At the dawn of 2011, an insightful journey through Glasgow with the acclaimed Peter Mullan offered a deep dive into his world, particularly his third directorial venture, Neds. This piece, adapted from an article originally published in The List in January 2011, explores Mullan’s perspectives, inspirations, and the raw authenticity he brings to cinema.
It was a brisk Wednesday at the start of the New Year when I found myself navigating Glasgow’s cityscape with Peter Mullan, crossing the River Clyde towards the Southside. Our destination was Cardonald, the working-class heartland of Mullan’s upbringing. This area serves as both the setting and the muse for his film Neds. This movie is a sharply observed, emotionally resonant, and darkly humorous coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the early 1970s. It subtly draws from Mullan’s own brief foray into a local razor gang, The Young Car-Ds. “It’s not autobiographical,” Mullan clarified, preempting the inevitable question as we drove along Paisley Road West. “But as I’ve said countless times, it is personal.”
This statement isn’t a mere disclaimer. Spending time with Peter Mullan reveals him to be remarkably straightforward, approachable, and refreshingly devoid of typical movie industry pretension. Interestingly, Neds marked his return to directing after eight years, following his Golden Lion-winning film at the Venice Film Festival, The Magdalene Sisters, a powerful critique of the Catholic Church. Mullan explained that acting roles provided welcome intervals, allowing him more time with his family and space to develop the script for Neds. The film gradually evolved into the narrative of John McGill, a bright, working-class boy whose promising future is tragically undermined by pressures from school, gangs, and his home environment.
Arriving in Cardonald, the neighborhood where Peter Mullan grew up in a large Catholic family, overshadowed by an alcoholic father, we turned onto Lourdes Avenue. We parked near Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church, its imposing structure still prominent. Just ahead, through gaps in the hedge, lay Lourdes Primary School. As Peter Mullan stepped out of the car, he pointed towards the tall brick wall lining the opposite side of the avenue, effectively shielding us from the contemporary city. “We filmed up and down here quite a bit because it’s one of the few places where you can get a decent stretch of road and it still looks like the period.”
Like his other directorial works, Neds carries a confrontational stance towards the Church. However, unlike his previous films, it portrays this conflict in a more audacious and surreal manner. Consider the scene where the protagonist, under the influence of glue, engages in a confrontation with Jesus, all while The New Seekers’ upbeat tune ‘You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me’ plays. “Yeah, that’s not something you see every day,” Mullan admitted with a wry smile.
He gestured towards the church front. “That’s where we put up our Jesus figure. The church actually wanted to keep it afterwards, so we let them have it.”
It’s somewhat surprising that the church didn’t attempt to impede filming, especially given the controversy sparked by The Magdalene Sisters. In an unexpected turn, the nuns from the nearby Nazareth House did visit the set – but merely to take photographs with Peter Mullan. “I had to double-check if they knew who I was. But they were like, ‘Yes, you directed The Magdalene Sisters.’ I was genuinely surprised by how completely I’d been forgiven.”
Back in the car, our conversation shifted to the film’s title. NEDS is an acronym for Non-Educated Delinquents. Peter Mullan first encountered this term during his childhood. “It was derogatory. You’d fight anyone who called you a Ned because it implied you were unintelligent – and no self-respecting Ned wanted to be seen as dumb, even if they were actively making themselves appear so, because you also didn’t want to seem smart. It was like that classic John Lennon quote: ‘They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool.’ So you had to find a middle ground. I was a keen reader, but I kept that hidden from everyone.”
We drove towards Pollok, searching for the bridge that served as the location for the knife fight scenes in Neds. Peter Mullan explained that gang territorial disputes were often fought over very small areas, sometimes just a street corner. For cinematic effect, he needed something more visually striking to represent the division between rival territories.
However, the bridge remained elusive.
We ended up in a residential area bordered by a playing field on one side, and a patch of wild scrubland on the other, connected by a footbridge. “Is that our bridge?” Mullan wondered aloud. “Has it been right here in front of us all along?”
The real-life events of how Peter Mullan became involved with the Young Car-Ds closely mirror the film’s narrative. As an intelligent 14-year-old, an incident where a friend’s affluent mother forbade him from visiting their home marked a turning point. Shocked and hurt, he took a different route home and found himself in Moss Heights, a nearby housing scheme. There, a gang of youths confronted him, but upon realizing his connection to his older brother (Lenny Mullan, now Peter’s casting director, who had a formidable reputation), their demeanor shifted. Suddenly intimidated, they promptly invited Peter to join their gang.
“And that was it, for about a year,” he recounted, standing on the bridge, smoking as sleet began to fall. “I skipped school. I hung around places like this. Loitered all day. And occasionally got into fights.”
“Of course, I broke my mother’s heart,” he added, his voice softening slightly.
Did he feel any guilt at the time? “None whatsoever. Because you dive right into it, it’s so thrilling… And I was glad to shed the ‘good boy’ image because it hadn’t done me any favors. I was still living in a dysfunctional home, with a father who was a nightmare.”
Eventually, the gang told him to “fuck off” because “I used too many big words.” He also unnerved them. “At the time, I was reading about revolutionary socialism, and Joseph Connolly, and I started developing bizarre ideas about seizing police stations.”
In the car again, we decided to drive towards Moss Heights. En route, we discussed the character Peter Mullan portrays in Neds, John’s father – “a bit of a pot-bellied patriarch” – who exudes genuine menace. Did he base the character on his own father? “He was definitely partly inspired by him, but it’s not a direct imitation. My father was much worse.” However, Mullan admitted that playing the role made him realize the extent of his father’s mental instability. “He was definitely not right in the head. I know many drunks, but they don’t stand at the bottom of the stairs, rape their wives, and abuse their children in that way.”
As we arrived in Moss Heights, Peter Mullan continued to speak with striking candor about his father, including a harrowing story about how his father, as he succumbed to cancer, wanted Peter to end his life. “He’d scratch at my door at night and say: ‘Come and kill the rat.’ It was insane… What kind of human being would want his own son to kill him? And then face imprisonment for it?”
The irony, he noted, was that during this turbulent time, they lived in a large, rented house on Mosspark Boulevard, and his father held a respectable position as a lab technician at Glasgow University. “Outwardly, we seemed respectable. But behind closed doors: chaos.”
Outside the car, the sleet intensified. Peter Mullan pulled his hood up and lit another cigarette. We surveyed the surrounding high-rise buildings, among the first of their kind in Glasgow. He described how these flats were once highly sought after in Cardonald because they featured under-floor heating included in the rent. Below us, he pointed to the swing park where he was initially “initiated” by the Young Car-Ds.
He had wanted to film in Moss Heights, he explained, but the flats were renovated in the 1980s, and their more modern, curved facades made them too out of place for the period setting. “I would have liked to use CGI to fix it, but once you start doing that, you’re talking Inception budgets.” He lamented the limited funding for film production in the UK. “People often say we only make social realist films,” he remarked. “But that’s because we don’t have the money to do anything other than social realism.”
We walked over to the playground to take some photos. Peter Mullan confessed his ambition to tackle a big genre film, but the massive budgets of Hollywood productions often mean surrendering too much creative control. Standing on a swing, he mused, “I’ll probably never get a US movie now, which doesn’t particularly bother me, but considering we’re all working over here for peanuts, it’s going to be a problem as I get older. I have no pension.”
Peter Mullan wasn’t seeking pity. He was simply stating facts as he saw them. Driving back towards Glasgow city center, he mentioned that the start dates for his next few acting roles had been delayed, a common occurrence that can lead to months without income. Only large-budget projects guarantee consistent payment. In this context, he had recently worked on Steven Spielberg’s World War One epic War Horse (based on Michael Morpurgo’s acclaimed National Theatre production) and the final two-part installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Yet, listening to him talk about these projects, it was clear it wasn’t just about the money. With a mischievous charm, he referred to Spielberg as ‘Stevie Spielbergy’ and expressed amazement at the director’s youthful enthusiasm. “And the stories he tells are brilliant. You’re sitting there and he’s talking about Jaws and E.T. and you just get giddy.” It was similar on Harry Potter. “I mean, it’s Harry Fucking Potter. But it was such a good shoot. I love all that stuff. It’s better than doing a real job.”
