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If you were there, you'll know.
If you weren't you'll wish you had been. |
Northern Soul is the title of a film with the tag line --- If you
were there you know. If you weren’t you wish you had been!
Northern Soul is not about where the music was made --- but where
the music was enjoyed. The scene is the north of England (hence “Northern
Soul“) the time is 1974 the music is made on small labels in the United States
--- NOT Motown which catered for the masses and made “black music” cleaned up
for a white middle class American audience. The people who loved Northern Soul
was after the honesty and grit served by smaller labels. And the followers were
avid.
The character Matt, in Northern Soul, has the record label Ric
Tic tattooed on his neck. Sean has a tattooed list of his top three songs and
bands (Exus Trek is the best) as well as the Northern Soul symbol --- a
clenched fist. Johns first tattoo just reads “soul” in capital letters.
The place is Burnsworth in Northern England --- the time is 1974. This
is the year that ABBA won the Eurovision Song contest in Brighton with Waterloo
(a year which all Swedish people know) and at the top of the charts you find
music by Cliff Richards and the shadows
and we’re all going on a summer holiday. Northern Soul was retro even when the
movement was new. Most people are into charts. Matt seeks to convert the masses
as a DJ, starting at the youth club, one northern soul record at a time --- and
most of the favourites are from the 1960:ies.
Matt’s first convert is John and together they plan to become an
unbeatable DJ:ing duo and they are going to go to the states to discover new
records. They start saving up, but the saving goes slowly. Matt spends his
money on drugs, John on records.
Will their friendship last? Will they ever get to America?
Acclaimed Northern Soul director Elaine Constantine visited
Sweden for a special screening of
Northern Soul at RNio io, where she introduced the film.
And she also granted personal interviews.
-When did you first encounter Northern Soul? You actually look
much too young to remember 1974!
-Thanks! I was eleven at the time, when I first heard Northern Soul at
the youth club, just like the character John does in the film, and it captured
me immediately! I’ll actually be fifty this year. So I can remember the
seventies!
- The film has a very strong documentary feel …
- It is interesting that you should say that, because I first planned on
making a documentary. I shot loads of material. The music and the passion for
the music is still there, and there are still people collecting the records.
Its just … the dancing wasn’t there anymore. All those cool lads and girls in
their best getups, dancing the night away. Now the Northern Soul fans
had reached middle age. So I had to recreate the scene in a fiction, but I
still wanted it to feel like a documentary. As if you could time travel and see the 1970:ies again.
-The opening shot of Burnsworth is like all those social realism kitchen
sink realism movies (a lot of them shot in the 1970:ies) and then the music is
so upbeat and optimistic and also feminist with lyrics like “I’ve done all
right for a girl” and the film is just something completely different from all
those other films with similar opening shots …
- I totally get what you mean. I you were born in the working classes in
the 40:ies or 50:ies that was that. You could dream but you couldn’t realize
the dream. If you were born in the 60:ies or 70:ies (like I was) you can dream
and realize the dream, which is why john and matt are so optimistic. Yes they
are working class but why shouldn’t they
have a great music career and become famous DJs? But I like social
realism and their documentaries and their feel. But as time goes on things
changes.
-How did you find the actors for Northern Soul?
- We saw a LOT of different lads for Northern Soul, neither of
the lads, Joshua Whitehouse who plays Matt, or Elliot James Langridge who plays
John, are actors, or had done any acting before they got their parts in this
film. They got into a rigorous training
to play their parts. Elliot very early on decided that he wanted to be very
acrobatic in his part. That’s what you see on the poster. Then Elliot got a
small part in Hollyoaks and he asked me “should I take it?” and I was
like “yes, sure you should take it, it will be great for experience and of use for
us when you’re working with the film, because you’ll learn to hit a mark and
other useful things. Joshua Whitehouse, who plays Matt, it was his first film but he’s got plenty of offers
now and he’ll have a really bright future.
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| John and Matt - in a film about friendship. |
- The film is great its about friendship and music and fashion … and I
think it is great that it’s about a “friendship” triangle and not a romantic
triangle ---- with Matt and John and Sean as the three cornerstones--- because
friendship also goes though strains, and you don’t know if Matt’s and Johns friendship
is going to survive. That’s the mystery of the film! But you also had some
really well known older actors in the film …
-Yes, James Lance, who plays the DJ Ray Henderson, read the script and
said yes right away, and as for Steve Coogan, who plays John’s teacher, I know
Steve’s brother, so I gave him the script to pass on and he said to me “he
won’t do it if he doesn’t like the script” and then I got a text in the middle
of the night saying he loved the script and wanted the part!
-The make-over scene, when John goes through his transformation, is also
interesting … I have seen sooo many films where there is a make- over scene
with a girl. It seems to be a compulsory
scene in any “chick-flick” and most romantic comedies - boys: they hardly ever
do a make-over scenes …
-Really? (Elaine laughs)
-Yep, your movie is unique!
- I basically thought of the ways boys want to copy their friends or
their best friends and they can go from being totally geek to totally cool over
night. I wanted to show that in a montage of pictures, John’s transformation.
You know, my brother was like that. He made a really cool new friend and wanted
to look cool like him and totally transformed over night. When I woke up in the
morning, usually the first thing I saw
was my brothers foot in my face. He was practicing those high kicks for
dancing!
- In the make-over scene in the film the boys start with the shoes (very
appropriate), they get black leather Italian Solatios, then John borrows a cool
pair of black slacks from Matt, Matt fixes a new hair do for John and then …
it’s like 50% Bruce Lee!
(Elaine laughs) - Well, ALL boys wanted to be a 100% Bruce Lee at the
time!
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| John, working in the factory. |
-When they work their in protective clothing and hair nets and then they
go out at night and transform …
- Yes , I think that is typically working class. Whatever you look like
during the day doesn’t matter. You shine your shows and iron your shirt (all
preparations are meticulously filmed in Northern Soul) and then you go
out looking your best.
- What exactly were they making in the factory where they work?
-Sweets. And (in the film) they mess things up because they are just
talking about music and production has to shut down and it takes an hour to get
things going again if you mess up! So that’s very expensive. We shot all the
factory scenes in an actual factory.
- Usually in films there is this “male gaze” and in the dancing scenes
there is an obvious “female gaze” - when the girls are on the balcony and
checking out the boys dancing below…
-Well… (laughs) that part is totally autobiographical, me and my
friends, there were three of us, used to check out boys like that. I think it
is just human nature, girls do check out boys, boys check out girls, and boys
check out boys and girls check out girls … in main stream films it gets rather
ridiculous with the “male gaze” and just men checking out young girls.
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| Training to dance. |
- The boys got really fit.
-Yes, they trained a lot and they were really proud of themselves
showing off their new bodies! And everyone in hair and makeup and wardrobe (all
female staff!) were checking them out! We had a joke, when it was going to a be
a shirt-off day, what we call “bums up“. Well, when Johns granddad dies we said
“what is he going to wear?” and we all went “bums up!” (Laughs)
- I loved the depiction of the complex friendship in the film, between
the boys, but also the depiction of friendship between generations - John seems
to be most of all close to his granddad, and they have a great affinity for
each other.
- Yes, you’re right, was it the same thing with you and your granddad?
-I think it is something universal, that you connect with the older
generation and feel an affinity with them and they’ve got all the time in the
world … but with John and his granddad … did he stop seeing his granddad after
he had met Matt or did he still see him, but it wasn’t filmed?
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| Matt becomes friends with John and together they DJ & dance |
-John saw less of his granddad after meeting Matt, that is why he is so
devastated when his granddad dies, you see, he is feeling really guilty and
that is why he lashes out at his parents saying they weren’t good enough to
granddad, it is really his own guilt speaking.
- John's love interest in the movie, Angela, is half British, half
American, a mix of white and black, just like the Northern Soul movement. Is
Angela a symbol of that or is she just a real person you know, because it must
have happened a lot of Brits and Americans meeting and falling in love
during (or after) the second world war …
- Angela is actually based on a real person, Fran Franklin, mine and
(producer) Debbie Gray’s best friend, and she worked so hard on the movie with
us and helped so much with the dance scenes and she didn’t live to see the film
completed so we dedicated the film to her…. Our Soul sister. And based the
character of Angela on her. Fran’s mum was Irish catholic and her dad was
American, in the air force, and she discovered Northern Soul and though they
lived in Edinburgh she travelled herself to Wigan and other places in northern
England by bus to get into the scene, when she was only thirteen.
-Was Fran also a nurse, like Angela?
-No, but there were a lot of nurses on the scene in those days, and
they could get the drugs that were
popular, so that’s why we made the character of Angela a nurse in the film.
- There are a lot of drugs on the scene in the film.
-Well, there were a lot of drugs about, people wanted to have the energy to
dance all through the night. And there
wasn’t any alcohol served, and no energy drinks and been invented. All there
was to drink was orange squash!
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| The Music. |
- I noticed that some of DJs in the film also danced themselves. Like
Ray Henderson (one of the greatest DJ:s) is on the floor dancing during the
warm-up before it is his turn to DJ for the night. And the characters Matt and
John dance at the same time as they DJ.
- There was one popular DJ in particular who liked to get up on the
dance floor and dance while he was DJ:ing, but otherwise it was mostly either
or. Guys were either into DJ:ing,
dancing or drugs. I say “guys” because there were only guys as DJ:s and I don’t
know of a single girl dealing drugs. To be a DJ you also have to have a certain
degree of nerdiness for music, and nerdiness often don’t go hand in hand with
dancing.
- I’ve thought of a possible sequel, maybe Matt and John get to go to America,
but then I thought it is just better that you imagine them in your head, that
they are going to be successful …
- I also thought of a Northern Soul sequel, but it took fifteen
years to make this film so by the time I’m finished I’ll be too old! (laughs)
- Another possible sequel could be to tell a friendship tale of three
girls, three soul sisters … like it says in the dedication in the end!
-That is a good idea actually!
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| Sean has tattoos of his favourite songs. |
-Was it easy to select the music, or was it difficult to find it?
-It was easy to select, because we just took ALL our favourites and put
them in the film! The only song we couldn’t get the rights to was a crap song
that we wanted to play in the youth club to show a contrast to how good Northern Soul is …
- Was there anything that was especially difficult to film?
-Well you know, since the film
took some time to make, the most difficult thing was to keep the lads
looking young! That took a bit of time in post production. Otherwise, when you
have very little money you have to be very creative. Like the car crash. We
didn’t have green screen, no special effects and we didn’t crash an actual car
(we couldn’t afford that) so it is all just done the old fashioned way -- with
lights and noise! You have to be creative and play with that you’ve got!
- What projects have you got going now-a-days?
- I get about six new scrips every week now, so I’m reading!
- Well, I wish you good luck with your next venture!
-Thanks! It was great talking to you!
-You too, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in Sweden!
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| Film Soundtrack. |
Don’t miss out on the film Northern Soul - unbeatable soundtrack,
great story, lots of heart. You can’t keep a working class hero down! This is Northern
Soul.
Available from Universal Sony Pictures on DVD and Blu-ray.
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| Dancing the night away! |
