Man Dancin Creates a US Storm
Scottish gangster flick Man Dancin' (US title Kerrigan's Passion) has won the prestigious Gold Remi Award for Best Dramatic Feature at the 39th WorldFest Film Festival in Houston. It then went on to win the title of Critics' Choice. This comes just a month after Man Dancin' won Best International Feature at the Garden State Film Festival in New Jersey, which considerably animated discussions surrounding US territory distribution.
The film stars Alex Ferns as Jimmy Kerrigan, a hardman who wants to go straight... but gets more than he bargains for as he comes up against crime boss Donnie McGlone (James Cosmo) and corrupt cop, DI Villers (Kenneth Cranham). They siuspect Jimmy's out to set up on his own, which might threaten their own inner-city criminal empire. Man Dancin' was nominated for Best British Feature at Raindance Film Festival.
Norman Stone says of the film, “"I'm braced for a broad criticism from one or two sources. It's not an art house film or a festival film, it dares to talk about God without flinching. That is going to be anathema to some critics because they're not used to having God on their patch. “
"The public seems to think it works very well already. We've had spontaneous applause at test screenings which is very gratifying. Empire gave it a bit of a doing, OK magazine gave it three stars. It's the audience I'm aiming for. I don't think it will please certain trendy critics.
"It doesn't fit with the chattering classes point of view, it's not PC, which is wonderful because I don't think Christianity should be PC. This is not a religious film, it's a social film, it's a gangster film, which doesn't duck the issues. It's about a passion play and it very specifically involves God."
The film's director is probably best known for the Shadowlands TV drama he made about the love story between CS Lewis and Joy Davidman. Joss Ackland played Lewis. Later, a Shadowlands feature film drama was made by Sir Richard Attenborough, which starred Anthony Hopkins, but Attenborough is said to prefer the Norman Stone screen version to his own.
As part of Jimmy's probation he's press-ganged into playing Jesus in a local Passion Play run by parish priest, Father Gabriel Flynn (Tom Georgeson). Reluctant at first, Jimmy eventually throws himself and a collection of prostitutes and chancers into the project. As the play develops Jimmy develops a personal (and confrontational) approach to the gospel which he takes into the city streets.
Meanwhile, he is still entangled with his previous life. In the conflict that arises, the themes of sacrifice and redemption are worked out.
Between Shadowlands and this Stone has made TV dramas, including some of the Miss Marple and Catherine Cookson series. He is both a son and a grandson of Scottish Calvinist preachers, who says quite candidly "God is at the centre of my life" – and clearly is often to be found at the centre of his dramatic work.
For the BBC, in 2001, he directed the award-winning series of 15-minute dramas for BBC religion Easter Tales. Afterwards the BBC suggested that instead of a second series of short films they could use the same budget to create an hour-long drama.
The result was an outline Stone wrote for what eventually was to become Man Dancin' but the BBC did not take the project any further. Stone had worked with screenwriter Sergio Casci on Easter Tales and teamed up with screenwriter Casci again with the idea of making it as a low budget feature. Stone is reluctant to disclose how much the film cost but has suggested it was closer to six figures than the usual eight or nine.
"When the BBC passed on it I was angry,” Stone said “And I thought, 'I'm not going to let this idea go, I'll expand it'. Sergio and I worked on it together, got a script together and then went out to raise money. Slowly, inch by inch, penny by penny the money came in."
Even so, the budget was bound to be an issue, especially for a director used to mainstream film budgets used for broadcast drama, so how did the decision to shoot low budget come about?
"People may not realise what the budget for this film was and the limits we made it under,” Stone says. "James Cosmo, who's been a friend of mine for some years phoned me. He said, 'Norman you've got to come down and see this film I'm working on'. I asked the director what the budget was, and he said £350,000 I didn't believe him. When I saw the rushes, I saw Vermeers, Dutch genre art, I saw Rembrandt - stunningly good stuff, all done without lights! He said the lenses are so good and the stock is so good you don't need that any more. Can you imagine the freedom of not having actors trip over cables and waiting two hours for the turn-round of all the lights?”
Stone began to reappraise the film he wanted to make. The new technology had impacted considerably, as he explained.
"I was very impressed, and began to think about it. I also did a drama with Victor Lewis-Smith called Play in a Week which was shot live and that broke a lot of the old hallowed rules. Looking back at the Easter Tales, I'd made those for less than the price of a local television documentary, with quality stars and they'd won all these awards, so I knew things had changed. Man Dancin' took just weeks to shoot which is going very fast. It's made film into a cottage industry again, if you know what you're doing."
Stone clearly does and is quite at home as a story teller, but looking at his drama record raises questions about how his Christianity is likely to inform his work. How does he see his filmmaking role?
“I love telling stories,” he confesses, “and there are three elements; audience, communication and entertainment which - although my higher-minded film colleagues don't go for them - I embrace fully, because that is good story telling.
“But I am a Christian and that gives me a perspective on the world and life and if something comes across my bows, as it often does because it's the centre of my life, then I'll touch on it.
"I think I have a gift for telling stories and making films and I will happily tell anyone about the Lord Jesus Christ if they ask me. My prime objective with this, as it has been in all my other films, has been to make a truthful, powerful, entertaining, really-glad-I've-seen-it, even life-changing film.”
Which naturally begs the question as to what his next truthful, powerful, life changing film is likely to be and what sort of setting he may have chosen to o which to bring his Christian intellect to bear – and is it likely to be another impactful low budget movie?
“The working title of my next low-budget feature is The Power,” the director says. “It's set two years in the future where a SARS like virus has taken over the world. Countries hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. International travel is cut back and it's a very paranoid society. It's The 39 Steps meets Outbreak, with a touch of Three Days of the Condor. It's a big attack at the pharmaceutical companies in this country. We're in a very dangerous place when pharmaceutical companies are in charge of research.”
www.mandancinthemovie.com