Why make From the Ashes? What was your personal motivation?
I had made One Night In Turin, I was talking about other sporting stories that I could make that had inspired great English victories, and 1981 was a very special, very memorable sporting summer for me. After the Botham Ashes I went out and bought Duncan Fearnley’s cricket bat from the local sports shop and started knocking a ball around the garden.
Course, after some investigation it became obvious that July 1981 was not only an historic moment in cricket history, it was indeed a rather incredible month in British history. Among lots of other very stirring things going in the country, our cricket captain, Ian Botham, was unquestionably the biggest sporting character of the decade. Football hadn’t really gotten very big yet and Botham stood out as the greatest cricketer of the second-half of the 20th century and probably the most charismatic sportsman to boot.
From The Ashes then is a really clear hero story and it’s Botham who makes the film and story work as a classical journey. If you were to write it, you would have to set it as a gladiator in Roman times, yet it happened in 1980s Britain.
Did the socio-political context of the country give you more ammunition? The backdrop to the 1981 Ashes was Thatcher and the Brixton and Toxteth riots after all…
Very much so. What I was really attracted to was the fact that everything happened in such a short period of time: you had the riots going on, and the Headingley test match and the Royal Wedding all in the same month. That’s a pretty extraordinary month to take place! A whole national mood turning around in short a short time period is quite unusual.
It’s comical now watching the footage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, but I was genuinely shocked the first time I revisited footage of the Egbaston test. The way that people are responding at a cricket ground is almost unbelievable. It’s weird how a sporting victory can mean so much to people who have no association with it except that they’re watching it.
Gideon Haigh nails it at the end of From The Ashes when he talks about it being “so brief, but so iconic” – 20 million eyeballs all tuned in and feeling the same thing at the same time. It’s a weirdly religious thing that you derive from national sporting experiences.
At what point did you know that From The Ashes was really coming together? Was it the Kim Hughes interview per chance?
That was a big turning point for me when I was making the film, yes. I’d seen it as being a very British, very Botham story, and then I did that interview with Kim Hughes.
The thing is, he’s never really spoken about it and has been slightly reclusive. I conducted a three-and-a-half interview in a very hot room in Perth and he was just so effusive and so extraordinary that another split-story emerged of another sporting man who was also made a leader but wasn’t a natural leader. I personally think it’s the strongest part of the film – a man who is still being driven mad by the demons of Egbaston 30 years later.
Did you have to leave much on the cutting room floor? Were there any edits which you were stroppy about?
I don’t feel gutted by having to leave things out, no. The story is stronger for its simplicity really. Our first cut was 95 minutes long, not the usual three hours you have with a documentary. We were very bold with what we left in and what we omitted. We were very clear about what was important and wasn’t important. There was a few gags that we might have liked to have kept in, but so be it. I think what we are left with is a very strong portrayal of the era and an engaging piece of storytelling.
We agree, James. Thank you for your time.
From the Ashes is also released on DVD and Blu-ray on 30 May and you can get your copy here.
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