Noel Clarke Tells Us Five Things About 4.3.2.1, The British Film Industry, Comics And More

I spoke to Noel Clarke about his film 4.3.2.1, coming to UK DVD and Blu-ray today. It’s a kind Girl Power* jewel heist caper that has Kevin Smith making a cameo peppered with jokes about how he’s too big for his seat on an airplane. So, if nothing else, it has proved rather prescient.

Here are Five Things that Clarke told me. Buckle up. He had an awful lot to say so I’m going to put the pedal down…

1. Noel Clarke’s Ambitions For The Film

I was just trying to do something different. I think we lack ambition in films in this country and I’d rather be the guy that fails doing something different than the guy that just does the same as everybody else. I did the Hood films, and I did them well, and arguably none of the others that have come out have been as good – that’s not a statement, it’s an argument. So why should I continually do the same thing over and over again and pigeonhole myself and limit my career?

One of the things I wanted to do differently was to give girls the forefront, give girls the chance to be the leads without putting myself as the main part, which is quite easy for me to do… and ask and answer some questions. It’s not a film where I say “I know about women” it’s where I say “These are girls, these are characters, and you are allowed to judge them”.

Also I wanted to be ambitious in being out of sequence and trying to do something new and fresh with cinema that isn’t really done here. The shot with the four girls that splits apart, it was motion control, so we just did the move four times and each time the motion control was set to go a different way and follow one of the girls. We did all the shots in an hour so the light wasn’t that different, then we stitched it together and graded it and made it look like it was one shot as they approach which then splits. I did this film with another guy and Mark Davis is the sort of visual effects guy and he’s more technical than I am. I don’t really want to be the guy who ends up doing flashy tricks, I just want to make films.

2. Success As A Filmmaker

People – I won’t even mention names – but certain directors can put out films that do no box office at all and they’re fucking applauded and it’s like “Oh, aren’t they the next best thing” but actually, no. People want to talk about what I do because I want to do something different. My films make box office. 4.3.2.1 has made a million, Adulthood made 4, Kidulthood made over half a million on 40 screens and you know what? When it comes down to reviewers and all that kind of stuff, they can sit on their high horses and have their opinions, it’s the public who go and watch the films. That’s why you make art – no matter what you do in life, no matter if you put on those trainers you’ve got on now, or your jacket or your shirt, people are going to like them or not. My job is to make films and put them out there and if people like them, they like them, if they don’t, they don’t. What can I do?

3. Old And New Projects

I have no idea what is next. It depends on which of my films get made, really. I definitely have a performance capture thing that I’m scripting at the moment, the Olympics film is being written at the moment, I’m writing that with another guy. I’ve written a whole bunch of other things and it just depends. For every one that gets made there usually another five that won’t get made or seem just about to get made or sit on my laptop forever. It’s just about trying to be different. I just want to inject something different into the industry over here because I think it’s a bit samey.

One of the scripts I wrote before Kidulthood, somebody else has picked up and they want to make. It’s a sort of romantic comedy, and I think that’s going to shoot in March. We’ve got a couple of American actresses on board that and it’s looking like it’s going to go. I have got another Rom-Com that I haven’t written yet, so maybe that will be something I write but for the moment I’m just doing a bit of acting.

4. Comics

Tony Lee, I love that guy. We’re cooking up something. I’ve been a long time comic fan, I’m not one of these people that’s jumped on the bandwagon to try and do a comic to make a film. I can already make films without doing that. Paul Cornell put me on to Tony. I was asking around, and Paul put me on to Tony.

I stopped reading comics when I was an actor because I was broke. I’ve started again this year and am catching up on things. I think Marvel are way ahead of DC at the moment, in terms of the whole Civil War, Dark Reign, Spider-Man: One More Day, all that kind of stuff. But I do like a lot of Image stuff and Boom stuff. I love Irredeemable and Incorruptible from [Mark] Waid. There’s a lot of stuff like Haunt and Welcome to Tranquility. Walking Dead is good… but isn’t it just 28 Days Later? What’s the deal with them. Who’s going to sue who?

There’s one comic book I love. I won’t name it, but I’ve been trying to get it and option it but the writer’s just a dickhead. He’s saying “You can have it, you can have it” but he won’t sign the paper. Nah – he’s an idiot.

5. The 4.3.2.1. Girls

It’s so funny when the media jump on things and they’re like “He thinks he can write women” because they’re just characters, characters that I wanted to see on the page that came from either my experiences or my sense of humour. None of the characters represent all women at all but they represent girls. There are girls who watch the film who love the film but hate three of the girls and love one of them, or love two of them but don’t like the other two.

Obviously the sales company and the marketing people sold the film one way, but it’s really about the four girls and their relationships and everything else is just thrown on top. They’re almost caricaturey girls, they represent a certain section: one’s kind of like an emo kind of girl, one’s like a feisty punky kind of girl, one’s like a normal every day girl and one’s posh girl. If you sat and thought about it you’d argue about why those four could be friends or would be friends. When they were separated from each other we dressed them how their characters would dress but when they were together we dressed them like they were mates. It’s all done so girls can relate to different girls, and we’re not just being like “these are generic girls”, they’re just under being caricatures of a personality and they will only ever relate to certain people.

Three of the girls were offered the parts because… well, Shanika was in Adulthood, so when writing, or re-writing Keris, it was very focused on her. With Tamsin, she auditioned for Adulthood so I told her there’d be something else, so Sandra was always for her, the nice sort of posh girl who has bad things happen to her. What happens to her is awful but because she gets so much revenge, you just about get away with it. Emma Roberts was targeted as well because I liked what she was about, I saw an interview with her where she was a bit cheeky and I liked that. I thought she could just play the every-girl. Ophelia, who is about to be massive, was auditioned. We kind of wanted somebody who was a great actress because she had arguably the hardest part to play. It’s the part that a lot of younger people find boring, but older people find interesting and we needed an actress who could just nail that. She came in and the moment she came in it was over. We could have sent everyone else home, but we didn’t. She’s gonna go on and be another person that Clarke has said “Watch this guy or girl” and then they go on and just do it.

4.3.2.1 is released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK today by Universal. I’m sure we’ll be keeping you abreast of Noel Clarke’s collaboration with Tony Lee.

*And I mean that in a very Spice Girls sense.