?We wanted to do something that was going to get out there and do business in the multiplexes and reach a wide audience ? definitely in Ireland and the UK, and we hoped maybe a little further afield,? explains Paddy Breathnach, the director of I Went Down.
Breathnach, producer Rob Walpole and writer Conor McPherson are sitting in Dublin?s Clarence Hotel ? along with actors Brendan Gleeson and Peter McDonald ? for what, given the film?s success so far, could turn out to be just one of hundreds of press outings.
Breathnach and Walpole have been friends since their schooldays, and had made a number of short films together when, in 1994, they saw a production of McPherson?s play The Good Thief at the Dublin Fringe Theatre Festival.
?We knew immediately we wanted to work with him, but at that point we were involved in other things,? says Breathnach. ?But at least once a week we would say, ?We must get in touch with Conor MacPherson??. It almost became like a joke ? the company motto was ?And another thing we must do . . .?. But eventually we did get in contact with him.?
When they did, they brought him a loose idea for a script.
?We definitely wanted to do a genre movie of some sort, and we knew it would be set in an underworld gangster milieu and we knew we wanted to have an element of revenge in the story. So it just went from there.?
MacPherson was already established as a talented playwright, but this was his first time writing for film. ?I learned pretty quickly that because film is such an expensive medium, you have to become a team player ? there is no room for self-indulgence,? he says.
He moved into the office when they were undertaking the final draft, so that each scene was read immediately and it became a collaborative process.
?Ultimately that was very liberating for me, because it meant that the whole responsibility wasn?t on my shoulders,? he affirms.
There was also plenty of collaboration on financing, casting and locations.
?It was interesting that the writing process was happening in the office,? says Walpole. ?It was almost like the old days in Hollywood where there would be a room full of screenwriters scribbling away. It made it very real, so that when I was on the phone trying to raise money, I knew that it was being written right there in the room.?
Breathnach had already put in the #125,000 prize money he?d won for his previous film Ailsa at the San Sebastian Film Festival.They took the finished script to Cannes in 1996 where BBC Films agreed to back the project. With the Beeb on board, it was relatively easy to raise the rest of the money.
Amazingly, the film was shot, finished and ready for the same festival in May of this year. ?Nobody ? not even us ? believed we could make this film in that time but we just decided to go for it,? says Breathnach.
Within a day of being screened at Cannes it had been sold to 19 countries. It was also picked up for distribution by Buena Vista UK, and has just swept the board at this year?s San Sebastian film festival, winning three major gongs: the Special Jury Prize, the Best Screenplay award, and an unprecedented second New Directors Prize for Breathnach. The film also received a special commendation from the International Critics? Jury and an invitation has been extended to the filmmakers to screen their movie at the leading American Sundance Film Festival in January.
The plot of I Went Down centres on the luckless Git Hynes (played by McDonald) who gets out of jail, having been dumped by his girlfriend while still inside. He is determined to go straight but instead finds himself indebted to a local gangster who sends him to Cork to pick up one of his ?associates?. Git is accompanied on the journey by Bunny Kelly (Gleeson). All manner of double-dealing and downright madness ensues as the mis-matched duo get to know one another while attempting to escape being offed by two deranged hoods.
One of the most refreshing things about the film is that it contains none of the usual hackneyed visuals commonly associated with celluloid Oirland ? even the bog doesn?t look like a bog.
?We were very conscious of that ? to the extent that we even discussed it at the writing stage,? says Breathnach. ?We were playing with genre too ? we wanted a desert and that?s the closest thing to a desert here. And the reason deserts work is that you can isolate characters there and so the moral dilemas they are facing become clearer and more stark. If you?re in a luscious, romantic, country setting you can?t bring those things out. Also, sometimes those landscapes can be cloying and have all sorts of connotations we wanted to avoid.?
Despite the fact that he was working within a well-worn genre, Conor McPherson?s scipt ? which is very funny and intelligent ? is also fresh and original.
?It?s really about not being afraid of the genre,? he says. ?No-one is really looking for a truthful rendition of that particular world (i.e. the gangsters?), they are looking for a world that they can believe for two hours. So as long as you have a certain consistency. I come from Coolock and when I was at school everybody talked a lot and everybody talked themselves up and everybody cursed a lot. For me it?s like a world where you are constantly defending your own little patch ? whatever little bit of integrity you have. It?s like a way of scaring people away from you ? like a defense mechanism.?
Once the script was completed, they sent it to a couple of high-profile actors, both of whom were interested in playing Bunny.
?We knew we had a part. So we sent it to Brendan and I just liked his approach. Most importantly, I knew he would be able to play the whole range of that character ? from the slapstick to the more tender and intimate revelations.?
Peter McDonald, meanwhile, happened to be a friend of McPherson, something which counted against him initially.
?I really put him through the hoops,? says Breathnach. ?I really didn?t want to cast him, because he was a mate. At the beginning when we were doing read-throughs for various parts, Peter came in and read all the other parts for us. And he was always better than anyone else in the room.
?But I wasn?t happy. It just seemed like a cosy decision. So I called him back to audition for Git and then asked him to go away for three weeks. Then I brought him in again and had him read with Brendan. By the end, it was just stunningly obvious that he was the best one to play it.?
?The funny part was that if he hadn?t been Conor?s friend he would probably have been cast much earlier,? admits Walpole.
Unsurprisingly, the team plan to work together again. McPherson is currently writing their next project, a thriller set in the American Deep South. The writer also plans to direct a screen adaptation of his own play This Lime Tree Bower, which Breathnach and Walpole will co-produce.
Meanwhile, I Went Down opens here (on October 3rd), then in Australia and Spain in December, and in the UK in January. n