Urban World

Hush Your Mouth: A film that gets people talking

This summer sees the release of the new British feature Hush Your Mouth by first-time feature director Tom Tyrwhitt (38).  Hush Your Mouth is the story of a young man murdered for being a grass, his brother trying to find the truth and his best friend wrongly accused.  The film is set in that forgotten part of London - Silvertown,

Growing up in the 80s in Silvertown, Surrey Docks and the Isle Of Dogs, Tom saw his landscape change, Surrey Docks became Surrey “Quays” and the Isle of Dogs – “Docklands”.  Silvertown never bothered with a change of name, it stayed as it was - just older and shabbier and never silver.

This is a film about men – men learning how to relate without violence and learning to admit defeat, weakness and error.  Things you would never do in your right mind in this part of town. There was violence in every corner of Silvertown – the silent threat from the knackered Dad sat in the dark sending you out for a quarter bottle of cheap whisky and forty Navy Cut, the overt challenge from the jack-the-lad who bought a drink for everyone in his presence because he knew he’d ‘had’ each and everyone of them, at one time, in one way or another.  The only controlled violence was in the Boy’s Brigade Boxing Club where the teenage Tyrwhitt trained.  He still remembers his first session, doing sit-ups too fast and a massive man standing over him, then his massive hand, then just his little finger resting on Tom’s forehead – that’s all it took to restrain him and Lennie Mclean wasn’t the kind of man to waste energy or words --  and the question: “Three my way or ten yours – your choice.”  Tom chose Lennie’s way and although he never became much of fighter he remembered those snippets of dialogue and story and he held on to them.

Tom saw London for the first time from a boat – he’d joined Blackwall Rowing Club and every Sunday he’d row up to Tower Bridge and then race back.  He felt London was his and he could go anywhere.  Stories started to bubble up and the idea of a grass being simultaneously the lowest of the low and maybe the bravest of the brave started to form.  Years later talking to kids in the abandoned parks and derelict streets near the river he was struck by how London for them was just a few safe streets – they had no sense of the city they lived in and spent most of the time on the back foot – scared to go through the wrong estates or take the wrong bus. Tom had lost a good friend to heroin when he was nineteen, but apart from George, funerals were of grandparents and old people who’d had a good innings – but these kids had been to seven funerals by the age of seventeen – not of Grandma but of mates.

Leo, the hero of Hush Your Mouth, is seventeen and bereaved, although he is surrounded by people of all faiths, he and those close to him hold nothing sacred.  To make him even more alone, the person closest to his dead brother, Isaiah, is suspected of his murder.  Leo is offered the opportunity to take revenge and injure, or even kill, Isaiah but he refuses and thus sets in motion his own growth into a man and the revelation of the truth behind his brother’s death.

The film was made digitally and in a very organic way over a two-year shooting period with first-time actors and non-actors – “real” funeral-directors, strippers, preachers, fighters, priests and police.  These spontaneous and sometimes dangerous situations were held together by a group of adult actors including Ruth Sheen who is well known for her work with Mike Leigh on Vera Drake, Life is Sweet and Jay Simpson who has worked on films as diverse as Alan Clarke’s “The Firm” and “The Holiday” with Jude Law and Cameron Diaz.

Tyrwhitt has a great love of discovering new talent and this film gave him plenty of opportunity. Khalid Abdalla had never stepped onto a film set before meeting Tom and since making Hush Your Mouth has gone on to play the lead hijacker in “United 93” and the lead in the major adaptation of “Kite Runner”.  Jessica Jones who gives the stillest and most understated of performances had never acted before and now is beginning a career in features including parts in Ricky Gervais’ Cemetery Junction and the thriller Bonded by Blood.

Tyrwhitt knew that the masculine violence and aggression in Hush Your Mouth needed to be balanced by music with a female sensibility.  He chose a first-time composer Sukie Smith who wrote original songs and a score.  This led Sukie to a trip with Tyrwhitt to Los Angeles and a record deal for her first album “In Case of Emergency” under her band’s name Madam.  

Hush Your Mouth is bound to attract controversy as it tackles the cold grey areas of morality. Says Liza Brown, the film’s producer: “The responses to early screenings affected how we cut the film.  Particularly with a film like this which, in its working method, is very much like a documentary in the sense that Tom sets up a situation as real as possible and keeps the camera away from the action and gathers lots of material which is later shaped in the cutting room.  Unlike most filmmakers I know Tom actually invites negative as well as positive response to his work and acts upon this feedback.  That’s why this film, made in very difficult circumstances, is as good and strong as it is”.

Hush Your Mouth has led to lots of interest in Tom’s next projects both in Europe and America.  He is currently working with Bona Fide the producers of “Little Miss Sunshine” on a seventies soul movie set in the North of England and Memphis Tennessee called You Get To Me.