After all these years, an Irish film has finally been made that aims itself squarely at American audiences and their fondness for the traditional trappings of Oirishness, without ever becoming even faintly excruciating for the native audience. The brainchild of brothers Aidan, Paul and Declan Quinn, This Is My Father given its inevitably Oirish tinge is an immensely enjoyable and surprisingly moving melodrama.
The tragic romance which forms its basis would have carried the film through anyway, but its appeal is enhanced enormously by a host of classy cameos from a veritable Who s Who of Irish acting talent (Colm Meaney here, Brendan Gleeson there). Pat Shortt of d Unbelievables fame also turns up in a hilarious minor role as a good old-fashioned rural Garda with Brendan Gleeson as his partner.
Their roles are relatively minor ones which obligingly take a back seat to the main course (a tragic, sweetly-acted romance between Aidan Quinn and new face Moya Farrelly) in fact, the only real problem with This Is My Father is the under-use of Messrs. Shortt and Gleeson, who appear to be enjoying their scenes so much you d almost wonder what drugs they were on.
Ahh, we d a mighty crack on it, Shortt testifies. I d worked with Brendan a year previously to that, and we d kept in touch with each other, and everyone else got on like a dream as it turned out. The film was just great fun to make. With the three brothers working together Aidan, who s a megastar obviously, and Declan the cameraman who everybody knows in the business, and Paul (director) who I didn t know much about there was no danger of any fights cos the three key people really had everything worked out together and there was no shit between them, so everybody else could just get on with it and have fun doing it. Even when some of the bigger names came in, that goodwill was there with everybody.
Having had such a ball on This Is My Father, can we expect to see Shortt doing more movies in the foreseeable future ? Yeah, it s something that I feel into and I enjoy it like mad and I know I can do it, so why not, y know? I ve worked on another film since, a film in Donegal which I did with Ian Hart and Sean McGinlay and a young film-maker called Sean McDonagh. I m Ian Hart s best mate in the film. I ve three other offers coming in in the New Year; you do one thing and the next thing yer phone is hopping and it s like any business, you get to know people and you do a good job and someone says that guy can do that . And I m still keeping the live work going, and I m still writing with John in fact, both of us have been dabbling in movies, John s on Angela s Ashes at the moment.
Shortt is generally thrilled with the way things seem to be heading in film here.
The quality of Irish films has got . . . there s been more good ones in the last ten years or so than ever before it s like a new age of Irish film-making, and as Brendan recently pointed out to me, people aren t afraid to show Ireland the way it was, with all its imperfections. There used to be a thing where every Irish movie had to be scenically beautiful, where s now they re showing the real Ireland. It s nothing to be ashamed of, it doesn t need to be picture-postcard. You re now getting movies that reflect a whole range of Irish life, and of course now the topics are much more varied, with people being more confident about what they re doing.
Certain movies, obviously, demand panoramic views and all this sweeping shite, but some films don t, and it s great to see something like I Went Down. I really liked the grottiness of that whole film, it s a travelogue of the Irish countryside and it s ugly as sin it s classic, all bogs and crappy hotels. They showed it the way it is.
I ve always really valued movies, stuff like Ken Loach s, that are not afraid to show things the way they are. Loach s work it s like you re sittin in a pub and havin the conversation, it s happenin all around and the situations are so real.
Away from the silver screen, what s Shortt s masterplan for the new year?
Meself and John have a show on in Vicar St. on the 22nd March, and we re in the process of writing that at the moment; the video s out about five or six weeks and it s at number one, doing huge business. The video s different in the sense that all the ones we d done before were live. This time, we decided to have a crack with different characters and we thought we d like to think it out a bit more and we d like to build a stage to shoot on, cos there s more to what we do than just doing live there are some characters we ve always wanted to do that we ve never actually had a chance to because they wouldn t have suited a live situation as well.
You can develop more of a character the pathos, the humour in a film or TV format than you can live on a stage. I know you can do it in theatre but live laugh-a-minute stuff is a bit different, you have to keep you eye on the balance, bringing a crowd up and bringing them back down again. It was a pretty big move actually, even if it didn t look like it. It was a bit of a risk to take it could have been a complete disaster but the reactions have been great.
Does he intend to keep his d Unbelievables work up for the foreseeable future?
We re sort of hooked. I know I can t see myself stopping it, cos I still buzz, I still love doing it, the co-creative process of developing a show and the madness of the characters, and touring and getting people s reactions throughout the country. I ll be at this for a long time, I think. n
This Is My Father continues to show at the Screen, the Virgin and most suburban multiplexes.