28 March 2024 The Irish Film & Television Network
     
Mahon’s Fight for ‘Strength and Honour’ Feature
29 Nov 2007 : By Angela Mullin
Strength & Honour
Irish boxing movie ‘Strength and Honour’ reaches cinema screens this Thursday November 30th. IFTN talked to the film’s writer, director and producer Mark Mahon and one of its stars, British bad boy Vinnie Jones, about the Cork shoot and why Mahon took producing the pic into his own hands.

‘Strength and Honour’ is the directorial debut of Cork native, 34 year old Mark Mahon. Filmed on location in Cork from 18 th September to the end of October 2006, the film tells the story of an Irish-American boxer, Sean Kelleher, who promises his dying wife he will never box again after accidentally killing his friend in the ring. Years later he is forced to break his promise when he discovers his young son is dying of the same hereditary heart disorder that took his wife. In order to raise the funds needed for his son’s operation, he enters a bare-knuckle boxing competition with a hefty prize fund of €250,000.

For a first time director, Mahon has assembled an impressive cast, headed by Michael Madsen, known for his tough guy roles in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Kill Bill 1 & 2’. Alongside him are Golden Globe winner Richard Chamberlain (Shogun, The Thorn Birds), Vinnie Jones (Snatch, X-Men 3), Irish man Patrick Bergin (Sleeping with the Enemy, Patriot Games) and musician Finbar Furey, who previously appeared in ‘Gangs of New York’. Irish thesps Gail Fitzpatrick (Evelyn, How Harry Became a Tree) and newcomer Michael Rawley put in strong performances in supporting roles.


Richard Chamberlain, Michael Madsen & Micahel Rawley

The film’s theme of overcoming adversity is one that rings true for Mahon. Originally trained as an actor, a serious accident at the age of 22 saw him spend three years of his life in a wheelchair. Determined not to give up his dream of a life in the movies, Mahon decided to turn his creative hand to scriptwriting. 

Several years and five scripts later, Mahon was overjoyed to win the ‘Best Screenplay Unproduced’ award at the 2005 Action on Film Awards for his project ‘Freedom Within the Heart’. For a while, he was courted by different studios, but when none of his meetings came to fruition, the determined director became impatient.

Vinnie Jones interjects: “You had to get up off your arse and do something!”

“Yeah, I just decided that we were going to have to do it ourselves,” says Mahon. “I did a little bit of property developing in the past, I used to buy one off sites and I’d do the plans for them and I’d actually build on them and sell them. I thought ‘how difficult can it be?’ I’ve been doing this with property for years and I just took that knowledge and just transferred it into movies really.”

Mahon set up his own production company Maron Pictures on the advice of his solicitor, Olann Kelleher, who later became exec producer of ‘Strength and Honour’. Realising that ‘Freedom Within the Heart’ would be too expensive to see to fruition, Mahon began developing another, more economical script, and so ‘Strength and Honour’ was born.

The next task was finding a cast. No problem for this confident Cork man, who soon had Hollywood stars Madsen, Jones and Chamberlain on board. So how did he do it?

“I suppose it’s the power really of having a good script,” he says. “We all heard the story about how a good script can attract good actors for little or no money. Obviously, even big stars have mortgages and bills to pay and they do have to work, and sometimes they have to take projects that they’re not 100% about because there’s a nice big cheque attached to it. So when a good script comes along they embrace it, and luckily they embraced me and that’s a fortunate thing.”


Chamberlain with Mahon on set

Richard Chamberlain had been retired for several years, when a chance meeting with him at Sony gave Mahon the opportunity to talk up his script.

“I told him very briefly about Strength and Honour and I gave him my card and we parted company. Then I got an e-mail from his manager about two weeks later and he said he was very blown away with the idea. I said to him ‘We don’t have big Hollywood money’ and he said ‘you’re not listening to what I said to you, I really like the script!’”

Mahon had originally written the role of ageing boxing trainer Dennis O’Leary as a small, overweight balding man, but quickly changed the character spec to ‘slim and good looking for his age’ when he heard of Chamberlain’s interest.

“Then I got to know Mike, and Mike loved the script too,” he says of Michael Madsen.

Wasn’t Mahon intimidated when directing these A-list Hollywood actors?

“It’s funny I was never once intimidated on set,” he muses. “The reason I wasn’t intimidated was because I had so much going on between producing and everything else, I was just so busy I didn’t have time to think about it or I didn’t have time to be afraid!

“I knew that if I blew this I wasn’t going to get another shot, besides writing and directing I also produced it, and the research and ground work that I had done for it, I had done everything twenty times over.”


Irish actor Patrick Bergin

Vinnie Jones stars as tough talking traveller Smasher O’Driscoll, the man Madsen’s character must beat in order to win the coveted prize money. The Watford-born ex-footballer has carved a successful acting career since he traded the football pitch for the big screen several years ago. His tough guy image has proved a boost to his acting career, and has seen him land roles in many Hollywood flicks including Guy Ritchie’s ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ and ‘Snatch’, Barry Scolnick’s ‘Mean Machine’, Dominic Mena’s ‘Swordfish’, Brett Ratner’s ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ and Andy Fickman’s ‘She’s the Man’.

Mahon had Vinnie in mind for the role of Smasher from the outset, but doubted the in-demand actor would be interested in a low-budget pic filmed in rural Ireland.

“I knew that Vinnie was only off X-Men 3 and the whole lot and he was being cast in big movies at that stage,” says Mahon. “I didn’t think he would have any interest in coming to our little operation but, low and behold, here he is.”

“Yeah, he said to my manager that he didn’t think anyone else could do the part,” adds Jones. “And he knew Ireland was a big part of me and he said would I give it a go. So I read the script, and a week later I signed on.”


Jones as Smasher

This is Jones’ second time shooting in Ireland, having filmed ‘Johnny Was’ in Northern Ireland in 2005. The challenge of doing the Irish traveller accent and his love for Ireland drew him to the part in ‘Strength and Honour’.

“I’ve been coming to Ireland since I was like eight or nine,” he says. “I love it here, I wish it was a bit more sunny here though! But I’ve built a house down in Kenmare, I lived in Kenmare for a while, so I’m very localised.”

Jones enlisted the help of the travellers he and Brad Pitt worked with for ‘Snatch’ to perfect the traveller dialect.

“I actually know quite a few travellers, because I’m involved with the coursing and stuff,” he says. “There’s one family in Watford that I actually introduced Brad Pitt to that he could go to. For Smasher, even down to the costume, it was kind of the older boys, the older travellers who would wear that costume, you know, and it’s always fascinated me.”

So how did he get under the skin of the ferocious Smasher?

“For me, I wanted Smasher to be humorous, but at the same time concerned with living up to his name,” says Jones. “That’s why he’s called Smasher, and he’s got a lot of problems. He just faces life every minute, wouldn’t look an hour in front of him or a week in front of him - he just takes deals with things there and then and you never know what he’s going to do.”

The ex-footballer has maintained his muscle bound physique from his days on the pitch, making the characters he plays all the more intimidating. For ‘Strength and Honour’ he completed six weeks boxing training in Watford, training six days out of seven. His hard work paid off, with the film’s gruesome fight scenes appearing brutally realistic. Mahon wanted the fight scenes to look as gritty as possible.

“I had a good idea of what I wanted,” says Mahon. “He’d put something together for me and say ‘That’s not working’ or ‘We need to lose this’. At one stage there was couple of karate kicks they put into it but I was like ‘Hang on a second it’s not a Kung Fu movie, these need to go!’ It’s just a question really of preparation, a lot of movie making is all about preparation, that’s the key to it really, and just being focused on what you want to achieve.”


Fight scenes

“In fairness, I was dealing with two great actors and two legends in their own right and the thing is when you are dealing with people who are at the top of their game is that they’re giving it 120% and these boys were really smacking each other, they were really going for it!”

“Yeah, I had few bruises after it, but the adrenaline keeps you going,” says Jones.

With a large ensemble cast camped in Cork for the five week shoot, there must have been a good atmosphere on set?

“Michael and myself sort of stayed in character,” says Vinnie. “Which you had to do, it was a five week shoot, everything was ‘Crash, bang, wallop’. There wasn’t a lot of time after work, so Michael stayed in character and kept himself away from everyone. I was just mixing with the crew afterwards in the bar, we all stayed in one little hotel, so for five weeks I was Smasher O’Driscoll.”

Jones was impressed by the debut director’s meticulous preparation before the shoot, that saw Mahon storyboard the whole script from start to finish before shooting began.

“It was great because he had prepped it all, it was his baby,” says the actor. “Everything was storyboarded, all the crew were drilled beforehand. And if you prep a movie and do it properly it will run smoothly, I mean all the crew knew what they were doing, the actors knew what they were doing, and Mark was just tweaking it on the day you know?

Small budget movies like that, normally the director’s getting on with it with the actors and the producers are just running around trying to keep the money coming in and keeping everything going. But he’d already done that so then he just said ‘That’s done and I’m going to get on with taking care of the acting’.”

There’s no rest for the wicked, and Vinnie continues his bad boy roles in a string of films next year. He will star opposite funny man Jack Black in ‘Year One’, with Mickey Rourke in ‘Shane’ before heading to Australia for another movie. Jones plans to return to Cork for Mahon’s second feature ‘Freedom Within the Heart’ in mid 2008.

 “That film is about the Vikings, it’s the story of Brian Boru, it’s going to be an Irish Braveheart, a big epic period piece,” says Mahon.

With an estimated budget of €100 million, getting the movie together will be a mammoth task. But ‘impossible’ doesn’t exist in this enthusiastic young director’s vocabulary, and if anyone can bring ‘Freedom Within the Heart’ to the big screen, Mahon can.

 





Free Industry Newsletter
Subscribe to IFTN's industry newsletter - it's free and e-mailed directly to your inbox every week.
Click here to sign up.






 
 the Website  Directory List  Festivals  Who's Who  Locations  Filmography  News  Crew  Actors
 

Contact Us | Advertise | Copyright | Terms & Conditions | Security & Privacy | RSS Feed | Twitter

 

 

 
canli bahis siteleri rulet siteleri deneme bonusu veren siteler bahis siteleri free spin veren siteler deneme bonusu veren yeni siteler yeni casino siteleri yeni bahis siteleri betwoon grandpashabet