You’ll gist me when I’m gone

Rodney Lee obviously is the kind of student who didn’t waste a moment of his time in college. At least creatively. And even more specifically when it comes to the fact that he attended the prestigious film course in Dun Laoghaire’s Art College, from which he graduated in 1999 and now uses as the setting for his first play The Gist of It.

But before he and I talk about the actual play or it’s setting – well known to me because I actually took part in the first film course in Dun Laoghaire Art College! – it would be remiss not to mention the fact that The Gist of It is a play Lee probably couldn’t have written had he not attended a playwriting course run by the Fishamble theatre company which, not surprisingly, is staging this production at the Project, Dublin and, later, the Civic Theatre in Tallaght. So how beneficial was the course?
“Greatly,” Rodney responds. “Particularly when it came to inspiring me. Before that I had been working on film scripts and, actually, wrote a film script called Sixty Nine that won a Tiernan McBride award. Someone passed it onto Jim Culleton, of Fishamble and it’s going into development now with the Irish Film Board.
It’s a full-length feature but I hadn’t written a play and I wanted to, so I did Fishamble’s weekend course. As I say, it helped me greatly.”
So why, exactly, did Rodney decide to make The Gist of It about, according to its press release: “Film student Orla, who wants to complete her precious masterpiece, featuring a reluctant butterfly, before the weekend is through. But her lovesick lead, Liam, and her neurotic father, Gerard, seem determined to sabotage her genius’?”
“When I did the Film Course in Dun Laoghaire I always wanted to write about that experience because those were pretty crazy but wonderful times,” he responds, no doubt truthfully.
“Just the way people could get caught up in making their movies and do the most horrible thing purely for a 10 minute film that nobody is ever going to see! Like ringing people and demanding things for free and be completely angry and irrational when they wouldn’t get them!”
So is Rodney saying he wasn’t thus inclined?
“Just a little bit but I wasn’t as bad as the others, hopefully!”
More seriously, surely the point of making even 10 minute movies in any film course isn’t so much that the outside world may never see them but that they prove whether or not you have true cinematic talent?
“These days, that is true and people do make those movies as a kind of calling card. But back then some students were making films that were highly personal and certainly not accessible and maybe had more to do with personal therapy and purely artistic expression,” Lee says.
“I’m not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but I did have some of those people in mind when I was writing The Gist of It. They would make something they’d be passionate about but they actually wouldn’t have the talent or skills or really listen to people who would give them good advice.”
Was Rodney’s graduation film personal therapy in any sense? Seems not. Apart from the fact that it reflected his abiding love of cinema.
“It was called Edge of Destruction and I just did it because do love cinema so much and I wanted to make something that was fun and I would watch and be entertained by,” he explains.
“I admire the work of directors like Woody Allen, Spielberg, Hitchcock, David Lynch. But I often find that comedy is the best way to tell a story, or at least have more of a comedic element in it than anything else. Certainly if you look at Woody Allen’s films, for example, you’ll find that his humorous films are better at communicating the message than his dramas. When he tries to imitate Bergman in films like Interiors it’s bloody awful. Whereas something like Crimes And Misdemeanours is magnificent. Either way, these are the kind of influence that come across in The Gist of It, I hope.”