Public Servant Lifestyle

Orlando ‘Legolas’ Bloom stars alongside Billie Piper (Doctor Who) in a comedy about a boxing milkman who faces a world championship bout.

The Calcium Kid

A boxing epic, with plenty of bottle...

Starring Orlando Bloom (The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, Pirates Of The Caribbean and Ned Kelly) in his first lead role, The Calcium Kid tells the story of London milkman Jimmy ‘The Calcium Kid’ Connelly, an amateur boxer who, in a bizarre twist of events, is propelled onto the world stage to fight the world champion in his home town.

Also starring are Rafe Spall (Shaun Of The Dead) as Jimmy’s best friend, Stan, comedian Omid Djalili (The Mummy, Anita and Me) as boxing promoter, Herbie Bush, with boxer turned actor Tamer Hassan (Layer Cake, Spivs) playing Herbie’s initial protégé and aggrieved middleweight fighter, Pete Wright.

From stateside are Michael Peña (Buffalo Soldiers, Gone In Sixty Seconds) as World Championship boxer, Jose Mendez and his promoter, Artie Cohen, played by Michael Lerner (Barton Fink, No Way Out). Former pop starlet Billie Piper (The Canterbury Tales) makes her big screen debut as Angel, the object of Jimmy’s desire.

“The idea for the film actually came to us from two Scottish writers [Raymond Friel and Derek Boyle] who had never previously written a screenplay,” says executive producer Natascha Wharton when asked about the origination of The Calcium Kid. “We were impressed by a short they had written and commissioned them as part of our [Working Title’s] New Writer’s Scheme to develop it into a feature length screenplay.” Wharton continues, “We started looking for a director and knew Alex De Rakoff through his writing. When he came on board he was very keen to inject some of his personality into the script.”

Getting Started

One of the first things writer/director De Rakoff did with the script was to take the action out of its original Glaswegian setting and move it to his home turf of South East London as he explains, “I was born and bred in South London and was influenced stylistically by the fashion, music and locations of my time growing up there as a kid.” He continues, “I thought I would need to personalise it and felt that to set it in South London and re-characterise it in that way, would work for the taste that I have. I have always wanted to make a movie set in South London so I managed to get my first film off the ground and base it somewhere which I was absolutely delighted about, it was great.”

“Everyone says, ‘You’ve made a boxing movie’, and I say, ‘It’s set in the boxing world, it’s not necessarily a boxing movie’,” says De Rakoff when talking about the film’s narrative setting. “I am a big boxing fan and I’ve seen a lot of boxing movies, but I always felt that The Calcium Kid was not one of these. I wanted to make a heartfelt, quirky comedy, but set it against a boxing backdrop.” He continues, “There is some boxing in it, and it follows a kid in the lead up to a championship fight, but I changed the whole third act of the script, which I won’t reveal as it would ruin the film, to make it stand out from your usual boxing film climax.”

“I have no particular interest in boxing, I’ve never been to a match and find the notion of boxing actually quite terrifying,” adds Wharton, “but what is so fantastic about this script and what Alex has brought to it, is that it has heart as well.” She goes on, “Alex has balanced the array of eccentric, wild characters and the boxing world so at the heart of it is this kid whom you really feel for.” De Rakoff picks up, “You know when I first wrote this film and started to cast it, I felt it was an out and out comedy, but as filming progressed I started to realise there was a lot more heart in it, so I played often for the drama and emotion as much as the comedy.”

He continues, “At times, it’s very funny and at times you have real sympathy for the characters. Jimmy’s journey is like a coming of age and it’s about him taking control of his life. It starts a certain way, he’s very naive, very sweet, very lovable and easily controlled, but by the end of it he’s slightly more of a man. It’s a simple journey with an extravagant story around it.”

Casting

“All directors say that their film was really dependent on cast,” says De Rakoff, “but this film is so dependent on cast. We spent a long time casting, seeing a lot of different people for all the parts. Casting is everything, essential.” He continues, “There had to be real continuity. You might have found someone you thought was fantastic for the part and then you put him in amidst everyone else and it didn’t work. It’s not just about casting individuals, it’s about looking at the casting of the complete whole and how everybody works and interweaves and that was challenging, definitely, but also good fun.”

“A few people asked the question ‘did you cast Orlando because he was Orlando Bloom?’” says Wharton. “In fact when we first met him, there was a buzz post-Lord Of The Rings, but I wasn’t sure he was a name as such.” She continues, “Truthfully, the minute we met him he just smiled, and it sounds stupid and a bit corny, but I just thought, he is The Calcium Kid!” She goes on, “Orlando just had this sweet innocence about him. It was always going to be a hard thing to balance, someone who was a boxer but had this real sweetness in the character, and I think Orlando embodies Jimmy, I’m just delighted by him.”

Bloom was equally as delighted to get the part, “I knew when I read the script that it was a project I wanted to be involved in. Alex wrote the script too and it’s just so quirky and funny and off the wall and the characters are fantastic. I had complete confidence in his ability to direct and knew he would do a stupendously good job and I just really wanted to work with him. Alex has got some great work out of the cast, myself included.”

He continues, “I also wanted to work in England. I’d been out of drama school for about four years and I hadn’t done anything in my own hometown so being in South London was great. It was good to be home and have my mates around me.” On the character of Jimmy he comments, “One thing that really appealed to me was his innocence and openness. Until it gets complicated, his life is so simple and he is so content and happy, enjoying his milk round and being around his mates. There are points of real beauty, how you see his journey progress, the naivety, vulnerability, I really liked to show that.”

On the casting of comedian Djalili, Wharton reflects, “Herbie was a really hard part to cast because he is so significant and we all felt that if you didn’t get Herbie right, certainly in terms of the comedy, it just wouldn’t work. We considered lots of people, but Omid came and read I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind to be honest.” De Rakoff expands, “Omid is of Middle Eastern descent and I wanted to cast away from the usual ‘Arthur Daly London hustler’ type character.

On the page, Herbie was so larger than life, with lots of funny, ridiculous situations and dialogue and Omid is a very funny man. He has great comic timing and has a great physicality that when he came to read for the part he did something very different from what I was expecting and I was completely blown away by it.” He continues, “He’s also a really good actor and can play for drama as well as comedy which absolutely worked for Herbie.” Wharton agrees, “Omid worked brilliantly and even though he’s playing it heightened, it’s credible; despite the Altar Boys and dolly birds, you really believe the character. We were really excited to have found him.”

The Boxing

The Calcium Kid is set amidst the backdrop of the boxing world and De Rakoff put his lead actor, Orlando Bloom, through a rigorous training schedule to get him into shape to play the titular ‘Kid. Says De Rakoff. “Because of the nature of the film and his character, I didn’t want him to appear to be a fantastic boxer, so we had to build him to just the right physique.” Bloom was happy to get in shape, “I’ve been training quite a bit for myself anyway, but I’ve also been doing a lot of boxing stuff like skipping, which is actually a really hard skill to master.”

De Rakoff brought in established stunt/boxing co-ordinator Vince Keane to oversee all the action. “My role is to choreograph all the fights, go through and rehearse the routines with the actors and importantly, to look after them and make sure no-one gets hurt during the fight,” says Keane. He continues, “We obviously don’t actually hit, so we have to get the actor comfortable with throwing a punch. Anyone can throw a punch, but to throw it with force and to stop and not hit, and to make it look real. That’s actually very hard.” He goes on, “You have to think of it like a dance routine; every move has to be choreographed, so you know exactly what each actor is doing at any given time.”

Actors require a lot of training, not just physically but mentally too, as Keane explains, “Actors are not naturally aggressive, and so they need training to not just perform like a boxer but to think like one also. They can sometimes find the moves hard so you have to spend a little time with them, building their confidence, once they feel confident they can take care of themselves. Many actors are just afraid to let the punches go for fear of hurting a fellow actor.” And for someone who’d not boxed before, “Orlando has done brilliantly,” says Keane, “he’s had to learn to skip, spar and shadow box and all these things have their own little difficulties. He’s a good learner, he picks things up really quickly and he really looks the part.”

Tamer Hassan, who plays the psychotic Pete Wright, was no stranger to the ring. “I was an amateur boxer before I was an actor,” says Hassan, who still in fact owns his own boxing gym. “I grew up in Southeast London and there is a big boxing community down there, I started boxing when I was nine.” Keane adds, “Because Tamer has boxed before he is naturally more aggressive and knows how to move.”

Keane concludes, “It’s great when you get people like Orlando and Tamer and you do a fight sequence and it comes together. You look at the finished product and if I believe it, you know the audience is going to believe it to.”

Southeast London

The Calcium Kid was shot almost entirely on location in Vauxhall, South East London. The production took over the old disused school, The Beaufoy Institute on Black Prince Road as their production office. The Institute also doubled up as a studio, with Production Designer Joel Collins and his team building many of the interior sets within the old school halls and classrooms. The grounds of the Beaufoy were also used as a permanent unit base for the wealth of local Lambeth locations used by the production in the surrounding area, including the butcher’s, the pubs and the tower block flats.

Being from Southeast London himself, De Rakoff felt the area had a personality of its own, which lent wonderfully to the production. “People from South London are proud of being from South London and there is a certain kind of dialogue and a certain way of dressing, certain kind of music, certain cars you drove as teenagers that are different from East London, it’s just a territorial thing.” He continues, “People think you’re insane and that there’s nothing different about South London, but us south Londoner’s think there is.”

“I know Alex was keen to use a lot of local extras because their personalities just reflect the overall character of the place,” says Wharton. “Throughout the pre-production and shoot, we’ve worked extremely closely with Lambeth Council and the local people of Vauxhall.” She continues, “This is the curious mix, when we visited Vauxhall and started looking at the locations, what I found amazing was how much character there was inherent in the place. We just walked into certain locations and they had so much character to them, it was like time had stood still.”

The Calcium Kid, a WT2 production, is written and directed by first time feature director Alex de Rakoff from an original screenplay by Raymond Friel and Derek Boyle. The film is produced by Natascha Wharton with Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan serving as Executive Producers.

The Calcium Kid is out on DVD now.

More information available in Film, Humour, DVD / Home Video