Silent Men & Men Don't Talk: Duncan Cowles meets Clare Prenton

Two of the big events at this year’s Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival are Men Don’t Talk, a play written by Clare Prenton which tours Scotland from 18 October, and Silent Men, a documentary by filmmaker Duncan Cowles which is screening as part of our Focus on Film programme at the CCA in Glasgow before touring to cinemas across Scotland.

Both set out to explore why men can be so reluctant to talk about mental health. Here, Duncan and Clare compare notes on what they discovered…

Duncan Cowles: My documentary is called Silent Men, and it’s about mental health, looking at my own difficulties in expressing emotion and talking about it to my family. By speaking to other people about that, and also my own family within the film, across seven years, it follows almost a reluctant journey, because it was quite difficult to actually open up (about mental health) to my family. I kind of stopped doing the film a lot.

So the avoidance of actually doing it is kind of built into the structure of the film, which made it a bit of a nightmare to make, but I think it’s something that a lot of men do, they just avoid doing the things that are difficult. The title Silent Men was kind of there from the beginning as a placeholder title, really. And then I thought about changing it because actually there are no silent men in the film. It’s the opposite of that, really. But I was told it worked as a title, so I just kept it.

Clare Prenton: I think it’s a brilliant title.

DC: Thanks. Yours is kind of similar.

CP: You hear it in the zeitgeist, don’t you? Men Don’t Talk. The Scottish Men’s Shed Association, who I was working with, promote this notion that men don’t talk face to face, they talk shoulder to shoulder. So that’s really where the idea came from. But I suppose, as an artist, my gut feeling was that men do talk. I come from a family of very chatty Scouse men. Not necessarily talking about important stuff, though, and I think that’s where your film is very different, because it’s a personal journey and it’s family.

I was working with ten strangers that had agreed to work with me out of potentially 100 men in a shed. So there were plenty that didn’t offer to come and talk to the nice drama lady, you know? The fact that I got ten was good but, you know, I didn’t get 40. I was not overwhelmed with people coming forward. So I think there was a reluctance, like ‘what’s she going to do with the material?’ But the ten men that did trust me kind of came on that journey and stayed on that journey.

My gut feeling was that men do talk, given the right conditions, but are probably more likely to talk with strangers or people they know less well. It’s very hard having honest conversations with our nearest and dearest.

But yeah, my gut feeling was that men do talk, given the right conditions, but are probably more likely to talk with strangers or people they know less well. It’s very hard having honest conversations with our nearest and dearest. I have a theory that women don’t talk as well, but it’s more nuanced. I see that in my peers. I don’t think we talk about really important stuff until we’re forced into it sometimes. So I think it does affect women as well.

But clearly the statistics are showing that it’s an issue for men far more. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we’re talking about this at about the same time? There’s a need, a desire, and there’s a kind of drive and an interest in it. That everybody recognises the need is why we got our funding. I think that’s why your film will do so well, and it will be picked up by lots of different people I hope.

DC: When I started making Silent Men back in 2016, 2017, there were statistics coming into the headlines and there was a bit of a push on male mental health, but then over the seven years since it sort of died down, and obviously there was Covid. But looking at it now as the film’s coming out, the stats have actually got worse, not better. So there’s still a huge need to keep talking about these things.

I mean, I was trying to do something for me but then hoping that the film would also help others. We also filmed in a Men’s Shed as part of the film, although it didn’t end up in the film. I went to male group therapy retreat as well, which is mentioned in the film. And we’re partnering with Andy’s Man Club on some of the UK release as well. What they do is really interesting, providing spaces for men to go to get support.

CP: I’m working with Andy’s Man Club as well at the moment, on a companion piece to Men Don’t Talk which is going to be a musical for six actor musicians but again based on conversations that I’ve had with a group of guys down in Galashiels. I didn’t know about Andy’s but because I was following a lot of male mental health charities through work I realised that there was one in Galashiels, and I thought, oh my goodness, I can write a musical about this, about brotherhood and friendship and being heard and being seen.

It’s this thing that people’s stories matter, and bearing witness to that. I think that’s really exciting as an artist. I think we need to listen more as artists, rather than pursuing our own agendas, because I think the answers are around us in communities, and then it’s how you respond as an artist through that. Rather than saying, ‘I think I’d like to go and do a version of Macbeth that is like this’.

Andy’s is a really interesting one because it’s this non-clinical environment. It all comes back to tea and biscuits at the end of the day, for me anyway, when I’m doing these projects. And we kind of parody that in my show, which has got a lot of humour in it, but the tea and the biscuits are so much more than tea and biscuits in our British culture. That’s where we do talk, you know?

Your work was a very personal work. Mine was a response to request from a theatre to work with these men but then it actually did become a really personal work. I’d lost my dad and my father in law to dementia only a year before working on this, and I realised that I got so much more out of it as an artist, from my own wellbeing point of view, by just hanging out with these guys and listening to their stories and laughing with them as well. So there was a huge benefit to me. On a personal level, I have all these new friends that I bump into locally all the time, and they become sort of part of the fabric of my world where I live.

I stopped having as many conversations with strangers in the film because I thought, actually, that’s almost becoming too easy for me, and I need to focus back on the family conversations, which were the ones that I was sort of avoiding a little bit more.

DC: The whole thing was a very therapeutic or cathartic sort of experience for me to make. Even though it was very difficult, when I actually made little breakthroughs or managed to go and film something and have a really good conversation. The growth of me over the seven years, I mean, it might not be immediately visible now, first thing in the morning, where I’m probably not looking like a very emotionally expressive bloke, but you see in the film a change from where I was, and the understanding, and it is like those conversations with strangers that I had in the film as well. It was like therapy, probably for both parties, because it is sometimes easier to have those conversations (with a stranger). I kind of stopped having as many conversations with strangers in the film because I thought, actually, that’s almost becoming too easy for me, and I need to focus back on the family conversations, which were the ones that I was sort of avoiding a little bit more. Yeah. It feels very like we’ve both been working in the same kind of mindset, in the same space.

CP: I think that’s right, although I think your work’s far braver because to put yourself under the spotlight like that is really raw, isn’t it? I can hide behind some of my script. It’s part verbatim but also a lot of it is me as a writer trying to write funny lines and dance around it so it’s not completely verbatim, whereas yours is just this ripping off a plaster and it’s extraordinary for that. I think even from the trailer I got that, and can’t wait to see the whole thing, because it’s really brave of a documentary maker.

DC: The initial plan was to not have us as much of me in it. I was going to do a sort of intro and then it was just going to be other people with maybe a little bit of reflection from me. And the feedback I was getting was like, you have to put more of you in. And I was sort of avoiding that a lot.

CP: Did you work with a team, Duncan? Did you have camera people with you?

DC: No, I did all the filming by myself. I worked with an editor on the footage, and two producers who helped me at different stages in the journey. The first producer, Rebecca Day, ended up actually becoming a qualified psychotherapist and moving away from producing; she now provides therapy and support for filmmakers. So I was well supported, but I did all the filming by myself, just because I think as soon as you’ve got someone else the conversations change. I really wanted that one on one kind of intimacy with a contributor, where you can just speak freely, and you connect with them more.

Claire Prenton (c. Mihaela Bodlovic)

CP: Yeah, I understand that well. I guess where I was kind of angling with that was the support networks around you, and how that opened up conversations. I find that with the actors I’ve worked with it’s opened up interesting conversations within the rehearsal room. I can see that there’s a benefit to them because it pushes buttons on lots of topics. And so it has that wider application.

In theatre there’s probably 12 or 13 people working on this, lighting and sound, etc, so there’s a wider kind of spread of these messages. And then I go home and I have a son and a husband, so I’m talking about that with them, and I’m talking about Andy’s with them. My son’s only 14, so it feels that just by putting it in the conversation and working in this area that it’s being pushed out to so many more spaces. I’m sure in your editing suite that is also happening.

DC: Yeah, there was a bit of that. Most of that is now coming as the film’s coming out. The first screening we had, in Sheffield at the documentary festival there in June, it was amazing because it had been quite a private project, quite a solitary thing, me and the editor and a very small team, and then seeing the reaction with audiences and the questions that they were asking and engaging with.

One guy like after the screening came up and had his phone in his hand, and he was like, ‘I’m going to go and phone my dad and tell him that I love him, because I’ve never done that before’. And he went outside and then phoned him, and then he came back in with big smile on his face and was so thankful that the film had prompted him to do that. That was the first time it almost exited my space and became something that was working for others. And it was like, Oh, wow, yeah, it was actually worth doing it. Because there were plenty of times I thought about packing in the film because it was just like, this is not going anywhere. Or, you know, I’m never going to be able to kind of finish it.

CP: So has it been less exposing than you imagined? Because your film is actually so universal, the experience across lots of men. What started out as maybe something that you felt was really very raw for you actually is opening up conversations about everybody, and it’s becoming less about you as it rolls out?

DC: Yeah, in a way. Most people respond pretty positively. Occasionally you have a conversation with someone and they don’t relate to it at all, which has been also quite interesting. It’s just not their experience, or they’re not like that, or they come from a family where it’s totally different. In a way I almost wish I’d filmed with more of those people as well, households that are totally different to mine.

CP: We did the show in Peebles, and it was lots of the men who had shared and their friends and people that know me as a writer. So it was, you know, pretty soft. We did get some lovely feedback, like one lady who I teach drama to in another context said ‘my husband and I went home and had a conversation that we would never have had about prostate cancer’. So she was glad that she brought him for that reason. And again, when we did it in Duns at a play festival, the Duns Men’s Shed were there.

So I think the response that you’re talking about will come through the reviews when it’s out on this tour, and it’ll be interesting to see the feedback. You just never know how it’s going to land, do you? But I think these issues are universal enough that people can recognise these characters in lots of different contexts. We had a photographer in rehearsals the other day, and she said she works for a community housing association as a trustee, and recognised these men and these types of conversations and these mugs of tea and these kind of so that was really reassuring to hear, that it’s perhaps got even more universality than just a Men’s Shed.

I would love it to go to Canada and Australia and Ireland, where there is a Men’s Shed network and a movement that could help support us, because I think you could change the accents and change some of the references, and I would hope that it would have that universality.

DC: Yeah, I’m hoping to show this film internationally. I’m intrigued to see whether it’ll resonate with international audiences as much as it does UK wise.

CP: Like, if an Italian is watching this, would they say, oh no, my father was so huggy? Maybe not, you know. And I think that’s what’s fascinating, that we make assumptions – oh, it might do better in Northern Europe, I bet the Swedes would be like this, or the Norwegians, but, you know, the Italians and the Spanish are more outwardly sort of emotional but maybe not, maybe not with their own children. So I think it’s absolutely fascinating, that there are kinds of social stereotypes around these things.

DC: It’s funny because my editor was Italian, she had a bit of a different point of view, and she came onto the project sort of halfway through, and started working with the footage. And she challenged me a lot, because she came from a different situation together. I don’t want to speak too much on her, but it was interesting coming from a totally different point of view. She’s lived in Scotland long enough, but yeah, it was kind of funny.