Serkis act sparks controversy

A new biopic of the iconic disabled musician Ian Dury has landed Andy Serkis with the kind of mixed reception that often greeted the movie’s subject and his work. Paul Carter reports

With his bands Kilburn And The Highroads and The Blockheads, Ian Dury was a key player in the new-wave music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, producing seminal tracks such as “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” and “Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3” that also won him chart success.

Widely regarded as one of Britain’s finest ever lyricists for his biting, witty, honest observations about life and disability, Dury is the subject of Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, a new biopic named after his 1977 hit of the same name.

Starring Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, King Kong) as Dury, the film tackles Dury’s life head on, giving a warts-and-all impression of a man for whom disability meant many different things.

Perhaps ironically, despite the authentically of his characterisation, it is Serkis’s presence in the lead role that has caused some controversy among the disabled community, and once again raises questions about the rights and wrongs of non-disabled actors playing disabled characters.

Speaking to Disability Now, Serkis says that before getting involved in the film in the very early stages, he wasn’t aware that disability was a constant theme in Dury’s life.

“One of the things that came out while talking to Sophie, Baxter and Jemima [Dury’s wife and two children] was that because Ian wasn’t born with a disability, because it was kind of thrust upon him at the age of eight, and he then had to spend his life dealing with it, all of them said he never considered himself to be a disabled person.”

This question of self-identification is something that’s revisited throughout.

In a film that’s sometimes over-stylised and slow-paced, Serkis produces a nonetheless extraordinary performance, further cementing his position as one of this country’s finest method actors. (He spent several weeks in a calliper to prepare for the role, he told Disability Now.)

Serkis says that disabled actor, playwright and film­maker Nabil Shaban had been particularly opposed to his taking Dury’s role.

It’s an issue he clearly feels strongly about, and tackles the subject almost immediately into the interview.

“He [Shaban] wrote a big tirade about why a ‘non-crip’ actor shouldn’t play these parts, and that Ian would be absolutely furious, which I don’t agree with at all, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken on the role.

“Sophie replied saying Ian probably wouldn’t have approved of the exclusivity of that kind of approach.”

As a child, Serkis grew up more aware of disability than many non-disabled people. His mother used to teach at a school with thalidomide children and children with polio, and his sister has severe MS.

He concedes he understands “how it would wind people up”, considering the paucity of roles for disabled actors, but thinks disability shouldn’t be seen as the defining theme of the film, just as Dury railed against people defining him by his impairment.

“Given the percentage of that to the meaning and the context of the rest of the film, it’s not all about that, it’s not all about ‘disabled person becomes rocker’.

“Ian, as a creative persona, in many ways didn’t even acknowledge he was disabled, he didn’t acknowledge that side of him, until he wanted to play it.”

Dury’s self-discovery of his “identity” as a disabled person becomes a strong theme towards the end of the film and shows his transformation from a performer trying to hide his impairment to one who began engaging with the disabled community.

“That’s actually when he did get in touch with that,” says Serkis. “On the rise to fame, throughout the Blockheads and New Boots And Panties, he wanted to cover up his disability.

“He tried on stage not to show he was disabled and then when it came to post-fame and the emotional turmoil of being ‘normalised’, which was the word he used, he started to suffer and started to drink a lot and really sort of persecute himself for selling out, and his disability was a way of re-engaging himself with that.”

A particularly poignant scene in the film shows Dury completing the circle by going to visit some disabled children at his old school, Chailey Heritage.

Serkis says: “Going and meeting those kids was a way for him, after a nervous breakdown, sort of stripping off and making himself naked. Even in all the documentary footage, he started to wear sleeveless t-shirts so you can see his arm whereas before it was all covered up. Then, the kind of patronising attitude to the Year of the Disabled, and all his railing against it, that gave him his fire.”

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll will no doubt split opinion among the disabled community – after all, for many, it does commit the cardinal sin.

But it should perhaps be applauded for trying to portray disability not only candidly but with a sensitivity that never falls into the trap of becoming patronising or voyeuristic.

Those looking for a bog-standard rock biopic, or a necessarily straightforward heart-warming tale of “disabled man-done-good”, won’t find either here.

What you’ll find is a film that’s challenging, wry and darkly funny, though not without flaws.

In many ways it’s much like the man it portrays.