29 March 2024 The Irish Film & Television Network
     
Going Down and Coming Up
01 Oct 1997 :
Paul Byrne interviewed the makers of "I Went Down" just before its Irish release in October 1997.

Having won numerous awards at the San Sebastian and Edinburgh film festivals, I Went Down this week hits our screens with one of the biggest promotional pushes ever afforded a small independent Irish film. Paul Byrne talks to the men behind the scenes, as well as its two stars, Brendan Gleeson and Peter McDonald.

If Brendan Gleeson were ever to turn in a bad performance in a film, it would probably be a while before anyone worked up the courage to tell him. Taller (6' 1") and stockier than your average bear, Gleeson exudes a no-nonsense air that suggests a man who approaches acting as he might painting a wall or mowing the lawn. It's a job, and no amount of longwinded pontificating on the whys, wherefores and whatevers means a thing if you don't just shut up and get on with it.

"I'm just not a big fan of babbling on about the inspiration for the part, and the search for the inner child, and all that," smiles Gleeson. "Besides, I think the research you do, and the path you take to become a certain character, should be a private one. If you're putting on a puppet show, you really don't want the kids in the audience to see where you put your hands (laughs)."

Having arrived to the acting game a little late in life ("I'd always been involved in acting in one way or another really, but I didn't turn professional until I was 34"), the 42-year old Gleeson has managed to make quite an impression over the last 8 years. After a series of theatre and tv appearances, Gleeson's first came to notice for his powerful portrayal of Michael Collins in the acclaimed tv serial, The Treaty. Following up with a string of well-received supporting roles in such major feature films as The Field, Into The West and, most significantly, Braveheart, Gleeson has now finally been promoted to leading man status with this month's award-winning Irish feature, I Went Down.

"From the moment I read the script, I knew that this part was for me," enthuses Gleeson. "Here was a character that I felt an instant connection to, and when that happens, you really have to go with your instincts and go for it."

A black-humoured road movie about Bunny and Git, a pair of bungling smalltime criminals, and their efforts to find and return a slippery individual to their Dublin big boss, Gleeson's partner-in-petty-crime is played by newcomer Peter McDonald.

"I'd been helping with the audition readings, and never really thought I had a serious chance of playing the co-lead in the film," offers McDonald. "So when Paddy approached me a couple of weeks after I'd finished doing the audition readings to tell me they wanted me for the part of Git, I just flipped." Something of a noted perfectionist, director Paddy Breathnach was reluctant to cast McDonald purely because he felt that such a decision would be too easy.

"It probably sounds silly, but because Peter came to us very early on, I just thought it would have been premature of us if we didn't audition some other young actors for the part," says Breathnach. "But it didn't take us long to realise that Peter was the one. And it's pretty obvious watching the film that we made the right decision."

Having just picked up four awards at the San Sebastian film festival, it was back in 1994 when Breathnach began picking up buckets of awards for his debut feature film, Ailsa, that he had something of a divine realisation. And that realisation was this.
Arthouse cinema is an elitist, self-serving, self-indulgent, poloneck-wearing crock of shit that only elitist, self-serving, self-indulgent, poloneck-wearing people go to see.

"It was at the Oslo Film Festival in the middle of November, and having 30 people turn up to see your film on a miserable Wednesday night," offers Paddy. "That made me think, this is like playing for Scunthorpe. Is this what I worked 2 years for? "It was great having your work taken seriously, and winning awards, but I knew then that something wasn't quite right."

For Paddy Breathnach is a filmmaker with a conscience. And he also, bless him, knows where his bread is buttered. "When I started thinking about the subvention in this country, the assistance we're getting from the State to make films, and then you realise that you're not even attracting the punters in your home country - that's not healthy. "The Irish film industry isn't going to develop unless you can engage in some way with the people who go to the UCIs, or to Virgin, or any of the big cinemas around the country. So that's what we set out to do - engage with those people."

The resulting film is indeed worthy of a large audience. And the fact that it has gone on to win more awards than its arthouse predecessor is something that Breathnach and his production co-horts feel particularly proud of.

"Making a mainstream comedy thriller means that there are already specific guidelines and rules that you must adhere to," states I Went Down's screenwriter Conor McPherson, the noted Dublin playwright who picked up the Best Screenplay Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

"The form dictates the story, and that's something I only realised in retrospect. "Having said that, I think the charm of this film lies in the little details, when we step out of the genre and pause in a hotel for the night or whatever."

"And we were determined not to make a typically Irish film," interjects producer Robert Walpole. "This film would be set in Ireland, it would feature Irish characters, but it wouldn't be of the old Ireland variety. "There's a recent article you did actually that we've been bringing around with us at press conferences, the one about the 10 vital ingredients for making an Irish film. And we're very proud of the fact that we avoided nine of the cliches you listed. The only one we stepped in was the pint of Guinness, but otherwise we're clean (laughs)."

Having secured a very large wad of cash for his next project at the 1994 San Sebastian Film Festival when Ailsa won the Euskal Media prize, Breathnach and his Treasure Films partner, Walpole, set about putting together the Irish criminal underworld film that would become I Went Down. Sitting in the audience of Conor McPherson's The Good Thief one night, the two men quickly realised they'd found the writer of their story.

"What we wanted to have at the story's core was a quest," continues Paddy. "I had an idea to do something with an Irish myth called The Sons Of Turin - and I still think it could have worked - but Conor felt that he couldn't translate scenes of people being turned into goats and pigs into a modern gangster milieu. But there was something in the base of that myth that gave us a starting point, so we played around with the revenge element, and the idea of the quest."

Was Conor given a list of films to check out at his local video store as a crash course in film writing? McPherson: "No, not at all."

Breathnach: "I just gave him my own films actually (laughs). We talked about certain scenes from other films, but nothing too specific."

Walpole: "I think we knew in the back of our minds that we were going to do something original in Ireland, and to trust our own instincts was probably the best thing to do rather than trying to emulate an American story in Ireland."

Breathnach: "People ask us what film is I Went Down like, but it's very hard to say what film goes from slapstick to poignancy to western and so forth. It has some similarities to Palookaville perhaps, but what else?"

Midnight Run?

Breathnach: "Yeah, that was a film we spoke about actually. We all definitely had a good look again at that one. I take back what I just said (laughs)."

As our trusty trio wait with fingers crossed to see how I Went Down goes down with the great Irish public (Breathnach: "We'll definitely be running around shouting about it until the end of the year, when it should have opened just about everywhere in the Western world"), plans for future projects are already underway.

And those plans have no doubt been helped by I Went Down's incredible quadruple-whammy at the recent San Sebastian Film Festival, where it picked up Best Screenplay, the Special Jury Prize, a special commendation from the International Critics Jury, and, incredibly, the New Director's prize, the $170,000 award for a first- or second-time director that Breathnach picked up in '94 for Ailsa.

"Conor's already written a screen adaptation of his play, This Lime Tree Bower, which he'll be directing next year, " offers Walpole. "And we've got a film that's set in the American deep south that the three of us are working on too.

"There's always ideas floating around, but I think in any set of relationships like ours where we all work together, you're still going to do outside projects. Paddy's getting some interesting offers, as is Conor, and we're not exactly joined at the hip. But we'll keep coming back together. Why mess up a good thing?"

Gleeson- who's currently shooting John Boorman's Once I Had A Life, based on noted Dublin criminal Martin Cahill (aka The General)- views the success of I Went Down as an important step forward for Irish film.

"It's just wonderful to have an Irish film that's been made by such a young, exciting crew, that isn't a retrospective postcard, and that isn't about the troubles. This is a comedy thriller that happens to be set in Ireland, and it's well-crafted, well-scripted, and, well, funny.

"If we can come up with a few more films like this, the Irish film industry will have well and truly grown up."



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