Trivia / Kes

• Actor-Shared Background: Brian Glover was also a teacher at the time the movie was filmed.
• Amateur Cast: Pretty much everyone was an amateur or not even an actor, with Colin Welland being the only professional actor in the cast. Brian Glover was a pro wrestler and Lynne Perrie had been a singer and comedian.
• Breakthrough Hit: Ken Loach was established as a director with this film's success. Especially impressive because it wasn't given a wide release at first, believing no one outside Yorkshire would understand the accents.
• Cast the Expert: Bob Bowes, who played the headmaster, was an actual head teacher at a school.
• Creator Backlash: Ken Loach later said he regretted making Jud too much of a brute, and not focused enough on the hardships he faced as a coal miner.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • The child actors were actually caned on the hand by Bob Bowes, and paid ten shillings for it.
  • Colin Welland taught in the local school for a week to properly develop a credible relationship with the children who would be acting as extras.
  • Ken Loach lied to Dai Bradley that one of the kestrels used in filming would be killed to get a genuine reaction of disgust from him in the final scene.
• Friendship on the Set: Dai Bradley described the cast as "like one big huge family", and he and the other boys in the film often played together.
• Looping Lines: Some scenes had to be redubbed for the American released. Word of God is that some American studio execs told him they could understand Hungarian better than the Yorkshire accents.
• Production Posse: Ken Loach and Barry Hines would collaborate several more times.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Richard Hines, younger brother of author Barry Hines, and the inspiration for Billy, served as a bird handler on the film.
  • Lynne Perrie (Mrs Casper) was the sister of Doggie Brown, who played the milkman.
• Reality Subtext: The school used for filming was where Barry Hines and Dai Bradley had attended.
• Throw It In!:
  • In the library scene, which was filmed in a real library with hidden cameras, an old woman who didn't know they were filming overheard David Bradley arguing with the librarian and ordered him to "show some respect". Dai Bradley improvised telling her to "bugger off", an argument ensued and the woman hit him with her umbrella. However, the film on the camera ran out, so the take couldn't be used.
  • Brian Glover can be seen wearing a white bandage over his leg in the football match scenes. This is because, on the evening of the first filming day, he also wrestled a match (he had another career as a wrestler Leon Arras) and got injured. He needed a support bandage to get through the scenes on the second day, but they had to re-shoot the previous ones to account for continuity.
• Unbuilt Casting Type: Brian Glover would later be typecast as thugs and criminals. In his first role here, the overbearing sports teacher Mr Sugden, he's almost parodying the later typecasting.
• Uncredited Role: Julie Goodyear, who would later achieve fame as Bet Lynch of Coronation Street has a small, uncredited role as a woman in the betting shop.
• What Could Have Been: Disney were interested in making an adaptation of the novel, but they also wanted Kes to live at the end. Barry Hines refused, despite the lucrative deal he was offered. American execs also tried to change the ending to be happier, such as having Billy get a job in a zoo.
• Write What You Know: Barry Hines, author of the book, based it on his own experiences as a teacher and how his younger brother's life was improved when he began training a kestrel.