UNITED KINGDOM: ANDREW HOWARD AND LOUIS DEMPSEY MAKE THEIR OWN FILM "SHOOTERS" AS A TRIBUTE TO THE GANGSTER MOVIE GENRE

Record ID: 388788

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: ANDREW HOWARD AND LOUIS DEMPSEY MAKE THEIR OWN FILM "SHOOTERS" AS A TRIBUTE TO THE GANGSTER MOVIE GENRE
  • Date: 1st November 1999
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (NOVEMBER 1999) (REUTERS) VARIOUS ON SET OF FILM 'SHOOTERS' (SOUNDBITE) (English) 'GILLY' LOUIS DEMPSEY SAYING: "When we got together first, it was one night and we all started sitting around and we started talking about seventies movies and America, this is before Quentin Tarantino or anything like that, and we all suddenly realized that
  • Embargoed: 16th November 1999 12:00
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  • Location: REUTERS
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAE7LF3Y78M5NFCMHKQ1VDC4539
  • Story Text: A deluge of new gangster films proves that the British genre is still going great guns.The latest in a line of movies is 'Shooters', still in production, it's a dark, violent look inside the criminal underworld, with a touch of seventies grit.
    There's a strange fascination with the heady, cold-blooded world of the gangster, or at least that's what Andrew Howard and Louis Dempsey think.The two actors found the combination of murder, mayhem and madness so irresistible, that along with writer Gary Young they decided to pen their own movie.
    They based their screenplay of 'Shooters' on the seventies style gangster genre, in the mold of Michael 'with me it's a full time job' Caine in 'Get Carter'.These were roles that many actors would kill for, and ones that Howard and Dempsey had to play.
    Dempsey says: "When we got together first, it was one night and we all started sitting around and we started talking about seventies movies and America, this is before Quentin Tarrantino or anything like that, and we all suddenly realized that we all had these seventies movies that we all watched as kids and loved them and thought it was great and it was like we should do one.No one's ever done that here really well.
    The Americans have got their independent film making off pat and we're still in this country learning the ropes and we thought it can't be that difficult.Let's see what we can do.So we wrote the script and it's kind of strange because it was almost death by encouragement.If one person had come to us and said 'this is a piece of crap, get rid of it' that would have been different.But everybody was saying 'oh no this is really great I'd love to make it'.We went through various torturous phases of trying to get so far and things being canceled and made it at last".
    Howard says: "It is nice to write your own parts.We always envisaged that we'd play the parts and along the way, that's what's been one of the difficult points in getting it made.But it has worked out OK now.I'm doing it with Colleen (Teague) the director and Glen, who are old friends of mine and we've had a lot more say in what's going on and kept a certain amount of control on it, in a respectful way.It's just wonderful to see it all coming together and happening.
    It freaks me out all the time walking out onto the set and seeing all these images that you've had in your head, God knows how long.And there it is in front of you.It's a special time in our lives."
    It has taken seven years for the dream to become reality, but the timing couldn't be better.A recent rash of criminal capers, such as 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' and 'The Limey', have returned the genre to its past dominance in the thirties with 'Heat' and the seventies with 'The Godfather'.
    Dempsey and Howard wanted to create a believable gangster, local hoodlums who just happen to deal in bloodshed.Inspired by their own experiences of Bristol's gun culture, they took real-life scenarios and turned them into celluloid.
    Dempsey says: "It is about the people involved and we want those people that we could walk past them in the street and it's like who is he? It is not gangsters don't actually, well in my opinion and what we have in the script, is gangsters don't walk around in three piece suits with cigars saying 'I'm going to have you', doing all that.Most of them don't.You're standing beside them in the bar and they are real kind of cool and calm people, they just happen to inflict violence as part of their occupational hazard, they are not bothered by it.Luckily because of our background, we know a lot of people.You know, so we could immediately relate to it.Little things in the script, we have shamelessly stolen off people we know and friends of us and people in real life that we think, oh yeah.One guy we know is a really calm character and suddenly he'll go off.And we say 'oh yeah, that's good, I remember the way he did that'.So it's little things like that.It hopefully fills out the character."
    Howard says: "The scene that we are shooting now is in a brothel called 'Dazzlers', which everyone thinks is a daft name.But there was one in Bristol, where we used to live, which is where we got the name from.So turning up at the exterior in Shoreditch the other day where we could see Dazzlers up there we just couldn't stop laughing.Reuters reporter adds: "Of course, you didn't know it THAT well'.Howard says: "We just dropped past a couple of times.Dempsey says: "And we just thought 'oh that's a funny name".
    Dempsey plays Gilly, who has just been released from prison, after taking the rap for his best friend J, played by Howard.All Gilly wants is to collect the money he's owed, but J has different ideas.J's boss is notorious gangster Max Bell, Adrian Dunbar, who runs drugs and gun rackets, he suspects that J will double cross him.Upcoming star Melanie Sykes is Marie, J's wife, who is desperately trying to break free from a live of crime.
    Adding to the mix of betrayal and deception is Gerard 'Gerry' Butler, playing the mercurial gangster Jackie Junior.Howard had already worked with Butler on a film, noting Butler's manic behaviour he wrote him into 'Shooters'.
    Butler says: "As you can see I'm popular with the rest of the cast.Actually, I'm a bit of an arse in real life as well.Funnily enough, Andrew, who just called me an arse, we did a film last year called the Cherry Orchard, which we were both at the royal premiere last night, and Andrew wrote this script and he's playing the lead part of J and they wrote Jackie Junior in relation to me.Because they can imagine me doing all these changes that Jackie Junior has, 'even when you jump up and say this, we thought that's exactly what Gerry would do'.So not that I go about killing people or dealing drugs, honest, but I think his characteristics I have a lot of".
    Directed by Colin Teague over six weeks, the film has been shot on set and in a mixture of locations within the urban heart of East London.Due to be released sometime this year, 'Shooters' proves that the British gangster movie is back and spoiling for a fight -- with something a bit more substantial than madcap capers laced with cockney malarkey.
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