Jez Lewis Interview

A couple of weeks ago I got to speak with Jez Lewis, director of the excellent documentary Shed Your Tears And Walk Away in which he returns to his hometown of Hebdon Bridge to try and root out the causes of the town’s crippling drugs, alcohol and suicide problems. Jez was screening the film and giving a Q&A and I spoke to him for about 40 minutes before he had to go into the screening room for the talk. Jez made for a great interview, passionate, intelligent and very honest.

Check out my review here first as it will help illuminate the people and scenes we end up talking about.

http://eggmagmovies.blogspot.com/2010/06/shed-your-tears-and-walk-away-review.html

This is a slightly longer version than the one on Eggmag's main website. Enjoy!


GARRETH. When you first left Hebdon Bridge when you were young, was there a problem then and were you aware of it?

JEZ. Yeah I’d say there was. Drugs were around, but because I was growing up there and nowhere else, I had a sense that it was unusual but I didn’t know – I couldn’t be sure. I had a year off before uni when I went travelling and got more of a sense that my experience in Hebdon was unusual. But also my next door neighbour had attempted suicide when I was about 16. Another friend committed suicide, I knew of another lad who committed suicide. But I actually became more aware when I got to university and experiences there showed me that actually most people didn’t take drugs – I didn’t take drugs.

GARRETH. That’s interesting because a lot of the time it’s the other way around. You go to university and this world opens up of alcohol and drugs…

JEZ. Well that’s what happened to some of my friends but I’d quit drinking by then, I quit drinking when I was 17.

GARRETH. How come? As a product of growing up in Hebdon?

JEZ. No, I was always terrified of drugs and addiction. I was also heavily involved in karate, I was quite sporty and I just made a twat of myself drinking one night and thought I’m not doing that anymore. A couple of friends had gone on a health kick and I joined in but took it a little further by quitting drinking.

Then, a friend came to me and said, “Can I ask you a personal question?” I said she could and with some trepidation she said, “A mutual friend told me you know someone who tried to commit suicide.” I just laughed and she looked incredibly shocked. I thought it was a wind up but it wasn’t. A friend of hers had attempted suicide and she wanted to talk to someone who had had that experience. So I said I didn’t mean to offend her, it’s just that I know a lot of people who have done that. And I started to get more of an awareness [of the problem] than I had when I was living at home.

GARRETH. You mean, being able to look back and say there is actually something seriously wrong?

JEZ. Yeah. Everyone at university was Southern, middle class and from private education. Whereas I was from a working class comprehensive school so there were differences and I didn’t know how much to attribute to the fact that we were from completely different backgrounds, or how much of it was specifically Hebdon. And then I made trips back to Hebdon and I saw my peers taking crack or whatever. It was gradual, but more people died or committed suicide, and really at the start of the film when Emma [School friend Of Jez] died I still hadn’t moved my perception to the fact that there is definitely something different there. So I did some research and it was then I decided I must make the film.

GARRETH. So then, when you started the film, did you have a particular agenda or did you find what you wanted as you were filming it?

JEZ. I went there to ask some questions in a journalistic way and I was only going to do a 15 or 20 minute film. I was going to say, here’s this beautiful place with a vibrant community but it also has this alternative community killing themselves one after another. I was going to ask questions of all people across the spectrum, but it changed quite quickly from that into what it is.

GARRETH. The main figures in the film; were they people you had been in touch with over the years, or people you got back in touch with specifically for filming?

JEZ. Cass I’d always been tentatively in touch with. The others mostly I hadn’t. I knew of them but they were not old friends.

GARRETH. This is one of things I’m interested in – watching the film you feel that there is probably an awful lot more footage – things you haven’t included, all kinds of people we don’t see…

JEZ. I had around 100 hours of footage!

GARRETH. Wow. So making Cass the focus, did that happen in the edit?

JEZ. No, I kind of knew. Cass was kind of a rock rebel when we were teenagers and I knew he had charisma. He also had looks, which were gone by the time I met him again. But those things were in my mind and I knew he knew everybody.

GARRETH. I must admit, that moment when you’re on the train back to Hebdon and Cass produces that can of special brew, it’s just heartbreaking.

JEZ. Oh yeah, yeah.

GARRETH. One of the things that interests me about documentary film makers is that question of wanting to make the film and watch this stuff happen but also the need possibly to intervene. Is that a difficult line to walk?

JEZ. I think if they hadn’t been my mates historically it might have been more difficult. I don’t know my audience when I’m filming, but my mates are there – they’re in front of me. I’ve done a lot of martial arts and I came across a samurai saying, I know this sounds quite juvenile to be quoting samurai, but the saying is: “You can hear of a danger and run away, but you can’t see it and run away.” I felt like that. When I wasn’t in Hebdon it wasn’t my responsibility but once I was there and filming, I felt almost ashamed to just point a camera at people who needed a hand. And I wouldn’t be able to live with being ashamed if I can do something about it.

GARRETH. Absolutely. One of the things that’s so interesting about the film is how much you feature in it, and, purely from the perspective of just watching the film, there’s a great moment later on when you say, “I have to just walk away. I’m trying to help you, I can’t do anymore.” But this is what you’re saying, you still can’t walk away really because you’re there, you’re watching it and there’s that sense of responsibility.

JEZ. Yeah, for me my responsibility is to the people there but I do have a responsibility to the film too so that’s part of the difficulty of those decisions and I’m more their friend than a film maker but I’m still a film maker. In that last scene when I’m saying I’m going to walk away, if I hadn’t had a camera [in that scene] I’d have walked away a long time before.

GARRETH. That’s very honest.

JEZ. In the end, after that scene, I put him [Cass] in a car and drove him to the house of a person he was with many years ago.

GARRETH. That has to be incredibly frustrating though too – you’re there and trying to help and, okay you’re making a film, but, you’re actually there and trying to help. Was there a part of you that experienced that frustration? Or was it just an overwhelming sense of sadness about the whole thing?

JEZ. It’s an overwhelming sense of urgency more than anything. I mean, I don’t know if you know but, since I stopped filming, five of the people I filmed have died.

GARRETH. I didn’t know that, no.

JEZ. Yeah, died of overdoses. I hate to say this but it’s not going to stay at five. But yeah – of course there’s frustration. To be honest with you, in that scene, it was my fucking chips and mushy peas he ate! You traipse around following people for 15 hours a day – it’s November and you’re cold, you’re hungry, you’re knackered, you have a 30 pound camera on your back, you can’t sit down - and then finally you go and get some chips. And it happened so many times, I’d go get some chips and there’d be somebody totally muntered! Staggering through the streets as if they’re about to die and I use that expression completely seriously, “as if they’re about to die.” And I’d go, “Have a chip. Oh fuck it, have ‘em all.” And it’s a joke in a sense but the frustration in that day was that. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I only went there to wish Di a Happy Birthday. I always have my camera with me but I had no idea Cass was there. And the truth is all that sadness and frustration and urgency was built up over that day and at that last minute, I was just so annoyed.

GARRETH. At that moment, when you found out Cass was there, what went through your mind?

(The day of the scene in question, Jez thought Cass was in London going through rehab, not back in Hebdon getting pissed.)

JEZ. I didn’t believe it. I genuinely didn’t believe it. That’s why [in the film] the guy who saw Cass tells me the make of his car, because he could see I didn’t believe him. I hoped Cass could come, like he did before, and not drink, but he didn’t. He came and he fucking hammered himself that weekend, you see it in the film…

GARRETH. I was going to say, he’s doing pretty badly at that point!

JEZ. Apparently the next day he got worse. His mate put him on a bus back to London and he got chucked out of his home which is the phone calls you hear in the end credits. He got fucking chucked out. Sorry about all the swearing!

GARRETH. Not at all. Do you know where he is now?

JEZ. Yeah, I speak to him every other week. He phoned me the other day and said, “Jez I think my head is swelling up.” I said to him, “Why Cass? Whats up?” And he said, “I was walking along and I heard someone shout “Cass!” and I turned around and there were two women sitting in a silver BMW. They got out and told me they had seen the film at the ICA and they thought I was right lovely and I’m starting to feel like a superstar!” He is drinking again, but that pattern is fairly normal. It’s quite normal, for people who succeed in getting off alcohol, to take four or five attempts. Just because he’s gone on and off it a few times doesn’t mean he won’t make it.

GARRETH. So when it comes down to it, do you have an explanation as to why this is concentrated in one small place?

JEZ. The people living that life think it’s normal. And I did. It took me until Emma’s death to convince myself that it’s not normal. Since finishing the film I’ve come across it people saying again and again, “I thought it was normal. Isn’t it the same everywhere?” And you have to say, “NO IT’S NOT!” My mate who was too shy to be in the film asked the same. My mate from uni stood up and said, “I don’t know anyone who has died from drugs or alcohol, I’m not sure I know anyone who has died under the age of 40.” My Hebdon mate was shocked because he knew about 30 people who had died. And a few months after that conversation, his own nephew hanged himself.

GARRETH. Oh God…

JEZ. Yeah. In the film when I say I’m afraid of the phone, it’s because [all this] was happening – getting texts or calls in the night. Imagine, you get a text to tell someone that their friend has just died – that’s how commonplace it was. And when it’s normal, it becomes an option, if you see what I mean.

GARRETH. That’s interesting. I mean, if I’m in the park drinking, or doing drugs or whatever – if that’s my lifestyle then I can kind of understand that becoming my normality. And people dying as a result of that, well it‘s sad but that’s what happens. It’s when so many people actively take their own lives… to my mind, I start to think that there’s a degree of awareness in that, that I have to get out and so I kill myself. It seems more active than just sitting in the park slowly drinking yourself to death…

JEZ. Cass says that, around here you either kill yourself or you die anyway. It is that thing, it’s ingrained in their unconscious, and it just seems like it’s par for the course. It’s simply how it is.

GARRETH. And there’s also a very strange disconnect between that life and the people watching it – two different worlds right beside each other. Because it’s very visible – it’s right there for everyone to see.

JEZ. Oh it is. Yards from each other.

GARRETH. And is there any sense then of what the rest of Hebdon feels about what’s going on across the street?

JEZ. They tolerate it. By the way, the film is a sugar coated version of what goes on there.

GARRETH. Really?!

JEZ. There are much worse things going on than you see in the film.

GARRETH. Can I ask…?

Long pause.

JEZ. No, I don’t think so.

GARRETH. Okay, fair enough.

JEZ. But there’s tolerance to a lot of things and they [the people watching] don’t mind if one or two of these people die. They think that we all make our choices and they are living out theirs. I’m not going to judge or criticise them for that. It’s not my way of doing things. It’s normal for these people, for everyone in the town. I have a mate who wouldn’t touch the drugs that the others use, he’s friends with them but he wouldn’t go near them and HE thinks it’s normal. And the suicides, as far as I can tell, aren’t really connected with the drugs. It’s like you said earlier, it’s an active exit strategy rather than a passive one.

Checks his watch…

Oops, I better go now…

GARRETH. Sure. Thanks so much for talking to me, it’s been really interesting.

JEZ. Not at all. Thanks.

A quick ending to a brilliant interview. Check out Shed Your Tears And Walk Away, it‘s a tough but excellent film.