Dek (Rhys Ifans) and Shirley (Shirley Henderson) live together with Marlene (Finn Atkins), Shirley's daughter by the sexy delinquent Jimmy (Robert Carlyle), who skeddadled years ago and hasn't been heard from since.
Decent-but-dull Dek loves Shirley so much that he humiliates her by proposing without warning on national television.. Jimmy witnesses Dek's TV proposal and he returns to town, convinced that his nerdy rival doesn't stand a chance against a renewed romantic assault from the great love of her life.
The race is on for Shirley's affections, and Dek's the one driving the Ford Sierra.
For his third feature film, acclaimed director Shane Meadows has gathered together a who's-who of British comedy talent to tell a quirky, heart-warming tale of big emotions in a small town.
Background
After A Room For Romeo Brass, Shane's next major project was the Shane's World collection of shorts for Channel4. One of the short films in the collection is a film about a boxer called Three Tears for Jimmy Prophet. It was this short film that became the original inspiration for Once Upon a Time in the Midlands.
When the main focus of the film was still to be about a boxer returning to society after a spell in prison, the film had a provisional title of Standing Eight Count.
Shane's love of Spaghetti Westerns was always intended to be incorporated into the story of the film, and eventually became a very prominent part of the films style.
The film had the biggest budget of all of Shane's films, and to compliment this, Shane wanted to work with actors that he had respected over the years. After previously only working with mostly unknown actors and smaller budgets, the big budget and the famous faces in the film were both challenges that Shane wanted to take on.
This is the only film on which Shane had to share final cut of the film. This is the main reason that Shane believes the film didn't turn out as well as he had hoped.
When the main focus of the film was still to be about a boxer returning to society after a spell in prison, the film had a provisional title of Standing Eight Count.
Shane's love of Spaghetti Westerns was always intended to be incorporated into the story of the film, and eventually became a very prominent part of the films style.
The film had the biggest budget of all of Shane's films, and to compliment this, Shane wanted to work with actors that he had respected over the years. After previously only working with mostly unknown actors and smaller budgets, the big budget and the famous faces in the film were both challenges that Shane wanted to take on.
This is the only film on which Shane had to share final cut of the film. This is the main reason that Shane believes the film didn't turn out as well as he had hoped.
Actors:
Dek
Rhys Ifans
Jimmy
Robert Carlyle
Charlie
Ricky Tomlinson
Carol
Kathy Burke
Shirley
Shirley Henderson
Marlene
Finn Atkins
Donna
Kelly Thresher
Donut
Andrew Shim
Vanessa
Vanessa Feltz
Released: 2002
Somer's Town
In Somers Town, a London neighborhood by St Pancras rail station, young Tom, who had nothing to keep him back home in Nottingham, encounters Marek, a young Polish immigrant with nothing to fill his days.
It's a mismatched friendship: Tom (dubbed Tomo by Marek) is full of youthful swagger and Marek, an amateur photographer who lives with his disciplinarian father, is more introspective and cautious. Their dynamic is uneasy and awkward at first as each teen believes himself to be the more mature, but a genuine rapport develops between the two.
W hen Tomo and Marek both fall for the same girl, the common ground between them is further solidified.
Shane moves from his usual Midlands setting down to London for Somers Town, but he explores territory quite familiar to him: the working class and fathers and sons. Thomas Turgoose, who stars as Tom, manages to be cocky and vulnerable at the same time, whether he's wearing a tracksuit or a housedress, and he lives up to the expectations of the most promising newcomer prize he received from the British Independent Film Awards for This is England.
The script was sent through to me a few weeks ago and to be honest, I was really impressed with what fraser had done and agreed to get involved. It is basically a 30 page script which tells the story of how a young Polish boy and his father come to London to live and work in Somers Town.
Actors
Marek
Piotr Jagiello
Tom
Thomas Turgoose
Marius
Ireneusz Czop
Maria
Elisa Lasowski
Graham
Perry Benson
Jane
Kate Dickie
Re-occuring actors- something I can maybe use, iconic characters used within more than one film of his
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