Film

Uttoxeter born film director Shane Meadows is known for his gritty, true-to-life movies, in particular the award winning 'This is England' and 'Dead Man’s Shoes'.

Along with long time friend Paddy Considine (who he met on a performing arts course at Burton College), the duo have made a name for themselves in Hollywood.

But with their movie Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee, they’ve gone back to square one – filming it in just 5 days, and paid for out of their own pockets.

“The first film that I made called Smalltime, I made back in the late nineties and I did that in five days,” Shane told the BBC's Film 2009. “It was completely down to the fact that was all the money that we had - just a few thousand pounds. Having spent the last decade taking a year to 2 years to make a film, I just got to the point of where I’d lost what I’d done before.”

Who is Le Donk?

The character of Le Donk, played by Paddy Considine, is a failed musician and world-weary music roadie, who’s just lost his girlfriend. In the movie he decides to take a road trip as part of the Arctic Monkey’s tour crew.

Paddy Considine as Le Donk

“Paddy’s been doing the character of Le Donk since we were first in a band together when we were 17,” says Shane. “We came across loads of shysters in the music game. They would turn up and say they had contacts for EMI or they’d been roadie-ing for the Black Crowes, when they’d actually been with Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts in Walsall!”

For Paddy, he was just glad to be back on common ground, away from the Hollywood glare and big budget movie making. (he previously starred in the Bourne Ultimatum).

“On other films there’s a lot of waiting around and a lot of restrictions,” he says. “It was good for both me and Shane to know we could go back to the territory. That I could just put the wig and the hat on, and Shane could press the record button, and we could just go and record something.”

Scor-say-zee

Nottingham born rapper Scor-zay-zee, real name Dean Palinczuk, is playing himself in the movie, hence the title.

He hit the headlines with his track Great Britain in 2003, which got played on BBC Radio 1 and 1 extra. There was plenty of controversy over the track which not only criticised the Iraq war, and Tony Blair, but also compared the Queen to Saddam Hussein and accused the Royal Family of murdering Princess Diana.

He quit music as a career a couple of years back, but there’s no doubt this movie will help him resurrect it. Shane says the chemistry between Scorz and Le Donk is what made the movie so great to film.

“Every line that’s in there is as close to a documentary as you can get – we didn’t script anything, or write a single story idea down. A lot of the film is a happy accident and I think that comes across in the final piece.”

5 day features

As well as doing the film in just 5 days with no storyboards, script or cast, Shane and Paddy have also done it on next-to-no budget, out of their own pockets.

Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee

“I’ve finally realised why I never get any money off my other films because we’ve spent so much getting to the actual release,” says Shane “I’ve heard people say certain films cost £100,000 but you know £700,000 has been spent on publicity. So at every stage we’ve done it all ourselves.”

Following this idea through he’s now launched a project called 5 Day Features, with  Mark Herbert of Warp Films in Sheffield, to encourage other directors to follow suit.

“I know if I was 21 years old again trying to make films now, I wouldn’t get it going.” says Shane.

“5 Day Features is all about raising money to get other people to make films in five days. When I was young the thought of taking 10 to 12 weeks to shoot a film was so daunting. But anyone can think ‘Making a film in five days - I can do that.’”