Director Gavin Fitzgerald claims Oasis sibling rivalry had major impact on his new Liam Gallagher film

In his latest documentary, As It Was, Irish director Gavin Fitzgerald, follows Liam Gallagher during one of the toughest periods of his professional career. Fitzgerald, who previously directed 2017's Conor McGregor: Notorious, has revealed that telling the story of Gallagher's solo comeback was far from straightforward.

Talking to the Irish Film & Television Network (IFTN), the Irish director claimed that infamous sibling rivalry between Liam and Noel Gallagher had a major impact on the finished product.

"We could only use third party material of Noel as he refused his image rights," he said. "We couldn't use Oasis music, even the tracks that Liam wrote. All I heard from Noel was his lawyers say you can’t do this and that. It was hard work for our editor Nick Webb who had to change music in the film more than once. The sad thing is that there’s an archive of tapes in Ignition records that are rusting away because it’s so difficult to access. Oasis is a piece of cultural history yet all the memorabilia is in a lockup essentially.”

Liam and Noel Gallagher's feud has been well publicised since Oasis' split in 2009. Liam has continued to hit out at his brother on his Twitter account, recently posting: "Me growing my hair long is more exciting than anything noel gallghers [sic] high flying pretend spaced out pancakes will ever do".

Fitzgerald, however, believes that Liam "misses him and would get Oasis back together in a heartbeat but Noel would never do it."

However, the central focus of the film is Liam rather than Oasis. Fitzgerald claims that "it's a very different film to Supersonic", as it "is about Liam failing for the first time in his life and then making an unprecedented comeback with his solo career."

Aside from his feature length documentaries on Liam Gallagher and Conor McGregor, Fitzgerald previously directed The Truth About Irish Hip Hop, a short documentary about the rise of the once foreign music genre on these shores.

Watch the trailer for As It Was below:

https://youtu.be/aPPw18Psnj0

As I Was is available to view at Dublin's Light House Cinema and Galway's Pálás on Saturday, June 15. For tickets, see here.