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blackball
“He is preternaturally brilliant at the game, but his attitude towards it is not quite holy enough for some people,” says Smith. “He rubbed the traditionalists up the wrong way. He has the most enormous charm, but he’s a bit of a young gadabout. Sometimes, he just doesn’t turn up. If you look on the awards board at the Torquay club, it lists the champion for 1999 and the champion for 2001, but 2000 is blank. ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘Griff didn’t turn up!’”
BENCH MARKS:Below, Johnny Vegas as Trevor and Bernard Cribbins as Mutley celebrate Cliff's triumph.
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In fact, the real Griff (who is called Cliff Starkey in the film and is played by Kaye) rubbed the game’s older generation up so much the wrong way that they got together and banned him from the sport for 10 years - the longest ban ever imposed on a British sportsman. In the end, they had to rescind it, and now have a more indulgent attitude towards Griff, regarding him as something of a loveable enfant terrible. But the story still appealed to Smith.
“If I’d seen the same thing about golf, I wouldn’t have been interested,” he says. “But bowls is such an unlikely sport to have created so much passion. It’s the juxtaposition, really - though, as you find out more about it, you realise that it can be an extremely brutal and competitive sport.”
Mel Smith on
location in Torquay with real-life ‘bad boy of
bowls’ Griff Sanders.
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In Firth’s version of the story, Cliff is a bowls prodigy who beats the reigning champion. arch-conservative Ray Speight (Cromwell), in the regional championships. But Speight spots a rule infringement and gets Cliff banned from the game for 15 years. Then, however, an American sports agent called Rick Schwartz (Vaughn) hears about the story and takes Cliff under his wing, turning bowls in the process into a rock ‘n’ roll sport that attracts massive sponsorship and a slew of TV deals. The Bowls Association realise the writing is on the lawn: they readmit Cliff and, true to their underhand form, find a way of dumping the loyal Ray.
Cliff becomes a star, having his head turned in the process. But then, preparing for an all-important match against legendary Australian players the Doohan brothers (Little and Mark Dymond), Cliff realises he has no chance of winning on his own and buries the hatchet with Ray. Together, they represent their country and win a cliffhanger of a last-minute victory.
“The trick with filming bowls, as with any sport,” says Smith, “is not to have too much of it. Take Robert Redford’s The Natural. Look at how many baseball shots there are in there: not that many. And besides, with Blackball, the focus is on the people.”
Here, the arc is a familiar one. Initially the loveable outsider, Cliff is gradually seduced by the fame that Rick brings him, turning his back on his origins - and in particular, on his best friend and partner-in-crime, Trevor (Vegas). He “becomes a bit of an arsehole,” as Gay-Rees succinctly puts it, also alienating his girlfriend (Evans). Finally, though, he comes good. And the result, adds the producer (who is partnered with Smith in production company Midfield Films), “is a really sexy comedy about something very unsexy”.
Both Gay-Rees and Smith, meanwhile, draw in comparisons from elsewhere to characterise the film they are shooting. Cromwell, for example, who here looks more like Farmer Hoggett from Babe than the corrupt police chief from LA Confidential, is nonetheless an imposing figure. Gay-Rees calls him the “Darth Vader of Torquay: he’d be looking quite normal and then he would suddenly flick on those LA Confidential eyes”.
But Cliff is the centre of the story. And, as both film-makers are swift to point out, he has his equivalent in almost every sport. There is John McEnroe in tennis. There is George Best in soccer. But, for Smith, Cliff most recalls the bad boy of another sport which involves pushing balls round on a very smooth green surface: snooker. “Cliff,” he says, “is the Alex Higgins of bowls.”
As for the tone of the film, he adds, “it is kind of like Strictly Ballroom. A bit less satirical, a bit less extreme, but the same idea of someone coming into a very sedate sport and turning it on its head.”
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BLACKBALL
Midfield Films,
in association with the Inside Track Partnership, the Isle of Man Film Commission, Mel Smith Enterprises and Icon Entertainment International
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Prod: James Gay-Rees; Dir: Mel Smith; Scr: Tim Firth; Ph: Vernon Layton; Prod des: Grenville Horner; Cost des: Nigel Egerton, Anja Mai; Ed: Chris Blunden; Casting: Carrie Hilton.
With Paul Kaye (Cliff Starkey), Johnny Vegas (Trevor), Bernard Cribbins (Mutley), James Cromwell (Ray Speight), Alice Evans (Kerry Speight), James Fleet (Alan Booth), Vince Vaughn (Rick Schwartz), Mark Dymond (Kyle Doohan), Mark Little (Mark Doohan), Imelda Staunton (Bridget), Vic Reeves (TV director).
International distribution:
Icon Entertainment International.
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