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Monday, November 30, 1998

Writer, stars hit jackpot with comedy set in Ireland

FILM: Actors, director awaken mature themes of friendship, adventure

By Stephanie Sheh

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Film critics are buzzing about the newest golden boys since Matt Damon and Ben Affleck - only this time the boys are actually in their golden years. Ian Bannen and David Kelly are a couple of old veteran actors swashbuckling around first-time feature-film director Kirk Jones' "Waking Ned Devine."

The film, an Irish import, follows the crazy adventures of Jackie O'Shea (Bannen) and Michael O'Sullivan (Kelly) in a little Irish town called Tulleymore. When Jackie discovers that someone in the village has won the lottery, the two set out to befriend the winner in hopes of getting a share of the profits.

Jones could have shot the film a year and a half earlier if he had succumbed to the pressure of rewriting the script for much younger stars. He says that many people responded very warmly to the script and pretty quickly started offering him money.

"Very soon, they were saying, 'We're going to use the money to make this ...' - which was very flattering for my first script - 'but we need you to rewrite the characters, just make them kind of early fortyish and it'd be fine. And then we can start approaching people like Gabriel Byrne,'" Jones says.

Jones loves Byrne as an actor, but says that he didn't fit into his vision for the film. If Jones had gone with the safer image of two younger guys, the picture would have had to be about greed and avarice.

"I think it would've been bad to go ahead and make it with younger people," Kelly says. "It wouldn't have had the same fabric. I think it's essential that they're two old guys, two old swingers, because they don't play it old. We didn't play it old. (The director) said, 'Just be your own wicked selves.'"

But Jones was confident that Bannen and Kelly would bring the amount of charm, character and presence to the screen that he wanted. After explaining this to his financiers, Jones thought they understood his direction for his film, until they offered up another ludicrous suggestion .

"They said, 'Okay if you want old guys, we got it. We'll set it in Canada. And we'll get Walter Mattheau and Jack Lemmon.' And I said, 'No, no you haven't quite got the idea.'"

So Jones walked away from that money. It was another year and a half before he could get sufficient funds to make the film with the cast he wanted.

Kelly points out that the "Grumpy Old Men" duo is quite different from the Bannen and Kelly dynamic. The actor says, "They are mean old men and they are old. Whereas ours are still sort of swingers. They dislike each other. We actually love each other."

Bannen and Kelly's off-screen rapport and genuine friendship comes across on their performances. The rapport between the two actors was so strong that they even share a nude scene together. The two go skinny-dipping early in the morning, discussing the lottery and their plans for the day.

"Walking down the beach with those two bottoms disappearing to go skinny-dipping, I thought it was rather endearing. Very sexy," Kelly says, laughing. "Funny thing is the director staged a closed set. He said, 'Now just the cameraman. We want everybody else to turn away. Go behind the rocks.' And we we're in yellow dressing gowns. He said, 'Now wait until the last moment and then ...' And everybody hid. And then they make a movie and then they show it all over the world. A closed set always makes me laugh."

Kelly says that his wife commented, "Nice ass" after watching that scene. His daughter, who is also an actress, reacted a little differently.

"She said, 'Do you know what my mad father is doing? My aged father is going to do a nude scene in a film. What would you say if I said I was to appear in a nude scene in a film?'" Kelly say. "So I said, 'When you're sixty-nine you can do it.'"

But Jackie and Michael's naked exploits don't stop at taking a swim. Somehow Michael finds himself riding naked on a motorcycle.

"I just knew I was going to die," Kelly says. "I thought in a few minutes I'm going to be talking to Steve McQueen and saying, 'You try doing it naked.'"

Originally, Kelly was not supposed to film the scene in the nude. The crew had made a flesh colored stocking for him to wear, but the apparatus was too obvious and the cameras were picking up the string around Kelly' waist. But the actor said that being naked was actually the least of his worries during that scene. He had never ridden a motorbike before and was terribly frightened.

"I was cold and I was terrified and apart of being nude - I mean I was wearing a crash helmet which was a damn size heavier than I am," Kelly says.

"And it left an impression on me in every sense of the word, because clearly I have no upholstery at all. So it's just folds. And I kept sliding off this thing. And they'd say it's only 35 miles per hour."

Bannen, who describes the characters as growing old but not ever growing up, had it a lot easier. He wore underpants with his motorbike. On top of that, he had ridden a bike before. But there were other unpleasant moments in the filming for him. One involved simply carrying a chicken dinner through the rain.

"It was at the edge of a cliff and they put on this wind machine as well as the rain," Bannen explains. "They hadn't tested it properly. I'm going with this chicken dinner, concentrating on it. Suddenly I was blown backwards and nearly over the cliff."

Despite all of the hair-raising near-mishaps, these un-grumpy old men maintained a love of the film and each other. Kelly says that he even had someone tell him that their two performances looked like one. Although Bannen and Kelly both independently produce a long and varied list of roles, the two have never worked with each other. Bannen says part of their chemistry was a result of the rehearsal process.

"I think it came having such a long time to rehearse and also we seem to get on very well," Bannen says. "(Also from) the great courage in the director, felt he was onto a roll, he'd listen to his old grandfather telling stories for years. He wanted old men giggling away. It was very encouraging."

Both Michael and Jackie had elements of Jones' grandfather's personality although the director says that Jackie was more similar to his grandfather.

Interestingly enough, Bannen did remind Jones of his grandfather when they first met. But Jones did not see the connection between the film and his grandfather immediately.

"When I wrote the film I just sat down and just wrote and wrote. It wasn't until I'd seen the film maybe 15 or 20 times that I said, 'Hang on a minute. That's just like my grandfather,'" Jones says. "The bike riding scenes - my grandfather used to have a motorbike and tell me about his adventures, not naked of course. So I could see very clearly where that came from. When my grandmother died, my mom - on Sunday - used to make up a dinner which (was) quite often a chicken dinner and I used to take it up to my grandfather's house every Sunday for him because his wife no longer lived. And I'd be going through the rain up there with this chicken dinner. So I could see very clearly where that came from."

Kelly recognizes that the story came out of Jones' relationship with his grandfather.

The warmth that comes out of the film is what the actor feels makes it so special.

"The thing is that the two characters would have never had a childhood," Kelly says. "In their early years, they would've had to work very hard helping their parents with the farm or fishing. But now they're at an age where they're sort of old men behaving badly. So this is all about a great adventure that sort of leads to a scam on the lotto. It's not basically about the money. It's about this adventure, and the love and affection and friendship."

FILM: "Waking Ned Devine" is currently in the theaters.

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