Kevin Sampson - youlikewelike

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Kevin Sampson’s 1998 debut, Awaydays, caused something of a stir when originally published, and even more so when translated into a film. Awaydays tells the story of a Joy Division obsessed football hooligan and the experience of growing-up in Britain as the seventies turned into the eighties. Now, as the film is released on DVD, Sampson opens his heart on how his book came to the big screen, and its love-hate take on terrace violence.

How do you feel about seeing your book as a film?

I adapted the novel myself so if I had any reservations about it I hadn’t got to look too far for someone to blame. I am sort of bound to say I loved the finished version and am really pleased with it.

Was there anything you felt would not work on film?

There are a couple of things from the novel that I really miss and I accept the reason why we could not have them. In particular there’s a scene when Elvis, one of the two protagonists, has a set-to with a load of Morris dancers. It was too expensive a set up for us to contemplate but I feel it would have been really funny and well loved by audiences. In another scene Dr Who, during an experiment, let’s just say, lights his own methane. But overall it’s a really faithful rendition of the novel and I am happy with it.

Because of the football hooliganism, it is quite a violent film -

I feel it is more than that. It deals with adolescence, a need to belong and a search for identity. It is an undeniable phenomenon that young teenagers are attracted to gang life. It gives them a sense of purpose, it is exciting, adrenalized, and this is really the motive for Paul Carty’s search for his own voice. He become more and more obsessed with becoming a member of this small but extremely violent gang of football hooligans. His entry into the gang is through Elvis, the moody, enigmatic council estate poet who has seen this all before. Despite Elvis’s warnings, Carty is like someone seeing a wet paint sign - he just can’t resist reaching out and touching it even if I it has fatalistic consequences. So the gang violence is a vivid and savage back drop but it serves a purpose. It is a motif for Carty and where he is going in life.

Do you feel some of the violent scenes romanticised the hooligans?

Not at all. I think by its very nature romanticism falsifies it, it gives an idealised version. If there were gratuitous slow motion shots of teeth flying out and blood encrusted eyes then perhaps you could levy that charge at Awaydays. Each incident drives the plot further. It might be chillingly realised and it might be horrifyingly realistic in parts, but to romanticise or glamorise it would be to use special effects. And that the last thing you could say about Awaydays.

There were some fine actors in the film.

The story is a young person’s story and we had to find a brand new pack of young British talent. We got Stephen Graham as the older guy and he’s the most recognised and established actor in the film. For the others it was a case finding these kids; Nicky Bell playing Carty, Liam Boyle as Elvis, Holly Granger playing Carty’s sister, Lee Battle, Sean Ward were all fantastic. It was great ensemble. They all buzzed of each other and contributed to the gang mentality that we needed to evoke realistically. When we see the pack for the first time coming round the corner at the first away game, a lot the guys had only met for the first time that morning. That sort of energy and the buzz that you feel is very real.

The casual look was caught well.

The most difficult thing to get right was the hair. The wedge haircut was really difficult to achieve. We needed to have actors who had long hair or we were done for. Many had short hair and we were saying. ‘Don’t touch your hair; let it grow as long as possible. We need to give you these effeminate, long, lopsided fringes.’ If there was anything I felt we could have improved upon, it was that. But in terms of the outfits; the uniform, the training shoes, all the other nuances were spot on. We got a lot of help from some people at adidas who were great in providing us with vintage shoes. Also a load of collectors and aficionados dotted around the country wrote to us saying they would lend us specific shoes and Lois jeans. It all came together.

Was the Elvis/Carty relationship about bonding or homoeroticism?

It is deliberately vague. Given the setting is the 70s and Elvis’s background, if he was a young gay man growing up in a northern council estate it would be ‘the love that dare not speak its name’. In Carty, Elvis sees more of a kindred spirit. I don’t think it's necessarily a blatant sexually attraction but he finds someone he wouldn’t be embarrassed talking to about art. Elvis has wanderlust, he wants to see the world, and he desperately wants Carty to be like that. Elvis recognised those qualities in Carty. What he wants from Carty is for them to forget about the pack and hitchhike to Berlin. But that is the nature of your adolescence and late teens. It is messy and you definitely have those kinds of crushes. Julian Cope had a song called Passionate Friend and theirs is more of a passionate friendship. When your mates let you down you feel the pain of that. That would be my definition of Elvis’s love for Carty. He definitely loves him but I don’t think he wants to marry him.