Half the battle for a good documentary maker is finding something truly worth making a documentary about, and when young Irish filmmaker Liam McGrath heard about a teenage boxer from Galway who looked set to represent Ireland at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, he knew he was on to something. When he subsequently discovered that the young boxer in question, Francis Barrett, was also a Traveller, part of Ireland's gypsy community, McGrath promptly packed his bags and headed west.
Originally hoping to follow Barrett's progress over seven years, McGrath spent all of his spare time visiting the Olympic hopeful's home, a halting site just outside Galway, and charting his bouts in the ring. In the end, pressure to see some results from the film's backers, Channel 4, cut McGrath's shooting schedule short by five years, the quickly assembled results, Southpaw, proving an affectionate and often fascinating documentary.
Joining Barrett in 1996 as he competed to qualify for the Olympic Games in Atlanta, McGrath quickly realised that the old line that behind every great boxer is a great trainer proved to be true when he met Chick Gillen. A local barber who had dedicated himself to training poor young boys from the area who wanted to become boxers, Gillen found nothing but rejection for his proteges at established training clubs. So he set up his own, The Olympic Boxing Club, so-called because its proprietor believed his pupils should always think big.
PAUL BYRNE: Has the film changed Francis' life much?
LIAM McGRATH: "No, I think what's nice about it is that this film is going to have Francis on people's minds again. After the Olympics, he had just wanted to get away from all the media hype and publicity that came with it and get on with a normal life, but he's ready to deal with that again. And when that dies down, he'll want to continue his dream of getting to the Olympic Games in Sydney, of just getting on with his career. In terms of the film, Frank had always been very clear on what the whole film was about, and the reasons we were doing it."
PB: And what were those reasons?
LM: "Well, from the start, I said to Frank and Chick that I wanted to have the privilege of going on the journey with them, no matter what happened. I just felt someone should record what they were setting out to achieve. From the start, Francis had always wanted to have a record of it, even just to show his grandchildren. He wanted to show that if you have a dream strong enough, you'll get there.
"Francis had told me from the very start was that he wanted to win recognition through the Olympics, by winning a medal or whatever. And at the next Olympics, he'll only be 23, so it's a strong possibility. And regardless of whether he gets that or not, he wants to turn professional, and then eventually take over the Olympic Boxing Club from Chick. He wants to continue on the tradition whenever Chick wants to retire. And I want to record that process right through. There's a fear that this kind of amateur level of sport, the purity there for the love of the sport, will be gradually eroded away by the BskyB's of this world, putting a price on everything."
PB: A great example of that purity in sport would have to be Chick. It must be a struggle for Francis whether to stay with his old trainer or, as he's advised in the film, progress to a professional coach?
LM: "Francis has made the decision that he's going to stay with Chick and Louis [his London trainer], and they'll get whatever help they can. If he qualifies for Sydney, this guy he works for in London is going to pay for Francis, Chick and Louis to go out to a club in Cuba and do intensive training there. But Francis has this tremendous sense of loyalty, which is also fed by this belief that if something ain't broke, why fix it. "Chick now has twice as many kids that he ever had in the club, largely because of Francis, and right now, as we speak on this wet, cold Tuesday, Chick is down in this little container in Hillside - which everyone made a big joke about at the time of the Olympics - given these young kids the confidence to go further. The thing he says to them now is, 'you're a million times better than Francis was at twelve'. And it's this process repeating itself over and over again, where Chick was telling Francis the same sort of thing when he was starting out. Where else would you get that?"
PB: Was it difficult to decide how far to go in regard to the Traveller issue?
LM: "Yeah, the fact that Francis is a Traveller was significant to me in that that was the motivating factor for Francis wanting to do everything that he was doing. To gain respect for himself and his family, and in terms of carrying the flag when he became a national hero. The Traveller issue was his identity, but it could have been any minority section of the community. It's just a part of the story."
PB: Was it a big surprise getting into Sundance?
LM: "Oh, that was brilliant. Basically we sent them out a tape, but we knew that they get such a huge amount of entries every year we had little chance. The woman said to me at the time that they had over two thousand films. There's only two documentaries for the World section, so we're hoping it'll do well. There seems to be a bit a buzz about the film already, with the three screenings selling out in a matter of hours."
PB: What about the sequel?
LM: "It's all starting off as the first one started, filming here and there. And when we go to the States, we're going to try and find backing there whilst the iron is hot. Our plan is to have more sequels than Rocky. It would be somehow fitting [laughs]."
Paul Byrne
