'I'm Annie, isn't this weird?' I said, 'Hi, I'm Richard': Anne Hathaway, 'caricature gangster' Dave Courtney, too-brown bananas, and an exiled hippie in Goa
Ace photographer Richard Kelly charts his picaresque odyssey through Manchester, London, Miami, the Arctic Monkeys' Sheffield, and a council flat inhabited by a Willie Nelson lookalike...
Pinewood Studios, circa 2012, and Sir Kenneth Branagh is striding across the floor of a film set to congratulate Richard Kelly on his performance.
The two-time Oscar winner is directing Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, a £60m Hollywood blockbuster Tom Clancy thriller starring Kevin Costner and Kiera Knightley but it is Kelly who has moved these shores’ ultimate thespian to gush.
Kelly says: ‘I was in this scene with Chris Pine playing a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan and the camera came past me and then onto him and I was flicking these switches - which they didn't tell me to do.
‘I landed the helicopter and Kenneth Branagh came over and he was like: "I love you what you're doing with the buttons."
‘And I said, "Oh, thanks, mate.’”
This, like many of Kelly’s tales, is delivered with a grin and the laconic sense of how comedic life can be. The 46-year-old from Burnage, south Manchester, impressed Branagh as an extra, a line of work pursued while living in London solely due to the wish to learn more about the art of cinematography.
It is typical of Kelly: rather than study theory at nightschool he chose the practical route by finding a way onto film sets where he could observe the experts up close.
A slew of parts and adventures ensued. They including playing one of Anne Hathaway’s prostitute-lovers in Les Miserables and the elevation to a speaking part that involved insurance, the five-star Paris hotel treatment, and a realisation that ‘I was just completely out of my depth.’
All of this came after Kelly was inspired to be a photographer when working as a busboy for the Manchester Evening News.
He says: ‘I attended Barlow RC High and left with no GCSEs and went to work at 16 at the MEN. I was a bit aimless at that point. There was no email then so I used to deliver things around the building, just messages and notes and parcels and whatnot. I remember you'd go in the newsroom and see the photographers come in and I really liked the fact that they wore their own clothes.
‘They always seemed to be just doing - not what they wanted, but they'd get a job and then they'd go off and they seemed to march to the beat of their own drum.
‘That appealed to me. They'd come in and they'd been photographing, say, Paul Ince at Man United or a portrait of someone who’d been in the IRA bomb - quite interesting stuff. That really piqued my interest. That was the first time I ever thought about photography. While I was there, I went to do a City and Guilds in it and really enjoyed that.
‘I left that job at 18 and I went to work for one of those really cheesy boudoir places in Altrincham called Girls on Film - a studio where housewives got slightly risqué photos done for their husbands.
‘I worked in the basement developing the film, chopping it all up into slides and then their agents would go show it.’
After around 18 months Kelly moved to a printers in Manchester. ‘They trained me to do black and white photographs, all the list prints, beautiful exhibition prints,’ he says. ‘I got to do the contact sheets for some Oasis singles - like the one with the wheelbarrow - Some Might Say.’
A degree taken remotely in Fine Art from Liverpool John Moores while still working followed then Kelly became a photographer’s assistant, on location in Miami, New York, South Africa, and other far-flung locales.
Next, a revelation: ‘You get on with the models, with everyone and you start realizing: “Actually, I can do this." Instead of getting £65 a-day you see the photographers on a grand and want some of that.’
So Kelly did - and he took off, notably snapping the Arctic Monkeys when the Sheffield group started out. ‘I got on really well with them,’ he says. ‘They liked the fact that I didn't really want to be their friend.
‘I just said, "Let's just do whatever you want to do and let's do it candid." I almost shot it a bit not documentary style, but very relaxed.
‘I'd been going to see PR and other agencies in Manchester and I went to see one, lied and said I was a photographer and had just got back from LA, shooting there.
‘They said, "All right. If we get anything, we'll give you a ring." I left and when I got out the lift they rang and said: "We've got something for you, come back up." It was this massive three-day shoot for Onitsuka Tiger. 1,500 quid a-day, great money - done in a stately home.’
Kelly would enjoy a studio share in Ardwick with other photographers that was a ‘huge warehouse’, drive a ‘classic Jag’, and was ‘doing alright.’ The move to London followed, the extra work, and an encounter with Dave Courtney, again self-propelled, due to Kelly’s curiosity.
He says: ‘The reason why I really like photography is it's an opportunity to be nosy, it really gives you an excuse to say to someone, “I'd like to spend some time with you.”
‘A friend told me about Dave Courtney and I was fascinated by how shit he was as a gangster, do you know what I mean? Just a caricature of what a gangster is.
‘I became really obsessed with him, found a contact for his manager on a drum and bass CD Courtney released, emailed the manager and said: “Look, I'm doing a book on Great Britain and I want to photograph him.”
‘He lives in this council house he calls Camelot Castle in Plumstead [southeast London] and I knocked on at 11am and he opened the door in a dressing gown, and I spent a full day with him, photographing him.’
Life and taking pictures of it continues to invigorate Kelly who lives again in his home town now.
He is a senior lecturer in fashion media at Manchester University, a position he has after grafting as a labourer on building sites, work his brother got him.
‘Hard graft and shit money,’ he says. ‘The lads were good, though. Like, if God forbid you're slightly different, you know what I mean? I had long hair so on the first day it was, “Oh, Mr. Darcy.”
‘Yes [I thought] bring it on, give me more. I used to joke about lace handkerchiefs. I was like, “I've got lots of lace handkerchiefs and my pantaloons in the van.” As long as, for them I can take it. And I was never late - they knew I was shit at it but I did my best. I wasn't shit but I wasn't great.’
Pantaloons feature in the meeting, too, with Anne Hathaway, which occurred when Kelly lived in Stoke Newington having moved out of the sweet deal of a council flat he obtained in trademark style.
“I had to house share at first in London and I was like, this is not for me. Living with an Aussie girl and French guy, who always seemed to have someone sofa surfing.
‘I did that for about six months. Then I put an advert on Gumtree because I hated the two people I lived with. You get to a point, it's not like you want everyone to be clean and tidy, you want everyone to do everything like you do it. You've become a bit of a dictator.
‘The advert said: "I'm sick of living with the people I live with. They're really messy. I want to live with people who are clean and tidy."
‘I received an email out of the blue from this guy, saying: "Look, I have a one-bedroom flat I want to rent out in Homerton, just around the corner from you in London Fields. Come and look at it.”
‘I said: “I can't. I won't be able to afford a one bedroom."
‘He said, "Oh, come and meet me anyway.” So I got there, and he opened the door and he is like a Scottish Willie Nelson. Hippy guy.
‘He said: "Look, I'm on benefits, sickness, on the blag. I want to go and live in India. Sublet this for £400 a month. No bills, council tax because it's on benefits. Also, I'll give you my disabled freedom pass.”
‘So I didn't pay for London travel for about three years - he went and lived in Goa and was weird, hard work. I had to manage his mail, open it - see if the Department of Work and Pensions wanted him to come back to see them. All of that.’
Kelly also took what was an odd tete-a-tete with Hathaway in his casual manner.
‘It was for Les Misérables - I was on set as a fisherman in the background going up and down these steps. It was a musical and they were like, "We're keeping you."
‘So it's evening and they brought me in and it's a closed set, there's no one - usually there’s someone eating a donut, someone messing with a mike, you know what I mean? But there was like only 10 people in there.
‘When the director talks to you it means they’re asking you to do something [special] as they don’t normally bother. So I was introduced to him: “This is Tom Hooper, director of The King's Speech”.
‘And he's like: “Now, Anne Hathaway will do this… And I'm going to give you a bit of a backstory. She’s a prostitute blah blah, the guy's just shagged her and left and she sings I Dreamed a Dream. We're hoping it's going to be the Oscar moment You're going to be the next one. When she sings, I Dreamed a Dream, blah, blah, blah, you walk down the steps to her. She looks at you and we'll cut."
‘I can hear singing, its A capella, how they do it in film - “I Dreamed a dream, blah, blah, blah”, and Anne Hathaway is there and I walk towards her and they don't say, “Cut.”
‘The thing is you carry on until they say, “Cut.” So she gets on the bed, and I'm in character sat undoing my trousers - fisherman waders, then they're like, “Cut - brilliant. Can we roll again, please? Can we source some pantaloons for the fishermen?”
‘So, now, with the pantaloons on, I do it again, you know, "I Dreamed a dream, etc." She gets on the bed, I start undoing my trousers, and they don't say “cut” and Anne goes: "Get on me."
‘I get on her, my pantaloons halfway undone, and she's gyrating, I'm humping her, they go, "And cut."
‘She says: "Hi, I'm Annie. Isn't this weird?"
‘I said, "Oh, hi, Annie. I'm Richard. Nice to meet you." Then I get up, and they're all applauding her because it's like a big moment and I'm waddling off, pulling my pantaloons up.
‘The best thing was there was this other guy, an extra too, a right arsehole, who really loved it, telling everyone he was a part of the movie and was desperate, was always being told off for trying to get more in any scene he could. Telling him about it: he was gutted and what made it more gutting for him was I wasn't even arsed and he knew it'.’
Next came the uncomfortable denouement of Kelly’s escapades in film.
With a chuckle, he says: ‘You start moving up into “the featured extra” category if you’re reliable and the agency said: “Can you send a video to us saying these lines?"
‘It was a policeman saying, "Do you confirm the disappearance of your daughter?" I got the role, and the agency told me: “It's in France, Paris. Four nights. Then they’re going to shoot on location in London, then you need to return to Paris for some other bits."
‘It was this massive budget French film - Two is a Family - and I was completely out of my depth. There’s a point when you can blag it, but at this stage I was like, "This is getting quite serious."
‘I had to get theatrical insurance. I was staying at a five-star hotel, they picked me up at the airport with a card, I was with all these actors - I couldn't say to them I was just messing about - all these French-Canadian actors, and they were like, "Richard, do you like TV or stage?" I said, "Obviously, I love the stage, but TV is where the money is."
They're like, "Oh, tell me about it.” It was nerve-racking because you’re miked-up, you're on the set, they're all talking French, the director is like, "Richard, your line is-”
‘I was on set for two and a-half weeks. In France, with Omar Sy and the girl from Harry Potter [Clemence Poesy]. The director's like, "Richard, you bang on door, and they don't answer, you bang more, then you run up there."
‘I said, "No worries." So it’s “action”. And I say my line: "Do you confirm the disappearance of your daughter?”
‘They go “cut” and there’s a pause and the director goes, in this thick French accent: "Erm, Richard, maybe we try one more, but maybe a little bit less - how you say this - Keystone Cops?”
Kelly roars with laughter. ‘I was like, "Right, okay." I had felt sick all day and I’m thinking, “I'm not even enjoying this."
Now, though, he is having fun - in Manchester, where his A Time And Place exhibition at Kimpton Clocktower Hotel on Oxford Road runs until 31 August, and where Kelly is a regular walker, constantly documenting the town and country around him.
As always, his modus operandi is to keep on keeping on. ‘In your career, when you start out, I think you're like a green banana, you're not ready, you're not in your prime,’ he says. ‘That's when you're absorbing knowledge and learning everything. You're, "Oh, okay."
‘Then it reaches a point where you become the perfect banana. You're lovely and yellow, you're succulent, and you’re just in your prime. Then if you stay too long doing [the same thing], you go brown and smelly.’
There is zero chance, of course, of Kelly doing this.
Richard Kelly, A Time and Place exhibition