Have a Butcher's

The Making of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Stephen Marcus

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9780750986496
• Print ISBN:
  9780750967938

When Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was released in 1998, few would have prophesied quite the impact this low-budget crime comedy would have. Almost overnight it became a cultural phenomenon, launched the careers of Guy Ritchie, Matthew Vaughn and Jason Statham, amongst others, and spawned a television series and numerous British gangster film rip-offs in the process. But box office gold didn't come without huge upheaval, and the making of the film was often fraught. In Have a Butcher's, actor Stephen Marcus (Nick The Greek in the film) recounts the on-set dramas, the behind-the-scenes banter, his initial meeting with Guy Ritchie, the subsequent trips to Hollywood as the boys basked in success and critical acclaim, and the numerous financial problems that were only solved when Sting and Trudie Styler came on board. Drawing upon interviews with his co-stars, never-before-seen photos and original storyboards, Stephen tells the story of a film that has become a firm cult favourite.

1

‘dunno tom, seems expensive’

Tom sells Nick a stereo.

Ed arrives at Tom’s shop.

Ed, Tom and Nick walk through the shop.

Nick The Greek and Tom do a deal.

Tom gets money out of the oven.

BRIGHTON ROCK	1947
THE ITALIAN JOB	1969
PERFORMANCE	1970
GET CARTER	1971
VILLAIN	1971
THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY	1979
SCUM	1979
MCVICAR	1980
THE KRAYS	1990

As the list above shows, British gangster films have been around for years. These are some of them that came before Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and below is a list of some that have come since. Some good, some bad and some great. We all have different opinions on which is which.

SEXY BEAST	2000
GANGSTER NO.1	2000
SNATCH	2000
LOVE, HONOUR & OBEY	2000
ESSEX BOYS	2000
LAYER CAKE	2004
THE BUSINESS	2005
RISE OF THE FOOTSOLDIER	2007
IN BRUGES	2008
BONDED BY BLOOD	2010

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was released in 1998 by Polygram after almost three years of hard work by Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn: three years of meetings, script writing and rewriting and rewriting and more rewriting, fundraising, pre-production, hunting down locations, putting together the crew and, of course, casting.

Guy Ritchie was introduced to Matthew Vaughn in 1995 through a friend of Guy’s. Matthew had told the friend that he was a producer, so first-time director Guy exaggerated a few things about himself and a partnership began. Guy sent Matthew a copy of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Matthew took Guy’s script down to the country and read it:

It had no ending and no real structure but it was a diamond. It had so much energy and was strong, funny, clever, new and original.¹

MATTHEW VAUGHN

A few days later Matthew called him up. Guy acted some of the scenes over the phone to him and Matthew was convinced, ‘Let’s make this film.’

For two years they worked tirelessly on getting the film made. The whole process was made harder by the fact that Guy was a first-time film director; investors are wary of funding untried talent. The whole process brought them both close together and they built a strong friendship based on honesty and taking no bullshit from each other and the others involved in the film. For example, if you allow them to, a film crew can take forever to set up a scene and get going. The director of photography may take a long time lighting it, the art director may take forever dressing the scene, and of course the actors will stand around talking forever if allowed. When this happened Guy was often heard counting down from ten. When this was heard everyone would get going because nobody wanted him to get down to one. I never saw what happened if he did get to one.

The first draft that Guy wrote was 250 pages long. The powers that be say a page of script equals roughly a minute of film, so this film would have run at four and a half hours. Guy and Matthew spent the first two months polishing the script and trimming it down. Once the script was sorted, it was down to Matthew to get it financed. He punted it around all over the place and the script ended up on Trudie Styler’s desk.

I found myself laughing rather a lot … I don’t believe in putting money into projects. Having said that, I thought I’d take a punt on this one because I thought it was really worth putting some money into this one.²

TRUDIE STYLER

I personally remember some investors from Italy. Vas Blackwood (Rory Breaker) and I met them at Ealing Studios when we were in there for a fitting. People invest in films for many reasons, but often one of them is that they like to meet and hang out with filmmakers and actors. Being at the studios at the same time as the investors is a golden opportunity to impress them. But I guess we weren’t that impressive, because they later pulled their money out, almost collapsing the production. How do they feel now?’ wonders Vas Blackwood.

It started out at £3 million and I thought, ‘This is going to be Lawrence of Arabia, with big shots and panoramic stuff.’ Then the budget got cut and cut, it ended up being less than a million. I shoot commercials with bigger budgets than that – in fact back then I was doing music videos with bigger budgets. Back then I’d do a Bjork video for a million. This budget was £800,000. Guy was like ‘Can we do it for this money?’ [I replied] ‘I can do it for that, I’m used to doing it for cheap.’

TIM MAURICE-JONES

Tim Maurice-Jones was the director of photography and he got involved in the film because of working on music videos. Guy Ritchie saw a video that Tim had worked on for Take That, called ‘Babe’. He called Tim in for a meeting and after a chat – and Tim thinking, ‘I’m going to have to cut corners to make this work’ – Guy asked him to do it. And Tim did cut corners; in fact he sunk nearly all of his fee back into the film to pay for the lights that he wanted.

Just as we were about to shoot there was a wobble. Some money had pulled out and there was a real sense of ‘this might not happen’. There were days to go. That’s when Trudie and Sting got involved, I think. I had a connection there. I’d worked with them on a film, The Grotesque, which Trudie produced. So when I heard there had been this wobble, I was like ‘no’. Then I got a call: it was all back on again. Matthew had done something and pulled something out of the bag.

STEVEN MACKINTOSH

We had all the money. We were at Ealing Studios. I was walking around the art department and they were printing up money and making half a ton of ganja, putting all the things together. I was shown around the studio space, ‘this is where we’re going to do this’, and then suddenly, bang, they pulled out. It was all off and Matt was, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve’ … and he did and we were all back on. But then it was decided that he was going to use some sort of dodgy, hooky money, some gangsters’ money. So Matt was, ‘We’ll, restructure, cut the budget and don’t do it as a studio, do it all on location, tell everyone they’re getting paid the square root of fuck all. I’ll give everybody a bonus when it stands.’ Handmade were supposed to be working as the sales agent. They had very little to do with the film, but they were the sales agent. They went bust a week into filming. Suddenly Matt had nothing – no sales agent, no distribution. He managed to borrow the money, a bit from Trudie (Styler), a bit from Peter Morton, a bit from Stephen Marks, a bit from a handful of his mates – total of about a hundred grand, but he kept it moving. He actually made a sort of socialist cooperative movie out of a bunch of arch Tories and aristocrats.

NICK MORAN

The budget dropped from around £3 million to about £800,000, and, as Nick says, everybody ended up working for low fees and part deferments - meaning we got half of our fees during working and half when the film was released and in profit. Now, most films don’t go into profit, and you rarely see any deferred money. By that I mean that there is some creative accounting done so it looks like films haven’t made profit. If they didn’t really make profit, then who would be stupid enough to invest in them? Lock, Stock did go into profit, it made approximately $25 million and Matthew Vaughn and Guy Ritchie are two very happy bunnies these days. Matthew is a very loyal person and as far as I know everybody got paid the full deferments as agreed.

I’ve never known a producer drive it through and turn it around: you’ve lost the money, you’ve lost the names, you’ve lost the sales agent, your route to market, lost the studio, everything – but he still made it. We’ve got 20 quid but we’re still making it. Incredible. It went from £3 million to £800,000. When I got the phone call I was the lead in a £3 million movie to be shot in Ealing Studios, and I ended up in a £800,000 movie being shot on the back streets of Bethnal Green. God bless ’em. I stuck by them but they stuck by me, even more importantly.

NICK MORAN

I personally became involved with the film at the casting stage, obviously. I got a call from my agent, and he sent me a script. He’s no longer my agent, as he let me go just before Lock, Stock was released – doh! My career shifted after it was released, and my new agent reaped the rewards. Anyway, the call said I had to read the script, and then if I liked it I had an audition with the casting director, Celestia Fox, and the director, Guy Ritchie. The script was a small, low-budget British movie called Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (a mouthful of a title).

When I read a script I find it hard to decide if it’s good or not, even though I’ve read hundreds, and Lock, Stock was no exception. I couldn’t tell if it was good or not. The dialogue was great but it jumped around and I found that difficult to follow. The characters were very exciting and funny, and I could see myself playing a few of them – that is what swung it for me, and I went for the audition.

People often ask if I knew that it was going to be a success; to be honest, I had no idea. You can never tell if a film is going to be a hit. There are so many factors: what genres are on trend? What are the other films being released at the same time? And, of course, is it actually a well-written and well-made film?

Lock, Stock broke the trends of all the gangster films before it (and created a few trends after it). Every twenty years or so a great British gangster movie gets released, and it was time for another when Lock, Stock came along. The audience took it to heart and they loved it, I think they loved the characters, the dialogue and, of course, the story.

Usually when I get an audition booked, I check up on the director. But this new fella, Guy Ritchie, had no track record except for a few music videos, adverts and a little short film called The Hard Case. This was the precursor to Lock, Stock. It’s about a gambler in a card game – sound familiar? It stars Benedick Bates and Wale Ojo, and was written and directed by Guy Ritchie. So when I got the call for the audition I had no idea what to expect, and I also had no idea what role I was to read for. I don’t think they did ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Thanks To
• Foreword by Paul Tanter
• 1 ‘Dunno Tom, seems expensive’
• 2 ‘They lack any kind of criminal credibility’
• 3 ‘If you hold back anything, I’ll kill ya’
• 4 ‘He’s got some adhesive mates’
• 5 ‘Can we lock up and get drunk now?’
• 6 ‘It’s a Samoan pub’
• 7  Lenny McLean
• 8 ‘It’s Been Emotional’