When filming a documentary exploring Norfolk’s stock car racing scene writer and director Guy Myhill instantly fell in love with the county’s rustic landscape, charmed by it’s resemblance to his own rural childhood. With the Norfolk countryside setting in mind Myhill went about writing an apt narrative that did the location justice, and so he wrote The Goob.

The Goob centres around lead character Goob, as he’s called by his family. We first meet the lanky teenager on the back of the school bus having just finished his final day, freedom is calling, and yet his summer is stained by the omnipresent shadow of his mother’s violent, womanising live-in boyfriend, Womak; a cheating stock car racer.

Goob’s insular world is challenged by two outsiders; camp, fun-lover Elliot (Oliver Kennedy) who enrages Womack with his frivolity, and summer worker Eva (Marama Corlett) who comes to town to work on Womack’s beet farm. Both give impressionable Goob a taste of a greater world outside his own, outside Norfolk, if only he can break free, both mentally and physically.

The star of the film, street cast up comer Liam Walpole – who when approached by the casting director had just finished working at a local chicken factory, living on the dole at the time – excels as Goob, bringing a fresh vigour to the role. Set against the backdrop of Norfolk’s stock racing scene The Goob slides itself perfectly amongst the canon of candidly raw yet charming Brit flicks; think Shane Meadows and Ken Loach. Myhill’s vision is articulated confidently, juxtaposing Simon Tindall’s stunning cinematography with the narrative’s vivid slice of social realism.

Alex James Taylor: Guy, can you explain to us how the premise of the story came about?
Guy Myhill: I’d previously made a documentary on the stock car scene, specifically at the same place that we shot the film, and I was fascinated watching these men just going round and round and round, stuck almost. That was the starting point, and I love that scene, I’m not speaking about it in a negative way at all, I think it’s bloody great. If you’ve got a man stuck going round and round the flip side to that in a narrative way would be, who escapes? So pulling that into a family situation but also exploiting that part of the world, all the migrant workers etc, I’ve got a coupe of mates in that line of business so I know it a bit.

AJT: The track is symbolic of the mundanity of everyday life, going round and round…
GM: And how does one get out of that, you’ve got limited opportunities in those places, so how does one get away?

AJT: So did you grow up in a small town yourself?
GM: I’m from Nottingham, but when I was sort of Goob’s age I was in Cheshire in a pretty small town, in Nantwich.

AJT: In terms of Norfolk, because you’d previously filmed your documentary there did you already know which locations you wanted to use for The Goob?
GM: Yeah, and I love location scouting. If all I could do is just wander around and find locations, I’d love it. And look, I don’t think there’s anywhere like Norfolk in the UK, it’s got this kind of flat land that can go on for miles, but traditionally when films have been filmed there they’ve probably not actually been set in that part of the world so I think it was a great opportunity to set it there. There’s something about the landscape around there Alex that I just find interesting, as big and wide open as it is I think it’s a land full of secrets.

AJT: And in terms of your own life Liam did the film reflect your own experience of growing up in Norfolk or did it allow you to see Norfolk in a different light?
Liam Walpole: Yeah I kind of saw it differently after filming to be honest.

AJT: Sometimes it takes an outsider’s view to romanticise somewhere you know so well
LW: Yeah totally, and Guy did that for me

AJT: In terms of casting Liam for the role of Goob, did you always have the intention of street casting the lead?
GM: Yeah, I think not just with Liam but across the board, it’s slightly different with say a Yorkshire accent like yours because it’s maybe easier to get people not from Yorkshire to emulate it. But Norfolk is quite specific and hearing professionals who don’t come from that part of the world you get this kind of Somerset accent and it doesn’t sound right. So it was always an intention to cast it as best as we could for this reason, Hannah [Spearritt, plays Mary] she’s from Norfork, Sean [Harris, plays Womack] is from Norfolk, Sienna [Guillory, plays Janet, Goob’s Mum] is also Norfolk. That was great, they know the place and they have that authentic tongue.

Mixing it in with people like Liam and I’ve got a couple of builder mates who are in the film, they’ve got that dialect and like him [pointing towards Liam] a strong physical presence. But beyond the actors, equally it’s scored by a musician called Luke Abbott who has brought out a few CDs but has never scored a film, so it was great to get him in as his sound prior to The Goob is all about exploring that landscape

AJT: I was going to mention that, the soundtrack is great and really helps pull the film together throughout.  The song that plays at the beginning during the credits is a brilliant choice.
GM: It’s called Degringo and it’s by this French band called Monofocus. Funnily enough there’s a little coastal town in Norfolk called Great Yarmouth and they have a massive, you just wouldn’t equate putting it in Yarmouth but, there’s an arts organisation there and every year they put on this four day massive circus event and normally I go. This particular year I couldn’t go but a mate of mine went and this French mob had turned up with four cranes and they were hanging these shipping containers in the air and there were these tiny little planks and they came out of it on these Puch mopeds on that Monofocus track and went round and round and round. Such was the power of that, my mate went up to them and got the name of the track.

AJT: You speak passionately about motorcycles, stock cars and moped, all these sort of banged up modes of transport, and they all feature in The Goob of course, why do you think it is such a theme in your work?
GM: When I was a kid we didn’t have Puch but I always liked the sound of Puch, it’s a nice word to say. We have an old Honda that we’d nicked, well, acquired, and me and my mates just used to scream about on that in Cheshire, so it’s a part of that. But also I suppose I saw it in Western terms as his horse and I love the scene when it’s just Goob and Eva, the picker girl, on the back, I remember doing that with a girl and I just like the feeling of that. In those rural communities you can’t walk anywhere, there’s hardly any public transport so you need something, and he’s just got this battered old bike and it’s there with him at the end like a dependable horse, actually you trashed it didn’t you?

LW: Did I?

GM: yeah, the bike is fucked. All the crew were on it during filming and it would hardly go by the end

LW: The spark plug kept getting charred up.

AJT: So could you already ride bikes before filming?
LW: Yeah I’ve been riding them since I was about eight

AJT: And what about the stock car scene, were you familiar with it?

LW: yeah I did know about it, I’d been a couple of times but I haven’t been for years, not since I was like twelve. I actually went to the one where we filmed The Goob at. I’m not quite sure how many other tracks there are

GM: There’s one at Yarmouth and a big one on Wimbledon but I think they might be selling it off.

AJT: When the casting director first approached you Liam did you jump at the chance or were you apprehensive about it?
LW: I was apprehensive but not because I was worried or anything to do with that, it was more that I didn’t believe what the casting director was actually telling me, I didn’t even believe that they were actually filming a film in Norfolk. I didn’t expect to hear anything back and then all of a sudden I heard back and me and Guy met up…

GM: Yeah and I was with my partner and we’d had this massive argument

LW: [laughing] about this dog

GM: Yeah, it’ll take too long to explain. But poor Liam, it was the first time I’d met him and me and my partner were having this blazing argument in this cafe, and I think Liam was sitting there thinking ‘What the hell am I doing here’ [laughing].

AJT: And did you know straight away that Liam was the person you wanted to play Goob?
GM: Well we had teams going out to find people and it was getting pretty close to starting so I had a back up Goob list but nothing had really cemented in my mind. We had teams going around all these little Norfolk market towns taking maybe sixty pictures a day and then his came through and he had that yellow T-shirt with the blue trim and he’s looking right down the barrel of the camera, he had this sort of David Bowie from The Man Who Fell to Earth, Spock look,  and it was just brilliant. When I met him basically it was just a question of whether he could act, so we did a couple of scenes and he was great.

AJT: Is there anything that surprised you about filming?
LW: How long it took, how many times we had to shoot one scene, that did surprise me.

GM: The whole film only took twenty four days to shoot though. We were on six days a week, just one day off a week.

AJT: I guess that can be good because everyone stays in the right frame of mind.
GM: Yeah it is good but by the end of it you’re just on your knees, it was hard.

AJT: So Liam, in terms of your future, do you want to go into acting know, or has that put you off for life? [laughing]
LW: [laughing] No not at all, I’d love to do some more acting work, I’m just waiting to see what happens.

The Goob is out now at selected cinemas