Special RoadShow edition

welcome to Yorkshire. when we first saw RED RIDING, we stumbled out of the theater bleary-eyed, dizzy and ecstatic from the experience. each film works as a self-contained story with its own unique directorial vision. But viewed together, RED RIDING is truly an example of the sum being greater than its parts. we were convinced this was the greatest addition to the noir canon in some time, and we knew we had to bring it to american audiences. RED RIDING began as the vision of the producer andrew eaton who runs Revolution Films in the UK. having read david peaces quartet of novels, he brought in tony Grisoni to adapt the films. a monumental challenge, Grisoni has managed, with the help of three great directorsJulian Jarrold, James Marsh and anand tuckerand channel 4, to present us with a major work of cinema that deserves a grand presentation. we have created this special program book to help you navigate through the cast of characters and the story, and give you a peek behind the scenes. we hope you will enjoy this epic as much as we did. Your friends at iFc Films

MURdeR in the noRth

BY david thoMSon RED RIDING is better than The Godfather (ill try to explain why), but it leaves you feeling so much worse; and the business plan of watching a film is never realized if it doesnt make you feel its leaving you assured, ready to sleep...fulfilled. thats what we expect from entertainment, isnt it? Something thatll give you a warm inner glow at the end of a day when youve been ruined, humiliated, out of work, and lied to over your obituary. no need to rub that in, is there? turn on the telly. Youre less alone with the telly on, and less given to the thought that there are types of loss and anger and betrayal that might have you shouting in the streets. So RED RIDING is a deeper pool than The Godfather, but it doesnt encourage swimming. how do you watch tv? put it another way: is whats on the box ever capable of being beautiful? id like to strip those quotation marks away, but i worry that as soon as television looks anywhere near beautiful, were being told to respect something because its picturesque, or noble, or gracious, something elegant and Ken Burnsy (its such an educational medium)oh, look at that, mother, isnt that lovely? wouldnt you like to be there? i mean, its nearly beautiful, isnt it? it might be a stretch of west Yorkshire moorland, the Manchester road over the penninesat sunset or twilight. Just a bit creepy, though. one shot like that, with the wind moaning, and i think of little Red Riding hood hurrying to see her gran, with the Ripper waiting in his dirty white van. You could make a song of that, with the rhythm and the rhyming. well come back to television, but i should say something about Yorkshire first. it is the largest county in Britain, over six thousand square miles, starting about a hundred miles north of london. it is broken into three administrative areasthe Ridings north, east, and west. theres no Red Riding, except in the imagination. nor was there ever a house called wuthering heightsjust try forgetting it. Bront country
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is only a short drive from leeds and Sheffield, the big, tough cities in southern Yorkshire. in the minds of most Brits, Yorkshire is famous for a dry crusty accent and the deadpan comedians who use it, for strong beer, purist cricket, the textile industry, and the coal mines. the pretty dales and the somber moors. and murder. they say Guy Fawkes was from Yorkshire, the fellow who tried to blow up parliament on november 5, 1605, and who is burned in effigy with fireworks every year. ted hughes was born in Yorkshire. Bram Stoker wrote dracula there. prime Minister harold wilson was from Yorkshire, also alan Bennett, henry Moore, david hockney, J.B. priestley, James Mason, charles laughton, Judi dench, and peter william Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1981 for the murder of thirteen women, most of them prostitutes, in the southwest Yorkshire area. hes there still, in Broadmoor, the prison for the criminally insane, where he probably watches television. dont those institutions use it as a pacifying agent? You know where the Ripper mystery comes fromnot just the bloody career of that rascal Jack, but his famously unsolved crimes, and the rich rumored forest that includes members of the royal family as suspects (see paul wests 1991 novel, the women of whitechapel and Jack the Ripper). the Yorkshire Ripper, Mr. Sutcliffe (also the name of one of Yorkshires greatest cricketers), did his work in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Margaret thatcher became prime minister in 1979, and one of the tasks she most relished was breaking the power of the mining unions (centered in Yorkshire), which had done so much to destroy the career of her tory predecessor, edward heath. that campaign was the background to Billy elliott, the story of one might-have-been miner who turns to ballet instead. lucky Billy, to be inspired just as the mines were being closed. Such career adjustments were rare in Yorkshire, and those thatcher years are thought of as the period when socialism, prosperity, and employment took a terrible beating in the county. it was a time of abandoned factories, dole lines, and the withering of Yorkshires confidence. Yorkshire people were always supposed to be gruff, kind, and sturdy. thats the doctrine pushed for years by Yorkshire television (one of the companies involved in making RED RIDING), and in soap operas like emmerdale Farm. But the Yorkshire people in RED RIDING are lost souls and driven madmen. in it, a profound effort has been made to imagine that lossbut its hardly audience-friendly that in five hours we have so few heroes. this is all background to RED RIDING, three films that are in turn based on four novels by david peace, born in west Yorkshire in 1967. the four novels nineteen Seventy-four, nineteen Seventy-seven, nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty-threewere published in Britain between 1999 and 2002. the Yorkshire Post
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(a distinguished provincial newspaper) said of the first book that it has done for the county what Raymond chandler and James ellroy did for l.a. thats a fair point, even if chandler may have encouraged some people to visit l.a. and explore its cottages in the hills. the comparison with ellroy is more useful, in that the author of L.A. Confidential and david peace are equally addicted to what one might call the torrential voice that begins as the sound of barbed talk among the books characters, but that ends up as the music or wind blowing through its shattered terrain. (a lot of RED RIDING feels like a postapocalyptic story, but some of urban Yorkshire looks like that.) i turned to peaces novels after i had seen RED RIDING. i found them compulsive reading but just a little overdone, repetitive, nightmare for nightmares sake, torturous (torture is an essential part of the material), and remorselessly accretive. the ambition and the technique build as the stories develop. By the end of the fourth book you feel as if youve met everyone in the county, and most of them are tainted by the intrigue. it may be that peacewho was acclaimed by Granta as one of Britains Best Young novelists in 2003, a year after completing the serieswas able to take such paranoiac liberties with his home country because he has lived in tokyo since 1994. perhaps he needed to get away. the books are exhausting, inescapable, and sometimes breathtaking, but like the rant of someone shut up with a life sentence. they crowd your head to a point of nausea. But the film is clarified and beautiful. hands flat on the table. it is the order given by the police before an interrogation, done in the neon moonlight of a cell kept for torture. it is also what the medium

asks for as she tries to make contact with some of the little girls who have disappeared. the medium works by candlelight; she has her own atmosphere in which those in the sance must touch hands. But in the police cell, the suspects hands are flat so they can be smashed by the steel loop of handcuffs, and then flat again for the cigarettes extinguished in the fractures bruising. we learn this grim routine as the series goes on, just as we understand the terrible regime of the police. (theres another lesson: murder can look so good on screen, but not torture.) and who has any reason to think that torture is more or less reliable than occult inquiry? we are in west Yorkshire, where vestiges of modern lifeplaces called leeds and hunslet, cars, highways, telephones, and televisiondo not prevent the feeling that we are in the dark ages, when hovels cling to the moors, where gypsy camps are set on fire, with the people passing hazardous lives in dread. it is an age when the coppers bring certain pain and contempt, and the medium may be a pale-faced saint on valium, aware that she walks on foul ground where the bodies have been buried for centuries. this has happened before, she realizes, uttering tribal wisdom. the three films are a unity, no matter that they have three directors, three cameramen, and three formats (16mm, 35mm, digital). the look is unified, along with the voice and the mood, so its proper to credit tony Grisoni, who adapted all three films, and producers andrew eaton, anita overland, and wendy Brazington, who presided over the entire work. the directors have excelled, but the signature remains david peaces torment.

i can offer a synopsis, but dont expect to find it easily in the films. in the first part, 1974 (directed by Julian Jarrold), Yorkshire is in turmoil over the Rippers killings and the disappearance of little girls. the police are heavy-handed and brutal, but they are getting nowherein the real Yorkshire Ripper case, there were many accusations of incompetence. a journalist, eddie dunford (andrew Garfield), takes on the case. he has an affair with paula (Rebecca hall), the mother of one of the lost girls. he realizes that the police may lead the way in breaking the law. he discovers the beginnings of an intrigue between them and a local property developer, John dawson (Sean Bean). paula is killed. eddie shoots down dawson in revenge. at the close he meets his own end. in 1980 (directed by James Marsh), a Manchester policeman is called in by the home office to examine Yorkshires failure to settle the Ripper case. this man is peter hunter (paddy considine). he is thwarted in every way. his own marriage is disintegrating. Suddenly the Yorkshire police discover the Ripperthe case seems over. But hunter knows too much. he is killed by other policemen and the feeling dawns that there may be more than one Ripper. Someone was killing prostitutes, but someone is murdering children, too. and murder is a cry that serves the police very well. Before episode three, 1983 (directed by anand tucker), a young man, Michael Myshkin (daniel Mays), has confessed to killing some of the children. But he was tortured by the police so he said what they wanted to hear. a washed-up solicitor, John piggott (Mark addy), is persuaded by Michaels mother to seek an appeal. another policeman, Maurice Jobson (david Morrissey), tells him its uselessso it seems. But Jobson is nearly at the end of his tether. one of the evil gang, he may be at breaking point himself. perhaps ive spoiled itive told the story. But all ive done is given you a fighting chance of being able to keep up in the dense gloom and switchback narrative of RED RIDING. thats odd, you say, you thought that everything on television was always supposed to be clearlike the ads and their confidence that you should purchase. the telly once worked on reliable tips: this is the news; buy this version of viagrabut watch out if youre still stiff after four hours (you may be dead)! after all, its an educational medium: it shows us what happens, doesnt it? and if they show it, it must have happened. But suppose beauty, with its mystery and doubt, found a side entrance. Suppose theres a shot of a kid walking over a bright green meadow, where six huge cooling towers grow like dragons. its not like a painting, its not captioned as pretty, but RED RIDING gazes into the troubled light and sees poisoned pastoral. RED RIDING is not to be grasped, followed, or understoodthats why you need to see it. this is not a veiled charge against tony Grisoni and the others involved for not telling the story plainly. there are many internal elements subverting organization or
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authorship: three films; the adherence to muttered Yorkshire dialects that leave a good deal unheard; and an absolute refusal to let the story be tidy or finished. whereas the first two parts of The Godfather conclude with set-piece executions that make bows of loose ends and settle the familys authority, the dedicated viewer of RED RIDING will find no such comfort. throw in a pattern of flashbacks that feel like extensions of the present, and you may see how RED RIDING is not just hard to followit believes in a culture and a narrative where things no longer click together. You never know the whole story or the larger purposes because the world is no longer run on those pious timetables. in The Godfather we are made to feel the thrall of corleone power. thats what enlists us in the family. So the slaughter of those filmseven the bleak consent with which one brother signals the execution of anotheris vindicated as the completion of design, and of the daft idea that a presidential Michael corleone may keep order in an entropic world that is losing its cohesion. indeed, the corleones do not recognize entropy or depression: they eat their pasta dinners like hungry boys; they shoot to kill; and they sit in their shadowy rooms making their immaculate plans. it is another proof of assurance in that world that every scheme worksso Michaels decisive murder of Sollozzo and Mccluskey is not just a wish made fact, it is ordained or foretold. it is a scene these guys know by heart and by legend. theres one scene in RED RIDING out of that heroic film. at the wedding of his daughter, Bill the Badger Molloy, chief constable of Yorkshire, gathers his senior policemen in an upstairs room. he reports on progress: the police are organizing vice in the north to make their own fortune out of it. Molloy introduces them to John dawson, his crony, who plans an enormous mall on the old gypsy campsite, a development with cinemas, bowling alleys, restaurants, in which theyll all prosper. and then the Badger calls for a toast: to the north, where we do things our way. Molloys war cry is terrifying, and i give credit for that to the actorwarren clarkeand the uningratiating brutishness of all he does. we have seen the Badger lose his temper already, and it is a fearsome prospect. Moreover, the construction of RED RIDING offers this statement of principles late in the story (in the third film), by which time we are in no doubt about the horrors it permitted. the toasting scene also explains the policeman who betrayed and killed hunterhe was a Badger boy all along, even though he came from Manchester. what remains in the way of revelation is that the Yorkshire police knew who was killing the children early on, but they overlooked the knowledge because it implicated John dawson. Yet these coppers have a creed and a dream that is not far from the corleone fiveyear plan. its just that The Godfatherin all its saturnine graceis a very old-fashioned and unpolitical film founded in a reactionary view that would always sacrifice life to
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order and loyalty. and The Godfather was kind to itself in that it showed only gangsters killing one another. those films have not an inkling of the social damage that comes from organized crime. whereas RED RIDING is the work of someone who has had a breakdown from that damage and its loss of hope. there is not much family comfort in RED RIDING. Many of its characters live alone or in relationships laid waste by mistrust or staleness. there is a priest, but he seems to have gone off down a private track. the women and children worry about being out after dark. one prisoner waits for a far-fetched appealhe had signed a confession so the police would stop hurting him. they had told him he would never see his mother again. his solicitor has to rouse himself from drunken stupors and a life of failure. Guilt is all that drives him on. another youth is a prostitute, in and out of prison, helplessly addicted to the cash he can get with his flat charm and his obedient mouth. he is called BJ and he walks through the film like a nomad. in the books he is a chiding lament for the society that has lost its own children. no one in this Yorkshire expects to be happy or confident; no one seems to admit to a glimmer of hope. there are brief sexual encounters but betrayal is seeded in them. So people eat and drink and they hear the despondent news on the telly. the case of the Yorkshire Ripperlike it or notis the big public show. if the police conducted themselves for so many years in a way not calculated to catch him, perhaps it was a circus they encouragedto let the supermall prosper. perhaps if the real Ripper grew weary, they threw in a quick sex killing of their own. they had the book on how the Ripper worked. this is a squalid, listless world, where conscientious police or teachers might kill themselves. But its our world. if it is beautiful in these films, it is the grace of melancholy. RED RIDINGs three directors seem to have the same vision: they shoot without establishing shotsafter all, what is there to be established? when the center does not hold, there is no place for master shots. Many scenes do not pay off: there is no punch line (or money line), no concluding shot that says thats what this scene did. So scenes end in hiatus or dismay. But thats the way in life: the biggest lie in film is not the attractive peopleits the promise of order, payoff, or purpose in a scene.
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what basis for a scene is there in RED RIDING? it is more that scenes play in fragments, the broken hopes of their participants. Yearning close-ups are surrounded by darkness. plunged into wild glances and semigloom, claustrophobia is our first response. very little in the shooting or the editing believes in order or developed intimacy. let me go further. let me advise you of the danger herethe series takes an approach to story that will not find satisfaction. i have watched it three times now (on dvd), and i could not tell you everything that happens, let alone the order of the happening. call that a movie? You say, as if you believed in pictures with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But havent you noticed that no one has that trick or the heart to do it that way now? So many movie stories are humiliated by their tellers lack of faith, or by our carelessnesswhy watch if you cant follow it? there is a struggle going on in the best filmmaking, and it has to do with this anxiety or suspicion: do films cheat life any more persistently than by insisting on story? Suppose there are just the years passing and the burial ground of all our forlorn attempts at progress. So the question returns: how do you watch television? what did you watch last night? cant remember? we all know that feeling. of course, the movies died a long time ago, but television has died in the last few years. when the networks receded into the cable forest (like cavalry forts grown back over by the implacable wilderness), it was good night to the hope that a mass medium is a necessary thing because it holds our
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potential for chaos at bay. So we all watched cronkite and carson once, lucy and the bright light of her mad household. Yes, it came to that, because all you have to do is turn the set onand then it usually stays on till you go to bed. everything indicated that television was a visual medium, but some shrewd observers said it was only radio with pictures. thats how you could have the tv on all your life waiting for amazing events like armstrong stepping on the moon, Ruby shooting oswald, or Janet Jacksons breast winking at youbut nothing was beautiful. the box made beauty flinch. at best, you got an all-purpose picture-postcard look, the passport picture for the event. But a change is in the makingcall it home theater, if you like, if you still feel confident about that word home. its the grim huddle of people whove given up going to the movies for their fancy new screenplasma or whatever. Few understand plasma, Blu-ray, digital, or hd, but the feeling is that at last television looks like something. its not exactly photographic; rather, it involves a digital or electronic sheen that seems to thrill young people. its not always lifelike, and sometimes it is close to an image that was once deemed in need of correction. often its arty, but sometimes its beautiful. Sometimes the image is a place to beas in Murnau, ophuls, ozu, or antonioni. So theres a reason to be turning on beyond the need for company, or presence, or room tone (the term sound recordists use to signify background texture). thats where RED RIDING casts its spell. we have found ourselves in a culture of tv series and elaborate dvds where some lost movies are unpeeled before our eyes. and the eyes do have it. when The Sopranos ended, it was not with an emphatic story point, a wow! (like tony being an FBi plant or a papal delegate), but a delicacy of mise-en-scne that had to be seen over and over again. of course, that doesnt apply to all tv, and it never will, but there are series that are works of visual conjuring just as some old movies now enter a Borgesian library of variants. their pursuit tends to be meditative, solitary, and unnerving. it resembles reading. So RED RIDING is a secretive modern novel meant to be exhumed on your own; when you go to let the dog out afterward you hear the wind moaning and you feel nervous of the dark in your own yard. You dont follow or master this film, yet its alluring enough to keep you at attention. torture people call that fear of the fear. You cant like it, because the life it shows is forsaken and mean-spirited. But the looking is overwhelming. the abiding feeling as it unwinds, as you strain forward to discern details, is i have to see this. on the new screens that we are buying, as big as cinemaScope windows, it looks like a view we can hardly stomach. in its edgy beauty and grisly hesitation, RED RIDING is a new kind of televisionit is like somber music played at home and alone.
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1974
eddie dunford, a local crime reporter at the Yorkshire post, and his colleague, Barry Gannon, attend a press conference where an emotional Mrs. Kemplay makes a plea for help in finding her missing daughter, clare. eddie persuades his editor, Bill hadley, to let him investigate the case and its possible links to two other girls who went missing earlier. eddie interviews dcS Bill Molloy, but is given short shrift by the detective. Undeterred, eddie visits the parents of the girl whos been missing the longest. during this visit eddie learns clares body has been discovered, thus missing out on a big scoop. Back at the paper, hadley gives the story to the highly praised reporter Jack whitehead. against hadleys wishes, eddie interviews young leonard cole who found the body on land owned by local property magnate, John dawson. leonard, who lives with his mother, Mary, and a local priest, Martin laws, is clearly disturbed by what he has seen. eddie views the post-mortem report and is sickened by the brutality of the murder. Barry is hot on a lead regarding dawsons allegedly corrupt dealings. hadley, keen to keep Barry reigned in, asks eddie to keep an eye on him as he interviews dawsons fragile wife. however, eddie decides to head to castleford to meet paula Garland, the mother of Jeanettemissing since 1972. Following a disastrous meeting with paula, eddie is threatened by two local cops, craven and douglas. eddie decides he must apologize to paula for any misunderstanding. Meeting in a local pub, they become attracted to each other and spend the night together. the next morning eddie learns that Barry has been found dead. Before his death, Barry instructed his secret informant, BJ, to pass his evidence regarding dawson to eddie if anything should happen to him. acting on all the information hes been given, eddie visits Mrs. dawson to learn more but she becomes hysterical. craven and douglas burst in and brutally assault eddie again. after Barrys funeral, eddie meets with dawson, who offers him a scoop regarding a local lawyer who is standing in the way of dawsons business plans. turning down the scoop, eddie confronts paula about her relationship with dawson and offers her the chance of a new life with him. eddie leaves paula to pack, and visits Bob Fraser, the one policeman he considers trustworthy, giving him Barrys research. eddie returns to paula and is stunned to find she is missing. consumed by dread, eddie confronts dawson at his home. thrown out, eddie finds himself in the police station where hes tortured nearly to death. Just as things seemingly cant get worse, eddie is shown something so shocking that the only thing on his mind is revenge.
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cast Sean Bean waRRen claRKe andRew GaRField ReBecca hall eddie MaRSan david MoRRiSSeY peteR MUllan casting nina Gold line producer SaRah-Jane wheale Sound Recordist dannY haMBRooK Music by adRian JohnSton production designer cRiStina caSali hair & Make Up designer JacqUeline FowleR costume designer natalie waRd editor andRew hUlMe director of photography RoB haRdY executive producers hUGo heppell peteR haMpden executive producer liza MaRShall writer tonY GRiSoni Based on the novel by david peace producers andRew eaton anita oveRland wendY BRazinGton director JUlian JaRRold

1980
december 1980 leedsthe Rippers reign of terror has lasted six years. peter hunter, assistant chief constable of the Manchester police, is asked to head up a secret inquiry into the west Yorkshire polices Ripper investigation. in 1975 hunter investigated the Karachi club massacre in Yorkshire in which police were injured, but he was unable to complete the inquiry. hunter chooses Manchester detectives John nolan and helen Marshall to work alongside him. they arrive in leeds in time for the press conference in which Bill Molloy the Badgeris being removed as chief investigating officer and replaced by Jobson. hunter and team review each of the so-called Ripper murders. Ripper squad detective Bob craven is supposed to be hunters liaison officer, but he seems unwilling to help. hunters theory is that the west Yorkshire police have been blindsided by the Ripper tapes, and that the man they are looking for has already been interviewed and dismissed. hunter is visited by Martin laws, who takes him to meet a young man called BJ. BJ suggests hunter go back to the murder of claire Strachan. when hunters team reviews Strachans murder, craven says its a Ripper killing based on forensic evidence. helen points out that if its not a Ripper killing a copycat murderer is also at large. helen takes hunter to meet Mrs. elizabeth hall, widow of eric hall, a detective on the Yorkshire force who was murdered. Martin laws is also there. Mrs. hall reveals her late husband was involved in the porn magazine Spunk and gives an issue to hunter that contains photos of claire Strachan. hunter decides that former pc tommy douglas might know more about halls business. hunter probes douglas but gets nowhere. hunter interviews Ripper squad detectives alderman and prentice about the claire Strachan murder investigation and alderman blurts out that everyone knew it was a cover-up as eric hall had killed her. hunter receives a desperate call from douglas saying he needs to talk. when hunter arrives to discover douglas and his young daughter horribly murdered, he begins to realize the enormity of what hes up against. Before he can act, hunter finds himself forcibly removed from the investigation by the slur of professional misconduct. after christmas, hunter arrives back in leeds to discover the station in chaos: theyve just caught the Ripper. hunter and nolan watch the Ripper being interrogated by Jobson and watch him confess to every murder except that of claire Strachan. armed with this information, hunter drives to preston to meet BJ. BJ recalls the details of the Karachi shoot-out, as he was in the bar and claire was the barmaid, finally hunter is given the evidence he needs to make things right.
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cast JiM caRteR waRRen claRKe paddY conSidine Sean haRRiS david MoRRiSSeY peteR MUllan MaXine peaKe tonY pittS leSleY ShaRp casting nina Gold line producer celia dUval .Sound Recordist John peaRSon Music by dicKon hinchliFFe production designer toMaS BURton hair & Make Up designer leSleY laMont-FiSheR costume designer chaRlotte walteR editor JinX GodFReY director of photography iGoR MaRtinovic executive producers hUGo heppell peteR haMpden executive producer liza MaRShall writer tonY GRiSoni Based on the novel by david peace producers andRew eaton anita oveRland wendY BRazinGton director aMeS MaRSh

1983
detective chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson the owl holds a press conference about the disappearance of ten-year old hazel atkins. the press compare hazels disappearance to the Kemplay case, which Jobson worked on with his then boss Bill Molloy, the Badger. office-less lawyer, John piggott, takes an urn with his mothers ashes back to her house in Fitzwilliam. while home, his mothers neighbour, Mrs. Myshkin, begs him to see her son Michael, who was imprisoned eight years ago for the murder of clare Kemplay, she claims wrongly. piggott goes to see him and finds him very disturbed, repeating over and over, it was the wolf. piggott tells Michaels mother that he cant organize an appeal for someone who pleaded guilty. She regrets that he was forced to follow the advice of his then lawyer, clive McGuiness. Meanwhile, a young man is released from prison, BJ. he takes a bus to preston and hunts out a hidden shotgun from a locked up garage. dick alderman and Jobson visit a local medium, Mandy wymer. in a sance Mandy hints that the disappearance of hazel is linked to that of other girls in the area. Jobson remembers how during that investigation they discovered incriminating evidence on local Fitzwilliam priest Martin laws but they were forced to drop the lead when laws was given an alibi by John dawson, with whom other senior police shared business interests. convinced that hazel must be dead, the police pull in leonard cole, who found the corpse of clare Kemplay in 1974. alderman and prentice torture cole so brutally that Jobson cant watch. Mary cole goes with Martin laws to piggotts flat to beg him to represent her son leonard. cole and laws were also piggotts neighbors while he was growing up in Fitzwilliam. But by the time piggott and Mary cole arrive at the police Station, leonard cole is deadtheyre told that he hung himself. Jobson, disturbed by wymers further psychic convictions, follows up a lead in castleford, but his boss chief constable angus is furious that he wont tow the line and just lay hazels abduction and suspected murder on leonard. BJ approaches Fitzwilliam, images of himself as a young boy flashing before his eyes. after discovering more about Myshkin before his arrest from leonards longstanding girlfriend tessa, piggott goes back once more to see him. he is now in the hospital ward of the prison as he has been refusing food. Myshkin reveals to piggott that his dad was the wolf s friend. and piggott is jolted into a remembrance of his dads suicide a few years before and starts to piece the puzzle together. he heads back to Fitzwilliam, where someone is waiting.
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cast MaRK addY Sean Bean JiM caRteR waRRen claRKe daniel MaYS david MoRRiSSeY peteR MUllan SaSKia ReeveS casting nina Gold line producer teSSa BeazleY Sound Recordist MaRtin BeReSFoRd Music by BaRRinGton pheloUnG hair & Make Up designer tahiRa heRold production designer aliSon doMinitz costume designer caRoline haRRiS editor tRevoR waite director of photography david hiGGS BSc executive producers hUGo heppell alaSdaiR MaccUiSh executive producer liza MaRShall writer tonY GRiSoni Based on the novel by david peace producers andRew eaton anita oveRland wendY BRazinGton director anand tUcKeR

THE prEss
EddiE dunford is played by Andrew Garfield

1974, 1980, 1983 a journalist for the Yorkshire post, eddie dunford has just returned from the South of england with his tail between his legs. his father who was considered the best tailor in the north has just passed away as he attends a press conference about a missing girl named clare Kemplay. cocky, out to prove himself, he finds his real sense of purpose as he gets drawn deeper and begins to make connections between Kemplays disapperance and that of 2 other young girls.
BArry GAnnon is played by Anthony flanagan

1974, 1980 crime correspondent of the year at the Yorkshire post, Jack whitehead is eddie dunfords nemesis as they compete to cover the clare Kemplay disappearance. whitehead is also one of the two main characters of the unmade book 1977 in which he will become one of the key journalists following the Ripper murders.
Bill HAdlEy is played by John Henshaw

JAck WHiTEHEAd is played by Eddie Marsan

T H E dAW s o n s
JoHn dAWson (aka The swan) is played by sean Bean

1974 Barry Gannon is a journalist at the Yorkshire post and friend of eddie dunford. hes convinced there is something terribly wrong in the north of england and has even told eddie there are death squads nearby. hes investigating the local tycoon John dawson and believes he may be near a breakthrough. he also has a mysterious connection to a shadowy character named BJ.

1974, 1983 Bill hadley is the editor of the Yorkshire post. he brings in eddie dunford and encourages his investigations but also warns him not to rock the boat with the Yorkshire police as they have a healthy relationship.
kATHryn TylEr is played by Michelle dockery

1974, 1983 a powerful construction magnate with ties to politicians and the police in northern england. hes building a major shopping center that will revolutionize the north of england. hes married to the mentally ill Marjorie dawson and is the subject of an investigation by journalist Barry Gannon. eventually eddie dunford will uncover secrets about him also.
MArJoriE dAWson is played by cathryn Bradshaw

1974 the mentally ill wife of John dawson who tells Barry Gannon his life is in danger. She later makes clear to eddie dunford that John dawson has a horrible secret.

1974,1983 Kathryn tyler is a journalist at the Yorkshire post who has had a recurring sexual relationship with eddie dunford who will never quite commit. Years later, she meets John piggot, who inquires about Jack whitehead and her relationship with eddie dunford.

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T H E p o li c E
chief constable HArold AnGus is played by Jim carter

1980, 1983 a controlling boss who lets Bill Molloy go when the Ripper case seems to have driven him to the brink of insanity. when peter hunter comes to investigate the Yorkshire police, he doesnt exactly welcome him. its clear hes hiding something.
Bill Molloy (aka The Badger) is played by Warren clarke

1974, 1980, 1983 one of the leading investigators of the Ripper murders and the missing girls. he is Bill Molloys right hand man until he takes over the Ripper investigation from him in 1980. Married with children, he gradually begins to gain a conscience as he comes into contact with eddie dunford, peter hunter, John piggot and a psychic named Mandy wymer.
Assistant chief constable pETEr HunTEr is played by paddy considine

detective chief superintendent MAuricE JoBson (aka The owl) is played by david Morrissey

and Jim prentice, all members of the Yorkshire force.

detective superintendent BoB crAvEn is played by sean Harris

1974, 1980, 1983 an angry, greedy and seemingly disturbed man who has far reaching connections, a bad temper and will use a series of disturbing tactics to get what he wants. he headed up the Ripper investigation and the disappearance of the first three girls until he seems to crack under the strain. his daughter marries Bob Fraser, another member of the police.

1974, 1980, 1983 a police officer who is first seen with his partner tommy douglas keeping an eye on eddie dunford attempting to thwart his investigation. later he is one of the survivors of the Karachi club shootings but is kept from speaking with peter hunter who is investigating the incident. Years later he is forced to work with hunter on his investigation of the Ripper murders and inquiry into the Yorkshire police force.
dickiE AldErMAn is played by shaun dooley

1980 peter hunter is from the Manchester police force and twice is brought into investigations that pit him at odds with the Yorkshire police force. Married with no children and considered squeaky clean hes first introduced as a man who will run a covert operation investigating why the Yorkshire police force can not solve the Ripper murders. it is also revealed that years earlier he investigated a mass shooting at the Karachi club which also involved the Yorkshire police and didnt make him any friends especially with Bob craven, tommy douglas
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1974, 1980, 1983 a police officer who has been involved with the Ripper investigation from the beginning. he is also a survivor of the Karachi club shooting. Bill Molloy also barred peter hunter from speaking to him. however when he comes under investigation by hunter later, he starts to crack under pressure and reveals a secret about one of the Rippers supposed victims claire Strachan. he later works with Maurice Jobson on hazel atkins disappearance.
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1974, 1980, 1983 worked with dickie alderman and Bob craven on the Ripper case since day 1. he is also questioned by peter hunter in his investigation of the Yorkshire police.
pc ToMMy douGlAs is played by Tony Mooney

JiM prEnTicE is played by chris Walker

1974,1983 the cop eddie dunford considers one of the good ones after meeting him when Barry Gannon is killed. he is married to Bill Molloys daughter and is the other lead character in the 1977 story which remains unmade.
HElEn MArsHAll is played by Maxine peake

BoB frAsEr is played by steven robertson

1980, 1983 John nolan has been a police officer for over 2 decades and works for peter hunter on his super squad. he is hunters closest ally and confidant. he also carries a secret.
ArTHur piGGoT (aka The pig)

JoHn nolAn is played by Tony pitts

1974, 1980, 1983 tommy douglas is a former police officer who sustained serious injuries at the Karachi club shooting. he was laid off the force mysteriously shortly after. he was a good friend of the late eric hall, a pimp and pornographer. he has some shady business dealings that will come to light when peter hunter starts sniffing around.

1980 a detective from the Manchester police force who works for peter hunter. hunter selects her to be on his super squad sent to investigate the Yorkshire police force and the Ripper murders. She shares a similar work ethic to hunter. they also have had an affair which will eventually implode. She is befriended by Martin laws and believes there may be two Rippers.

Father of John piggot who never appears on screen but was a cop in the Yorkshire police force. he was neighbors with Martin laws. its hinted that he committed suicide.
detective inspector Eric HAll

the deceased husband of libby hall who never appears in the films. a cop with a troubled history. he was claire Strachans pimp and was a suspect in her murder until the Ripper claimed responsibility in a letter. he never believed the Ripper killed her though and kept tapes and writings until he was murdered. libby hall turned these over to Maurice Jobson.

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T H E Wo M En
kArEn douGlAs is played by charlotte James

1980 daughter of tommy and Sharon douglas.

1974, 1983 Mother of leonard cole and friend of Martin laws. Mary lives in Fitzwilliam.
pAulA GArlAnd is played by rebecca Hall

MAry colE is played by cara seymour

1980 the wife of tommy douglas and mother of Karen. She becomes irate when peter hunter comes around to ask tommy questions. She holds a grudge as hunter was part of the investigation that caused tommy to be let go from the force.
JoAn HunTEr is played by lesley sharp

sHAron douGlAs is played by Michelle Holmes

1980 the wife of peter hunter who is desperate to have a child.

MAndy WyMEr is played by saskia reeves

1974 while investigating the missing girls in 1974, eddie dunford comes into contact with paula Garland, the mother of Jeanette Garland who went missing in 1972. it is revealed she is a widow, her husband committed suicide after their daughters disappearance. Beautiful and mysterious, eddie sees paula as someone who needs saving but hes not aware that someone else is there to help.
ElizABETH HAll is played by Julia ford

1974, 1983 Mother of Michael Myshkin. Shes spent her life in Fitzwilliam and has an undying belief in her sons innocence. She comes to John piggot to help make an appeal, and she seems to have a deeper understanding of what has really happened.
TEssA is played by catherine Tyldesley

Mrs. MysHkin is played by Beatrice kelley

1983 leonard coles girlfriend who also knew Michael Myshkin.

1983 a psychic who is able to communicate with the various children that have disappeared. She first contacts the Yorkshire police when clare Kemplay disappears but is ignored. Years later Maurice Jobson and dickie alderman will visit her when hazel atkins disappears.

1980 the widow of former police officer eric hall. with the help of Reverend laws, she tracks down peter hunter and tells him her husband was claire Strachans pimp. She also reveals that eric never believed the Ripper killed her and handed over his findings to Maurice Jobson after he died. Finally she admits to peter hunter that he ran a porn magazine called Spunk for which claire Strachan was a model.
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T H E l AW y Er
JoHn piGGoT is played by Mark Addy

T H E B oy s
MicHAEl MysHkin is played by daniel Mays

1983 John piggot is a solicitor who is a bit of a loser. hes overweight and hasnt done much with his life. his mother has just died and his father was a police officer who committed suicide and is hinted to have a dark past. he grew up in Fitzwilliam near Martin laws and is brought in to help a neighbor named Michael Myshkin whos mother insists he was wrongly imprisoned for the death of clare Kemplay.

THE priEsT
MArTin lAWs is played by peter Mullan

1974, 1983 Michael is a mentally-challenged man who grew up in Fitzwilliam. he is friends with leonard cole who he works with at a photoshop. he had a close relationship with clare Kemplay. after her disappearance it is Michael and leonard cole who find her body with swan wings stitched into her back at a dawson construction site. he is arrested and convicted for not only clares murder but the other 2 missing girls in 1974. Years later, John piggot will come to his defense at the request of his mother and discover Michael knows a lot more than he originally said.
BJ is played by robert sheehan

1980 an intensely disturbed man accused of brutally killing 13 women, mainly prostitutes, including claire Strachan.

THE rippEr is played by Joseph Mawle

other victimes include: anita Bird, theresa campbell, Marie watts, Rachel williams, dawn Johnson, Katie Bird, Joan Richards, elizabeth Mcqueen and diane pickles.

THE Girls
the following girls went missing in Yorkshire: Susan Ridyard, missing 1969 Jeanette Garland, missing 1972 clare Kemplay, missing 1974 hazel atkins, missing 1983

. T H E r i p p Er vicTiMs
the Rippers 13th victim was a 20 year old student nurse named laura Bains. her death prompts the home office to launch an investigation against the Yorkshire police which peter hunter will head up. one victim named claire Strachan who died in 1977 draws particular attention because her death doesnt seem to match the Rippers style. in addition, just the mention of her name makes certain people uncomfortable. her pimps widow will contact hall with key information about claire, eric and the entire case.
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1974, 1980, 1983 often referred to as Reverend laws, Martin is often seen comforting the many women in the north including Mary cole, libby hall and helen Marshall. he seems well acquainted with just about everyone he comes in contact with. he also introduces peter hunter to a mysterious young hustler named BJ to discuss claire Strachan. he lives in Fitzwilliam near the piggots, the Myshkins and the coles.

1974, 1980, 1983 a young hustler who is first seen with Barry Gannon. eventually BJs path will cross with just about everyone in Y orkshire from eddie dunford and peter hunterwho he gives important information to to Martin laws who he seems to have an unclear relationship with. he also holds important information about claire Strachan. he believes his life is in danger and goes in and out of prison.

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the StoRY oF RED RIDING

in the words of dAvid pEAcE, AndrEW EATon, Tony Grisoni, JuliAn JArrold, JAMEs MArsH, and AnAnd TuckEr. interviews by Eric Hynes

on the YoRKShiRe RippeR, and the hiStoRY and cUltURe that inSpiRed RED RIDING Yorkshire, from 1967 through till about 1987. the main story of my childhood, in terms of the news, was the investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper. i first became aware of it in the summer of 1977. the Yorkshire Ripper had been killing for some time before that, but in 1977 he killed Jane Mcdonald, a sixteen year-old who was the first victim who was not a prostitute. the press and the public reacted much more strongly to this death, and i remember very clearly that people were signing petitions to bring back capital punishment, and putting a lot of pressure on the police to do something about this. i was ten years old, living only five miles away from the place where it happened, and i had just started to read Sherlock holmes novels. and in the ridiculous way you do things as a child, i thought that i would somehow try and catch the Yorkshire Ripper. My brother and i set up a little detective agency in the garage and cut out all the clippings about the case from a newspaper that my parents got. that was the extent of what we did. as the number of attacks escalated, posters went up in
30 31

dAvid pEAcE, author of The red riding Quartet: i was born and raised in west

the bus stations, in the shops. Youd have pictures of the victims, pictures of what the police believed the killer looked like. the police made this famous statement that this man was somebodys husband, somebodys son. So people began to suspect each other. i remember even wondering whether it was my father. which was ridiculousmy father was a very mild-mannered, gentle primary school teacher.
JAMEs MArsH, director of RED RIDING 1980: i grew up in the west of england, and everyone at that time was aware of the crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper, which unfolded in slow motion over a period of years and haunted many peoples upbringing, mine included. there was this tape that we actually use in the film, a tape believed to be the real killer in his real voice taunting the police. it was just chilling. that enters your imagination in a particular kind of way, and connects you with something thats truly evil when youre young and impressionable. dAvid pEAcE: they had this huge press conference, which was very dramatic, and everyone had to rush home and watch the news and listen to the radio. the police chief sat at his desk and pressed the recorder, and this voice said, im Jack, hello George. and it was this horrible, horrible voice, taunting and goading the police. people were convinced this was the voice of the Yorkshire Ripper. we later found out it wasnt, it was a hoax tape. But the police believed it. the real Ripper, peter Sutcliffe, was interviewed nine times by the police and on many occasions he was let go simply because his accent was not the accent on the tape. So he was released to kill again. JAMEs MArsH: they played [the tape] at football matches, for 50,000 people at a

was very present in my mind, as was the legend of the Yorkshire Ripper, this monster that had roamed around.
dAvid pEAcE: By naming him the Yorkshire Ripper, making the association back to

victorian Britain and Jack the Ripper, it did add this element of romanticism, and youre immediately connecting with a romantic gothic pastthe moors, wuthering heights and the Bronts.
JuliAn JArrold, director of RED RIDING 1974: it was a very political timethe beginning of the decline of the mining industry, depressed communities, industrial mills that used to be the powerhouse of the industrial revolution going through a depression. JAMEs MArsH: i dont have many fond memories of growing up in england. i could not wait to get out of there. dAvid pEAcE: i found growing up in the north of england in the 1970s quite an

intimidating and frightening experience. Maybe i was just that kind of child.

on the Red RidinG qUaRtet, the novelS that inSpiRed RED RIDING
dAvid pEAcE: i ended up living in tokyo and had written two books that were not publishednot very good. i still read a lot of crime fiction, particularly american writers like James ellroy and James lee Burke, and id run out of books to read in tokyo. i just thought, im going to write the book i want to read, which is the story of growing up in west Yorkshire during the times of the Yorkshire Ripper. i started to record all those memories of growing up. in writing, the question i was trying to ask was, to what degree was it just bad luck that this man, peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was living in west Yorkshire and doing these crimes? was there any culpability on the part of west Yorkshire society? i suppose its the old nature vs. nurture argument. at the end of it i didnt really have an answer, apart from that it was a bit of both. i do think that west Yorkshire society in the 1970s created an environment that allowed someone like him to thrive. Yorkshire culture is a very masculine culture, a very physical culture. even nowadays people will often refer to someone as a silly cow or this analogy of women being pieces of meat, dumb animals. and during that time places were quite rundown. So the actual landscape almost allowed these crimes to take place
33

leeds United game, and the idea was that someone somewhere would know who that person was. the police were clueless.
Tony Grisoni, screenwriter of RED RIDING: You were surrounded by the

threat of this man. For me it was like being aware of Jack the Ripper from the 19th century. the two would be conflated. it was almost as though a monster or something supernatural was walking the streets.
AnAnd TuckEr, director of RED RIDING 1983: i was born and brought up overseas, in thailand and hong Kong. But i went to english schools and all my friends were english. the thing about england, especially in the 70s with the Yorkshire Ripper and all that, was that it was even more mythic from far away. especially if all youve ever read is english literature. the whole mythic landscape, especially the north,
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because there were vast areas of wasteland and darkness in which the Yorkshire Ripper could operate. it goes back to coming to terms with where i came from. while i was writing 1974 i realized i wanted to write about what actually took place, not imagined things. particularly with 1977 and 1980 i saw there was a possibility for a more political dimension to crime writing. Rather than write for sheer entertainment, i could try to understand why these things happened at this time and place. the best that fiction can do is to illuminate the truth, and to make people think. the Yorkshire Ripper was a real killer, he murdered real people, people really lost their mothers and sisters and they still grieve for them. its not something i lightly did, to go into this.
Tony Grisoni: i was very aware that i was reading one persons creative response to events. they are highly personal books. i didnt think of them as documentary in any way. i recognized references and events, but thats not why i kept reading. they are a kind of meditation. JAMEs MArsH: [the books have] an extraordinary style, much like an incantation

AndrEW EATon, producer of RED RIDING: when i approached tony [about RED RIDING] it was really on the basis of, would you like to do one of these? he came back and said, ill do all of them or nothing. Tony Grisoni: i just launched straight into them. instead of setting up events and tying them up in a prescriptive way, i tried to keep everything in my head and feel my way into these very intertwined and complex narratives. i started at the beginning and kept going until i got to the end. these books clearly lent themselves to that kind of treatment. this hallucinatory, feverish elegy seemed to be the right thing. i love it when youre utterly immersed in one characters point of view. Youre a foreigner in a strange country, you dont know the rules. and thats a good place to be if youre writing or making films. thats why you make them, to try and discover, to find out. dAvid pEAcE: i find it quite irritating when authors are churlish or annoyed by

changes. if youre going to be really precious about your book then you shouldnt sell the option. to state the obvious, a book and a film are completely different works of art.
Tony Grisoni: You see all kinds of things that may not initially seem to be cin-

or a kind of obsession. each book has a character with a very subjective view of the world that youre plunged into. part of the brilliance of the writing is that its out of control to some extent. he just keeps going and going and developing more rich subplots, to the point where even the author, from what i gather, doesnt quite know the resolution to some of his stories. which i think is brilliant. why not? its a much better representation of real life than a conventional narrative.
JuliAn JArrold: what i responded to was this very interesting blend of totally

ematic devices but which can actually be used in a cinematic way. what starts off as a very literary thing becomes very filmic.
dAvid pEAcE: tony had this ongoing email conversation with me. he became

quite obsessed by these books and these characters. they were very, very real to him, as they had been to me when i was writing them. i would worry about it.
AndrEW EATon: there were times when tony said, please take me out for a

american noir and the British social realist tradition. though loosely based on events, hes very precise about the music characters are listening to, the type of jacket, the road being driven down, where characters live. its incredibly meticulous.

drink, because he felt hed gone into the valley of darkness.

on adaptinG the novelS FoR the ScReen

Tony Grisoni, screenwriter of RED RIDING: Because i was captured by these

Tony Grisoni: i was writing them sequentially, so by the time i got to 1983, i wanted to save one of those children. and also i needed to be released from these things. i was very nervous about doing it because it was a major departure, so i tried to embed it in the material as much as possible. dAvid pEAcE: people who are kind of obsessive about the books think that the

fictions, i set out to be true to them. i treated those books as if they were the truth. theres an adage that the difference between fictional film and documentary is that fictional films must tell the truth. and what i felt when i read those books was that whatever they were saying, whatever was happening, the teller of these tales was utterly convinced of it. i trusted the stories and the people in the stories.
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ending is a cop out but i dont think it is. its not a kind of hollywood endingits magnificently done. this sounds a bit bizarre, but John piggott [the attorney in 1983] would have liked to save that girl, but i didnt have the ability to do it. tony found a
35

way. i thought the scripts were brilliant. in an artistic sense, theyre very, very faithful to the books. the biggest compliment i could pay tony was that after a few pages i completely forgot that these scripts had anything to do with me or my characters. i was just completely in this world.

AndrEW EATon: and finally, with anand, ive known him for a long time and he has a great history as a filmmaker. hes probably the most sentimental and emotional of the three, and that seemed to make sense with the last one, 1983. You needed someone who would let in a little light at the end. AnAnd TuckEr: James had been talking to him for a long time, and his forensic

on RecRUitinG the thRee diRectoRS oF RED RIDING

AndrEW EATon: when you hire a director its like casting an actor, you hire

them because you think theyre the best. and therefore you want them to do their best work. its unusual to have three separate directors and three separate films, but we thought that would make it more interesting. By casting them all at the same time we knew there would be a good mix, and these were all directors that had pre-existing cinema careers. James had pursued us quite doggedly for at least a year, and he really passionately wanted to do 1980.
JAMEs MArsH: i was given the first draft of tony Grisonis first script, which was

style really suited 1980. i think Julians a supreme stylist and a confident filmmaker and i think he was very passionate about 1974. i guess they looked at me and thought, hes a bit of an old softie, he always goes for the cheap tears at the end, so he might be right for giving us a bit of emotion at the end of all this. But it was great to do something this dark, something in this territory, and yet still be able to explore the kind of emotional filmmaking that i like.
Tony Grisoni: theyre three very different people and i worked with them in three

different ways and just responded to what their needs were. they were the ones at the front line, and they needed to understand everything and feel comfortable with everything.
JAMEs MArsH: tony was very available. Sometimes id call him up in the middle

1974, and i just thought it was a really amazing piece of writing, and very true to where it had come from. By the time the films got greenlit id been slipped each of the scripts, and 1980 was the one i ended up making. Something about hunters tragedy felt very pure to me, and very available to me on a personal level. while the other [scripts] were appropriately delirious, this one felt like it had a sort of hard, crystalized tragedy which i really wanted to explore as a director.
AndrEW EATon: we pursued Julian for quite a while, because for the first film

of shooting and say, what do we do? we need another line here, and he would come up with it. in a sense, he was the author of the trilogy and we directed the individual parts, but it was definitely one of those films where you had everyone at the top of their game. we were all trying to make this material work.
AndrEW EATon: there were so many restrictions already imposed upon them,

[in the series] we wanted someone who was the most experienced director. this was a guy better known for period costume dramas, and it seemed interesting to chuck him into this sort of format.
JuliAn JArrold: i read all three and liked the first one, which is good because James already had the second one. i liked the character of eddie dunford and the way he changes, his relationships with leonard cole and John dawson, and this brooding atmosphere.

it seemed to be more fun to encourage them to go past that and do their own thing. Some of the directors chose different locations for the same scenes, and i think thats great fun. an audience is smart enough to see that this is a different interpretation of the story.
AnAnd TuckEr: they let three very different directors absolutely internalize the

film and then spit them out through the filter of our own individual sensibilities. Julian, James and myself only had one dinner together at the beginning, and we basically agreed that we wouldnt talk or consult each other about what we were doing. i thought if this works in and of itself for me, i have complete faith that the other two will work. we were working on no money and no budget, practically paying them to do it. But we got to do what we wanted. You sacrifice a lot but you get your freedom.
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on RED RIDING 1974

JuliAn JArrold, director of RED RIDING 1974: david peace is very fascinated by noir novels, and im personally fascinated by old noir filmsparticularly the conspiracy films of the 1970s. My memory of the way i see the 70s is through grainy 16mm. it just seemed very appropriate for that periodthe smoky look and all that. i also wanted the camera to be very close to eddie dunford, to force the audience to go on his journey and identify with him. hes one kind of guy at the beginning and somebody else at the end. with sound design but also the way we did the shots, the idea was to constantly suggest that something awful, evil, and dark was just around the corner. we also put eddie in a landscape that dwarfed, formed and affected him. that seems to be the key to the whole thing, really, the way that this place, this environment, this brutal, modernist architecture thats crumbling and largely demolished now, affected and created these terrible events. its important to capture that sense of period. its tricky, the 70s, because you can go to town on the flares and the hairstyles, but you dont want to just fetishize the period detail. period dramas can become obsessed with those things, but they should just be there and confidently used. 1974 was another country, but at the same time there are so many things that relate to us now. Tony Grisoni: one of the many improvements [Julian Jarrold] made was

the director of photography igor Martinovic and tom Burton the designer, was to really try and bring some clarity to this, to make it as real as possible. we each had the same budget, so to shoot on 35mm widescreen i had to give stuff upno steadicams or cranes. But it felt right for the film. we had elaborate dialogue scenes in which one composition could express the power relations between people, and i felt 35mm could accomplish that visually. we were observing this character, peter hunter, becoming increasingly diminished and trapped in a cage, and we made cages for him with our frames. certainly my understanding of film noir was very much a part of my thinking. i think all of us were looking at and trying to steep ourselves in those great paranoia films of the 70s. we looked at Parallax View and Klute in particular, which has amazing use of widescreen. So you know youre working in a genre, but what i think was important was that it didnt feel like we were imitating an american genre. this felt like these stories, these characters, this atmosphere, were utterly organic to the time and place.
Tony Grisoni: James Marsh and i discussed the ending of 1980 almost until he JAMEs MArsH: i kept putting off shooting the ending. the actors werent in the

shot it.

to strengthen the theme of eddie and his very complicated relationship with his father figures.

right spot to conclude this terrible journey that hunter was taking. paddy in particular was not ready to do it. it troubled me, and if you dont know how to do something theres usually something wrong either with you or with the material. So tony and i went back and forth a lot on this.
Tony Grisoni: these discussions werent always magnanimous. You argue, you

deeply buried in the book, if its there at all. they honed in on that sadness, and its much better than the book.

dAvid pEAcE: the film captured a kind of sadness which, to be honest, is quite

fight your cause, you say, no, i think it should be like this, i really think this could work. and through all of that, you arrive hopefully at a better answer.

on RED RIDING 1980

JAMEs MArsH, director of RED RIDING 1980: Given that the plots were by definition opaque and mysterious and somewhat shrouded in an evil fog, the more i could bring a clear lens to this, to find cause and effect as best i could in the plot, the better it was going to be. i love in 1974 where [Jarrold] creates a really delirious world of the protagonists subjective experiences. But i felt my protagonist, peter hunter [played by paddy considine], was a very different kind of character. hes older and more grounded, and therefore his descent became even more profound. our method, collaborating with
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ing, the betrayal of nolanwho betrays his best friend, his favorite colleaguewas passive. i felt that wasnt right. Judas goes to the garden and has to kiss Jesus, he cant just point him out, its very actively a betrayal. that Biblical metaphor became the idea for me, that one should be with that character after the betrayal so we could really understand his conflict. it was the last day of shooting and it was just one of those days you hope for. we shot it very quickly and simply and it just felt right. this is the end, its cathartic, its violent in the way it needs to be, and theres huge amounts of conflict and regret in that character. tony allowed me to go and do what i felt was right in that moment. and i think that ending was the right ending for the film.
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JAMEs MArsH: the ending came the night before we shot it. in the original end-

on RED RIDING 1983

AnAnd TuckEr, director of RED RIDING 1983: each film is about someone living through that period, and as we all know memory is so selective. 1983 in particular is about two main characters who know all the answers before the movie starts, but have to excavate their own memories. its kind of like an internal thriller. the clues lie inside them, not outside, though events push them to some kind of denouement where they are either able to find their better selves or not. i love films where characters who are beaten up manage to find something in themselves and triumph out of it. if theres any theme that im particularly fond of in the films ive made, its that. the script spoke to me, it moved me, and it wasnt difficult to make my own. the movie that was closest in my mind while i was shooting was The Searchers. the Yorkshire of david peaces imagination is a mythic, epic landscape across which men wander doing terrible deeds and searching for their souls, and thats what The Searchers is. if i had my druthers, id have shot this as ive shot every one of my last four movies, in anamorphic widescreen, because i just love it. But we couldnt afford to shoot that way, so we went the Red camera, which has been designed from the ground up not to be something that could stand next to film. north of england everyone thinks of as dark and dingy, but i wanted the film to feel immediate and vibrant, like you were just there. i wanted it to be the lightest noir film youve ever seen. when i shoot one of these films i know im aiming for the ending. ive always got that feeling that i want to get to. i had those three or four shots in my head, that little end sequence, and everything else in the film is there to make that sequence the most powerful it can be. and i wanted an unashamedly emotional ending. which could be a bit cheesy, but i like it, this insane image where theres this ridiculous release and its almost operatic in scope. in retrospect, 1983 seems to be the film that sums everything up for everyone. But i wasnt trying to sum anything up. i was just trying to take two characters from very dark places to some kind of resolution

AnAnd TuckEr: david Morrissey, whos in all three movies, basically carried around a giant notebook in which he kept a meticulous chronology of everything that was going on with his character across all three films. he sort of became the keeper of the knowledge, if you like. he would come up to me, and id think, here comes david with his notebook open, i must have done something wrong. JuliAn JArrold: it was very complicated logistically. there were actors going from one to the other, changing costumes and periods and hairstyles. and this was up in leeds, which isnt particularly a great film town. the producers were very adept at keeping us going. AndrEW EATon: not that many films get made in Yorkshire, so people were

slightly better disposed to having us around. we thought we might get some grief from the police [because of their depiction in the films], but in fact they were completely fine. i think they figured it happened a long time ago. and also that whole idea that, this is the north, we do what we want. northern people are quite like that. im sure [that line] has been said in a lot of bars in Yorkshire in the last 12 months.

on the SUM and individUal paRtS oF RED RIDING

AndrEW EATon: it was the idea from the beginning that you could possibly

watch one of those films by itself and be very entertained by it, or that you could watch them in the wrong order and also be entertained by it.
JuliAn JArrold: whats interesting is that they work as individual films. You do get

a hell of a lot more when you see all three because you get this real sense of something thats gone down over the years. You get this great wide picture of institutional corruption and the way individuals stand up to it. all these things and ideas and cinematic elements feel part of a whole to me. But like the book, theyre coming from different perspectives.
JAMEs MArsH: whats surprising when i saw the three films together were that

on the challenGeS oF MaKinG thRee FilMS

AndrEW EATon: we probably got the green light around March, and it was summer of 2008 when we shot them, starting in about July. [the shoots for] 1974 and 1983 overlapped by about two weeks, then 1980 started shooting about a week after they both finished. there was quite a lot of crossover for some of the actors, especially between 1974 and 1983.
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certain motifs wed all expressed slightly differently had a symbolic coherence.

AnAnd TuckEr: the mess of it, and the dissonance between them, adds up to something thats bigger than the sum of its parts. it was thrilling to watch Julians film, with its absolute confidence, and to see scenes that were mirrored in my film,
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sometimes the same scene. or other scenes that provided answers or seemed to be a counterpoint to scenes that id shot. Julians film is this very muscular, almost Scorcesean exercise in violence, and then to come to James almost tone-poem. what i thought was interesting was how different the rhythms of all three were.
Tony Grisoni: the thing that i found most fascinating was the different senses

Selected Works andRew eaton producer The Killer Inside Me (2010) A Mighty Heart (2007) The Road to Guantanamo (2006) Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005) 24 Hour Party People (2002) In This World (2002) JaMeS MaRSh director Man on Wire (2008) The King (2005) Wisconsin Death Trip (1999) anand tUcKeR director And When Did You Last See Your Father? (2007) Shopgirl (2005) Hilary and Jackie (1998) JUlian JaRRold director Brideshead Revisited (2008) Becoming Jane (2007) Kinky Boots (2005) tonY GRiSoni Screenwriter Death Defying Acts (2007) Brothers of the Head (2005) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) david peace author occupied city (2009) tokyo Year zero (2007) the damned Utd (2006)

Special thanks to Laura Sok at IFC Films, and Nisa Qazi for her invaluable assistance. For nore complete interviews with RED RIDING filmmakers please visit www.ifcfilms.com

of style. although 1974 was fragmented and descends into a kind of hallucinatory style of storytelling, there was something about the direction and camera work and the sound design that accentuated all that. and then 1980, which is ice-cold, almost like poison, and that again surprised me. then 1983, which becomes this kind of hymn. when writing, you imagine the drama in your head because thats what carries you through, but of course it cant turn out like that. to actually see these images coming together bit by bit, the delight is that they feel weirdly outside of you. it means the people in those stories have their own life.

on MaKinG it peRSonal
AnAnd TuckEr: ones hope always is that by being really particular, one can

transcend the human experience and make something that speaks to everybody. thats my experience of all the great movies. when we were making these, stuck on some shit industrial estate on some motorway on rainy outskirts of leeds, the last thing you think to be honest with you, i didnt think anyone would watch these. But i was just happy to be making it.
JuliAn JArrold: Films are about successful collaborations, really, and finding the best way to deliver on something. working on 1974 allowed me to play around with all the things i lovethe noirish feel, the sound design, these unsympathetic characters that you give some humanity to. JAMEs MArsH: My motives for doing it almost have to be personal, if you want to

live with something in the way that you do when you make a film. to me 1980 is a study of obsession and curiosity, and that was something i could identify with on a basic, personal level.

Tony Grisoni: as Marlon Brando says: its always personal. every film is personal. thats how you come to it. You need to play with the same kind of intensity and belief as a child. and then you scare yourself.
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poSteR eXploRation iFc Films hired acclaimed los angeles agency Mojo to design the poster for RED RIDING, looking to find an iconic image that would capture the essence of the three distinct films. here is a selection of their designs.

Mojo is a full service agency specializing in the advertising of film and television. its print group was founded in 2005, and has enjoyed success working on large budget studio movies and niche independent films alike, creating many award winning campaigns, including those for Burn After Reading, (500) Days Of Summer, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Watchmen & Where The Wild Things Are. www.mojohouse.com
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THE BASIS FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURES

RED RIDING
1974 1980 1983

The EXTRAORDINARY AND ORIGINAL* crime novels by David Peace

*Time Out (London) 46

photos phil Fisk design by Supermarket

Available in paperback wherever books are sold

www.blacklizardcrime.com

www.iFcFilMS.coM