DEDICATION AT FRONT OF SCREENPLAY

To the hundreds and hundreds of young people, and those who work with them, who shared their time and experience so generously. Many many thanks.
 
 
INTRODUCTION TO SCREENPLAY (4/9/02)
 
Court buildings are always good places for tabloid hacks to hang out. How many times have we seen the picture of a  teenager accompanied by burly police escort after sentence? There's usually a tough swagger, but the shiny suit and tie can never make up for the pinched white face. I'm sure the old hacks are masters of the leading question that the judge inside would never allow. How does it feel like son to imagine the next 15 years behind bars?  Scowl, fury, expletive, and the obligatory "two fingers" up yours. Snap! Snap! Thankyou very much and here we have a spectacular full page spread.
 
Those two fingers, in response to the hack, are now spectacularly directed at the reader; at civilised society. Below we have the sordid report of a vicious assault which will at worst leave the victim dead and buried and family traumatised, or so severely injured their life will never be the same. We can almost sense the collective bubble from each reader: "Rot in hell you little bastard".
 
I've never been convinced by this ritual, no matter how many papers it sells. But I often imagine a second bubble from our reader. "Tut tut tut.....What’s the world coming to?" Now, I think that's a very good question.
 
I'm not sure, because I can never remember, but I think the character Liam may have escaped from the back of one of these tabloid pages. Not the detail, just the notion. Here’s one possibility, of millions, of what happened before the likes of Liam raised those two fingers to our friendly reporter.
 
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Those upset by bad language, a notion which I respect and understand, should read no further and certainly avoid the film. (In general terms, I don't think strong language around the dinner table in front of your Mum is any more tolerated in Scotland than it is elsewhere.) A straight forward warning seems so simple and functional in a country where anyone over 15 can read short sentences in thick print, as for example, on a film poster.
 
So now to the great "cunt" question. The British Board of Film Classification, presided over by Sir Quentin Thomas CP, has been troubled by the rough language, especially the "aggressive" use of the word "cunt" in Sweet Sixteen. I can only suppose that the "little friendly cunts" didn't sizzle their ears quite so awfully. They have decided that no-one under eighteen can legally see the film.
 
I have now been presented with an arithmetical breakdown of naughty words and I can only say I'm appalled by the repetition and lack of imagination. At this point I always like to blame Ken and improvisation with actors. (I wonder if Board Officials borrowed those little clicking counters that British rail staff once used as they wandered up the train. Who did the counting? "Cunt"  minion and "fuck" minion snapping away in the cinema back seat and driving other viewers to distraction.) So for the first time in Ken's long career, his seventeenth  feature film, has been given an 18 certificate.
 
Now I realise the British Board of Film Classification has an important job to do. So, with high hopes, I wrote them a little note, some of which I attach below, praying they would reconsider and give it a 15 certificate. I thought a sombre start "In my research...." might sound scholarly and make up for the terrible clicking sound as they watched the film.
 
Here goes.... 
 
"In my research before writing Sweet Sixteen I visited dozens of schools, Children’s Homes, and several secure units for teenagers. (One of the latter was very similar to a junior prison.) I also spent lots of times with young teenagers at clubs of various descriptions and perhaps most useful of all were random street corners in various towns around the West Coast of Scotland....
 
To my genuine surprise I was amazed at how many had seen our previous film, "My Name is Joe". Some even quoted dialogue from various scenes. One school boy in second year told me "They speak just like us". The same issue came up again and again in many of the encounters I had. They recognised their own world reflected back at them via the story and the dilemma of the characters, principally because of the language we used.
 
There is a scene at the end of My Name is Joe when the main character torments and insults the young lad just prior to his suicide. It is dark and vicious, but I suppose more by luck than intent, he doesn't use the word "cunt". Certainly the scene is as aggressive and disturbing as any of the scenes where "cunt" is used in Sweet Sixteen. With all due respect I think this example demonstrates the great danger in an overly microscopic examination of the specific word.
 
I think there is another very important point of principle here. I believe the following requires a great deal of thought and reflection; it concerns the world of the story. "Cunt" as used in polite Manhattan society, or at Wimbledon, or at Ascot, is of a totally different nature to the word as used by these kids on street corners in the West of Scotland. In many ways all they have in common is the spelling. In terms of its resonance, its rhythm, and its acceptance, and many other cultural subtleties – without getting overly academic about it – I genuinely do wonder if it is even same word. To equate Hugh Grant using the word in one of his films, with Stan using it – albeit it aggressively in Sweet Sixteen, is not to compare like with like.
 
Continuing from the above may I make one last point. It is hardly original to suggest there are vast areas of Scotland, and England, and for that matter, most big cities in Europe, where we have a separate world within a world. It's a different realm. May I give one simple example of many; you might be robbed, threatened, or beaten up, but you don't tell the police. I know of one case where someone known to the victims broke into their house, stabbed the man of the house and then slashed the young woman who tried to protect him. The man’s spinal cord was cut and today the mutilated young woman pushes her boyfriend around in a wheelchair. As far as the police are concerned, the victims witnessed nothing. This is an unimaginable world for most of us in the so called mainstream.
 
Not only are the "laws" of these territories different, but so too are visions of the future. Education, personal safety, diet and even length of life are of a different nature. To talk of planning for retirement makes as much sense as a trip to Mars.    
 
We have tried to examine through this story a very delicate and critical moment in Liam's life as he approaches his sixteenth birthday. We have tried to be true to what we have found. I think young people like Liam face the threat of tremendous violence in their everyday lives. In addition, there is a structural violence in the choices open to them. We have not tried to shy away from these problems or come up with easy answers; there aren't any. But the very least we can do is be loyal to their predicament. And the very least I could do, as a writer, was to be true to how they speak. Are they now to be denied the right to hear themselves speak in the cinemas? If so, it would be the cruellest irony to "Sweet Sixteen" but perhaps a truly profound metaphor for how young people are treated in these hidden kingdoms "beyond the pale".
 
I am not blind to the predicament and the difficulty you now confront. But I do ask you to be bold and imaginative in the exercise of your discretion. There are tens of thousands of fifteen and sixteen and seventeen year old Liams out there. (And Chantelles with young children and self destructive desperate Pinballs.) For me they are more important than any critic or jury, but as usual, without clout. I hope you will give them a chance to see themselves, for once, as protagonists.
 
Kind regards......."
 
I thought I could hear Liam's ghost whisper in my ear as I drafted the letter. "Fat fucking chance ya prick, somebody wi a name like Sir Quentin’s no gonni get this". And so it proved to be. I'm sure it hit the shredder faster than a George Bush original first draft.
 
We trust teenagers to get married, hold down jobs, and buy property. They can drive fast cars and have a passport. We can send them to prison, and they can carry out the most complicated human endeavour of all – parent children, but we can't trust them to read a simple warning about language that some people might find upsetting.
 
On the other hand fifteen year olds are allowed to watch extraordinary violence, with mutilation common place. The slurp and thud of flying body parts blown apart by glorified weaponry are perfectly captured by latest quadraphonic sound systems. 
 
In Black Hawk Down they can enjoy square jawed white North American heroes, everyone of them, massacre the fundamentalist dark hoards by the thousands. There is no health warning for this sentimental drivel and the poisonous re-writng of Somali history which systematically strips human beings of their dignity.
 
The 18 certificate for Sweet Sixteen seems particularly British. (I have been informed that since this is a decision of the British Board of Film Classification, the Scottish Parliament has no competence to deal with the question. I hope the Scottish Executive will now get their finger out and politely demonstrate to the Minister of Culture that they have the talent to deal with such a simple matter.) It is unimaginable that the equivalent teenage population on the Continent would be similarly excluded.
 
It is now certain that the fifteen, sixteen and seventeen year olds – and many who were much younger, who shared their lives with us in preparation for this film will not be allowed to see Sweet Sixteen in a cinema by law. Is it important? I think it is. I believe it is censorship and I suspect, since it is impossible to prove, "class" prejudice suffuses the decision, the guidelines, and the whole bloody apple-cart.
 
Along with Liam, Pinball, Night-time, and his mates who run the fastest Pizza joint in the West of Scotland, I'd like to add my own "two fingers" to the British Board of Film Classification, (nothing personal Sir Q) and as a contribution to freedom of expression, and freedom to sit in a cinema with a big noisy trough of pop-corn and drive everyone mad, I'd like to attach the infamous little word used with all the aggression I can muster.
 
Paul Laverty. Fourth of September, 2002.