Billy Howle Enters the Ring in Kid Snow

A good boxer knows how to take a punch. They know when to throw in the towel and when to fight until the bitter end. Kid Snow (Billy Howle) is one of those boxers, but he finds himself knocked out of the professional world of the sport and into the far more brutal ring of tent boxing. Paul Goldman’s Kid Snow is a gritty look at survival in the barren land of the 1970s Australian outback.

Ahead of the film’s United States release, Billy Howle sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to discuss throwing his hat into the ring, Kid’s take on gentle masculinity in a brutal land, and how the definition of survival can change when you find something to live for.

Film Obsessive: Hey, Billy! I’m going to start with just a real basic question; what made you interested in joining Kid Snow?

Billy Howle: First and foremost, the script. I don’t think I’d ever read anything like it before. I didn’t know anything about 1970s Australia, never mind this very peculiar thing known as tent boxing. I had a vague awareness of its existence, but no real frame of reference. I’ll often read a script numerous times even before I decide to do something. Every time I read it, there was something new, some piece of subtext or some kind of hidden depth to a character. I thought the characters were remarkable, so very much alive. They just came off the page.

Then, my conversations with Paul Goldman, the director. He has a brain the size of the planets. Paul has a super-interesting way into filmmaking coming from music videos and working with Nick Cave. I’ve always liked Nick Cave’s music and I had lots of questions for Paul about that work. It was really interesting talking to him. Then I went away and shamefully, at the time, I hadn’t seen any of Paul’s films. I went away and watched some of his work as well.

It was like, wow, they’re kind of just on the cusp of experimental and very wild, you know? There’s a wild element to them that really speaks to me, especially in films that I love. I thought, yeah, this looks like a good recipe, when do we cook it?

Had you ever picked up boxing gloves before this?

I had done a little bit of boxing with my personal trainer. Sadly, he’s no longer with us, but we had done some boxing together. The timing of it was odd because he had just recently died and I was looking for a way to become much more active again. This was a really good excuse for that. I trained for six months with a guy called Rob Lynch in London. After that was over, I went over to Perth. It was interesting because the language of the sport of boxing itself can get lost in translation from club to club. There are different approaches.

It was interesting because I wasn’t totally undoing everything I’d learned. I had a good grounding in it, but we were finessing, tweaking, and looking at the anachronisms in some of the stuff that I’d learned. We’re looking at a very specific period of time in boxing and a specific version of the sport. It’s in a tent, so there’s more showboating and it’s more entertainment based than anything else.

Your character, Kid, is very quiet. I feel like there’s a physicality to your performance, obviously because of the boxing, but then because you don’t have a very wordy role. Did you feel like you had to rely on your body language in a different way than you have in previous roles because of this?

Yeah, it was a real gift to me. Less verbose roles are a bit daunting in some ways because you’re much more exposed and you really have to think about what’s happening in the scene. I’m not saying I don’t do that normally, but you can’t rely on the verbal expression of what is happening to tell you how the character is feeling.

Kid was daunting, it was exposing, but it was also a gift because, if you love acting and you love the process of it and you love the preparation, which I do most of the time (laughs), it really made me have to think about things in ways that I hadn’t done before. Body language was a key thing. A lot of it is unconscious stuff though. It’s reflexive and you learn over a long period of time how to use your body in a certain way, a certain manner.

I think subtlety is key. I think there are a lot of performances where an actor is celebrated for this physical feat where it’s very clear they’ve made this change to their body. I think subtlety is very important.

Yeah, I fully agree. I love a subtle performance more than a very loud one. That kind of brings me to this question about the role of masculinity in the movie. Kid expresses a gentleness that’s in direct contrast with the violent world he exists in. How did you relate to that idea of masculinity? How do you think Kid sustains his gentle nature in that sort of environment?

That’s a really good question. I’m so glad you asked me that because it’s the first time I’ve been asked about it today. I remember thinking about it at the time. I remember speaking to a few of the consultants who lived in this world in the ’70s in the Outback, either indigenous or white Australian. They had these incredible stories to tell us.

This one guy in particular, I won’t name him because I’m not sure if he wants to be named, but he had really seen so much. You could see that he had this kind of wizened expression on his face and his face was really weathered with these grains in his cheeks. In a way, it just felt like he’d lived a number of lifetimes.

He’s seen brutality, he’s seen violence. He came off the street and was a street brawler before going into the tent boxing world. The way in which he told me these stories was so, what’s the word…there was a serenity to it, a gentleness to it. That really struck me. I thought about the expansive landscape of this world they’re existing in and how even me being there and shooting this film felt like I’d been there for much, much longer than I had. The history of that land speaks to you while you’re treading over it.

I thought, maybe that’s interesting for Kid. Maybe there’s not just maturity, but a sense that there’s something ancient in him. In terms of masculinity, that young, brash form of masculinity that’s obvious and bold has no place here. I felt the weight of the world on his shoulders, having done what he’d done and his past constantly speaking to him in the form of resonances around boxing and what he still does for a living.

There’s no reason to try to prove anything or even to compete. When we do see the flash of anger in terms of what he feels, he has to teach his brother a lesson. That in itself is a resolution between them. All of these things that have gone unspoken for a long time. It’s the saddest thing I think Kid’s ever had to do in terms of his relationship with his brother.

I love American Westerns and the idea of the lonely person out in the middle of nowhere who remains kind in a harsh atmosphere. That was one of my favorite parts of the movie.

Oh, thank you!

The inciting incident of the film is a rematch between Kid and the local champion. There’s this idea of redemption, but do you feel like Kid was agreeing to the fight because of a chance at redemption or because of a deep, familial obligation?

There are these parallel worlds that I think the film speaks to, which is what we would expect in an almost cliched way from a sports redemption movie. It’s almost like Kid’s reaction to this news, to this inciting incident, is in direct conversation with the idea that there is this world where that would be the reason Kid would go to do this. It’s much more prosaic than that. I think, in some ways, it would be easy to criticize the film for this, but it’s this entrenched thing that the characters exist in. It has to do with survival.

There’s an element of familial obligation and guilt there toward his brother as to why Kid’s continuing to live in this world of regret, guilt, and grief that there’s no escape from. There’s a kind of recklessness as well to Kid’s decision-making early on in the story, and a careless innocence to him. It doesn’t matter what happens to him because he feels he’s nothing, you know? That there’s very little of him left.

We have the MacGuffin of the tin of money. For Kid, the idea of having an aspiration in that world seems perverse, but there’s still some youthful exuberance or optimism in him that hasn’t quite died yet.

Since you mentioned survival, I’ll make that my last question. I would agree that he’s very much only survival-focused until he meets Sunny, who is Kid’s romantic interest. Do you believe their relationship caused a real shift in his definition of what survival is?

Like I mentioned, the idea of aspiration seems perverse to Kid. I also think the idea of longevity is on an equal footing with that. Amidst all this, what I would describe as horror and brutality, when you’re faced with something of beauty…and when I say beauty, I don’t mean in an objectifying way toward Sunny’s character. When Kid is faced with her relationship with her son and their survival, it’s this mirror image, right?

That’s a moment of realization for Kid, and his relationship with Sunny’s child changes his perspective. We kind of lay parts of our psyche on a young person. We see ourselves in them, and Kid is presented with the idea that his role in life could change. That he could be relied upon. In that sense, it’s also a coming-of-age film as well. It happens to be latent, but it’s there. Perhaps he could be a provider, and that part of himself that comes naturally does have a place here.

Thank you so much for your time, Billy. I really enjoyed the film.

Good talking to you, too. Thank you, Tina. Thank you.

Kid Snow premieres in the United States on February 14.