SAINT OR SINNER? Terry McMahon caused something of a scene with his debut feature Charlie Casanova back in 2012, a micro budget indie about a loathsome man who has utter contempt for his friends, family, society and himself. Charlie was met with equal contempt by the critics and the punters didn’t bother showing up to see what all the fuss was about. Returning to filmmaking with his second feature Patrick’s Day, the opinionated director talks to TFR Editor Jack O’Kennedy about story, process and the importance of art with a message.
TFR: Patrick’s Day seems to be resonating deeply with audiences, are you happy with how it’s being received so far? TM: Yeah it’s one of those things, you know it’s not a movie for everyone. People are having a remarkable, visceral, collective response to it. At this stage we’ve literally received hundreds of letters and emails from people expressing the most incredibly private, personal emotion in a way that for them seems to be unprecedented. So there’s a power in there that’s something bigger than the movie which is very exciting. TFR: You’ve written and directed both of your films so far. What’s your writing process like and in the aftermath of your first film, how did you get to Patrick’s Day ater Charlie Casanova? TM: You mean that film was such a miserable piece of shit how do you get anyone to fund a second movie? TFR: I think it’s fair to say ...Charlie Casanova felt like you were quite angry about Irish society and this maybe is angry but perhaps in a different way? TM: Well they’re two profoundly different films and they require two profoundly different approaches. Charlie Casanova was designed as a fucking hand grenade and you threw it in and it was supposed to cause as much collateral damage as possible. It was an act of terrorism against the government. It was supposed to do all those things and if it hadn’t have done those things it would have been disappointing. For me it was important that you provoked in the most extreme way and if you’re listening to classical music all day and suddenly a punk rock song comes on it shatters your ears it shatters your system and that’s what that film had set out to do so…despite all the attacks and despite all the insanity and despite all the mayhem not only do I have no regrets but I stand by the film with pride and with real affection. Patricks’ Day on the other hand is a very different kind of film. Patrick’s Day is about a guy who is so overwhelmed with emotion he can barely contain it. They’re two completely different films aesthetically, content wise, character wise, all those…Interesting to me, people said I was an incompetent fucking moron
when it came to writing Charlie Casanova and now they’re praising me for suddenly having learned how to write. What they don’t know is that both Patrick’s Day and Charlie Casanova were written at exactly the same time. You know it’s the approach, they’re two completely different films on every level and the next film will be a very different kind of film again and we’ll take a very different kind of approach. TFR: You mentioned the term “hand grenade” in describing Charlie Casanova. It seems like with your films you’re setting out to achieve something. What would you say you set out to achieve with Patricks Day? TM: That simple notion that you don’t have to be alone and you don’t have to have someone tell you how to live your life. You don’t have to allow someone else to control your aspirations. Because we are becoming so increasingly oppressed within the regime that’s in place now that we don’t know who the fuck we are anymore. And you don’t have to be that way and you don’t have to be alone in your fear. TFR: It’s fair to say that Moe Dunford gives a pretty amazing performance as Patrick. How much of what we see onscreen is as written and how much did you and him work on the character together. Was it a long process or is that Patrick as you conceived him? TM: Every single word was written, there’s not a half
14
second improvised. But I think the difference is that I construct the narrative and I construct the dialogue and I construct the scenario but my job as a director is to empower everyone else on the set, to beyond what they thought they were capable of doing and that applies to the DOP, the sound recordist, the art director, everybody. But, particularly, more than anybody, the actors. You’ve got to try and find a way of taking someone to a place that they themselves didn’t think they were capable of going and when they make the discovery in real time and the camera happens to be recording it then we as an audience become empathically involved because there’s no lies, there’s no fallacy, there’s no presentation, it’s happening in real time for us and Moe did that. Moe had the raw courage to go there and then he learned the craft as he went on and now I think he’s one of those actors that’s going to be catapulted into a remarkable realm. TFR: You set your stock up from the beginning with the dictionary quote defining mental illness. Films depicting mental illness…this kind of film doesn’t scream commercial. How difficult was it to get it off the ground? TM: The definition at the start, its mental illness but that exact definition can also apply to love. Myself and Emer Reynolds, our wonderful editor, we were looking for something at the beginning and I thought okay, how do we set this up in such a way that we’re