticence, which we put down to shyness. In fact, they thought we might be undercover police – who else would ask them all these questions? The issue was quickly resolved after the session when my name came up on the credits of Brookside. We suddenly had credibility.
Over the following months we assembled a group of enthusiastic teenage first-time writers and developed an outline. The story, which The Times would later describe as ‘an energetic and surreal account of 24 hours in the life of a dysfunctional family’, featured characters based on the writers’ friends, families and neighbours. However, it owed a lot more to the imagination, with its aeroplane boarding-steps chase sequence, a holy-communion dress with mechanical fairy wings and an ‘imaginary friend’ as the central character (based on one of our writers’ real imaginary friend).
The story really started to take shape over three residential writing weekends. We sat around the table discussing, arguing about and laughing through every scene, character and plotline. Eventually we had a 60-page treatment and a story that we were all happy with.
The problem was how to write dialogue with 15 writers. Improvisation worked well for some scenes and characters, but not others. We tried working in groups of two or three on individual scenes, which I would then give notes on. After countless rewrites, our production line eventually delivered a final draft that the actor and director Kathy Burke, an avid supporter of the project, described as the most enjoyable script she’d read in a long time.
Budget
Next up was the small matter of raising the budget. This funny little slice of social surrealism had taken two years to write and now took a further year to fund.
The funding eventually came from drug money. All the usual sources of funding had proved fruitless; The Film Council and our local screen agency both declined to get involved (though they would eventually invest in the film). But pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), once a major employer in the area, had just closed down its factory, leaving behind a social fund, to which we successfully applied.
We decided that we’d begin pre-production on April 1st (a deliberate choice) and whatever amount we had raised by that date would be our budget. We had the GSK grant and local social initiatives were also really supportive. For example, South Liverpool Housing Group provided us with two houses: one for the main set, the other for production.
The shoot
The three-week shoot was one of the most exhausting and enjoyable that any of us had ever experienced. The professional crew were aided by the writers, members of the community and anyone else we could rope in. We renovated, decorated and furnished a derelict church, two houses and a landscaped garden. A family were able to move straight into a newly decorated and furnished home after we’d finished.
Throughout the shoot we had to beg and borrow. And, though we didn’t actually steal the ‘stolen car’ needed for a scene, it did get us into trouble. A wrecked car was donated by a local scrap yard but the police turned up on location and took it. Apparently it had been pinched that morning and quickly sold on; the scrapyard had even smashed it up to look authentic for us. Luckily the helpful boys in blue provided us with another car and the crucial night shoot went ahead.
With an eventful shoot completed, more fundraising meant a long wait before the edit. Then, thanks to a development executive Marc Boothe championing the film, the UK Film Council finally came on board.
Unfortunately, timing issues resulted in us having to submit a cut to them that we weren’t happy with. Having the film narrated by the imaginary friend character, which had seemed so funny and clever at script stage, just didn’t work. The central focus of the film was an empty space on screen; it was confusing. The cut was rejected and with it went hopes of further funding. The film sat on a shelf for a year while Sol and I went off to earn some money – Sol to make an award-winning documentary on the history of air warfare, and me to write, including an episode of Jimmy McGovern’s The Street (a total education).
A fresh eye
We eventually reconvened, reinvigorated, and watched the film with a fresh eye. The year’s break was the best thing that could have happened. We had always maintained that the film had no central character; ‘the family’ was the main character. Wrong. Only Magic, the family’s unofficial lodger, was actually pro-active: he fought to keep everyone together, he set out to ‘win the girl’ and was the catalyst for almost everything that happened. It was his story. How clever were we!
Fortunately, the actor playing the role of Magic, Lenny Wood (also one of the writers), had turned in a great performance. A day of reshoots resulted in us book-ending the film with two new scenes, beautifully setting up and resolving his story. Our editor, Liza Ryan-Carter, then skilfully reshaped the film. Thankfully, it worked.
The icing on the ‘mud pie’ was the score composed by the legendary Pete Wylie of The Mighty Wah! He also contributed five tracks from his classic album Songs Of Strength And Heartbreak, and a further two tracks were provided by my former band, The Farm. A selection of additional songs, chosen during the writing sessions, also needed to be cleared and though we knew it would be expensive, we decided to include them as they were key to the story. That was a decision that would eventually prove costly but for now the film was finally finished and we were ready to tell the world.
Invitations started coming in from film festivals. The response from our first, in Victoria, Canada, was amazing, with the film likened to early Mike Leigh: ‘A fiercely funny and achingly compelling portrait of a working class Liverpool family’. Blimey. Several trips followed – we invited writers whenever we could raise money or afford to pay for them ourselves. We visited places as diverse as Northern Ireland, California, Keswick, Colorado, Cambridge, Cannes (Sol shot a Royal Television Society award-winning documentary on that trip), and even Hollywood, where we rubbed shoulders not just with John (Mr Travolta to you), but also with Brad Pitt, the Afflecks, Zac Efron and Michael Sheen.
Back home, things weren’t running so smoothly. Endless visits to distribution companies resulted in the same outcome: they loved the film, but with no big names it would be prohibitively expensive to market. Getting word to the film’s audience would be difficult – though they all acknowledged that it did have an audience, and potentially a big one. Ultimately, it was too much of a gamble.
The premiere
The stunning Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in hosted the premiere, which was followed by a big party. But with no distribution deal, the film remained unseen. The Guardian described it as ‘maybe the best British Film you’ll never see’. We were convinced that it at least warranted a release but we couldn’t even put it out ourselves since the initial quotes to clear the music came to nearly double what the film had cost to shoot.
Another year passed and Sol and I produced our second feature, Of Time And The City, directed by Terence Davies, which was a critical hit at Cannes and around the world and a success at the box office. The two films couldn’t have been more different, in every sense.
Fate finally conspired to get Mud released. After a chance meeting, an old school friend of Sol’s passed a screener on to an acquaintance who fell in love with the film and decided to invest in its release. The first job was to clear that soundtrack. Our music supervisor from Of Time And The City, the fantastic Ian Neil, cajoled, harried and charmed the publishers and record companies, and cut the bill by two-thirds – but it meant a DVD release only.
And so, more than seven years after the first writing workshop, Under The Mud is finally available – although self-distribution, increasingly the only option for micro-budget UK features, is difficult and time-consuming, like everything else on this film. We’re still in touch with the writing team. Some continue to write, some act and some have just got on with their lives. But, like us, they are all very proud of Under The Mud.
Under The Mud writers with Kathy Burke: (left-to-right) David Catterall, Tanya Taylor, Natalie Southern, Mick Colligan, Lenny Wood, Howard Davies, Sophia Barlow (Photo: Solon Papadopoulos)
The Potts family in Under The Mud: (left-to-right) Lenny Wood, Lauren Steele, Lisa Parry, Andrew Schofield, Jasmine Mubery, Dave Hart, Adam Bailey (Photo: Solon Papadopoulos)
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