Off Screen - SEE YOU JIMMY!

It would be a shame if a trifling wrangle over the soundtrack were to stop Jimmy Smallhorne’s 2by4 getting a distribution deal. The Ballyfermot-reared, New York-based writer and director’s searing portrait of young, blue-collar Irish immigrants in New York packed them in at screenings at the recent Galway Film Fleadh and at last weekend’s Lesbian and Gay Film Festival at the IFC in Dublin.

The hassle over the soundtrack centres on the film-makers’ use of T-Rex’s classic 20th Century Boy. It features in a scene in which Smallhorne – who also plays the main character, Johnny – mimes to it in a karaoke bar. Most of the rest of the soundtrack is by Dodgy.

“We didn’t get proper clearance on ‘20th Century Boy’ initially, but I think it’s going to be sorted out now,” says Smallhorne. “I think we have a deal where a record company from New York, Jersey Records, will basically cover the cost of the soundtrack and then recoup it through sales of it on CD. There’s nothing definite yet, but the signs are good. There’s a lot of interest in the film from specialised distributors in the States, so I think it’ll work out.”

The other problem, Smallhorne says, is that 2by4 is too “raw” (read: too real) and doesn’t conform to American expectations of what an Irish film should be.

“People are used to Irish movies that are either ‘Top o’ the mornin’ to ye’ or at least have some kind of lyrical or poetic quality. But I wanted to make a film that had an emotional narrative. Because I think Irish people are afraid of their bollocks of addressing their feelings, y’know? Which is why we have such a culture of drink in this country. It’s like the men like to get angry but they don’t like to cry and the women can cry but they don’t like to get angry. But my film doesn’t have a classic plot, it floats and flows a bit and it’s only about half an hour into it that this dark narrative kicks in. And it has its flaws, but it does have a huge emotional punch at the end.”

By now a potted version of Smallhorne’s history is a mainstay of every interview he does. Brought up in Ballyfermot as one of eight kids, as a teenager he became a compulsive gambler and lived rough on the streets before ending up in rehab at 18. He sold a couple of tickets he had for U2’s New Year’s Eve concert at the Point in 1990 for £400 and went to New York where he has since lived.

He worked in construction – he has first-hand experience of the sub–culture portrayed in 2by4 – and started acting at the Irish Arts Centre, eventually starting a theatre group in the Bronx with the late Chris O’Neill (who played one of the lead roles in the film and to whom it is dedicated).

Having come up the hard way, he is refreshingly free of the pretension and bullshit that is endemic in the film industry. He refuses to have an agent and, despite being delighted that 2by4 was picked to compete at this year’s Sundance festival (“I was jumping around for about three days after we heard”) and even more delighted that Declan Quinn won the cinematography award for his work on the film, actually being at Sundance, he says, “was one of the worst experiences of my life”.

“There was a core group of directors that I met out there from all over the world and I was really proud to be amongst these guys, but then there were also all these pricks from the industry who really didn’t give a shit about independent film or what film should be about.

“And a lot of the directors felt the same – even the guys who sold their films for millions of dollars. They thought it was horrible. You have to constantly perform and you feel like a mouse on a treadmill. Me and my girlfriend ended up spending most of the time in our hotel.”

“And the film industry here is such an incestuous community. I think it has to do with the culture here. People give away their power – although that seems to be changing now. But when I lived here in the ‘70s and ‘80s it was like that. Even the Social Welfare system – people allowed the Government to decide what standard of living they would have.

“But the people who make it are the ones who don’t negate their own power. I never gave away my power to the Irish Film Board, or to RTE. I never gave it to an agent. I came to believe I had a level of talent. And it’ll take me 20 or 30 or 40 years to discover whether it’s a real talent. I mean, Truffaut’s finest movie was made after 20 years, it took Mike Leigh 20 years to make Secrets and Lies; maybe longer.

“But the thing is, if your script is good and you have a level of talent your film will get made – there’s no doubt about it. Regardless of all the bullshit, audiences still respond to talent, because it is such a rare commodity. So people out there – if they posses real talent and have good work to do, they’ll get it done, because Nature has a way of nurturing beauty in this world.

“I’m not unusual, you know? I’m just the guy who when no-one would give us money said: ‘Fuck yez all – I’m still going to fucking do it.’”

He’s wrong, of course. That’s precisely why he is unusual. His next film, called Half Life, is set in Dublin in the ’70s. We should, once again, expect the unexpected.

“It’s a comedy and it’s a kind of homage to my mother, who died three years ago. She was an amazing woman, lived in a two-bedroomed house in Ballyfermot, raised eight fucking kids on nothing. And every woman on the street was in the same situation. They raised their kids on nothing. And what kept them going was their belief in the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin. And the men just abdicated their responsibilities and they were quite brutal. And so it’s about this kid on the street who’s autistic, and the women get together and decide they’re going to take this kid to Lourdes.

“It’s really funny but there’s a lot going on underneath the humour. I wanted to make a film that portrayed those women as they are. Irish film is full of stereotypes of Irish women. I’ve never seen the kind of women that I know in films. These are women who went on hunger strike to get swimming pools while the men sat and watched the racing in the pub, who marched to get drugs out of communities, who marched to get schools. And who still did the cooking and the laundry and gave birth every year. It was the women who done it – it wasn’t the fucking men. Where’s the recognition for them? “And I’m an agnostic – so I can be neutral about the whole Lourdes thing.”

The most likely choices for the leads are John Cassavetes veteran Ben Gazzara, Cathy Moriarty (most famous for her role as Robert DeNiro’s wife in Raging Bull) and ‘80s Brat packer turned indie actress Ally Sheedy.

Given the level of interest generated by 2by4 – and the subsequent interest expressed by actors of this calibre in Half Life – you could be forgiven for assuming that Smallhorne shouldn’t have much trouble getting the finance for it. He’s far from complacent, however.

“There’s a lot of interest and I think it might be easier to raise the money this time but it’s a higher budget and I prefer to expect the worst, so I’m prepared for a fucking fight, y’know?”

“I’m blown away by the fact that there isn’t a distinct Irish cinematic language,” he continues. “We still have a very theatrical style of making films. And for me, creatively speaking, that’s what’s exciting. I want to be part of – and there’s a few of us knocking around – we want to create a form of cinematic language that reflects the Irish experience. Like the French or Spanish or Germans or Italians or the Americans have. We’re so caught up with the literary thing but I think language is 50% non-verbal. So with Half Life, the story is there, the characterisation is there, the next thing I want to do is create the cinematic style, with Declan and the actors and the crew. I have the film in my head and you haven’t seen a film like this before.”

Smallhorne is, inevitably, being courted by numerous wealthy studios but is keen to keep ploughing his own creative furrow.

“What intrigues me is what we don’t know, not what we fucking know, y’know? Life is like that – let’s discover what we don’t know, rather than rediscover what we already know.”