- You filmed in Dublin, which is where you are from, so how do you find shooting in your home city?
Yeah I have made three films in Dublin. I think that I can have an interesting take on it sometimes and show it in a different way. It's funny because when I shoot somewhere I almost feel that I can't even go back there without a camera.
If I walk down a street that we have shot a scene on, it's always so difficult, you think so much about a place so anytime I walk back it feels a bit haunted I get a shiver and I don't feel so good about that place anymore, it's strange. So I'm running out of location in Dublin after three movies so I'm going to have to start thinking about filming somewhere else.
- You also penned the script so what is the writing process like for you? And what about the idea for the story?
The writing process is very difficult,I think it's the most difficult part of the whole process, because it requires an awful lot of discipline to sit down everyday and get through it. You are stuck with only yourself, there's no one else to blame as it's just you in a room, so I think it's very difficult.
The story evolved very quickly and it's funny because you write a story and you try and do something that's personal and makes sense to you and years later, even now, just last week I remembered an idea that I had of running away as a kid. I just remembered it last week and I was like god there's all those things in the back of your head that you are not even aware of that you are writing into a script without knowing.
- Visual style and lighting plays a big part in the film so was that something that you incorporated into the script or was it just something that just happened?
Yeah the colour and the colour changes it was written in the script that it would start in black and white and change to colour. So it was always part of the idea but I think I'm predominately a visual filmmaker anyway so that's always going to be a large part of what I'm doing.
- Kisses has been very well received on the festival circuit so how did you find the whole Toronto experience?
Toronto was really brilliant and brilliant for one reason alone that every screening was absolutely packed out, they were really really enthusiastic audiences, and they were five or six hundred seater screens, even in the morning screenings.
I think the reason that Toronto was brilliant is because the audience was brilliant, they are huge audiences that are really interested in film. It's a bit industry festival so it was good for me I managed to get some other projects started.
- Bob Dylan's music features very prominently in the movie so why did you choose his music and how did you got about getting clearance for it?
Yeah Bob was a part of the story during the script and while I was writing it I met Stephen Ray at a Bob Dylan gig in Dublin, and it did strike me that there was a remarkable physical similarity between them. We got clearance but it was quite lucky that we got clearance because I actually wrote it, shot the film and edited it without any permission at all. Only then did we go to Bob Dylan's manager and say 'what do you think and is there any chance you would give us the rights?'
It doesn't hurt that we refer to Bob as a folk and musical god twice in the film, I think it's very respectful of his legacy. His manager Jeff Rosen was very kind about it, he liked the film, and we managed to work out a deal.
There were two points to the deal; one was we weren't allowed to say what we paid for it and the other was we had to make sure that the poster that explains about Bob, the tribute act, the poster about who he really was we had to extend the shot to make sure that the audience would be very clear that it wasn't really Bob, because Bob doesn't give kids beer.
- Other directors that I have spoken too who have made small budget movies have said that getting distribution was one of the most difficult elements of the movie. You have been picked up by Focus Features so how did all that work out?
Well there were some industry rumbles after the first screening in Galway, we won a feature prize there, and then it was Toronto. I turned to Focus because they had heard about us and wanted to see it and I was having a screening for the London Film Festival and Focus came along and wrapped it up that day.
They just fell in love with it and it was nice because it was entirely on the film's merit, there wasn't anyone pulling strings of anything, they just really wanted to sell it so they took it to sell internationally, which is great.
- Kisses is your third feature so how did you get into the industry in the first place?
I went and made a film for very very very little, I didn't make any shorts I just made a feature film called Last Days in Dublin that I had spent many a year writing as a young fellow. We raised a few thousand from literally going into the shops on the street and asking them to sponsor the film in return for us putting their shop in the film.
So we got £50 her and £50 there so we had no benefactor and we scrapped the pennies together and made the film. We ran up huge bills, I owed £30,000 at the end of it which was a bit of a shock to me as a young man, but then we got some completion money from the Irish film board and we just put it together. People reacted well to it and then embarked on the long and painful process of making a second and third movie.
- Finally what's next for you?
Well I'm not sure but I have a few things; I've got a small movie which is a tale of murderous jealousy between two lovers and then I'm doing another picture called The Day I Tried to Live with Orlando Bloom. There are some other things as well but it's hard to know what will boil up first so you just have to keep them all on the heat and see how they come together.
Kisses is released 17th July
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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