It’s not often the former Ritz Cinema is hailed as an inspiration for an award-winning film career, but the long-closed Mullingar cinema played a key role in setting acclaimed writer/director Terry McMahon off on a path which has seen him win multiple awards at some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals.
by Ronan Casey
The director, whose latest work ‘Patrick’s Day’ will receive its Irish premiere at the IMC on Wednesday week (January 26) ahead of its national release on February 6, remembers clearly the visit to the Ritz (then called the Hibernian) that changed everything.
“One Saturday my parents wanted us kids out of the house, so they gave us money to go to the cinema. We went, thinking we were paying in to see a matinee, a children’s movie, but what came on was a funny, smart, violent war movie totally not suited to three small children from D’Alton Park, ‘Kelly’s Heroes’. It blew my mind. I had discovered this cathedral.”
The movie maker now describes his career as “the stuff of childhood fantasy”. Two films in, with another two almost ready to shoot, rave review… oh, and did we mention awards?
The Mullingar man, son of George and Brenda, brother of Carol and twin brother of musician Glenn, has seen his latest project pick up seven major film festival awards: the Grand Jury Prize and two others at the Woodstock Film Festival; a Directors Guild of America 2014 ‘Finders Series’ Award; the Cinema Owners Grand Jury Prize at the Mannheim Film Festival; and the Audience Awards at both the Cork and Galway film festivals. This is on top of four awards for his controversial debut feature ‘Charlie Cassanova’, released in 2012.
“I don’t feel entitled to these things,” Terry tells Topic frankly. “Of course we all dream of being up there on a podium collecting an award for something or other when we’re young, but never in a million years did I see what would come with my own movies. I never wrote or made a movie to win an award. But it seems this film has a vital life force that transcends what people see in big-budget popcorn and Coca Cola movies. It has a heartbeat and people are responding.”
ROCKY
He remembers his formative years in Mullingar well, with the cinema on Castle Street (now Wilfs) at the centre of it all. “There were pivotal movies enjoyed there – the ‘Rocky’ movies in particular, the whole cinema cheering on this fictional character and everyone leaving wanting to become a boxer. And many others. My favourite movies are the great films that will outlive all of us but they may not be celebrated or award-winning. Movies like ‘The Odd Couple’, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’ and ‘Midnight Run’ all had that certain something.”
After a period of teenage homelessness in Dublin, Terry secured a bedsit in Rathmines, close to a 24 hour video store. Here he voraciously consumed films and put pen to paper, writing a prison drama and other treatments. Through word of mouth, the prison script found its way to the right person in Hollywood and soon Terry was on on a plane to write a movie for 80’s starlet Daryl Hannah.
The boy from D’Alton Park got his first taste of “la la land” and whilst his prison script wasn’t filmed (he intends returning to it as his next project) he enjoyed the industry.
DUBLIN’S FAIR CITY
Back in bedsit-land he joined Dublin Youth Theatre, took odd jobs here and there and took to several stages before his big break on RTE soap ‘Fair City’ where he had a memorable starring role as the demented, doomed gangster Terence. He then moved to scripting and directing episodes of the soap.
As boom turned to bust, Terry was out of work and in financial difficulty with a family of three and a house on the Northside of Dublin to support. He kept writing scripts. ‘Charlie Cassonova’ was one of them. After it was rejected by RTE and the Irish Film Board, Terry took to Facebook to say he was going to make it anyway. He asked for help, equipment, locations “and a lot of balls” and within a month, he was shooting the provocative drama on borrowed cameras.
Starring then unknown Emmet Scanlan and Leigh Arnold and made for less than a grand, the film became, as Terry fondly recalls, “one of the most reviled films of all-time”. Studio Canal in France loved it and distributed it worldwide. A dark, political commentary on greed in Celtic Tiger Ireland, it divided audiences. Promoting it, Terry cut a loud, passionate figure. A Tarantino-esque brash new kid on the block.
Viewed again today, ‘Charlie’ has parallels with the so-called ‘Anglo Tapes’ of bank execs laughing at the masses as they coined it in.
DEHUMANISATION
To follow it up, Terry returned in his mind to a job he had years earlier, as a trainee care worker psychiatric hospital. There he saw feelings of genuine intimacy and love frowned upon by staff.
“There was a remarkable dehumanisation as people were treated only in one way, with human contact not allowed by a strange moral structure. People were horrified by what was perfectly normal. Parents would come and visit and some would be reviled by their loved ones showing intimacy towards them.”
He turned these experiences into a script and whilst there wasn’t as much hustling, begging and borrowing to get this film made, he still relied on his wits and the generosity of others to get it made.
‘Patrick’s Day’ tells the story of Patrick, a schizophrenic 26-year old Irishman who falls for Karen, a suicidal flight attendant. However, his overly protective mother Maura goes to extreme lengths to protect her son from falling in love. What follows is a provocative and heartbreaking love story about the right to intimacy for everyone. The tagline says “Patrick’s Day proves when it comes to love, we’re all a little crazy!” but there’s much more to it than that. Like ‘Charlie Cassonova’ there is a political subtext to it. Terry is a highly politicized man, a free speaker, humanist and advocate of people’s rights. He hopes the new film will serve to heighten awareness of mental difficulties and loneliness.
MULLINGAR
The Mullingar screening will be nervous for Terry. The location is less than a mile from where he grew up and will be the first time one of his films has been screened in his home town. Like Niall Horan said over Christmas, he can sing to thousands anywhere in the world, but he is more nervous speaking to a few hundred at home.
The screening is a ticket only affair, open to competition winners, and will be followed by a Q&A with Terry and star, Moe Dunford. Terry was keen to get the film to Westmeath.
“I told the distributors to ‘Never underestimate the power of the parochial’ and they listened. You should never forget where you’re from and, yes, I’m going to be nervous seeing my own film on a screen in Mullingar just down the road from where I grew up but I’m looking forward to it too.”
– ‘Patrick’s Day’ is on national release from February 6. ‘Charlie Cassonova’ is on sale on DVD. For more, see www.patricksday.ie
