Bringing out the dead

A slick, high-energy, pitch-black comedy/murder-mystery thriller set and shot entirely in contemporary Dublin, Dead Bodies – the debut from award-winning shorts director Robert Quinn – stands apart from the overwhelming majority of Irish-made films by virtue of being a genuinely enjoyable and entertaining roller-coaster ride, in spite of fairly severe budgetary constraints. Its youthful cast is headed by Andrew Scott as Tommy, a likeable lazy slacker whose domestic spat with a satanically hyper-sensitive girlfriend plunges him into extreme trouble: the cast also includes Kelly Reilly, Darren Healy and Katy Davis, as well as Sean McGinley, reliably playing to type as a vicious cop.

Dead Bodies is also the first Irish feature film to be shot on cutting edge Hi Def digital technology, a state of affairs director Quinn partially ascribes to necessity.
“We got it made with a great deal of difficulty, originally. It was a low budget, and we spent a lot of time working with people in the Film Board, RTE etc. in order to try and garner together some sort of a budget that could get it shot. We tried to shoot on different formats, we went down the digital route, we did everything we could to get it made. But because we didn’t have a lot of money there were compromises along the way. Honestly though, I would challenge anyone to look at the film and tell us that they can spot the difference between celluloid and digital – it looks absolutely amazing.”
The film’s dark edge is constantly offset by a playful sense of humour, which Quinn explains was his primary motivation.
“What I was trying to get was a mix of genres, basically a black comedy thriller with contemporary film noir thrown in, there’s a Touch of Evil reference or two. Above all, I really wanted it to be fast, I wanted people thinking ‘fuck, what’s coming next?’ And the shoot itself was really fast by any standards, five weeks, that’s 25 days. The format we shot it on allowed us to shoot it quicker, but it was still severe pressure, I was pretty shagged afterwards. Another imperative was the lead character, Tommy, needed to be sympathetic. In the original script he was a bit more smarmy and aggressive and we tried to strip that away. There was a bit of impro but in general it was very loyal to Derek Landy’s script, Derek’s obviously got a very disturbed mind and it’s great. We had a very definite idea going into each sequence exactly what we wanted to do.”
Two award-winning short films aside, extensive work as an assistant director had prepared Quinn for the gig.
“I learned so much from the directors I’ve worked with – not only in terms of craft but also in the way that they deal with actors. If I was to walk onto our set without having had that experience I think I would have been quite intimidated – you’re asked questions, you’re asked to make decisions all day long. I remember, for instance, working with David Mamet on Sir John Gielgud’s last film and was impressed by Mamet gently coaxing a performance - not at all like the stereotyped image of a director barking orders. The other thing about Mamet was how clear a sense he had about what he wanted to shoot – there was no thinking about it. So when it came to this, I was very well prepared before we began – we rehearsed the actors for a week and all the scenes were storyboarded.”
Andrew Scott, the highly impressive lead of Dead Bodies, swears that prior to making the film, he had no extensive first-hand experience of burying corpses with a shovel at the dead of night.
“Oh yeah, I’ve buried three members of my family so far. That scene was really creepy in fact, that was the very last thing we shot. I hadn’t seen the skeleton, either, before we filmed the scene. Which was better, I think.”
Rounding off the inexperienced but effective cast is Tommy’s ever-present pet – an enchanting creature called Liz the lizard, surely the first major appearance for the species in an Irish-made flick.
“Liz is really beautiful, isn’t he?”coos Scott, clearly smitten from having played the reptile’s doting owner. “He wouldn’t eat anything, though. The funniest bit was during the sex scene with Katy where he was staring at us with this mad look on his face. I think maybe he was a bit stressed out by the making of the film, he saw a lot of bad stuff. He’d only eat flies – he wouldn’t eat the maggots, the bowls of crawling maggots that had been prepared for him, as beautifully appetising as I’m sure they looked. He’s in Hollywood now with his own personal publicist, I’m sure.”
Though the filmmakers were hopeful of a small national release for Dead Bodies, Buena Vista International has decided to give the film a big push, as the Irish Shallow Grave. “Who knows how well it’ll do,” says Scott. “I hope it gets an audience, because I think it’s nice that it’s a contemporary thing with a youthful cast and it’s quite a high-energy affair: it’ll have to be a word-of-mouth thing, but it’s getting a thirty-screen release, so here’s hoping.”

Dead Bodies is released on April 25