Ramon Tikaram Shows Close-Up's Samantha Hamilton his Naughty Side when he talks about Mischief Night

I met with the delectable Mr Tikaram to discuss such lighthearted topics as religious fundamentalism, racial division and how he went from ‘bad boy’ to ‘stay at home hermit’ …..

‘Mischief Night’, eh? who would have believed it …..

It’s a genuine thing but very selective, celebrated in parts of Liverpool, Leeds and Detroit! There obviously must have been a great export of people from Liverpool and Leeds to Detroit at some point! I had never heard of it either. When I read the script I just thought ‘why don’t they call it trick or treat?’ But in fact it’s such a specific thing, and as you get through the film it’s such a specific area it’s related to.

Mischief Night explores the splintering community in the north as a result of religious and cultural divide, as well as well as touching on poverty, drug abuse and religious fundamentalism often through a comedic framework. Were you at all wary of some of the subject matter?

Very much so, when I first got the script and somebody said ‘it’s a gritty drama from the North’ I held onto it for days before I even had a look. When I looked at it two pages in I was like ‘ahhh, I want do this, this will be an amazing film, this is actually hilarious’. The script was so funny. And I thought it was brave, incredibly brave to do that.

The seemingly deep dividing of Communities some people in some parts of the country you would not be inclined to think was happening, often we refer to 21^st century Britain as being a multi cultural society ..

That’s the hope isn’t it, but the reality is if you haven’t got a lot of money its more difficult to see things like that, it’s actually quite a middle class notion, and I think that is what is the great thing about this film, its managed to sort of indicate that it is possible to have that unity in the end, but in its own way, not the way you may have expected it to. It’s full of all these wonderful rough diamonds who have actually got very individual kinds of ambitions, you know, and that’s what we forget when we try to talk about people in ‘total’.

The film suggests the divide is worse in some areas now that it was in the 1970’s, would that reflect your experiences?

Well I basically grew up the son of a British Soldier, stationed out in Germany, so that feeds into to why I love doing this kind of work .Growing up as a squaddies son your surrounded by people from all over the British Isles, with their different accents, different ways of being, their oddness – so there is no kind of uniform state of being. I didn’t come from a firm community and I moved every year and a half. So I grew up and I wasn’t part of a community of Asian people. But I wouldn’t go in the playground as I new I would get the shit kicked out of me or be insulted, so instead I spent the whole time at home. So for me it’s just been a different world every time I get to it. It’s interesting cause in the story Tina (Kelly Hollis) mentions that back in the 70’s things were different and now people are re-organizing themselves to go to Muslim faith schools or whatever, and that it is now part of an on-going process. Ultimately, I think people will actually realize that this hasn’t and won’t really stabilize anything for our community.

It’s a hard balance isn’t it, the essential need for a firm cultural identity and so as not exist as a marginalized part of society, but also the need for is all to interact in order to stand a chance of understanding each other ….

Yes, my character Immie is the only character I could have played in this film because he doesn’t want to be like that. Immie is sick of all this nonsense really, and I think that is the feeling I always had as well growing up. That it’s pointless, next week that guy who hates me could be my best mate. It just doesn’t make any sense.

As well as divided cultures the film explores the divide between a culture and religion itself - modernism v traditional, moderation v extremism. There is a central scene in a mosque where the moderates and the extremists actually kick off and a fight starts, it could be a sensitive topic for some people. Was there any nervousness about filming it?

This is the interesting thing, a bit of me thought this just isn’t going to be the funny bit, its more the really dark serious bit in the middle, but then camped between the scenes it is, it did come out as quite funny. It was heavy filming it, a lot of the extra’s were convinced it was a mistake, that nobody fights in a mosque, but the fact was that Penny had gone to a lot of the Muslim elders and they said, “no, we need to show a fight in a mosque to show how serious this problem is” A lot of the extra’s were still saying, “no, we have got to walk”. One of them was a white convert, he took three or four lads with him and said “nah, we are going now, we might come back and cause a bit of trouble if you don’t stop filming" but it never happened.

There is definite tension there that has to be explored. I love the bit in the mosque where the elders are saying ‘this mosque was built up by the corner shop owners, the taxi drivers, the waiters, the small people' We just think fundamentalism came from no-where, it just started happening – that’s the way its presented but in fact fundamentalism can easily be a reaction against their dads, it could be as simple as that. I know in this country it’s skewed by the various people we have coming from the outside and preaching hatred, but they know there is a market for this brand of Islam. But the interesting thing is it was voiced as far back as 1988, 1989, with fundamentalists moving into the mosques and the community asking the police to do something about this. The police said no, its nothing to do with us, we don’t get involved in ‘faiths' as such, and the government didn’t think it that big a problem. So its not as if there wasn’t any warning about this and it wasn’t as if the Muslim population themselves didn’t know well in advance.

But when it floods out and impacts the lives of ‘everyone else’ it’s suddenly ‘an issue’

Indeed, when really badness is badness and should be dealt with at the time.

The film is shot on location in Leeds, within the communities it depicts. How do people react to the proposition that you want to shoot around their homes, in a film depicting their lives?

Penny did a great thing; she was there for three years on the streets of Leeds and Bradford, trying to get into the rhythms of teenage kids lives. When it came to filming she was going in weeks before hand, introducing herself to members of the community, knocking on the door of houses and saying ‘we are going to be filming here soon’, just wondered what you thought about that?” and they were like 'yeah, come in, I have got this story to tell you that you could use ...' So the writing hadn’t finished until she had been round all their houses and got a feel for what that community was like. So when we got in there they were just so receptive and accommodating because she had done the groundwork. I know that other projects have been bitten on the arse by that cause they haven’t gone in and made the effort with the community – they just decide, ‘oh, we are filming here’ and it becomes something that the people down the road hate because they haven’t been consulted and “its not a story about us cause you haven’t come and talked to us”

Penny usually does a lot of improvisation. Was Mischief Night tightly scripted following all this research or did you get to let rip?

It was very tightly scripted, which I believe is indeed quite a difference for Penny. I found Penny like an epiphany in this piece, everything seemed right – the characters spoke exactly right. She has such a powerful brain that you just respect, and she is so sincere without overstating it, that is why the film contains so much , but gets through it without loosing the narrative thread. Everything is feeding this final intention of hers, so it didn’t mutate from the original script.

There is a strong ensemble cast, with some particularly good performances from the children in the film, who are central to the narrative. They were also all non-actors. What like to work with kids who are new to acting?

Way more rewarding as these kids don’t know what they are going to do that day whereas other kids from drama school, they know exactly what they are going to do that day at the age of seven it’s very “boring”.

They are already jaded!

Oh yes, but in that very artificial way! Whereas with these kids there was more of the sense that if they didn’t want to do it they were not going to do it! They are still kids but at the same time they wanted to do the film it as it echoed them and their lives, they were not playing a ‘character.’

Penny likes to cast actors in which she can already ‘see’ the beginnings of the character. How much like Immie are you?

I’m like Immie in so far as when as I was a kid being a bad boy, a rebel, held a certain kind of allure. But like Immie (although for me it happened earlier in my mid twenties) I thought actually I’m getting in too much trouble, I’m way in over my head and I am just sick of this really. I took myself completely the opposite way. I started living on my own and became a bit of a hermit, you know! And I think there is that about me, yeah there is a certain feeling of ‘poke me hard enough and yeah you’ll wake up something’ but actually I am just quite happy being still and observing. I’m like that.”

Well I see our time is up, congratulations with Mischief Night from Close Up Film

Many Thanks- it’s been nothing but a pleasure.

What a gent ….