Concrete Plans screened last month as part of the digital Arrow Video FrightFest event and was easily one of the highlights. Directed and written by first-time filmmaker Will Jewell, Concrete Plans pits a group of working-class labourers against their aristocratic boss with horrific consequences. It’s a tightly written story that is by far one of the most exciting British thrillers in years and addresses, not only morality, but also issues of class, xenophobia, and much more. After being so well received on the festival circuit, it now arrives on DVD and Digital HD from Monday 23rd November.
At the heart of the group of workers is Bob, played by Steve Speirs. Bob is in charge of the group, but as fractures appear, he loses all control and finds himself taken down a dark path. It’s an interesting role made all the more intriguing by Speirs’ performance. Bob is a role that is very different to some of Speirs’ more popular roles, such as Big Alan in Stella; comedy very much takes the backseat here. Speirs proves that he can do more than make the viewer laugh. In Bob, he’s crafted a truly tragic depiction of the eternally jolly guy that gets taken advantage of.
We caught up with Steve to find out what it was about Bob and the project that appealed to him, and what made him want to step out of his comfort zone.
Like a lot of indie projects, Concrete Plans took several years to come together. When and how did you get involved?
I had a call quite late in the day actually. I think it had been in development for a while and funding was getting into place. I know Will Thomas, who was one of the actors, had been attached for a while, but I had a call quite late in the day. I can only assume somebody dropped out, which is how I get a lot of work. I was toying with…originally my manager said there’s interest here for a movie and I was writing my own show at the time. I’m writing a sitcom for BBC Wales. So I was in the middle of writing that and I said, “I don’t really think I can take the time off”. They said that they really thought I should read it because it was a terrific script. I’m so glad I did take time out to read it because it was a terrific script. I got involved late, but I’m so glad I did. It was a very quick turnaround from the time I signed up to it. As soon as I saw the script, because you rarely get really good ones, or true ensemble scripts. I think a lot of films say ensemble, but don’t deliver that in the script. This did. By the time I said yes to it, I think we were shooting like a month later or something. It was that quick.
What was it about Bob that made you want to have a go at playing him?
I loved Bob because I would like to think that he is the touchstone for us as viewers. I think there’s a sort of decency and humanity about Bob and I think that as we get into the certain nightmare scenario, and it escalates and gets out of hand, and this powder-keg that we just see is going to erupt…I think Bob for me was the common man, or the man I’d like to think I would be in that situation. There was relatability and humanity and a decency to him. I also like the fact that he struggles. He struggles with his blood bond to Steve, but also the fact that he’s trying to keep the job down, and bring money in. He’s responsible for what’s going on back in his home life. He’s responsible for these blokes. So there’s a really caring quality to him. I very much saw him as the Atlas of the piece, carrying the world around on his shoulders. That’s a great challenge, especially as an actor who mainly does comedy now. It was just really nice to turn my hand to something else.
Bob really is that character. Out of everyone, he was the one I felt most sorry for when watching. He’s just trying to do the job, trying to do right by everyone. A lot of the characters in the film, these are characters that you do see in society. You do see the work-horses, the slackers, the immigrants that are treated differently….
There are some real unlikable shits in that mix. For example, Steve didn’t need that situation to become the violent psycho he is. He’s a violent psycho that feeds off of that situation. They are all on the make for something for themselves. Dave is after that one last job, he wants the money to pay off something. Steve doesn’t work, Jim is on the run…they’ve all got an agenda. Then you’ve got the class above them that their agenda has got so little integrity. The only person with integrity thinking of other people is Bob. So I’m really pleased you said that because I think that all of these sorts of movies need someone that we relate to and whose eyes we see it through. If you had said you had related to Steve and saw it through Steve’s eyes then I’d be putting the phone down immediately.
There’s a scene with Bob and Steve in which Steve is just being so horrible to Bob, hurling needless abuse at him. It’s so brutal, but again it’s something you see so often in life, the family friend or relative that gets taken advantage of.
I think that’s a really interesting scene because you’ve got in life the thing where people are either radiators or sinks. You either give out, or take. I think that Bob is definitely a radiator and he gives out, and then he’s caught in a situation and a tense moment with the ultimate sink in the film. The person that just wants to take and take and take. You put those together and hopefully what you get is a powerful scene. It was a difficult scene to do because it’s difficult for Bob to hear all that.
Given the fast-turnaround, did you have much time to work on your performances and character relationships?
Normally within an ensemble film there’s a lot of time to get to know each other and to work the scenes and to work the scripts. To talk it all through, to take it apart and look at all the layers and see what beats are there, and what you want your character to say and what the scene itself is saying. But this was a movie that was shot in about three weeks, which is incredible when you think of it. It was incredibly tense. We lived and breathed in each other’s pockets. We did not have time to do any of that. The odd thing was, by just being together, because there’s no many scenes…it’s very rare that there’s a scene where there’s one chap on his own. It’s not that Indiana Jones against the world sort of thing where there’s lots of Indy on his own. This is really about a group of them.
Now we were stuck up on a farm, which was our location, which was our unit base, which was where we ate, which was we went to to get changed and do make-up, we’re all in this farm together. It became the centre of our lives for that month that we were together. When you’re that closely with each other you get to know each other very quickly. We were working split days as well a lot of the time, and with turnarounds and set-ups there’s time to talk in-between. I think because of the fact that we were thrown into that ensemble situation, there was a lot of trust immediately. Within that trust you did feel like you could explore little things. This wasn’t the place where you got a load of takes. We just didn’t have the luxury of that. It was very much a case of, “we’re going to do a master, we’re going to come in and you’re going to get one shot each, either a two-shot or a close-up and we’ve got to move on.” Everything technically had to be right, which also meant that you had to try and put your A-game on because you weren’t going to get the chance to do it again. There was very little space for people to be precious and say, “I think I could have done that better.” Well that’s tough, we’re moving on.
You mentioned that you were all staying together. I’m hoping it wasn’t quite as close quarters as it ends up being in the film.
(Laughs) You’ve not seen the blood yet in the place they put us in… It wasn’t that close quarters. We did get our own rooms in the hotel down the road. Thank God, or I think there would’ve been more blood on the set than in the film.
Although a genre thriller, the film deals with some really relevant issues, exploring the class divide, xenophobia and toxic masculinity. These are all things very prevalent in today’s society…
It’s very much a ‘film of now’. It reflects our times at the moment. We’re living in a time of – take the pandemic out – and we’re living in a time of suspicion of each other and the pressure of not knowing what is happening. If you look at the way the world is putting up borders to each other, which really worries me. I think the film reflects that, the fear of the outsider in the Viktor character. In the way that there’s mistrust the whole way through, no one is trusting each other. No one particularly likes each other and is looking out for themselves. If history has taught us anything, it’s that as soon as you do that, it’s going to lead to conflict. I think it pretty much reflects sadly a state of the notion as we are at the moment.
You mentioned it was filmed in Wales, was it nice to be back on home turf?
It was lovely actually. Brecon is beautiful. It’s a beautiful place to look at, but the other side of Brecon can be very harsh and arid. I mean the Brecon Beacons are where they stick the SAS to finish their training for the last month of their courses. For their survival month. The Ministry of Defence pays the local farmers a lot of money at that point because they stick these blokes up there in their pants with a knife, and a lot of sheep go missing so they can keep warm and eat and all the rest of it. The reason they do that, and they choose that, is it’s quite an arid place. I think that’s what’s really nice about the film actually. I think that the landscape of that farm and the remoteness and the way that the film closes in on the cast, that landscape becomes another character in a way. Especially when you watch it a second time, as the walls close in on them metaphorically, the scenery starts to open up in the shots that sort of shows you how small they are. It shows the isolation, aridness, and vastness of where they are.
Away from Concrete Plans, the BBC Wales show, The Tuckers, that you write and star in has just been commissioned for two more series. Is writing that what has been keeping you busy during the lockdowns?
That’s my day job at the moment, which is great. It’s a life of deadlines now. Story-lining and deadlines and story-lining and deadlines. It’s great. Whenever I’m on set and I’m filming after about six weeks, I always go, “I wish I was back writing”, because I love the DNA of it and I love writing. But whenever I’m writing, I want to be on-set. I wrote series two and then we were due to shoot, but obviously we couldn’t. But because the fan-base came so quickly and so strongly, and it did so well on iPlayer, and got so many hits outside of Wales over the bridge, which was just terrific as in so far as that everything was translating and everyone was getting it. There was confidence about it and suddenly BBC Wales picked up and commissioned me to write the third one. It’s a little but odd because normally I’d have shot the second one now. I’m waiting to shoot both of them back-to-back. I sort of feel like I’m training for a big rugby match and I’ve been training for a long time and I’ve yet to put my boots on.
Well hopefully it won’t be too long before filming can get back to something a bit more normal again.
We’ll shoot next year. We’ll shoot in June, and we’ll shoot two series, and it’ll be great. It’s a terrific cast, we’re all really good friends after the first series and everybody can’t wait to get back together. To see the response, warmth, and genuine love we’ve had is interesting because it normally takes a few series for people to really take to characters, but the response has been very quick.
Concrete Plans screened at FrightFest, have you had a chance to see what the reaction has been?
No I’ve not. That’s the sad thing about these things at the moment. Usually we’d get to sit in the cinema and gauge what people are feeling about it. It’s difficult. I will know when it comes out because I’ll sit down and watch it with my wife and she’ll tell me in no uncertain terms what she thinks of it. I tend not to read reviews, I always try to gauge from what the public say and what the audience are feeling. It would have been nice to have been sat in the cinema, because that’s the whole point of it really isn’t it? You should have an experience where, especially in this film, because it does take quite a turn and get quite graphic, it’s quite nice to hear that expressed in oohs and ahhs.
What I saw was very positive and hopefully those that liked it will be telling their friends to watch it once it’s released.
Hopefully yeah. I do think that it’s a British film, an indie British film. It’d be great if people got behind it. In hard times, it shows what you can do with a good script, a decent cast, and very little money.
Concrete Plans is available on DVD and Digital Download from Monday 23rd November 2020.
