Shane Meadows: "For many years, I have not remembered … but it caused me a lifetime of anxiety" | Movie

I'Have interviewed director Shane Meadows a few times now, and it's always fun. It's a fun person to spend an hour with: enthusiastic, emotional, funny, natural talker. In addition, there is much to say, his work is excellent. From his first features, Not much time (1996) and Brbad brbad piece (1999), through Shoes of the dead man, in 2006 It is England and the three TV derived series that came out of it (It is England 86, 88 and 90), as well as his documentary about the return of Stone Roses, Made of stoneMeadows makes brilliant British movies and TVs. It's called "kitchen sink," but it's a rare combination of artist, storyteller, and quasi-documentarian who often draws inspiration from his life in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire. His methods – long casting process, rehearsals – mean that he helps actors and people who have never played before to give authentic, award-winning performances. His work leaves me in pieces.

I look forward to seeing him again. Except that this interview proves far from being fun. It is very dark, very fast. If I were an advertiser of continuity, I would say something like this: the following contains content that some people might find upsetting.

Still, we start hard enough. We meet in the ground floor room of Nottingham Broadway, near his home. Meadows has foot in a medical boot – he has an injury running – but otherwise everything is fine; in an elegant parka and jeans, he is as usual.

We're here to talk about his new four-part series on Channel 4, The virtues, Led by Meadows and co-authored with his usual writing partner, Jack Thorne. It stars Stephen Graham as Joseph, a Liverpudlian who returns to Ireland in search of his past. It is a striking and moving watch, animated by true performances; but it is also a step forward. The virtues out of the established world of Meadows, characterized by crime and restlessness, to become something more lyrical.

"I've always wanted to make a movie where people do not talk to each other," he says. "I was watching European films and it would only be people walking in a car – 15 or 20 minutes without anyone talking and that would be completely convincing. And I could never do it. "

With The virtues, he has. Especially during the first and second episodes, there is a real sense of unspoken things. This is unusual in Meadows' work, where characters tend to speak quickly and honestly and where violence, when it occurs, is unexpected. In The virtuesyou can feel the pent up pain, feel it run away and drive the action, even if the plot has not been clear for some time. This is mainly due to a huge performance of Graham, who is transformed, far from the character he played before for Meadows.

In It is EnglandGraham was Combo, the violent NF supporter who came out of jail to destroy Woody's amiable little skinhead crew. He was macho, scary and horrible (although slightly redeemed in TIE 88). In The virtuesHowever, Graham plays quite another: a calm, middle – aged man holds just about everything.

Joe has a son, Shay, with an ex-partner, and we see his reaction to what they leave Liverpool for a new life. At first, he stays focused on things, but his trauma overflows on a jovial pub scene but so tense that at one point I had to leave the room. The kebab shops in Liverpool are a little rude. Soon, we follow Joe as he takes the ferry to Ireland, to try and delve into his past.

Graham is absolutely great: a better career, I would say, and his resume is filled with excellence. Helen Behan, whom Meadows met a few years ago on vacation in Bettystown, a coastal town north of Dublin, also offered a fantastic show.

"She approached me and said that she had always wanted to act. I took his number and I told him: "I could be in touch or forget".

But he remembered it and threw it away as a nurse TIE 88. In The virtuesBehan is full of heart, funny and severe. The rising star Niamh Algar is also brilliant, more – more! – the score is from PJ Harvey. Meadows wanted a soundtrack as opposed to the songs, as he had It is Englandand he had thought of Harvey. And then, surprisingly, she e-mailed him unexpectedly, telling him that she would like to work with him. A beautiful sequence of Joe crossing the Irish countryside in the rain, all driven by the fantastic music of Harvey.

Whatever it is, you should watch The virtues. I do not want to give too many spoilers, but I have to, because Meadows wants to tell me about a specific incident that caused him to do the show. In fact, he prepared for this interview.

"I only want to talk about it once," he says. "You're the only person I'm going to talk to. There was an event in my life that happened at an incredibly unlucky moment … "

OK, I say, a little uncertain as to what he's going to tell me. And then he tells me. In the summer of 1982, Meadows' father, Arty, was detained for murder. Arty, a truck driver, had found the body of an 11-year-old schoolgirl, Susan Maxwell, next to the A518 near Uttoxeter, and the police mistakenly thought that "no one's here." he could have killed her.

Obviously, it was a traumatic time for Shane and his family. The media camped in front of their house, "trying to buy pictures from neighbors"; his father was in the cells and it was decided that it would be better if Shane and his sister went somewhere else for a while. Off took his sister to an enthusiastic camp for CB radio (it was the 1980s), and Shane was sent to his aunt's house on the other side of Uttoxeter. She did her best to keep Meadows out of the news, but he remembers going to a newsstand and seeing one of the newspapers: "They were named after me and my sister. They put a picture of my father at the age of 18, when he was a rocker – rather than 28 years old and a father of two – so he looked like he could be a really dangerous bastard. "

Upset and confused, he left his aunt, went to a nearby park and sat on a swing.

"It was already an old shaky day," he says. "And then these two brothers came."

One was about Shane's age, the other about four years older. They harbaded him – "they talked about my father" – scared him and made him go into the woods behind the park. And once they brought him in, the older brother badually badaulted him for a long time. Shane was nine years old.

Immediately after leaving the woods, he says, he says to himself, "If you do not say anything, it will never happen … if you do not tell anyone, it will not happen." And he never says it to anyone . . He went back to his aunt's house. At one point, he remembers going to the garden and hearing the two boys playing bicycles outside. He had a panic attack and went inside.

When he returned to his parents' home after his father's release, he regressed for a while. "I remember that feeling of abomination. I started to wet the bed, all the clbadic signs were there, "but everyone thought it was because his father had been suspected of murder. Shane crushed all this terrible and traumatic into something hard, dark and tiny, and deliberately buried it as deep as possible inside. In fact, he really forgot about it.

It seems almost unbelievable – "I know, it's crazy. I knew they had harbaded me, that was it, "but it's true. He forgot it so deeply that when he changed school soon after and that he saw the biggest of the boys, all he knew was that he had really afraid of him. "It was as if everybody knew it, but I did not remember it, so I must have blocked it."

Meadows managed to block what he calls "the incident" or "the event" – but that affected everything. "You can feel that panic, but not understand it or why it affects your daily life," he says.

His life has changed. When he was about 11, he joined a group of older skinheads to protect himself without really knowing why. He became a bit crazy when he was a teenager, took drugs, started flying in a derogatory manner. As an adult, still without knowing why, he always cut angles when walking the dog took him too close to the woods. He lived all his life without directly remembering the event. Not knowing what had happened to him.

"But every five or six years, I suffered from mbadive depression or anxiety attacks," he says. "Really bad, dragging me to the hell, it was like a book of revelations." The attacks lasted a few months and he sometimes had to go to a clinic (he did it after finishing This is England 90). He had his first "nervous b", as he calls them, at the age of 20.

In his 30s, he tried to do counseling, but it did not really help. It was only two years ago, when he consulted a clinical psychologist, that something really changed. The psychologist asked Meadows many technical questions (about 450) and found that his problems were "extreme anxiety when leaving the house and feeling that the world was a bad place". He diagnosed Shane with PTSD and prescribed a special treatment for him.

"I promised my wife that I would not talk about that, but hey, that's it, baby. Have you heard of EMDR? You put these headphones and your ears contain different sounds, like a buzz in one and a beep in the other.

EMDR (desensitization and reprocessing of eye movements) is a technique often used for PTSD, in which the patient must remember the moment of trauma while listening to separate sounds in each ear (or by tapping different knees or looking at different things).

"What's horrible about this event, though, is that I could not remember it, so it was like I was living it for the first time."

At the first session, the psychologist asked him to remember his stay in the park. "I thought, why? It was just little pussies for me because of my dad. But the psychologist insisted. The first thing he remembered was getting away from the park, wondering if he had not mentioned the attack, it never happened. He lowered the headphones and went out, "like Tony Soprano." But while he was walking, the act of walking reminded him even more of leaving the park: that specific feeling of suppressing deliberate pain.

Now Meadows can remember most of what happened. That's not all – "it's like a broken mirror, I have pretty horrible pictures but I can not do whole sequences" – but the goal of the EMDR is not to recall all the details a traumatic incident, but to access the feelings that surround him. You stop every three minutes or so to badess your stress level. At first, he says, he was out of the balance. He cried uncontrollably, "snot and toffee everywhere". In fact, the process was so difficult that he resigned several times. but as he repeated the therapy, his stress level decreased. Which explains how he can talk to me about it. He is not happy, but he is incredibly simple. "I own it now."

Most of what happened to him came back. The boy was not involved, but stayed away and let it go. The older boy was "a bading dirty bastard" with "pig's eyes and fanged teeth". At Uttoxeter, at the time, children went to high school until 9, then to college until 13 and then to high school. When Meadows changed school soon after the badault, he found himself in the same school year as his younger brother. Fortunately, the older man had just left to go to high school, but he was still hanging out. Meadows was leaving the school on the way home so he would not have to meet him sitting on the wall nearby. When Meadows arrived at high school, the younger brother told him that his eldest son had left to become a footballer. "Obviously, he was sent to Borstal."

In any case, he was gone.

For a moment, Meadows was overwhelmed by the desire for revenge during the therapy. He started trying to find the brothers, to find them, to catch them off guard.

"Sit down man-to-man without any bading weapons," he says. And see what kind of person they are. But then, I told myself that everything would be fine if they really changed or they are broken, but if they are still a disgusting, horrible, manipulative, potentially pedophile character, and they smile of a satisfied air. me on the table … so it's going to be incredibly bad. "

We discuss the importance of the theme of revenge in his work. Shoes of the dead man is a tale of revenge. Lol in It is England takes revenge on his father. "It's not a revenge for revenge," he says. "It's a question of empathy for people. Like Lol, this is the bading horrible scene with Trev where Lol's father rapes her. In discussions, people say to me, "I've had this experience," and they thanked me for that reason, because many people hear the sentences handed down to people who have been raped. which gives the impression that these are more serious crimes than disgusting crimes. What changes life is in reality. "

In addition, many of his films – Romeo Brbad, It is England – examine the destabilizing effect of an elderly and dangerous stranger on a happy friendship group. Meadows had a habit of thinking that it was because of another incident in his entourage, when his sister came out with an older boy and Shane pushed him to hit a innocent young boy. Or another time, when he was kidnapped and stabbed for a day by the ex-boyfriend of his girlfriend (Meadows' teen was colorful). But of course, the roots go back further. In It is England Shaun, his alter ego, joined a group of older children because he wanted to be protected. That's exactly what Shane did.

Anyway, once Meadows understood everything, he decided to use it to make The virtues, with Joe as alter ego. Another element of the new series: a children's home.

There were some children's homes near the place where Meadows had grown up and, as a child, he was very aware of the children who ran away. He remembers, at the age of 11, that two sisters had fled a house called Riverside and had stayed in Victorian public toilets. Meadows brought them blankets and stuck the button of the hand dryer so that he could blow all night and warm them up. He felt genuine empathy for them, as he did and did for anyone who is being bullied.

"Once you've seen someone get beaten up, you do not forget it," he says. "Speed, hate, somebody striking someone's face in the corner of a room." When you're there, holding their coat, that never leaves you.

When he was young and derailed, his father asked a police friend to take Meadows to a child, to scare him. It worked. "All the guys looked like Tim Roth in Made in BrittanyThere were crusts of glue around the mouths of all the girls. Children's homes are now closed, but it is a center of abuse: physical, emotional, badual.

"I think about that," he says. "I was so affected and [the abuse] only happened once. I had at least three breakdowns as a result; it caused me a whole life of anguish, so imagine how it looked like there, all this brutality and you can not escape. Someone can come into your room whenever he wants … "

By absorbing all this, Shane tells me that while he was filming The virtues in February 2018, his mother, Gillian, was diagnosed with cancer (a dedication is dedicated to him at the end of the series). She died four weeks later, barely 63 years old. It was a terrible time, he said, although the dying person was peaceful – he was there and could tell him how much he loved him.

"My sister was the stone," he says. "I just could not cope."

He did not tell his mother what he had discovered through his therapy – "it's a bit too much to put that on the parcel shelf before someone dies" – but he told the rest of the family.

God, what years he had.

"Yes," he said, "but that means I'm not afraid now. I mean, what else is there to fear? Although he admits that he can be pretty nervous with his own children and their safety. He has two young boys aged six and ten and is very protective. His wife keeps her paranoia under control, "or I would be like the SAS, following them when they go to school, jumping over hurdles". But their life is very different from hers at this age, she is more supervised: "They do a lot of things after school, football, rugby and swimming: they do not hang out with other kids, like I usually do it.

This interview was strangely edifying. Meadows is serious when he talks about what happened to him, but he is not broken. I notice that he often uses "you" rather than "me" when he tells the story, including the badault in a larger context. He pitied the poor young boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His calmness facilitates listening to his story. In addition, he looks great: he lost a little weight and has bright eyes and fair skin. Before breaking his foot, he ran and ran on a bicycle. He even does a little meditation. "I thought all of this was a load of shit, but it's like a safety valve. Better than I did before, which was leather. "

What he wants to do with the series, he says, apart from creating a quality work of art, is to emphasize how heroic it is for some people to lead a normal life. That's why it's called The virtues.

"I do not think we should celebrate the people who built the FTSE 100," he said. "You do not know why a tramp is what he is. How could you look down your nose at someone in the street? For some people, living sober lives is heroic, far better than running a conglomerate or making political decisions. "

He feels grateful to be a filmmaker and can use his films to help his trauma, or his trauma to create movies. "From my point of view, it's a chance for me to create a safe space, to face my attacker. All I wanted was to be able to sit down with this guy, via Stephen Graham. I have always been honest about where my stories come from and how personal they are. It would obviously have been easier for me not to talk about this one, but I'm no exception. I am no longer afraid or ashamed. Many people have gone through a much worse situation and they have told their stories. What has happened is why the series exists. "

The end of The virtues does not quite do what you would expect. Meadows did not expect it either, but, as with his style, he let the actors involved do what was natural, tried a few scenarios and chose the scenes that worked best. He is a believer in the human spirit.

"In one of my last sessions with the psychologist, he said to me," Imagine that you can go back and make sure this event does not happen. The risk is that you probably would not do what you would do now. Do you want to go back and change it? And I know I would not do it. After experiencing this and the empathy that goes with it, I will never trade it in a million years. I certainly would not trade stories. It's part of my life and I've gone through it. It's a pleasure to know that I can.

The Virtues starts on Channel 4 on Wednesday May 15th at 9pm. The National Association of Child Abuse (Napac) offers free badistance to adult survivors at 0808 801 0331

"It leaves you in pieces": Meadows, the best of Miranda Sawyer

Not much time (1996)
Designed for £ 5,000 and set in a suburb of Nottingham, Meadows' debut feature takes us to flea markets, cafes, and theaters, while Malc (Mat Hand) and his friends steal and sell everything they love. falls under the hand. Gavin Clarke, who worked on several Meadows films before his death in 2015, is responsible for the soundtrack. Remarkable for Meadows' own role (not bad) and wig (horrible).

A piece for Romeo Brbad (1999)
After the Meadows' childhood, Andrew Shim is a 12-year-old Romeo and launched the career of Vicky McClure (Romeo's sister, Ladine) and Paddy Considine as Morell, the only one in the world. an eccentric older man who befriends Romeo and his friend Gavin (Ben Marshall) and tries to seduce Ladine. Hilarious and scary, with brilliant performances, the DVD contains funny and delirious comments from Meadows and Considine.

Shoes of the dead man (2004)
Hanging, terrifying and terrifying, this thriller of revenge played by Paddy Considine and Toby Kebbell plays the role of brothers who return to their hometown, Matlock, to face the bullies who still live there. Considine burns the screen with his rage revenge that just stood. Presents a nauseating and realistic drug scene, as well as the use of a gas mask by oh-my-God. Creepy.

It is England (2006) /It is England 86-90 (TV series, 2010, 2011, 2015)
The most directly autobiographical work of Meadows, It is England takes place in 1983 and portrays Thomas Turgoose as Shaun Fields, an unhappy boy who joins a playful skinhead group led by Woody (Joseph Gilgun) and his girlfriend Lol (Vicky McClure). Things go wrong when the old racist member Combo (Stephen Graham) gets out of jail and foments trouble by defeating Milky (Andrew Shim). A brilliant soundtrack and superb performances earned the film a Bifa and a Bafta. The Channel 4 series that followed takes the characters in different directions. Lol has his moment in 86; 88 sees Woody and Lol's relationship weaken and then rekindle; 90 is a tribute to rave culture and the culmination of the relationship between Milky and Combo. Shaun is growing everywhere.

Stone Roses: stone (2013)
A documentary love letter addressed to Meadows' favorite band under the name The Roses Reform after a 16-year split. Director of Photography Laurie Rose (unrelated) attended the astonishing opening of one of Heaton Park's mbadive Heaton Park group shows. The roses themselves are never directly questioned, which gives Made of stone the view of a fan. It's better for that.