Gary Oldman talks to Chris Evans about the 25th anniversary re-release of Nil By Mouth

Virgin Radio

31 Oct 2022, 12:47

Academy-award winning actor Gary Oldman joined The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about writing and directing Nil By Mouth, which has been remastered and re-released for its 25th anniversary.

Nil By Mouth will be re-released in remastered 4K from the original camera negative, both in cinemas UK-wide and on BFI Player from this Friday 4th November and on a limited edition 25th anniversary 2-disc BFI Blu-ray on Saturday 5th December. The hard-hitting film follows a dysfunctional family struggling to survive working-class London. Gary told Chris: “Well, it’s not a movie you’d take a date to on a Friday or a Saturday night. It's themes of drug addiction and alcoholism and domestic abuse, and even though it was made 25 years ago, I think it’s still as prevalent as it was then.”

Gary explained that it wasn’t easy to get the film made. “I was surrounded by many, many, many people, who did not want to make it, and were saying to my manager… ‘It’s career suicide, don’t let him do it. Oh God, now he thinks he can direct…’ he said. 

“It was uphill. I couldn’t raise any money from Britain, so I got Luc Besson, who I’d worked with on Leon, he put some money up, raised some money and I sort of put the rest up.”

He added: “I’d made a little money from film. I didn’t have Lamborghinis, and I didn’t have what I would call a lavish lifestyle and expensive works of art hanging over the place, so I thought I would buy myself a moving picture.”

Explaining that “it was an experiment. It had a very specific point of view, going in.” On the way he shot the movie, Gary elaborated: “It’s a mix of voyeurism and claustrophobia.”

With the movie being his directorial debut, Gary told Chris that he used his experience of working with directors as an actor, citing The Firm’s Alan Clarke as a positive influence. “You’ll work with someone who is not particularly respectful of actors, and you think to yourself, ‘If I ever direct, I am never going to do that. I’m never going to talk to an actor like that.’ And then you work with someone like Alan, who adored actors. 

“So, I’m going in loving actors to begin with, and I would go into the trailer in the morning, the make-up trailer, and I’d ask them how they were, did they need a cup of tea. 

“If you treat them well, if you treat the crew well, and the actors, they will go that extra mile for you.”

Nil By Mouth stars Kathy Burke and Ray Winstone. Speaking about creating the movie, Gary said: “I had one camera. We shot on Super 16, a little Aaton. and we shot I think it was something like 500,000 feet of film. And this camera, you could hammer nails with it. It was solid. It was fantastic, this thing. And what that meant was the actors would have to do many, many, many takes. Now it’s a lot easier. You shoot digital, you shoot multi-camera. 

“They were really committed to the material and I can’t thank them enough for that, because they worked their butts off.”

The gritty film depicts the environment Gary witnessed growing up on a council estate in South East London. Gary’s sister Laila Morse plays Janet, and his mother voices a song in the film. The director said: “It’s very colloquial and I made it for a specific audience, and I felt at the time that the London I grew up in had not been fully represented on screen, but to show those women, and my mum, who sadly passed a couple of years back, they really don’t make them like that anymore.”

He added: “It was really my love letter to those wonderful, resilient women that hold it all together.”

In addition to Nil By Mouth, the BFI Southbank is hosting other work from Gary until Tuesday 29th November, including his Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning portrayal of Winston Churchill in 2017’s Darkest Hour. “We did a Q&A the other night… and they showed a clip of me in Prick Up Your Ears and I look like a baby in it! 

"It’s photographing you, and as the years go by, you see yourself ageing, but in terms of feeling old, no, I’m young!”

Nil By Mouth is re-released in 4k across the UK this Friday 4th November. Find out more at bfi.org.uk.

For more great interviews listen to  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or  catch up on-demand here.