McMahon for All Seasons

One of the country’s most controversial filmmakers, Terry McMahon caused a storm in 2011 with his film Charlie Casanova. It was an aggressive, rage-fuelled and self-funded examination of greed, corruption and selfishness. Starring Emmet Scanlon as the violent, misogynistic and sociopathic title character, the film was unrelenting, with the raw, gritty camerawork emphasising the sheer ugliness of the characters.

To say the film proved divisive would be an understatement. It received almost universally negative reviews on home shores, while picking up awards in the United States. The film also started a war of words between McMahon and a number of Irish film critics. A deliberately selective use of quotes, personal attacks, Twitter feuds: it was all there. It was a sort of social media Shakespearian tragedy, for which McMahon is remains unapologetic.
“Look, Charlie Casanova was punk rock,” the director explains. “It was rage-fuelled, it was anti-establishment and so you engage with the filmmaking on that level – first of all because there was no-one promoting it, so you have to be front row centre, provoking the sort of divisive, rage-fuelled engagement its intention was to serve. If Charlie Casanova hadn’t done that, it wouldn’t be doing its job. But then the reaction to Charlie Casanova became so extreme that it was actually out of control, and you’re in a position where people think you are the central character, and thinking that the central character’s obscene philosophies are your philosophies.”
The battle began with Charlie Casanova’s marketing campaign. In many ways, it was an impressive and innovative effort that included enigmatic playing cards and teasing street art being scattered around Dublin city – not to mention McMahon’s deliberate decision to proudly advertise all of the film’s negative reviews. The marketing seemed like a bold and admirably ballsy strategy. However, some people took great exception.
Donald Clarke, film critic for The Irish Times, had given the film an unambiguously negative review, declaring it “relentlessly one-note, indigestibly overwritten” and comparing it to “being trapped in a train carriage with a bore who’s spent too much time at the drinks trolley.” However, a quote of Clarke’s subsequently appeared on posters and bus ads, describing Charlie Casanova as “a jaw-dropping piece of work”, a decontextualised quote that was seen by many to be misleading the public.
Clarke addressed the controversy in a lengthy piece regarding the use of quotes in advertising generally. But in McMahon’s eyes, the article was damaging not only to the film, but to his own reputation.
“The quote that was used was a direct quote obviously, it wasn’t a misquote," he says. "The quote wasn’t intended to be used as a positive or a negative, it was intended to be fair. And I didn’t even choose the quote! Studio Canal chose the damn quote! It was nothing to do with me – but the attacks on me were personal.”
The Irish Times elected not to publish a response that McMahon penned; he then took to his blog to fire off a lengthy response to Donald Clarke that was a mixture of sarcasm, insults and obvious anger. “I was attempting to use the same language as his article," he recalls. "I used the same word count, and for me I was trying to be tongue-in-cheek, while also being serious about the fact that this was hitting my film, and hitting my family, on a food-on-our-table level. So it was a bizarre experience to be involved in.”
One might wonder if the incident gave pause to any critics as to way in which independent Irish films might be approached. Either way, McMahon reacted to negative reviews as if they were all personal attacks, and openly disparaged his critics on Twitter. No one knew for sure whether he was genuinely hurt by the reviews, or if he had chosen to play the part of the reactive director, in order to drum up more publicity. Looking back on it now, he reckons that it may have been a bit of both.
“Maybe I was a loudmouth, maybe I could have kept out of it," he says. "But that wasn’t the approach that was going to work for Charlie Casanova. If I had presented the film in a humble fashion, I don’t think it would have generated the engagement that it did. For me at the time, it was an act of desperation, it was the only time that I could put a film that was made for a grand on the international map.”
In a sense that desparation showed: there was more than a hint of vulnerability, as McMahon took the blows to heart.
“I remember feeling disappointed that The Irish Times didn’t give me a right of reply,” McMahon explains. “I was disappointed that they would run that two-page article the week the film was being released. I thought the article was disingenuous – I still do. But I don’t think it was deliberately disingenuous, I think it was slightly tongue in cheek. I’m sure Donald Clarke thought that the film would survive regardless of his article. But when you’re a tiny little person, who has made this tiny little film, that had gone beyond any of our expectations – and you suddenly get what feels like a full force punch to the face in public, from an institution like The Irish Times, it stings.”

All that is now water under the bridge. McMahon has a new film, Patrick’s Day, which is ready to rock and it has been garnering a hugely positive reaction both in Ireand and abroad. If the film feels much more grounded in emotional realism than Charlie Casanova, then McMahon’s outlook too seems far more measured this time around. He acknowledges that Donald Clarke and other critics have been “very generous” towards his latest work.
“There are absolutely no hard feelings from me and apparently no hard feelings from Donald Clarke," he laughs now. "Do you know, I would love to sit down and have a bottle of whiskey with Donald Clarke, because I think we’d fucking fall in love talking about movies.”
The fact that the making of Patrick’s Day has been less tempestuous than was the case with Charlie Casanova doesn’t mean its subject matter is any less complex or controversial. The film stars Moe Dunford as Patrick, a young man with schizophrenia, who begins a sexual and romantic relationship with the depressive and somewhat emotionally lost flight attendant, Karen (Catherine Walker). Under the guise of protecting her son, Patrick’s mother (Kerry Fox) attempts to gaslight him in order to keep him from Karen. The film delves into often unaddressed issues, highlighting the fact that adults that are mentally ill have rights to intimacy and sexuality – where too often they are dehumanised and infantilised.  
McMahon reveals that the idea for the film had been brewing for over a decade. Working as a care-giver for people with mental health issues, McMahon saw how adults who sought out romance or intimacy were not given education or support regarding this basic human desire, but were instead treated like children.
“The law is very grey in this area and has changed, though not enough," he reflects. "There definitely was a time where to be aspiring to sexual engagement or intimacy as someone who had been diagnosed with a mental health issue made it illegal – and in some cases it may still be illegal – to engage in a sexual act. Now if you’re a rapist or a murderer or any of those things, you don’t have to make a public declaration about your private history; however, if you have a mental health issue, you have to state what it is and you could be breaking the law by engaging in intimacy. That is astonishing to me, but it seems indicative of the way we treat people with mental health issues. It’s more akin to criminalisation than humanisation.”
The disgust with the Irish government and with the prevailing hypocrisy of society that was on display in Charlie Casanova is clearly smouldering here too. Patrick's Day touches on ideas about social gatekeepers and moral authorities inflicting their limited views on others in order to support their own agenda.
“We seem to be plagued by a cancerous hypocrisy that allows us to dehumanise people who really need our help," he observes, "and to protect people who should be punished. We see it on a political level: we see the same dehumanising policies being applied again and again, which remove funding for carers and support groups for people with mental health issues. They’re pulling away all funding and support – all the while claiming to have the interests of these people at heart. It’s a hypocritical fallacy.”
McMahon is, of course, well aware of issues of consent and abuse when it comes to the sexuality of adults with mental health issues. However, he objects to blanket judgements and the widespread refusal to acknowledge natural adult sexuality.
“I completely understand the notion of protecting people from someone who is trying to damage them," he says, "but the notion of protecting someone from themselves or their own desires is always a grey and dirty area. If you look at Patrick in this film, his mother fundamentally believes that what she’s doing is for his own good, and I’m sure that those who have brought in government policies to supposedly protect this nation think they’re correct policies. But in fact the damage being done is immeasurable, and anyone with eyes could see that they’re refusing to see the consequences of what they’re doing.
"No-one is blinder than he or she who will not see," he adds. "The idea of applying blanket rules to people with mental health issues is wrong, and the damage you’re inflicting is untold, because you’re robbing them of their basic yearning for intimacy and sexual engagements. And yes, there are clearly cases where aberrations occur – but those aberrations occur largely from normal people.”

McMahon’s desire to explore the humanity and loneliness and need for connection felt by those left on the fringes of society doesn’t just spring from a political place, but a personal one. As a teenager, McMahon spent a year living on the streets and in abandoned buildings, and admits that he began to suffer acutely from mental health issues as a result.
“When you’re homeless, your predisposition to mental illness is already increased a hundred fold," he says. "It’s incredible the amount of people who are homeless and now suffer from mental illness. And it varies hugely. Mental illness can be short or long term, it can be fatal or it can be empowering. In my case, I have been suicidal, I have been so far on the edges of society that I had no idea how I was going to see another day. But then later in life that gives you a humanistic insight and an empathy that you never would have had if you hadn’t gone through it. So at the risk of sounding romantic, the plus side of going though that extraordinary, complex pain can be profoundly beneficial.”
The director is open now about this deeply traumatic period in his life.
“I wasn’t afraid of being homeless,” he says. “I remember waking up in the snow, brushing it off, turning back over and going back to sleep. That’s not what I was afraid of. I was afraid of something I had never experienced before, which was loneliness.
"I was so ashamed of being lonely, I thought it was a weakness and that if anybody saw it, they’d run a mile. So you rapidly lose the ability to speak, to engage, to communicate, to reach out. You lose the ability to look after your basic human rights and dignities, like cleaning yourself or feeding yourself. You just descend on a steep spiral downward, until you’re in the positon where I was, where I tried to starve myself to death.
"I didn’t eat for a couple of weeks," he reveals. "But then I suddenly collapsed and came to, and when I came to I suddenly panicked with the need to survive. But there was something to it, in that I didn’t have the courage to put a noose around my neck or cut my wrists: I did it in a way that I would not wake up from. And I was fully embracing the notion of not waking up from the sleep. But then came this incredible paradox of waking up from the collapse and you’ve this pressing desire for life that you haven’t experienced in a long time.”
With Patrick’s Day already receiving hugely positive reviews and picking up Audience Awards at film festivals, McMahon seems to be back in the ascendancy. It is a wonderful place for him to be, after all the adversity he has faced. The director is currently deciding between two projects.
“Dancehall Bitch is a really dark prison drama," he explains, "and again it’s about those themes of what men will do to convince themselves that they’re men. It’s very complex and for me, massively exciting, thematically and dramatically.” However, it’s the other project that seems like a new and intriguing step for the director – yes, the dark prince of Irish cinema is actually considering making a romantic comedy.
“Hey, I can be romantic,” he protests, laughing uproariously. “I love Ingmar Bergman, but I’ll also sit down and watch Step Brothers with Will Ferrell and laugh my head off! That project is called Oliver Twister, which is a far more commercial dark romance, a romantic comedy pitched at a much higher level. There’s been a fantastic response to both of them – so hopefully we’ll be shooting one of them over the summer.”
Who would have guessed? Announcing his interest in making a commercial rom-com may turn out to be the most shocking thing Terry McMahon has ever done...