By Holly Grigg-Spall.
Stephen Beresford
First time screenwriter of Pride, Stephen Beresford has a successful background in British theatre. He joined forces with Matthew Warchus (who previously wrote, directed and produced Simpatico based on Sam Shepherd’s play) to work on this very personal project some 20 years in the making. Pride details the formation in the early 1980s of the group LGSM, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, during the time of pit closures and the miner’s strikes across Northern England and Wales. The group came to the aid of Welsh miners and they in turn instigated the political integration of gay rights into the policies of the Labour political party (originally the party of trade unionists). With a stellar cast of British actors, the film showcases an incredible moment in history.
This film portrays a rather unknown part of British history and gay rights history, how did this story come to your attention?
It was 20 years ago when I was about 20, in the ’90s. My boyfriend at the time was about 30. He could remember the Pride march that we have in the movie. We were having an argument, as at that time it was the second round of pit closures. John Major was finishing off the job Margaret Thatcher started. We were discussing whether or not we should be supporting the miners, as gay men. The idea of that was totally alien to me, I couldn’t understand why anyone would suggest such a thing. I said, “Why would I support the miners, they don’t support me.” This line is now in the film. My boyfriend was delighted to be handed his argument on a plate, and said in response, “Well, let me tell you a story.”
He told me as much as he knew about LGSM. I knew it would make a great movie. It was a bit of lost history. That was reflected in how difficult it was to get people to agree with me about making this movie. I could see a great, commercial mainstream film. But whenever I pitched it to anybody, they said I could not bring a commercial audience to this kind of film. I would pitch it based on the little I knew, and they would suggest I do it for the radio. At the time I think people did not think a movie about gay rights would get funding. I think now is the perfect time for this movie, it may not have worked even just a year ago.
All out! Dancing in Dulais
How did you begin your research?
I found a book titled Walking After Midnight about the lives of gay people through the decades, and the ‘80s story was about Mark Ashton. It directed to me to the fact that LGSM made a video titled All Out! Dancing in Dulais, which I found online. They were young and they weren’t professionals so they observed none of the disciplines of documentary filmmaking. You have no way of knowing who they are interviewing, why, or what they’d done so it was impossible from a research point of view. But what it did give me was these incredible characters. I froze the screen at the end of the film and there was a “thanks to” card and so I looked for the most unusual names on there.
One was Reggie Blennerhassett and I looked him up on Facebook, saw a photo of a middle aged, friendly looking man, on a boat and I wrote to him and asked him if he was involved in LGSM. He wrote back and put me in touch with other people. What was most valuable was the first hand testimony. Then I went to Wales. Mike Jackson was very helpful. He was secretary of the LGSM club, he did all the donkey work. He came up to Wales with me. He was very well respected by the people there. It helped me get close to what was going on, to get the stories.
Were people pleased to know that you were going to write this screenplay?
All of the people in Wales felt they owed the gay community so much and no one else knew about it. The way the National Union of Miners supported enshrining gay rights in the Labour party manifesto means that the miners also directly impacted the lives of gay people, in fact all of our civil rights stemmed from that incident. They were the Harvey Milks of the UK. They changed people’s lives. They were keen to come on board. I had to explain that it would be a commercial film, not a documentary and so they had to accept I would make stuff up and amalgamate characters. They understood that it was necessary.
Did you find that people had reservations about how well some elements of the story might do with a US audience? For example, with Mark Ashton’s background in Communism (which is not part of the film) when in the US that’s a very unacceptable term. How did you approach that when writing the screenplay?
There was an element of that. People did say you can’t use the word “communist” in a movie in America. I don’t think they knew what they were talking about. I thought it was true that Mark’s political beliefs were instrumental in why he did what he did, it all kind of came from his communism. But in the early days of LGSM there were a lot of people trying to co-opt the group. Mark made a statement then in which he said that the group would have no party political affiliation and that it was only about supporting the miners as lesbians and gay men. It had no politics, as far as he was concerned. Leaving out the communism is exactly what he did. I also felt I owed it to the spirit of Mark that there was something in there, though. So when he stands up on the stage at The Bell, someone shouts “Commie!” (that’s my voice, actually). So I did identify him as a Commie!
The real Mark Ashton
What did you add to the script to further the dramatic narrative or create more tension?
One of the problems I had, which is very typical of Welsh hospitality, is that people in that community made absolutely certain that no one in LGSM ever experienced any hostility. They were protected fromm anything negative, which was not good news to me as a writer. And, having done that some 30 years ago, and having had a successful result, the memories had been turned to gold for all those people. They didn’t immediately recall anything bad happening. Slowly though, people did recall that certain people did say certain things, there was someone who was worried about AIDS, there was negative stuff. I had to dig to get it. I had to work that up, so the homophobia under the surface was made explicit.
I specifically made it a movie that has a lot of the traditional elements of populist movies. I wanted a populist adventure about gays and lesbians and trade unionists, because I think that’s subversive. I wanted it to be seen in multiplexes and have people laugh along with it. I wanted it to become part of the populist mainstream. All the most remarkable stuff, though, it is true.
It does seem as though you made up more than you actually did, because it’s such an incredible story.
I knew that there were two Pride marches during the time of LGSM and I wanted to bookend the story with those. I knew the ending was incredible. I figured, at first, I might have to do some padding in the middle. In fact, as I researched I found so much amazing stuff that I realized I didn’t need to do any padding at all and it would be more about what I would have to leave out.
Is, for example, the scene in which the character Gethin gets beaten up when collecting for the miners based on a real-life incident?
Well, I took what they told me and I tried to weave it into a three-point story if I could. So they told me there was a rule in LGSM that you could only vote if you collected money for the miners and the collectors could not collect alone. They faced a lot of homophobic violence, so that and collecting for the miners at the same time, made the act extremely dangerous. They feared violence. Gethin Roberts, who told them to go to Wales, who was from Wales but did not want to go back himself, but then did, well that’s all true. But I also had him go out collecting money by himself and get beaten up. It closed the circle. There was a journey for that character – he was supportive, but passive at the start and then he gets so involved in the group that he gets beaten up. So it gave a nice arc for that character.
Andrew Scott as Gethin Roberts in Pride
Did you do a screening for the members of LGSM and the Welsh community?
They did see the first screening. They didn’t have approval, but they got to see it early on, which was very scary, as you can imagine. Many of the extras seen in the movie are the original members of LGSM.
Your background is in theatre, what was this experience like for you and how was it different to play writing?
Matthew and I have a background in theatre, much more so than film. So we are used to the relationship between director and writer in theatre. The writer is in the room every day, he’s on set every day. It’s very different. The writer has a lot of space, which in cinema is less the case. We were often told we had too many characters, that we didn’t have enough money to get the needed coverage. We saw it in a theatrical sense. If there were five people in a scene, we did not do a cut-away. We would tell the actors that with five people in the scene, one person would speak and be the focus and that person needed to grab the others’ attention. That’s how we did the big group scenes. That’s what happens on stage.
It’s easier to write a film than a play. I think, because you have another arm to storytelling that you don’t have on stage. You can say, “He puts a telescope up to his eye, and we see through it the coast of 18th century Spain and the camera sweeps down over galleons.” Those sentences can sweep off your fingers. You may end up in a fight about it with someone telling you that you can’t have six galleons, they’ll only give you one, but you can still describe it visually that way. You can’t do that on stage, you are ham strung. In film you get away with so much more.
What do you hope people seeing this film will take away from it?
There’s a message in the film that people are hungry to hear. I think we have abandoned certain imaginative ideas about how to make life better for ourselves and other people and we think that all we can now agree on is the best possible way to manage our economic market, that’s all that matters. We vote for who can manage the markets the best. There’s a message in the film that there’s a great dissatisfaction about this, there’s a hunger to invest our energy in other ways of living. I would love that people would see the lesson of LGSM as that they were amateurs, the strike failed, but what they did was extraordinary. It achieved so much, even if it didn’t achieve it’s ultimate aim, because they showed up. In the world today, it’s so easy to be an online supporter of all kinds of things with one click. But prejudice can’t survive proximity, it melts away when you meet and speak to those you fear. If you show up, that makes the difference. It’s a new and interesting idea. I also want young LGBT people to see a version of themselves that’s different to what they see in other aspects of the media, I hope that empowers them and makes them feel better.
Paddy Considine, Bill Nighy and Andrew Scott
Was there a difference between how people reacted to the making of this film in the UK to in the US? I noticed that in the film you do relate the Welsh miners’ situation to that of those working in Pennsylvania coalmines as a way of making the issues raised relatable to American audiences.
The questions raised are about bigger issues, solidarity and intersectionality, those things cross all borders. We were constantly told, Americans won’t get this, and they won’t get that. On one occasion, by an American, we were told, “We’re talking about dumb Americans here!” We decided to respond with, “My wife is American and I’m very offended,” as that would put a stop to the whole discussion. Don’t write people off as stupid or as having too short attention spans. People are as good as what they’re given, so give them the best.
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