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| Preparing to face the crowds in Wonderkid |
Sometimes you come across a story and you just have to take it on. Rhys Chapman had set out to make a film about the troubles faced by a young footballer, and was exploring issues like racism and corruption in the sport, when he began to realise how homophobic football can be. Though he’s straight himself, the situation made a big impression on him, and he began to wonder how many talented players might fail to reach their potential as a result of it. Wonderkid was born.
The story of a young gay professional footballer who has just moved to London to play for a bigger club, Wonderkid pairs its hero with the best friend who has become his manager and who refuses to accept his sexuality. It explores his private life and the affect on him of homophobia coming from the crowd. ”We were just shocked initially,” says Rhys of the time he and his team spent on research. He remembered hearing, as a child, about Justin Fashanu, the gay Nottingham Forest player who took his own life in 1998.
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| Rhys Chapman |
“There are 5,000 professional footballers in the country today,” Rhys points out, “so statistically quite a few of them have to be gay. I’m not surprised they don’t come out. They face an enormous amount of suffering. The media has been very hostile.” He’s concerned about the effect on the game, too, because of all the talent that’s wasted. “It breaks my heart to see England fail to achieve success internationally.”
“I grew up playing football,” he says of his childhood in Cambridgeshire, “but it was a very hostile environment. That’s the way the game is now – it’s all about possession. At the top level it’s very aggressive physically and that’s not a very friendly environment so I stopped playing in my early teens.” Now, however, he says that he has fallen back in love with the sport.
“We found a team called Soho FC. They’re a gay friendly football team; they’re predominantly straight but have a welcoming ethos and they focus on team spirit and cooperation. After I got involved with Soho FC I went to charities to see how we could use the film make difference. Galop [a London-based charity dedicated to tackling LGBT hate crime) offered to affiliate with us and offered to help us when we film it, to make it as realistic as possible. We want it to be able to be used for educational purposes and talking to young people.”
Getting to know people already working on these issues led to Rhys being invited to London Pride by Arsenal’s LGBT supporters club. “It was an amazing experience to be around all these people who might have to spend large periods of their lives not being themselves and there they were, having fun,” he says. “I saw Ian McKellen there, just walking around, so I went up to him and told him what I’m doing. He was really nice and he said “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” McKellen has since narrated the Kickstarter appeal that is helping Rhys raise a budget for the film.
“As a result of the subject matter a lot of doors that would ordinarily have been closed were open for us,” Rhys says. “It was really heartwarming and it emphasised the seriousness of the issue.”
This reception has also strengthened his commitment to the project. “We could have made the film on a low budget very quickly and not taken the issue very seriously, kind of used the issue, but we wanted to be professional about it. I released a video in March explaining the project and saying that we were looking for a producer, and I had over a hundred replies.”
Reflecting further on the issue itself, he says “The main problem in football is there’s no real punishment for homophobic abuse. If crowds have been shouting racist slogans at events the punishment is very high – matches played in closed stadiums, that sort of thing – but when it’s homophobia, nothing much happens. Brighton and Hove Albion have an association with the gay community because of the way Brighton is and that led to them getting homophobic abuse from away fans week in, week out. They submitted a report to the FA detailing the abuse they suffered every week but to this day I don’t think has been any real punishment.”
He does see hope for change, though. “I think the media is now behind the issue in the right way. When the Rainbow Laces campaign was out last year, 32 advertisers in the Metro supported it by using rainbow colours.”
Although Rhys has been working in film for two years, this is his first major production. “I moved to London when I was 20,” he says. “”I was working for plumbing firm then and I wasn’t very happy. Then my girlfriend left me and I lost my job – it was the lowest time of my life really - so I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.
“In regards to this issue, I’m not going to stop working on it until homophobia in football is over.”
He is looking at other possible projects, however. “I did a lot of work for Trevor Sorbie, the hairdresser. He has a charity called My New Hair that he started after his brother’s wife got cancer. She died from it in the end but before that she lost her hair and he cut the wig she got from the NHS so it would look good on her. Her reaction was what motivated him to start the charity for cancer patients, cutting wigs. So I would like to tell that story too, but I have to make Wonderkid first!”
If you would like to contribute to Wonderkid’s budget, you can do so here.
