With East Is East, Damien O'Donnell has followed up one of the most charming and hilarious shorts of recent years, Thirty Five Aside, with one of the most charming and hilarious feature films of recent years. Paul Byrne talks to the sickeningly gifted young Dublin filmmaker.
When Damien O'Donnell had finished his travels around the world's film festivals with his highly chucklesome short film Thirty Five Aside (picking up 30 awards along the way), the Dublin filmmaker came home, he felt, ready at last to tackle his first big screen feature film. And, as he had long ago decided, he was determined to work from his own script, shoot in his own country, and deal with experiences and people that he'd grown up with. Things didn't quite work out that way though.
"I ended up making a film from someone else's script, in a different country, and dealing with a culture that I had absolutely no experience of whatsoever," he smiles. "I really should try and get an agent to work out my career for me."
Not that Damien has put a foot wrong so far. His work with Clingfilms, the small Dublin film company he co-founded with three friends, has garnered much acclaim and buckets of awards over the years for not only Thirty Five Aside but also He Shoots, He Scores and Jack's Bicycle. And now O'Donnell's feature film debut, East Is East, looks set to transform all that acclaim into box-office glory.
The year is 1971, the place Salford in the north of England, and proud chip shop owner George Khan (Indian film legend Om Puri) and his long-suffering English wife (Linda Bassett), don't always see eye to eye on the upbringing of their six children. The eldest having fled the family nest after dramatically rejecting an arranged marriage at the altar, the father of the house is determined to bring up his remaining offspring with traditional Pakistani values. Their mother meanwhile recognises that her children are far more interested in bell-bottoms than in walking around in silk pyjamas.
Adapted by screenwriter Ayub Khan Din from his own hit play, East Is East is a largely autobiographical work, but the struggles here between parents and their rebellious children are universal.
"Yeah, I think that really came out," offers O'Donnell. "I was talking to Ayub, and he was saying that he never realised how universal it would be. He was writing about his own family, telling his own story, but seeing the film, he realised that there are truths there for just about everyone."
Having been offered the job of directing the film after Ayub's girlfriend, Buki, caught Thirty Five Aside on a season of short films on BBC2 last year, O'Donnell was initially a little reluctant to get involved with a subject matter so far removed from his own life.
"It was the script that hooked me really; it had a great heart to it. I liked the humanity of it. They asked me to give an answer quickly, which prompted a mini-panic attack, but once I got over that, I decided that it was too good a script to let pass really."
And when did O'Donnell realise he'd made the right decision in taking on East Is East?
"I think only in the last few weeks," he laughs. "It's really been the audience reaction to the film that's made me feel I made the right decision. When I was making it, I often seriously doubted that I'd done the right thing. But that's just the pressure and the difficulties of first-time filmmaking. You're always questioning yourself."
The fact that East Is East was a big hit at this year's Cannes Film Festival, as well as Edinburgh and numerous American festivals, has meant that the film's original budget of two and a half million has already been recouped through international sales. In America, the godfather of
independent films, Miramax – responsible for Pulp Fiction, The English Patient and Shakespeare In Love - are planning a March 2000 release.
"The reaction in Cannes was exceptional," states O'Donnell. "It was hugely encouraging. Then we felt, okay, we've done something right; we may not have made the film we were trying to make, but we seemed to have struck a chord. At one stage I thought I was involved in a salvage process. But I don't know if everyone feels that when they're making their first film. It was a huge learning curve, and a difficult shoot in many ways, but it was only when we had people's reactions to it that we knew we'd done okay."
Anyone who's seen Thirty Five Aside (a Woody Allenesque kid goes through the torture of a new school) will have some idea of the quirky and delightful humour O'Donnell applies to East Is East.
Working alongside screenwriter Ayub and producer Leelee Udwin, a host of characters were added to the original play's line-up, and as well as a few purely comic details, such as an enormous, and enormously randy, Dalmatian, and that icon of early '70s playtime, the Spacehopper.
"Yeah, I wanted the Spacehopper in there, because we were looking at what kids had in those days, and of all the curious toys around, the Spacehopper was really the most distinctive," smiles O'Donnell. "And also, I always wanted one as a kid, but I never got one. So I wanted the kid in the film to always want one, but never get one too. It was there as a small ode to my own childhood."
So, is O'Donnell about to create The Great Irish Film next time round?
"Eh, no, not yet," he smiles. "I've got a project coming up, a drama, that will probably take me away again, but after that I'm ready to make The Great Irish Film. I want to get away from comedy with my next film, because I wouldn't like to be pigeon-holed. That way, if I fall flat on my face, I can always come back to comedy with my tail between my legs.
"Comedy is something I enjoy immensely, and the truth his, it's an easier sell to an audience too. If you have a film about fly-fishing, people aren't going to go, but if you say it's a comedy about fly-fishing, they'll be a lot more interested. But it's important for me to try different genres early on; I'm too handsome to be Ireland's answer to Woody Allen."
Paul Byrne
