Kevin Sampson
Despite penning Awaydays back in 1998 it has taken over ten years to finally get the book adapted for the big screen. But after a string of studios being interested in the novel writer Kevin Sampson decided to make the movie himself.
With filmmaker Pat Holden on board Sampson penned the script and Awaydays made it to the big screen earlier this year.
About to be released on DVD I caught up with Kevin to talk about the book to film process, his involvement and what lies ahead for the writer.
- Ok so your book Awaydays has been made into a movie can you tell me a bit about it?
Well Awaydays is the story, primarily the story, of Paul Carty who is a seventeen year old lad still coming to terms with the death of his mother. He is searching for identity really and identifies with her strong working class character and drifts into a friendship with the enigmatic Elvis and through him he becomes obsessed with a gang that he belongs to called The Pack.
So against this backdrop of gang life and his strange aspiration to want to be part of the Pack, Carty strongly identifies with them, we have Elvis' yearning to get out and go and see the world, he's a suppressed bohemian.
So the two of them are constantly struggling with each other to be what the other person wants them to be with an emotional ending to all of that. It's all set to the early days of what we now know as football casual, the idea of young lads going to the football but wanting to look good, and it's got a belting post punk soundtrack.
- So did the film come about?
Well ultimately it came about because me an my partner in the production company Dave Hughes went and raised the money ourselves, we have been trying to get it made through more traditional methods of approaching the Film Council and film financiers to little avail. So we set up and EIS, it's a government scheme to really stimulate the arts across the board, raised the money and set about casting it and made it ourselves.
This was just about a year ago so it's just about to come out on DVD as it has had its release in the cinemas earlier this year to a pretty good reception and good reviews so it's all systems go for the DVD.
- You worked on the film script so how faithful did you keep the adaptation and how comfortable were you with any changes that had to be made?
It's very very faithful to the novel, certainly to the sentiment and the heartbeat of the novel, inevitably you have to make changes in the novel it's in the first person, it's seen purely through Carty's eyes, so I saw the film version as a liberating thing really as it gave me the opportunity to tell the story through more than one person's eyes.
There were a few things that I was really really to have to let go; there's one scene that follows Elvis' gradual emotional decline and there's a scene were there is Morris dancers on the run up to Christmas and he causes havoc and attacks the Morris dancers, but we made the film on a very modest budget and a set piece like that would really have to punch it's weight to justify the cost so that had to go.
The Doctor who scene also had to go but apart from that I 'm extremely happy with the finished result and it's certainly very faithful to the novel.
- How important was it for you to be part of the book to screen process?
Ultimately very important, the book came out about ten years ago, and during that period I has pretty much always been under option in that there has always been a film company interested in making it.
It was a learning curve for me and it was a close call a couple of times I had seen what some of the film company’s ideas of how the film might turn out and it was really scary because it was an arms length of how I had always envisioned it. When the opportunity came to get the rights back and make the film ourselves we grabbed it and did it as true to my own version as we could do.
- What was you relationship with director Pat Holden like? And how similar were both your visions for the film?
My relationship with Pat is brilliant, part of the process of finding a director is all about sharing a sensibility, and before Pat was offered the job, that came about several sessions, many many cups of coffee and long and intensive chats about what the real pulse of the novel was about and how he would interpret the film, I have always been very comfortable to leave Pat to the actual day to day directing side of it, and he has made a great job of it.
- What was the hardest thing about bringing these characters, which had just been in your imagination, to the big screen?
Well the casting side of it really because until a physical person comes through the door and auditions for the role these are only imaginations and have only ever existed in my sub-conscious and in the novel. It’s a fascinating thing really, I think it’s inevitable, the characters that I have written will always be interpreted differently; one person will read the novel and imagine them in a certain way and another person will pick it up and imagine it I the opposite way.
Filmmaking is a consensual process and the three of us, Pat, myself and Dave Hughes, sat in on all the auditions and we just knew, when Nicky Bell walked through the door he bore such an uncanny resemblance to David Bowie on the front cover of the Low album that I think we all knew we had found Carty.
Similarly when Liam Boyle came in and read for Elvis he brought a real enigmatic, slightly fatalistic element to him that, in our heart of hearts, we had always been looking for and hoping for. Once we got those two characters and physically offered them the parts it was just a case of really working with them and immersing them in that role and that mind-set and slowly helping them bring it to life.
I think both of them have done a monumental job, given that they are both first time actors in a major motion picture, even more so and I think that they are really hot newcomers and I would love to see them get some awards and be recognised for it.
- How easy was it for the actors to relate to characters that are from an era that they aren't familiar with?
I don’t think the ear made a shred of difference, whether that’s because it’s such a universal rites of passage story, with them both being northern lads themselves and from similar backgrounds they certainly empathised with the characters they were asked to play.
In terms of their emotional journey I don’t suppose it would matter if it was set in the seventeen hundreds or set in the future that adolescent rite of passage is fairly consistent and has similar pains and anguish and similar ecstasies as well and they both embraced that very naturally.
In terms of the nuances of the period they had myself, Pat and Dave who were all, more or less, teenagers in that period, Pat is slightly younger but remembers it very specifically. So we were always there to help them if there were any questions about the period that they were uncomfortable with, by and large they took to it very naturally I felt.
- The book and film looks at football hooliganism and gang culture so what was it about this subject that interested you?
Again I think it’s the universal nature of a certain time of adolescence, that search for identity and the need to belong, the need to exist to within a gang is a curiously male thing that I haven’t really seen investigated in film from the point of view of that specific Liverpudlian and northern culture.
I think the closest think that we have had are films like Quadrophenia and This Is England, in a different sort of way investigates the radical politicisation of young people, but this is more about a lifestyle and a philosophy.
The football violence is there it’s massively there as a reason for Carty getting involved with Elvis in the first place but having said that it does very much create a backdrop for the film and the novel and more about their relationship and neediness and what they need to get from each other rather than just being about a gang or gang life.
- The book isn’t autobiographical but did you see any of yourself in the characters when you wrote it? And what about now.
I certainly didn’t when I wrote it, in fact the last thing that I had read before I wrote Awaydays was Damon Runyon’s On Broadway and I think that, more than anything, is responsible for the narrative style it‘s very immediate present tense and first person.
Looking back on it I suppose it’s inevitable that there would be shades of yourself in anybody’s first novel, although it’s hard to specify where as I can see little inflections of Elvis that I recognise in younger versions of myself and there’s occasional inflections of Carty.
But across the board there’s a mind set and way of seeing the world, which is possibly the way I was seeing the world myself as a teenage, but there was certainly no conscious decision to sit down and fictionalise my own life story. I have written seven or eight novels now and it’s something, no matter what the subject is, I still get asked ’is it about you?’ If it were I would have had a very interesting life.
- So what do you think of the overall adaptation of the novel?
I’m very very pleased with it I think it does everything that we set out to do and everything that I hoped the film would do. It delivers a hugely emotional story in an engaging and entertaining way and it’s unflinchingly realistic and has a pulsating soundtrack.
I think there is something for everyone; I have been amazed by, not amazed really but gratified, by the female viewers that have really engaged with the film, any intelligent viewer is going to get a lot out of it.
- Despite being very pleased with the film if you could go back and change anything what would it be?
I would have the Morris dancers back in, I would fight tooth and nail to stretch that money a little bit further and have the Morris dancers back in.
- Finally what’s next for you?
We are in the middle of shooting Powder, which is another of my novels; it’s a rock and roll story about an indie band that goes from obscurity to having everything. We are just about to head off to Ibiza and shoot that element of the novel. So it will be done by mid October and hopefully out in the cinemas next year.
Awaydays is out on DVD now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Despite penning Awaydays back in 1998 it has taken over ten years to finally get the book adapted for the big screen. But after a string of studios being interested in the novel writer Kevin Sampson decided to make the movie himself.
With filmmaker Pat Holden on board Sampson penned the script and Awaydays made it to the big screen earlier this year.
About to be released on DVD I caught up with Kevin to talk about the book to film process, his involvement and what lies ahead for the writer.
- Ok so your book Awaydays has been made into a movie can you tell me a bit about it?
Well Awaydays is the story, primarily the story, of Paul Carty who is a seventeen year old lad still coming to terms with the death of his mother. He is searching for identity really and identifies with her strong working class character and drifts into a friendship with the enigmatic Elvis and through him he becomes obsessed with a gang that he belongs to called The Pack.
So against this backdrop of gang life and his strange aspiration to want to be part of the Pack, Carty strongly identifies with them, we have Elvis' yearning to get out and go and see the world, he's a suppressed bohemian.
So the two of them are constantly struggling with each other to be what the other person wants them to be with an emotional ending to all of that. It's all set to the early days of what we now know as football casual, the idea of young lads going to the football but wanting to look good, and it's got a belting post punk soundtrack.
- So did the film come about?
Well ultimately it came about because me an my partner in the production company Dave Hughes went and raised the money ourselves, we have been trying to get it made through more traditional methods of approaching the Film Council and film financiers to little avail. So we set up and EIS, it's a government scheme to really stimulate the arts across the board, raised the money and set about casting it and made it ourselves.
This was just about a year ago so it's just about to come out on DVD as it has had its release in the cinemas earlier this year to a pretty good reception and good reviews so it's all systems go for the DVD.
- You worked on the film script so how faithful did you keep the adaptation and how comfortable were you with any changes that had to be made?
It's very very faithful to the novel, certainly to the sentiment and the heartbeat of the novel, inevitably you have to make changes in the novel it's in the first person, it's seen purely through Carty's eyes, so I saw the film version as a liberating thing really as it gave me the opportunity to tell the story through more than one person's eyes.
There were a few things that I was really really to have to let go; there's one scene that follows Elvis' gradual emotional decline and there's a scene were there is Morris dancers on the run up to Christmas and he causes havoc and attacks the Morris dancers, but we made the film on a very modest budget and a set piece like that would really have to punch it's weight to justify the cost so that had to go.
The Doctor who scene also had to go but apart from that I 'm extremely happy with the finished result and it's certainly very faithful to the novel.
- How important was it for you to be part of the book to screen process?
Ultimately very important, the book came out about ten years ago, and during that period I has pretty much always been under option in that there has always been a film company interested in making it.
It was a learning curve for me and it was a close call a couple of times I had seen what some of the film company’s ideas of how the film might turn out and it was really scary because it was an arms length of how I had always envisioned it. When the opportunity came to get the rights back and make the film ourselves we grabbed it and did it as true to my own version as we could do.
- What was you relationship with director Pat Holden like? And how similar were both your visions for the film?
My relationship with Pat is brilliant, part of the process of finding a director is all about sharing a sensibility, and before Pat was offered the job, that came about several sessions, many many cups of coffee and long and intensive chats about what the real pulse of the novel was about and how he would interpret the film, I have always been very comfortable to leave Pat to the actual day to day directing side of it, and he has made a great job of it.
- What was the hardest thing about bringing these characters, which had just been in your imagination, to the big screen?
Well the casting side of it really because until a physical person comes through the door and auditions for the role these are only imaginations and have only ever existed in my sub-conscious and in the novel. It’s a fascinating thing really, I think it’s inevitable, the characters that I have written will always be interpreted differently; one person will read the novel and imagine them in a certain way and another person will pick it up and imagine it I the opposite way.