Lexi Alexander for Green Street (2005) Interview

“GREEN STREET” PRESS CONFERENCE
5th May 2006
Posted by: Adam Whyte

I ditched the “Green Street” photo-shoot ten minutes after it was supposed to start when the cast didn’t arrive, on the basis that its lateness would mean it would probably be cancelled, and I wanted a decent seat at the press conference. The shoot was indeed cancelled, so during the entire press conference, a swarm of photographers blocked up the aisle of the suite in the Balmoral hotel, snapping so loudly and frequently that it felt like guerrilla warfare.

The director, Lexi Alexander, and stars, Elijah Wood, Charlie Hunnam and Leo Gregory, of the movie entered the room. Alexander is a German director with a background in martial arts (in her life, not her movies). Wood plays Matt, a young American who comes to England to visit his sister, and Hunnam (who played the title role in “Nicholas Nickleby”) and Gregory (who plays Brian Jones in “Stoned,” another movie at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival), play two of the football hooligans whom Matt gets involved with.

The chair asked Lexi Alexander about her introduction to football.

‘Well, my brother introduced me to football when I was five. Not because he wanted to, but my mother told him he had to baby-sit me. So he took me to my first match, and I quickly got as obsessed with it as he was. Cut to ten years later, I’d got to know that these guys were members of a “firm” that followed my team, and I bugged them so long that they finally took me to a game so I could stand with them, and I got to know them over the next two years. I just was fascinated by who they were, and how complex they were. They were not only thugs; there was a lot more to them, a much more sensitive side, which was something I wanted to share with the world. That’s how “Green Street” came about.’

The chair turned to Elijah Wood, and asked what he knew about (British) football.

‘Well, I know a bit about the game. I don’t really follow any sport, particularly. Down in New Zealand there were quite a lot of English actors that followed the sport, so I sort of learned a lot about the game through them. But the one thing I didn’t really know about was the violence associated with the game, and that’s what drew me into the script and what fascinated me most about this particular film.

The chair asked Charlie Hunnam about his gypsy-like background in a family that travelled a lot, and if the matters the movie deals with were new to him.

‘Yeah, definitely. I’d actually never been to a football match, and never watched a full football match on TV before, because I grew up a huge fan of film, and whenever I had 90 minutes to spare I’d go watch a film. I didn’t know anything about it.’

Chair (to Leo Gregory): Leo, you know nothing about football either, because you support Spurs…

‘This coming from a Hearts supporter?’

Chair: You’re here with two films this year, so do you feel divided between two very different movies?

‘This is gonna be more fun, because I know what I’m talking about. I’ve had a couple of films at the Festival before, and I love Edinburgh. I love the fact that this is more about the paying customer, the other things aren’t really in your face, so that’s great.’

Press (to Elijah): I presume when this script came to you, you were in a position to have your pick of projects, so what was it about this one that fascinated you?

‘I think the very nature of the script was fascinating to me; it was detailing this side of culture that I wasn’t very familiar with. And also it sort of gave me an opportunity to play a character that starts out very innocent, and ultimately turns into a hooligan, and it was sort of darker material and I liked that opportunity. And it was a smaller film. After “Lord of the Rings,” which was so massive, I was much more interested in being a part of films that were smaller and more intimate.’

A member of the press asks a slightly odd question about the darker nature of this movie, and how it reflected on the cast and director.

Alexander: ‘I have no skeletons in my closet, because I’m too lazy to put them in the closet.’
Hunnam: ‘This was a chance to escape the sort of type casting that I felt I was drifting into, with very passive, weak characters. I felt like I had a lot of aggression that I had to get out through work. So this was definitely an opportunity for me to depart the pretty-boy type of roles that I was getting offered a lot. At the beginning of your career, you just do the work you can get, and just now I’m trying to do the work that I want to do. And this and the last film I did [“Cold Mountain”] were the first two steps towards doing that.’
Gregory: ‘I’m not trying to escape anything. Ditto Lexi on that one.’
Wood: ‘I’d have to say the same.’
Hunnam: ‘Pussies.’

Someone asks the director about the level of violence in the movie.

‘I’ve been asked this question a lot since I arrived in the UK and it seems to be because it is a subject that some would have to deal with, and some would call it their disease (which I disagree with), but I understand now how sensitive people are to it. The balance in not having a film that glamorises violence came from showing a certain message: showing the attractiveness to it, so we can believe it and understand why people get involved, but in also showing the consequence of it. I think you cannot walk out of this film and decide to get involved in football hooliganism, unless you are so bad that nobody can help you. We did a lot of research on it. These [the cast] are not the type of guys that would sign up to a film that exploits anything. The two women who are producing this film, who both have kids, wouldn’t put their money and trust into a project that exploits or glamorises any kind of violent behaviour.’

A lady from the press asks about Elijah’s taste in music; in particular his fondness for Scottish band Franz Ferdinand.

‘Yeah, I bought their new single yesterday, it’s really good. Quite disco. They’re brilliant. Another band I love from Scotland is Sons & Daughters, they’re pretty amazing as well. I am going to concentrate on music; trying to set up a record label.’

Press: Are you aware of the Scottish rivalry between Rangers and Celtic football clubs?

Hunnam: ‘There’s a Scotsman in the movie [Ross McCall] who, being a Scotsman, actually broke someone’s nose during production. Uh, by accident. But he told us a bit about the rivalry.’
Alexander: ‘I was doing research here with my casting director who took me to a Celtic game. He bought us these Celtic hats. And apparently we walked the wrong street, and he took the hats off our heads, and we thought he was nuts. I’m obviously familiar with this subject, but I thought he was exaggerating, but apparently he wasn’t. I now know that you do not go through a certain neighbourhood in Glasgow with a Celtic hat on.’
Wood: ‘Is it really that intense?’

Chair: It’s not just a sort of ‘oh dear, we’d rather you didn’t wear those colours.’ Little more explicit.

Someone asks Alexander about her being a woman in a predominantly male environment.

‘You mean in the football world or the film world?’

Particularly in football.

‘Well, actually more in the film world. In the football world, it is a very male-dominated environment. I happened to grow up with a big brother and around a lot of guys, so somehow I was tolerated as the little sister. Probably also because I had a martial arts background and they figured I could take care of myself. You’re starting to see more women at the football games, which makes me happy and yesterday we did this entire day of UK press and every single woman loved this film, and there’s nothing better to me, because in the end I’m still very much a woman and I made this film not for a football club. That was not my goal. So the fact that women have responded so strongly is the biggest high for me.’

Press (to Wood): Is it dramatic having coming off the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy moving to small, independent films?

‘After “Lord of the Rings” was over and done with, the last thing I wanted to do was be a part of something massive again. I’d spent four years of my life working on that, and it was amazing, but I was exhausted and quite interested in doing something small and intimate, and also doing a variety of different things. Since then, the philosophy is still the same, but it’s also that whatever I read, I respond to, and it so happens that the things that I end up becoming passionate about are smaller films and smaller roles. It’s much harder to find anything on a large scale that is of great quality or interest. To me, anyway.’

Chair (to Hunnam and Gregory): How did you get to look the parts, physically, for the roles?

Hunnam: ‘I was very skinny. I thought initially Lexi wouldn’t take me seriously for the role anyway because I didn’t look physically intimidating at all, and Lexi kind of saw past that. I trained about three months and put on about a stone and a half in weight.’
Gregory: ‘In terms of beefing up, not really. We had an amazing fight coordinator. All of us lads would go and built our general fitness up.’

Press: Were you shocked to discover the level of violence associated with football?

Hunnam: ‘I wasn’t shocked at all. I grew up in Newcastle. You’re not going to shock a Geordie too easy. The only thing I was shocked about was how much I enjoyed going to the football matches. I didn’t find myself too compelled by the game myself, but I was enthralled by the human element of it, and the humour, and the fun, and the electricity in the stadium. I thought it was incredible.’
Wood: ‘I’d have to say the same thing. I’ve been to quite a few sporting events in the United States, and nothing compares to the energy and the feeling you get from being at a football match. Aside from the actual game itself and the experiences we had, we also went to the pub beforehand and had that experience: the sort of ritualistic thing of preparing to go to the match is amazing as well. The violent side of it was something that was shocking to me, because I didn’t really understand that part of the world, so that was fascinating.’

Chair (to Gregory): Was it harder to research this or Brian Jones, where you got under the skin of a troubled icon?

‘I would say definitely this was a lot easier. In terms of Brian, it was everything. It was Brian the man, it was logistically all the instruments he played, it was down to the fact that he lived in that area, it was a completely different world to what I’d grown up in. But this came a lot more easy to me. All the time and effort on this was spent on the character’s background, and what makes him tick as opposed to the whole spectrum.’

Chair (to Alexander): In the States I believe the film is to be called Hooligans?

‘Green Street Hooligans.’

Chair: Have you had any feedback about how this might be received in America, where it’s not as big a part of the culture?

‘Well, actually, so far we’ve been extremely pleased by the audience. We had it out in the festivals out there and it’s won several Audience Awards. It won Audience and Jury awards at the same time at one festival, which had never happened before. We have a kind of massive fan following for this film, and it’s being released on the ninth of September in the U.S. and I think that they did some promotion on the website for it, and it had to shut down because within an hour there were 6,000 emails asking for bracelets that we put out. I think Hollywood had a tough time dealing with it. What’s so great about seeing people react is that they don’t always put up with what Hollywood puts in front of them. If they want to see a film, they’re going to go and see this film. The distributors have done an amazing job of believing in this film in the U.S. and backing us up. I’m currently in London shooting a film, and I get these calls and emails from Los Angeles, and apparently the whole town is blasted with posters. I think the reaction will be great. They don’t see it as a football film at all, they just see it as a human story about friendship and loyalty, which at the time I thought I was making.’

Chair (to Wood): How has your American fan base reacted to the news that you’re going from Hobbit to hooligan?

‘I think they’re right along with the fans that have been posting online, and trying to petition to get the movie released. As far as I know, the fans of my films are right in there in terms of their support, which is wonderful. What’s so great about it is that it’s all in the spirit of how this movie got made. It’s really gratifying for us because that was the kind of journey we took, and we poured our hearts into this, and for us to get that kind of reaction from the fans, and to ultimately get the movie released, is pretty amazing.’

The press conference came to an end, and as I attempted to snap a photo of the cast before they left, someone stood up in front of me, and I (accidentally) took a charming photo of his behind, which I have chosen not to include here.

Visit our Movie Information Page for more on Green Street (2005)!

Latest Interviews: