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This page provides snippets from reviews of Paul's third film, Goodbye Charlie Bright plus extracts from the Press Release background information.
This film started production back in 1999, under the working title of "Strong Boys", this was changed to "Keep On Running Charlie Bright" and recently became "Goodbye Charlie Bright".
The film is about the friendship between two teenage boys from a south London council estate, set in the middle of a long, hot summer. It charts the way the close yet volatile relationship between Charlie and Justin reaches breaking point.
As Charlie watches one of his best mates leave to join the army, he starts to question where his own life is heading, but for the time being is kept busy looking after Justin who is constantly dragging him into trouble at any opportunity.
As the baking summer reaches boiling point, Charlie becomes desperate to find a way out, and when Justin decides to take the law into his own hands - Charlie realises that in order to make something of his life, he needs to sacrifice their friendship ...
A rites-of-passage story, strongly rooted in Nick Love's own life, co-producer Charles Steel describes Goodbye Charlie Bright...
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... it's a slice of life, and it's also a coming of age story about friendship ... it's a story about a defining moment in a young man's life. Charlie comes to a point when he realises he's got to move on and leave behind everything he's known. Knowing Nick [Love] and having worked with him and been a friend for many years, I think I've seen that moment in his own life. It gives the script its honesty. |
Nick Love describes writing the script for his first feature length film ...
All my writing comes from people I've met or stories I've heard, but it's not my life story. There's elements of me in all the characters in a way but I wouldn't want to make a film about myself as a direct transcript. On the other hand, my rule of thumb is never to make a film unless I know exactly what I am talking about.
Despite being set on a south London council estate, the film is not the depressing bleak-fest you might have thought ... shot in wide screen, deliberately suggestive of American western's and gangster films ... it is filled with sharp wit and explosions of colour. As Nick Love explains ...
It's set on a council estate because I grew up on one, but I'm not keen on the Ken Loach kind of council estate. My memories ... are of a very colourful place. I don't have memories of it being somewhere constantly grey and overcast. |
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Paul has worked with Nick Love before, on the short film "Love Story" which also stared Foreman and Thewlis - you may remember David Thewlis from "Total Eclipse" (with Leonardo DiCaprio) and "Seven Years In Tibet" (with Brad Pitt). Danny Dyer co-starred with Paul in "The Trench". For Paul though the major attraction of this film was working with Nick Love again:
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I'd worked with him before on "Love Story", and I really enjoyed the experience. He's sharp and very honest, he's always straight with you and he doesn't mess around. I hadn't played a part like this before and it's a blinding script. I related to that time of transition - being about 16 and just hanging around with your mates having a laugh. |
Paul is the only cast member not from South London and had to study the accent:
It's just a London accent rather than a specifically South London accent. It was very scary at first, especially when I went to the read through and everyone was so creative with the language of the script. At first, I had to just concentrate on the accent, but you can't go far wrong really with a script like that, and that acts as a safety net. |
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Nick Love's South London council estate rites-of-passage story offers nothing in the way of startling or gimmicky story content. So, when you hear that it's about dead-end teenagers, street crime and adolescence, you may just feel you've seen and heard it all before. But you haven't
It's simply a great film, succeeding in being at once funny, exciting and moving, just the way all great stories do. Shot in the rich light of a sticky British summer, it neatly avoids predictable dreariness in the portrayal of council estate life.
There's a superb cast, headed by ex-TV soap heart-throb Paul Nicholls, convincingly losing his native Manchester vowels to be thoroughly at home south-east of the Thames. The relationship between his Charlie Bright and Roland Manookian's Justin is a subtle triumph.
It seems a little repetitive just to put the word 'superb' next to every cast member's name, but that's what they all deserve. [Richard] Driscoll, once famous as a TV cockney vicar, excels in an hilarious display of drug-crazed lunacy, while Behr, better known for mindless TV presenting, beautifully underplays a neat cameo.
There are plenty of fine tunes on the soundtrack, much to make you laugh out loud and stuff to make you think.
It's the business.
Reviewer's Rating:
In the US, teen movies are about using your virginity to a pastry or trying to relocate your vehicle after a wild night on the town.
Over here, we do things slightly differently, as debut director Nick Love's humorous drama illustrates. Set during a long hot summer, the film focuses on the straining relationship between Charlie (Nicholls) - the only one who could possibly have a decent future - and his friend Justin (Manookian), who always manages to screw things up. Nicely played ... this has some genuinely funny moments and provides an enjoyable addition to the c.v.'s of the talented young cast.
Reviewer's Rating:
Cracking, authentic sarf-London-based film with heart and balls.
Spot-on capturing of the moment when a group of old mates move on.
Reviewer's Rating:
A promisingly energetic but flawed coming-of-age comedy from first time writer-director Nick Love.
Set in a vibrantly depicted south London council estate, ... Charlie (former EastEnder Paul Nicholls) and his increasingly unhinged best mate Justin (a stand-out performance from Roland Manookian) slowly drift apart over the course of one hot summer.Despite ignoring most (but not all) grim socio-realist clichés, Love let's himself down by sticking rigidly to the redundant Boyz-breaking-out-of-their-'Hood storyline imported straight outta Compton.
Reviewer's Rating:
There's nothing like a bit of gratuitous nudity to keep the peepers peeled
Once it gets past a tired, freeze-frame intro sequence (which looked old when Trainspotting did it), Goodbye Charlie Bright quickly starts sparkling thanks to blend of believable characters and emotive plotting, making a refreshing change from the usual run of-the-mill lads-about-town movie shenanigans.... Charlie Bright is more reminiscent of coming-out comedy Beautiful Thing not least in the way the council estates are depicted in vivid summer hues rather than as the stone-clad hell favoured by the likes of Ken Loach.
Plotwise, the focus is on the crumbling friendship of childhood chums Charlie (Nicholls) and Justin as they realise they're spiralling off in different directions. But Love falters as he tries to give the film deeper relevance by bookending it with anti-war sentiments
Love also struggles with the dialogue, which often slips into Sarf Lahndan clichés - given that Love grew up on the estates, that's unforgivable. But, despite occasionally feeling like an EastEnders reunion party, there are enough surprises to keep Charlie Bright gliding towards its satisfying conclusion
Reviewer's Rating:
Model-turned-director Nick Love has certainly managed to assemble an impressive cast for his first feature. Among the supporting actors are David Thewlis and Phil Daniels, while a younger generation of talent is represented by the likes of Paul Nicholls and Roland Manookian.
The story itself, co-scripted by Love, is a familiar coming-of-age yarn, in which a working-class teenager is forced to choose between his old mates and a world beyond his South London council estate. The key relationship in the film is between Charlie (Nicholls) and Justin (Manookian), who have been friends for years, with the more ambitious Charlie acting as a surrogate father figure to his tearaway pal. Increasingly however he is becoming exasperated with the latter's reckless behaviour...'Goodbye Charlie Bright' is at its most satisfying in observing its characters simply hanging out or pulling off petty scams - through these moments it captures both the camaraderie and the tedium of being part of a teenage gang, as well as the deep feelings that can underpin same-sex adolescent friendships.
Regrettably, as Love seeks to move through the plot gears, an unpretentious character study develops into an unconvincing thriller. There's a tiresome sub-plot involving a thuggish Falklands veteran (Daniels), and a gun stolen from a robbery precipitates a fairly preposterous denouement.
That 'Goodbye Charlie Bright' remains a notch above other recent British debuts can be attributed to Nicholls's likeable central performance, Tony Imi's accomplished widescreen camerawork, and the imaginative production design, which fills the concrete environment with warm, bright colours. It also gets the little details right - such as the pastel polo shirts, white trainers, and Lacoste shorts - which goes some way to make up for the narrative shortcomings.
Reviewer's Rating:
Paul Nicholls in the buff is a tasty proposition, But not even a couple of minutes of newly waxed, former EastEnders tush (cute as it is) is sufficient reason to watch Nick Love's valentine to growing up in South London. Goodbye Charlie Bright is a good-natured little film, borne of the writer-director's teenage reminiscences of Deptford, but aching familiarity hangs heavily in the air like cheap cologne.
Charlie (Nicholls) is your regular teenage boy: a seething mass of anger and hormones desperate to get laid and get wasted. Bored out of his mind and eager to escape his south London council estate, Charlie and best friend Justin (Manookian) dream up fun little scams, including stealing a neighbouring gang's football. When the boys become involved in a robbery, rivalries come to the fore, pitting members of Charlie's gang against one another.Nicholls nails the accent and has charisma to spare as the happy-go-lucky hero, but he is completely outshone by Manookian. The relative newcomer revels in his role as the wide-eyed and sweetly appealing best friend whose reckless actions inflame tensions on the estate. Strong repartee between the young actors, specifically the two leads, anchors the picture - even though most look a good five years older than their characters.
The plot unfolds with a certain inevitability, setting up the central dilemma: Charlie's choice between his friends and his future. Dani Behr lingers in a mercifully small supporting role as the brazen object of Charlie's affections. "If I had a bird like that wrapped round me," he boasts, "You wouldn't catch me hanging round with you kids." Dream on Charlie Bright, dream on.
Reviewer's Rating:
The background to Goodbye Charlie Bright is not unlike that of The Broken Hearts Club - a group of male friends tired of their aimless lives and, in the case of their leader, Paul Nicholls as the eponymous Charlie, looking for a way out. The difference is that these are adolescents, they're all straight and they live on what appears to be a model council estate in south London. There's no graffiti here and no violence to speak of and the teenagers play chess. True, the inhabitants, from small kids to grannies, eff and blind a lot but they're Londoners. What else would you expect?
The action, such as it is, is contrived and episodic. Charlie, brighter than the others, is restless but doesn't know what to do. He has a cousin who, starting from the same estate, has improbably made a fortune in the property market and offers him a job but he doesn't want that. His best friend is the rather dim Roland Manookian and, along with him and Alexis Rodney, Charlie does a bit of gentle housebreaking and steals a gun, which assumes significance later.Meanwhile, another member of the gang, Danny Dyer, is planning to marry his newly pregnant girlfriend but, unknown to him, she's still putting herself about quite happily. As written and directed by Nick Love, this is the kind of film in which characters come and go to meet the needs of the action, which boils down to rites of passage stuff, with Charlie realising that he has outgrown his friends - especially the devoted Manookian - and should make a break for it.
One of the passing characters with whom Charlie seems on the verge of romance is Danni Behr, which is odd because he looks so young that she could be his auntie. How old are these boys anyway? I've no idea. Yet despite amounting to a lot of ideas in search of a story this is quite a watchable movie and Paul Nicholls, who looks a little like an even younger Jude Law, is rather impressive.
Paul Nicholls was probably given the lead role of Charlie, in Goodbye Charlie Bright (18), to help sell Nick Love's first attempt at a feature film.
Certainly, his boy-babe charms are much in evidence, no more so than in the opening scene, which sees Charlie and two chums steal another kid's football and take off down a South London street – absolutely starkers.But Nicholls is not the only attraction here: in the end it is Roland Manookian, as Charlie's best friend Justin, who steals the show, followed up by a credible performance from Danny Dyer as Francis.
Love wanted to recreate the fond memories of his formative years. He has painted an optimistic picture, doused in heat-wave sun. The bright colours of the sky and the calypso wardrobe Americanises the setting, as does a scrap yard cowboy named Tony Immaculate. The estate looks more like a Pontin's holiday camp than a grim London suburb.
Justin and Francis are transformed, as small town lads, content to live out their limiting lives. Justin is happy with the occasional grope at a party and a designer pair of sunglasses. And Francis wants to get married, growing old before his time.
But Charlie knows there is more to life. He befriends a neighbour named Blondie (Danny Behr in a weak cameo) who is a little out of his league, and begins to break away from his bosom buddies.
The cracks in the boys' relationship start to show. But Nicholls and Manookian's shared screen time reveals there is chemistry, if only there was more time for it to affirm itself. A mixed bag but still, a great effort.
While the British filmmakers of today are better off than, say, the British coal miners of the '80s, it's still a tough time for the country's film industry. The National Lottery, the government's tax on the witless, became a massive new source of arts funding in the late '90s. Suddenly there was more money to be spent on movies, and a glut of comedies, dramas and thrillers followed, all striving to repeat the success of such U.K. productions as The Full Monty, Elizabeth, Sliding Doors and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. But most of these derivative, commercially minded offerings were met with terrible reviews and even worse box-office results.
In the age of Cool Britannia, filmmakers have struggled to decide which route to take. Should they emulate Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke, whose bleak and gritty films have made that side of British life familiar to an international art-house audience? Or is it smarter to make another crowd-pleaser, full of whimsy but shorn of any local references that could confuse American viewers? Just how British is a British film supposed to be?Director Nick Love would rather avoid the question altogether. "If I'd had any choice, I wouldn't have made a British film," he says over the phone from his home in London. "So I tried to make something that was as American as possible."
Lively and stylish, Love's debut feature, Goodbye Charlie Bright, is the most intriguing film at Toronto's second annual Britpics festival (July 20-26 at the Bloor). None of the six Britpics features I've seen is without flaws -- unfortunately, there's no Trainspotting, Nil by Mouth, Ratcatcher or Sexy Beast in this bunch. But the best of them do contradict preconceptions about British films and point in new directions.
Goodbye Charlie Bright is a fine example: though it's set on a South London council estate (we'd call it a housing project), stars lads spouting slangy dialogue and features the climactic use of Oasis' Britpop anthem "Live Forever," the look and feel of the picture is resolutely un-British. Inspired by a book on Mexican architect Luis Barragan, Love dressed up the locations and the characters in bold, bright colours -- instead of the usual greys and dark blues, the screen is full of screaming pinks and lurid yellows.
"I thought it would be a really weird concept to do, but something that wouldn't detract from the performances or the story," he says. "Many people have told me that when they watch the film, it takes them 10 minutes to get used to the colour of it. It seems so unreal."
Needless to say, the film ends up a long way from social realism. Love -- a former model and a fixture in the London tabloids because of his romance and short-lived marriage with soap star Patsy Palmer -- says it was truer to his own memories that way. "Everything was big and colourful when I was a kid," he says. "The estate I grew up on was quite grey, but I saw things in Technicolor and widescreen. The truth is, if I didn't think it would serve the film, I wouldn't have done it."
This somewhat artificial environment does heighten the intensity of the relationship between the main characters, best mates Charlie (Paul Nicholls) and Justin (Roland Manookian). Over the course of a summer, they lark about, indulging in partying and petty crime. As the two encounter the likes of local nutcase Eddie (Phil Daniels), Charlie's criminal cousin Hector (Richard Driscoll) and Charlie's dad (David Thewlis in a wise, understated scene), the mood gets darker and the stakes higher. Through it all, Love does a lovely job of portraying both the hardness and softness in the central friendship.
"I think everyone, at some point in their lives, has had these ambiguous relationships," says Love. "You never know what'll happen. A couple of critics in this country had a dig at the film by saying it sat on the fence: is this a homoerotic film or what? I took that as a compliment in a backhanded way. That's exactly what it is supposed to be doing -- trying to make you think about that confusion."
Love cites two classic American films about intense male bonding as inspiration, Midnight Cowboy and Mean Streets. Goodbye Charlie Bright also contains playful references to Taxi Driver and Pulp Fiction. Like Paul Thomas Anderson, Todd Solondz and Wes Anderson in the U.S., Love employs a very movie-literate style without being explicitly derivative (except for the final shot, which Love admits was lifted from French director Leos Carax's Mauvais Sang).
He feels that one thing that the British film industry needs is the ballsiness of the new American directors. "They've really given the studios a kick up the arse," he says. "They're making marketable, commercial films with A-list stars that'll get the films out there, but they're telling people really good stories. They are the Scorseses, the Bogdanovichs and the Coppolas of the millennium, I suppose."
Several magazines, newspapers and review sites have posted reviews of Goodbye Charlie Bright, so if you still need more opinions, why not check out these sites - but don't forget to come back!!
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This Page created: 23 December, 2000
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