for us to keep it down.
I talked to Emmet recently and he was talking about making sure that the locations were real to the characters,
One of the big things that we all brought to it, but especially Emmet and Dave Tynan, was that authenticity of not picking obvious locations but still bringing that real thing of the route to town making sense. That drives people mad. I can't remember the film but the hang a left out of Temple Bar and they end up in Fairview. There was actually a lot of logistic discussions about that, in terms of making sure that when we moved it to quieter streets that we asked "would he come this way" and that was a real big part of it. It's challenging but the pay-back is that people feel that there is an authenticity to it and it's not something that we've seen a lot of and its not obvious or cliched. There's no usual vistas or the Spire. It was the same with the clubs and the same with the gaffs. The lads whole thing was authenticity. Whether it came to extras or locations or interiors or production design. The lads were very quick to go "that's wrong" or "that works". The nice expression, which has been said a lot, is that their idea was to do it from the inside out so that the audience feels like they are looking out and that they are part of it. That you don't feel that it's an artificial Dublin or an artificial culture. That it feels real and that you are with them.
Only the monologue scenes, the flashbacks, take you out of that trip through the weekend.
They're separate. It's kind of like a brothers film, then the relationship with Seána Kerslake as Gemma, and then his ensemble group through the weekend. His ketamine support group. It's those layers but we do feel that at its heart you want the brothers tale to have the impact. Weaving all of that together was hard. That was heaving lifting by the two lads in the script.
When did you get involved in the production of it?
Mike Donnelly who produced it with me, also produced Dave Tynan's Rockmount short, which was the Roy Keane film that won IFTAs and played in Galway. JJ Rolfe, who is the DoP shot that and they both did Just Saying. Mike produced, JJ shot it and Dave directed it. That was the viral immigration short. Fast forward then and we did the 1916 short with the Film Board, The Cherishing. At that stage we were sharing a mad space, that is sadly gone now, and out of that space as a sidebar came thinks like the Repeal shoot, Heartbreak, pop videos. We all kind of hung out in there. We needed a first A.D., and Mike Donnelly is an excellent first A.D. and an excellent line producer, and indeed producer. So we asked him and it was a lovely shoot. It went really well. We were in the pub afterwards and he said to me "have you seen Dublin Oldschool?" and I
said "no no no...I've tried to see it but every time that I went to go see it it was sold out", so he goes "we should go see it, because we should make a film of it". So I was like "okay" and we went to go see it. He was seeing it for the third time and Dave Tynan had seen it in Bewley's on the first run. I thought it was amazing but that there was a lot of stuff in there and it would be difficult. There were fantastical elements and a lot of characters. We came out and we said "let's do it!". We spoke to Emmet, who was like "okay, we'll try and get this done in a year and a half".
It's that kind of Venn diagram of all of those things that we did together that led us here. I had done a script development thing with Dave Tynan in the Film Board with Rory Gilmartin, and we had talked about Dublin Oldschool with Rory and Sarah Dillon at the Film Board. Then his term came to and end and he moved to Element Pictures. He was really supportive and the Film Board advised that as it was our first feature that we should take an executive producer. Element Pictures Distribution were onboard at that stage so Rory came on and Lesley McKimm at the Film Board. Liam Ryan had line produced The Cherishing, and he had put together a really tight ship, so we just came out and asked why shouldn't we do this. I kind of think of it as a graduation. All of the crew as well, the sound mixer Paddy Downey and wardrobe as well with Sarajane Ffrench O'Carroll. It was a really young crew on-shoot, barring maybe myself and the production designer.
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