Laila Morse (Laila), Kathy Burke (Kathy), Sadie Frost and Denise Van Outen get into the karaoke.
“It’s how I imagine it must be if you are working with your wife or partner,” says Anciano. “Suddenly you click on and become professionals; and then later you click off and go home or to the pub and have a laugh. The whole vibe was so positive that every day was just magical.”
Love, Honour & Obey is again set in London. Working to a basic script, the duo allowed the cast free rein to act out scenes within the allotted framework in terms of dialogue. This was a method much enjoyed by Jude Law. “Fifty per cent of it is us,” he says, “fifty per cent is character. What’s amazing is that we’ve ‘out-Mike Leighed’ Mike Leigh. People think Mike Leigh is improvised, but it’s very stylised.”
The movie is narrated by Jonny (Jonny Lee Miller), who works in a dead-end job as a courier but dreams of a more glamorous lifestyle – one that could be made possible by convincing his old school friend Jude (Law) to let him join the notorious North London mob, run by Jude’s Uncle Ray (Ray Winstone), the biggest gangster in London.
Ray, whose obsession with karaoke is legendary, is not initially convinced but eventually relents. The character is not your run-of-the-mill tough guy, and it was this untypical take that attracted Winstone to the part.
“We’d scrape around for years to get the money to make a film and then watch the director fly off to Hollywood. So one day Ray said, ‘Sod this, let’s write produce and direct our own stuff’. So we did”
Dominic Anciano
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“I’m not playing the clichéd film gangster with the overcoat around his shoulders, puffing cigars, winding the car window down slowly - none of that,” says the actor. And likewise he found the Anciano/Burdis way of working refreshing. “I’m not saying all films should be made like this,” he declares, “but it’d be great to do one of these a year. Ray and Dom can have me back any time.”
The credit-card scam that is Jonny’s introduction to the North London mob works a treat, and he is initially happy with his new-found life in the ‘fast lane’. The ‘family’ settles back into its usual daily routine of low-level, non-violent crime and Ray and his soap-star girlfriend, Sadie (Sadie Frost), set about planning their wedding. Meanwhile, Dom (Anciano) and Ray (Burdis) who are the gang’s bouncers, try and sort out matters rather closer to the heart: Ray’s current problem with impotency.
Jude Law as Ray the boss’ nephew, Jude, and Jonny Lee Miller as Jude’s former school friend Jonny, who wants to make the career transition from courier to gangster |
His wife, Kathy (Kathy Burke), is feeling redundant as a woman, now she is in her mid-30s and still childless – a problem not helped by Ray’s impotence. Dom and Maureen (Denise Van Outen) suggest sex toys could be the key to the problem and, in a hilarious X-rated scene, Maureen suggests ways in which Kathy could solve Ray’s problem by demonstrating - much to Kathy’s disgust - her expert ‘oral’ technique on an over-sized cucumber.
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