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The interview: Kevin Sampson discusses Awaydays

Written by Alison Grist
Tuesday, 19 May 2009 00:00

Football hooligans and fashion, an impressionable era in more ways than one, says writer Kevin Sampson, as his 1998 cult novel turned film Awaydays is about to be released. It tells the story of Carty, a middleclass fashion nut who’s longing to join a football gang called The Pack. It’s Merseyside in the late 1970s; they wear Fred Perry shirts, green anoraks and Adidas trainers, all with androgynous wedge haircuts. They stand out when they go to football matches, especially the away days. Carty meets Elvis in a club. Elvis is part of The Pack and is Carty’s way in – except Elvis is a dreamer, a wannabe artist, looking for a way out. Carty experiences an intoxicating buzz from the violence of his first away day; Elvis wants more than just Carty's friendship and he doesn't want to lose him to The Pack. This is the story of that tug of control.

Kevin Sampson talks to Seven about the struggle to bring his book to the screen.

Seven: You’ve shown great tenacity in getting this film from book to script to screen; 11 years of determination and stoicism?

Sampson: Yes, a veritable saga, although I’ve heard of things that have taken longer; I’m sure De Niro’s got projects he’s still sitting on after 25 years that he’s trying to get away. In terms of this, it’s been a struggle. Sometimes good things come out of struggle, but here we finally are. It’s going to be out there and that comes with a huge sense of relief.

Seven: Is relief your primary emotion in getting this film made?

Sampson: It’s one of them. There’s a lot of exultation. There’s quite a bit of fear and trepidation as well, because this is the point where it goes out. 

Seven: Is the finished product the one you hoped and dreamed of years ago?

Sampson: That ponders an interesting question about the whole creative process and creative visions because, clearly, no two people are going to have exactly the same interpretation of something that’s essentially images and ideas in someone’s head. This started out as a seed in my head and I’ve always had a very vivid and specific perspective on it, not just what the ensemble were like generally, but in terms of the look, the area of the time, the visual backdrop and, particularly, how Elvis and Carty look. It was a wonderful moment when we started the whole casting process. Liam and Nicky came in and came so close, it was like the characters I’d invented in my head were actually there in front of me; slightly spooky just how much Liam Boyle looks like his character.

As the film came together, there were some huge epiphanies, none more so than seeing The Pack coming round the corner for the first time. That was a big, big moment for me, certainly in the context of how long it had taken to getting the film off the ground, to seeing these sheer inventions. They almost seemed to come round the corner walking in slow motion, one at a time, one after the other after the other, all dressed in the way I’d always envisaged they would. With that sort of confidence and swagger, it was a very, very satisfying moment.

Seven: In the end, after all those years of negotiations with producers, film companies and other writers tackling the screenplay which didn’t work, you eventually decided you’d keep complete control of the film, didn’t you?

Sampson: I’m certainly not carping about those first five or six years, because it’s the very nature of filmmaking that statistically nine out of 10 films don’t get off the ground. Through a combination of coincidences or just sheer bad luck in certain instances, we came very, very close a few times.

The real moment that changed everything was when I had quite a severe accident in 2005. It took me a long time to physically and emotionally to get over that, not least I was on some really, really strong painkillers I had to live with. It was debilitating. It physically and psychologically made me incapable of working. But, once I’d dusted myself down and recovered from that whole experience, what I found I had left with was this really strong desire to finish the unfinished business. I kept thinking, possibly my only one real regret if I’d had died that day is that I hadn’t actually seen Awaydays come to life.

It rapidly became an obsession. It was a compulsion. Dave Hughes and I really accelerated that process of things that we’d talked about. Fundamentally, we were from a post-punk/new wave background and our inspiration was those labels from the late 70s; if you’re talking about Zoo or Factory Records, they were driven by individuals who were passionate and who had a real, possibly manic, zealous belief in what they were doing and the need for it to be done. We used those as the inspiration for our company, Red Union, in that the company only existed in as far as there were two people with a shared ambition, a shared cause. It’s a case of inflating what we started out with – just a room. We wanted to fill that with people and noise and ambition and production in every sense of the word. Dave set about the Enterprise Investment Scheme, which had been up and running for about a year or possibly a couple of years by then. It’s a government initiative to encourage wealthy people to invest in artistic projects, a tax shelter which means for every pound they’re investing, they’re only putting 40p in. Dave set everything up and did all the paperwork, the research, methodically. We set a target of raising half a million quid; we got 518,000.

Seven: Because you wrote the book, the screenplay and you co-produced it, was it a more controllable experience on set than writers usually have with their films?

Sampson: I did make a conscious decision to let go, although, sometimes I absolutely fundamentally had to butt in. It happened twice. Once was when I came down onto a set and we’d actually found some money to pay for a policeman. We had a mounted policeman there. It was a big scene, where The Pack was supposed to be arriving in the Northern hinterlands. It had Liverpool overground written above the station. They’d gone to the trouble of creating a 1970s logo, but it was basically saying they were arriving at the place they’d set off. I pointed that one out. There was another instance as well. But even a week before we turned up, I knew that I had the potential to make a real nuisance of myself, and you just have to make the decision to stand back and let the crew and cast get on with it.

Seven: There are a lot of issues explored in the film, especially from the young male perspective. We were talking about control. I think there’s a lot of controlling going on between Carty and Elvis, taking it in turns to be in control, but also the sense of belonging and fitting into The Pack and gaining an identity was a huge part of this film.

Sampson: All of those things go hand in hand. I think it’s more of a male adolescent ritual than a female one in that your search for identity is a huge deal when you’re 17 or 18, the need to fit in, the need to belong. Mirrors play an important role symbolically in the film. The opening shot and the last shot involve mirrors and they’re there to underscore the whole thing.

There are two very strong-willed men who effectively want what each other had got. Carty wants his way into The Pack; he so badly wants to belong; he identifies with what they’re doing and he possibly invests them with a heroism and nobility that they don’t in reality possess. Their world and sense of cohesion is everything that he aspires to. Elvis, who’s from that world, knows it for what it is. What he wants is what Carty’s got – entré into that slightly bohemian and arty world of underground gigs and late-night parties where, without any embarrassment, he can talk about his innermost fears and dreams; he’s got this wanderlust.

You’re absolutely [right] that the balance of power in that relationship is constantly shifting and it’s all to do with who wants it more. At the start of the film, it’s Carty’s sheer determination to belong to The Pack; it’s the drive of the energy of the first half hour of the film. The middle section is really much more contemplative. Carty’s got this artistry in his soul; he’s got poeticism; he can look at a sunset and say “big sky”. Elvis goes, this is the sort of guy I want to knock around with. All of those observations would cut right to the heart of everything the film’s about. It’s about the ritual of boys becoming men and all the pain and the constant searching for things that seem elusive. Ultimately, the questions it posed are not all answered; there was not so much intention to answer those questions as to pose them.

Seven: And talking about The Pack, those scenes were really vibrant and visceral, the scenes on the train when they were passing round that jar –

Sampson: Ah, the Pack punch…

Seven: Is that what it’s called – Pack punch? They pass round the jar adding contents like cola, prescription medicine, alcohol and everything; you could smell the atmosphere in those scenes and it rang very true. Was this part of your experience?

Sampson: Yeah, yeah, very much so. For all that, none of it is strictly autobiographical in that it’s not a version of my life or even a segment of it. It’s certainly inspired by not just experiences I had, but by a whole era that I was inspired by. So, things such as you’ve just highlighted, the whole thing of going to football – in fact, going on the train – was seen as an unusual way of getting around in the late 70s. Most people went by coach. There was a big thing about 50 or 60 lads getting on a coach and getting dropped off right outside. But there was a sort of bravado going on there. It’s called the ordinary, going on the ordinary intercity train. You would be dropped off at the heart of the badlands and you’d have to walk to the grounds. There wouldn’t be a police escort most of the time, so much of that lifestyle is ritualistic not in a conscious way. There are codes all along the way, very tribal. Inspiration certainly comes from my misspent life as a teenager; the realisation of it is much more about the tools of fiction.

Seven: Were you actually in a Pack yourself?

Sampson: Yeah, well, it was more of an occupational hazard. To be clear about it, I was just ridiculously into football and would seize any opportunity to go and see Liverpool play anywhere. Sometimes, there would be thousands and thousands going to the away games and you would be one of a multitude; but equally, you could go to somewhere like Newcastle, quite a difficult place to get to and it would be quite a forbidding place when you got there. It would be more like a hundred on the train. You would obviously stick together – it would be ludicrous not to – so, to that extent, I was part of a cohesive gang that would go and see football. Some of those gang [members] would be into fighting; I wasn’t, but I saw a lot of it.

Seven: Some people may say the film will glorifies violence. Do you think it’s necessary to have a moral, pounding heart to the film when you have violent scenes like this?

Sampson: I think that the violence in the film speaks for itself in that the last thing it does is glorify that violence. It is all so very quick. It’s visceral and energetic, but it’s brutal; it’s absolutely brutal. I don’t see how anyone could see that and not be appalled by it, but certainly shocked. There was a conscious decision by myself, Dave Hughes, the producer, and Pat Holden, the director, to go the opposite way of even boxing films. If you think of Raging Bull, for example, all those slo-mos of teeth flying out, strands of snot caught in mid-air and so on; if anything, that possibly dignifies violence. It maybe doesn’t glorify it, but it glamorizes it. By definition, it makes it look quite beautiful and noble. The stance we’ve taken is to have very, very short scenes that are as brutal as people can stand, which emphasis the underlying violence of the gang. But the question, I suppose, is why on earth would Carty, with all his connections, want to be involved in something like this? You’ve seen the film; you know how it ends up, so that’s one question that is answered, isn’t it? I don’t think anybody who’s seen the film could walk away having seen what becomes of Carty and think yes, they’ve glorified violence.

Alison Grist says of Awaydays:

This film does have a moral, yet bleak, heart which beats throughout, but this is not a great film. It’s a typical gritty, low-budget British flick which flounders in its execution. The first 20 minutes are hard to follow with disjointed, clunky scene changes and dialogue that’s often hard to hear; this means the build up of Carty and Elvis’s relationship and their motivations isn’t as focussed and understood as it could have been.

However, the film does come alive in the scenes with The Pack and the showmanship of their fighting. The soundtrack, which includes Ultravox, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen and The Cure sets the film in history and evokes a choked kind of nostalgia for anyone who’s lived through that time.

The themes of the film – the need to belong, identify and control – are certainly worth exploring in context. I can see this story suiting the stage, especially the Chekhovian longings for escape: “I’m going to Berlin,” Elvis says. The trouble is, we know he’ll never get there.

Awaydays opens on Friday, 22 May. Certificate 18.

www.awaydaysthemovie.com/

Check out the trailer for Awaydays: