We talk to the stars of Green Street Hooligans.
by Eric Goldman
http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/649/649035p1.html
September 8, 2005 - In director Lexi Alexander's new film, Green Street Hooligans, Elijah Wood portrays Matt, an American who comes to London after being kicked out of Harvard. Filled with pent up anger and frustration, Matt finds an outlet for his repressed feelings when he meets Pete, played by Charlie Hunnam. A true football (that's soccer for us Americans) fanatic, Pete introduces Matt to the members of his so-called "firm," a group of fellow West Ham United supporters, whose organization and tendency to get in dangerous fights with rival teams' firms often evokes the feeling of a gang. Soon, Matt finds himself a full-fledged member of the firm, and goes from being scared of the constant violence they find themselves immersed in, to embracing it and finding true thrills from it. IGN FilmForce took part in the recent press day for Green Street Hooligans and talked to both of the film's stars.
Wood, who for the most part normally plays fairly innocent and good-natured characters, revealed what drew him to this role. "I think there were a few things that really interested me. One was that I didn't know a lot about hooligan culture. I'd heard of football violence but I didn't quite understand how intense it really is, how organized it is, and more importantly, how these people aren't necessarily criminals or thugs in their daily life. They almost have this sort of double life. They're people with families and some of them have relatively good jobs. That fascinated me. And also the opportunity of being able to take a character from that kind of relatively innocent place to essentially making him a hooligan was very attractive to me. To explore a darker side of humanity that I'd not really explored in film before just as an actor was an interesting challenge."
Hunnam, probably best known as one of the stars of the late, great TV series Undeclared and for his role in Cold Mountain, discussed how pivotal the preparation and research that went into the film was and how spending time with the men who really lead this life taught him a great deal. "I got really friendly with a bunch of boys while I was researching this. I met the real ICF, which is the intercity firm, the West Ham's proper firm. And they invited me to go to all the football games with them. And I definitely found myself in a few verbal standoffs with the other guys." Speculating on why these guys seem to thrive on fights so much, Hunnam observed, "No one is actually trying to kill each other. You're trying to best the other guy. You're trying to prove that I'm bigger than you and tougher than you." As to what he thinks sparks the actual confrontations, Hunnam said, "When you see them in the streets, they're very much just alcohol fueled madness. And none of these guys are trained fighters. There's very few prizefighters that go out and get involved in this. Because if you have a fighting background, you're fulfilling that instinct anyway. You don't need to go out looking for it on the streets. These are generally guys that just drink a lot of beer. It's more about actually adrenalin I think than the fighting itself. It's a huge adrenalin rush."
There are several major fight scenes in the film, as Matt finds himself participating in an ever-escalating series of violent confrontations and Hunnam explained how much work went into these scenes. "It's really about trying to figure out how to make it look as messy and out of control as possible, while being absolutely in control. We really didn't have any casualties at all through the course of filming. A little nick and scratch here, but for the amount of volume of fighting that we did, it's pretty amazing how little." Hunnam had high praise for the films choreographer. "This is an amazing fight choreographer, actually an American guy came over called Pat Johnson. He was the number one guy in Chuck Norris' fight team and of 198 bare knuckle fights he had throughout his career, he won 196 in knockouts. So he was definitely very familiar with the world of fighting, but completely unfamiliar with the specific world of Hooligan fighting. So I spent a lot of time with him, and obviously Lexi did also, just watching all of the tapes of fights. And this was a huge challenge for him because there's nothing at all choreographed about these fights."
Not surprisingly, a lot of preparation went into getting all of the actors playing the members of the firm ready for the fight scenes. Explained Wood, "I had to train a lot. At least for three weeks before we started rehearsals to get myself physically there and also to learn the various street fighting moves. It was physically demanding. It was definitely a challenge on that level." Hunnam agreed, saying, "The training was incredible. We'd go and work out with Pat Johnson for four or five hours every day. He had most of those lads throwing up, he was working them so hard. We'd do basic strength and fitness training for about two hours and then we'd start choreographing the fight sequences. And then we'd go into the afternoon and rehearse, and then go out in the evening and start drinking… which is probably why the next morning people were throwing up. "
Both actors also agreed that the actual filming of the fight scenes turned out to be increasingly complex. "The most physically difficult fight was the last one in the film, because it was the longest and there were the most people in there," said Hunnam. "Everything had to be right in all of the shots, so there were just endless retakes for things not being quite right. And we were right on the water and the wind coming off it was just bitterly, bitterly cold, just in our joints. We were getting so tired of doing it all day. You get exhausted and cold and it was pretty brutal." Saying he got a lot more then he bargained for, Wood explained, "I think we all kind of thought those would be the most fun, the fight scenes. And they were the most challenging. Physically exhausting and complicated and kind of very specific and intricate, so they just took a long time to film. I think that we all thought that we'd get to set, have a punch up and we'd get it on film and be wrapped, but it wasn't quite like that."
Both actors had tremendous respect for Alexander, who makes her debut as a feature director with Hooligans. Asked if he felt trepidation about a woman directing a film about a lifestyle usually equated with men, Hunnam answered, "I don't know if you know this, but Lexi is herself two years consecutively the world kick boxing champion. Once I realized that, there was very little concern that she wouldn't understand the nature of violence." The German-born Alexander in fact had her own background to draw on when it came to directing Green Street Hooligans. As Hunnam explained, "She ran with a firm. I don't think she actually participated in any of the fighting itself, but from a very early age she got interested in documenting life. Her brother was in a firm so she would go and take pictures and kind of observe them from a distance."
Wood and Hunnam both noted how much attention Alexander spent on getting the actors to feel like genuine friends and create an easy rapport. "With Lexi, it was intensive in terms of bringing these people together and creating that world. She was very passionate," said Wood. Hunnam went so far as to compare Alexander to his Oscar-winning Cold Mountain director, saying, "She has a very mature style of directing that I've only encountered once, with Anthony Minghella." The actors agreed that Alexander had deftly already taken care of a major part of her direction before shooting began. "It was a pretty intensive two weeks of rehearsals and spending time together and going to matches," said Wood. "Going to the pub before the match and that whole ritualistic experience. We were pretty much spending all of our time together which was great, 'cause it really cemented those relationships and made us a unified group that would be represented in the film. It also really unified us as allies to the movie, to help Lexi ultimately see this vision through"
Once the actors began filming, they saw how Alexander's plan to have them spend so much time together beforehand paid off. Explained Hunnam, "Her direction was over in terms of creating the friendship bond between us on set, which is key to the film. The moment she decided to bring us all together prior to when we started shooting and gave us money to go out drinking beer together every night… All of that was very intentional and very planned out." Hunnam also loved how Alexander was open to the actors interpreting their roles in their own way. "She's not somebody that comes with an absolutely cemented pre-conceived idea of how she wants these sequences to unfold. I think that's often applicable to writer/directors that come and basically like to micro-manage and get specifically the performance out of you that they were looking for. I hate that style of directing. I hate working like that. We shot a lot of this film in one or two takes. We wouldn't talk at all before the scene and we'd just do a take and she'd be like, 'That's perfect. Love it. Let's move on.' Two or three times I absolutely begged for a third take but that was it."
Wood acknowledged that despite the violence and the extremely negative consequences it ends up having in the film, a lot of Green Street Hooligans shows the life these characters lead and their camaraderie as very appealing. "It was our intent to show the world of hooligans. To paint a really accurate picture. And it was also really important that like any subject matter that has negative connotations, they have to make it look attractive for you to understand why they were into it. Like drugs for instance in Requiem for a Dream. Same with this. We had to make it attractive, the violence, initially, so you could understand why Matt would be attracted to it. And since Matt is sort of the audience's perspective, because the audience is new to the experience as much as Matt is, that was our intent."
Hunnam was particularly happy to meet one particular real life hooligan who he drew a lot of inspiration from. "I met this one guy who wasn't particularly friendly to us to begin with… He had kind of always kept his distance. I saw him and he just had an aura about him. But once I got to know him it turned out this his journey in life had absolutely paralleled the journey we were trying to portray in this film, where he had a brother 15 years his senior who had been involved in this, and now he was 28 and kind of moving his way up the ranks and had become a little bit of a legend in the area recently because he'd engineered this raid upon Chelsea. They'd gone into the lion's den of the three main Chelsea pubs, and Chelsea are serious boys. They'd gone in one pub, had a brawl, smashed the pub up… gone into another one, done the same thing… gone into another, done the same thing. Then he printed up t-shirts for everyone in the neighborhood, with a picture of each smashed up pub and it said, 'Ticket to the match: 35 pounds. Tube ticket: 4.50 pounds. Smashing up three of Chelsea's pubs: priceless.'
Hunnam was thrilled to be able to learn so much from someone living exactly the kind of life as his character. "He's very much on his way now to becoming one of the top boys in London. And it took me a little while to actually do it, but I kind of got him to laugh a couple of times, and got him to know me and bought him a lot of beers and he finally just kind of relaxed and started to talk to me. And we ended up being really good friends. I went out drinking with him a lot. It's amazing the access you get as an actor into a world that you would never ordinarily be allowed into."
Wood made it clear that the violence itself isn't meant to be idealized in the film, but that he felt there are positive attributes to the firms to be explored. "There is a journey within the fights. As Matt gets sucked in to it, they become more interesting and more fun, to ultimately become tragic. And yet there is still something retained from those experiences, which is that sense of brotherhood and that sense of standing up for yourself, but not necessarily with violence." Asked to comment more on how the film does in some ways show Matt's experience with the firms as something that gives him new insight, Wood remarked, "That was very important. I think it's interesting. Some people get confused that there is something that can be positively gained from those experiences. But I think that the only thing that's negative about hooliganism is the violence. But the brotherhood, the sense of self that is gained and the confidence, those are all positive things."