Loading ...British film, Paddy power
“Don’t take a picture of my fanny!”
These are the last words Paddy Considine says to me as I prep a photo and leave the interview. I caught up with the director Shane Meadows and its stars Considine and Scor-zay-zee and discussed their brilliant new mockumentary, Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee. Shot in just five days, the film follows bitter roadie, Le Donk (Considine), who takes rapping prodigy Scor-zay-zee under his wing and attempts to catapult him to fame and fortune, meeting the Arctic Monkey’s on the way. Sitting in the BAFTA halls, I ask Considine where the inspiration for his character comes from:
Paddy: Well, from the time I met Shane, we’d started a band and six weeks later we recorded E.P and I’d only been playing the drums for six weeks! We attracted these people – the music scene’s full of them – these people who want to be your manager and they’ve got no credentials at all. Donk’s banter comes from some of the building sites I worked on with my brother, too. So Donk is a sort of mixture of people, experiences really.
Was that your real hair in the film?
Paddy: No! But I like the fact you thought it was real. I mean, it was a wig; there was no production value whatsoever.
Shane: That wig though, it kind of goes back to the shorts we used to make. It really is just a ten pound wig! At one point, we actually wrote a screenplay with Le Donk, with a budget but Paddy and I decided that Le Donk wasn’t for that world. It just wouldn’t sell. We thought, ‘We’ve got to do it lo-fi.’ So the film has taken a long time to get to where it was. I mean, Paddy’s been doing films like The Bourne Ultimatum, I did This is England and I was just tired of how long things took. Then Le Donk came along. I hope it inspires other people to realise that you don’t need to spend massive amounts of money.
Certainly. Back to Paddy – even though the budget was lower, were you in character for the whole shoot?
Paddy: Well there’ve only been two times I’ve ever been completely in character. The first was in A Room For Romeo Brass, which was the first film with Shane I did and then there was Le Donk. I’ve realised in films I’ve done, when I’m not shooting, I’ve been doing other characters. For example, we were shooting Dead Man’s Shoes and in between takes I was doing Alan Partridge impressions! I was all these other people, but with Le Donk I stayed in character all the time because it sort of takes over and I don’t know what’s coming out his mouth. He’s quite un-edited.
And how has the character changed over the years then?
Paddy: The same psychology has been there from day one.
Shane: Maybe he’s got the slightest hint of humanity now though. But some of the short films we did, Donk is so brutal. In one of them he’s auditioning to be a drummer in a band and this guitarist comes to pick him up. I’m secretly filming him in the garage and Donk’s jacking off into a cup saying, Come on bitch, gimme the gravy.” That’s how severe he was at one time! Now he’s not so X-rated.
Scorz, how did you react to Le Donk as a character?
Scor-zay-zee: At first, when he was being Le Donk, I thought it was literally him. There was a point at the beginning of the shoot where I was like, you cheeky sod, but then he’d pull his wig off and say, ‘look mate, only joking.’ After about half an hour, I thought this guy was quite funny.
Shane: It’s because Paddy’s so good at comedy acting. I’d play myself, but I couldn’t do it if I didn’t believe it was Paddy as Donk. I’d go onto the set and within five minutes I’d totally believe it was Donk. With Olivia Coleman (Peep Show), even though Donk is a mess, she believed he was an ex-boyfriend. If she believed it and Paddy believed it, it’s true.
Scorz-zay-zee: Some of the stuff Le Donk comes out with…you think to yourself, how do I react to this? Eventually, I decided not to react too much, just flow with it. I play Le Donk’s lodger, so my character knows him – he wouldn’t laugh at everything he says. If I was going to laugh at everything he said, it would’ve ruined it. I mean there were certain bits in the film where I’d turn away, nearly laughing…
Were there any scenes you had to reshoot because of corpsing, or did you just keep it in the film?
Shane: We didn’t do many things twice, did we?
Paddy: No, I can’t remember really. It was all one take stuff. I was Le Donk, Scorz was Scorz and everybody around us was just themselves. I’d be Donk in full spiel and Scorz would come out with a little one liner, cut in there. It wasn’t rehearsed and it was really funny. Now, if he was an actor, he’d try and compete with my character, try and go one bigger.
Scorz: I understood after a bit that if I was going to compete and try and be funny it wouldn’t have worked and it would’ve seemed fake, wouldn’t it?
Paddy: True. When I make jokes about his physicality, I felt bad, so I’d take of my wig and apologise for saying these things! But I think this cruel humour, the stuff you find on building sites, is so brutal.
Scorz: I’ve had that actually. My brother’s mate’s dad…he calls everybody Elvis. No matter who they were, he’d call them Elvis. I just think it’s funny when somebody takes the mick out of someone.
Paddy: When I had to work with my brother, one of the lads in this gang decided that I had a big head…not a big head as in an ego…but a physically big head. So I was called Big Lid. You had to take this banter, but nobody went home wounded at the end of the day because it’s the type of humour that got them through the cold weather.
Shane, had you never heard of Scorz before?
Shane: I’d heard of Scorz, I’d heard of him for a while back and he’d explained that he’d retired. You had no intentions of coming back. I mean, you came in it to act didn’t you?
Scorz: I did. If you hear some of the raps I did on stage, you see I didn’t actually have any brand new material. I had to go over some of my old raps. I shared a room with the cameraman and he’d complain because I was up till 4, 5 in the morning, doing my raps! But I’ve got bags of new material now though.
Shane: Universal has got one of his singles now as well, which shows a lot about Scorz and what he can do next.
So where does the Donk go from here?
Paddy: Oh, it’s top secret stuff.
Shane: It is. I think we’re going to have to do something else with it. Now we know other people find it funny. Maybe Scorz’s career will take off and he’ll be living in a mansion whilst Donk works for him. Who knows what’ll happen? We’d like to retain the low-fi ethos of this film though.
Paddy: We’re not making the Empire Strikes Back, if you know what I mean.
Le Donk kind of seems like prime breeding ground for television. Would you ever consider working in television? Because the rumours are that you’re involved in a 4-part show about This Is England
Shane: That’s right. It’s called We Were Faces and it’s the sequel to This is England, set 3 years later in 1986. It’s going to be 4 hours. After seeing shows like The Sopranos and The Wire I started thinking there’s no shame in working for TV. You don’t have to make rubbish. You can make films.
