lucecannon.com

The other day I interviewed the actor Eddie Marsan (who played Scott, the furious, possibly psychopath driving instructor in Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky). And because the interview was set up late in the day for the particular feature I was working on (several deadlines had already passed) and because I basically only needed one quote from Marsan to finish the feature and send it off to the commissioning editor in the States, I had a whole load of notes sloshing around in my notebook with nowhere to go.

So – even though Marsan has clearly given similar answers to similar questions to similar journalists around the globe, as he dutifully publicises Happy Go Lucky in the so-called “awards season” when the film and TV industries start voting on the Baftas and Oscars – I will share these notes with you.

First off, Marsan seems like a really nice guy. He was hugely apologetic when his mobile was inexplicably not working up in Manchester where he’s currently filming Sherlock Holmes with Guy Ritchie and a stellar cast. (Film tip from Marsan: the man who designed the Houses of Parliament, whose name clearly neither Marsan nor I know, also designed the town hall in Manchester. So when a TV or film scene calls for the Houses of Parliament in the background, actors and crews often head north. You’re getting all this for free, y’know.)

So anyway, Marsan is apologetic. He had one hell of a journey up to Manchester: he had a woman and three kids in the back of whichever vehicle he was in (I don’t know if any of them were Madonna); a tyre burst; he and someone else (possibly the woman, all I got was “we”) managed to fix it; he arrived in Manchester at 6.15pm not at 5pm when he should have been there; his iPhone wasn’t working; and the sat nav was its usual, erroneous self.

Then there was the problem with me not getting through on the phone at the appointed hour. But after all this, Marsan was happy to talk via his hotel’s phone line at 6.50pm on a Friday night. A true professional.

Marsan reckons Happy Go Lucky – which was released in the UK in April and which I saw in May but which has been released much more recently in the US – is going down well with American audiences because “there’s less cynicism in the US”. Happy Go Lucky, if you haven’t seen it, is Mike Leigh’s latest film and goes against the traditional Leigh grain by focussing on an unremittingly, overwhelmingly positive, optimistic, sunny-side-up character, Poppy. “We don’t trust her character as much as they do in America,” says Marsan.

But the reason I was interviewing him in the first place was because his performance in the film is being hotly tipped for a best supporting actor award at either the Bafta film awards or the Oscars in February. There is literally a small industry around creating a buzz for certain films, actors and actresses (plus the other categories) for the awards season. Entertainment Weekly has a dedicated OscarWatch feature. An entire website, Incontention.com, exists to say who or what is “in contention” for which awards. PR companies fall over themselves to put their film clients forward for interview, to add to the buzz (and perhaps create it where it doesn’t exist). US studios even time the release of some films to coincide with “awards season”.

And of course the whole thing is fuelled by advertising. Incontention.com is currently awash with ads for Keira Knightley’s The Duchess. Of course, the ads merely offer a film “for your consideration”, as a voting member of either the British Academy of Film and Television (Bafta) or the even more illustrious US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which hands out the Oscars. The ads don’t seek to actually influence people or anything.

So the awards buzz industry is pushing Marsan, along with lots of other contenders for different awards. But Marsan deserves recognition for his part in Happy Go Lucky where he is truly unsettling as the tightly wound, obsessive driving instructor whose satanic mantra, En-Ra-Ha, is at the same time hilarious and unnerving.

Marsan didn’t like the character Scott but says: “People seem to agree with him. I think he’s a complete victim and have very little sympathy for him.” He’s said elsewhere that actors don’t have to like the characters they play, they just have to understand them, which is fair enough.

He reckons Happy Go Lucky is an emotional journey for the audience, rather than the characters in the film. “The characters don’t change but the audience changes. When you first see Poppy you think she’s frivolous. But through the film you see her underlying sensibility and courage, through the way she deals with the tramp, the bullied boy and with Scott. Your perception of Poppy has broadened.”

He also says the film is “multi-faceted” and, because like all Leigh films it is character-led, it doesn’t jump to conclusions. So when Scott finally confronts Poppy’s irritatingly upbeat, ‘nothing matters as long as we’re having a laugh’ behaviour, he could be speaking the truth. Poppy could be selfish. Scott, the angst-ridden anal retentive, could be morally superior by being more realistic (and angry) about the way the world is and why it drives you nuts. The beauty of the film is that it leaves the audience to decide who they side with: Poppy or Scott.

Forget the awards. Talking to Marsan makes me want to get the DVD and have another watch. Award or no award, it’s watching the film that really counts.

Posted on October 27th, 2008 under Other Media • Tags: Bafta, Eddie Marsan, Guy Ritchie, Happy Go Lucky, Mike Leigh, Oscars, Sherlock Holmes. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback