Always look on the brightside of life
Sing Street is another joyous journey into the 1980s from Once director John Carney, writes Barry Hartigan
Once director John Carney changed his approach to his films because he wanted to laugh more in work as an escape from the harsh realities of life. Carney, who also directed Begin Again, is back with new movie Sing Street, which takes a look at life in the Dublin of the Eighties through the eyes of a teenage boy who forms a band to impress the girl of his dreams.
The film has earned rave reviews – currently 100% fresh on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes – and is Carney’s third consecutive feelgood musical film and a significant change from his early career.
Carney directed November Afternoon in 1996, a film about a relationship break up; in 1999 his edgy drama Park, was about a girl who is abused by a paedophile; and 2001’s On The Edge was the story of a suicidal young man who makes friends who change his life in a psychiatric hospital.
He attributes the change in tone as a response to life becoming more difficult.
‘I think life got harder, tougher and the realities of everyday hit me and I realised there was enough s*** in my life, to be honest. Between my personal life and my family and things that happen to you, and opening the Irish Times or the New York Times every day and being faced with reality.
‘I thought if I’m going to go into work I kind of want to be having a laugh at the moment. I’m not saying that will last forever but at the moment I’m not ready to make a good heavy film. I can make an okay light, fun film and I would never dream of forcing the stuff that I was doing starting off my career with heavy movies because that takes a master.
‘I feel you hit a certain age like 40 and you think, “enough of the f ****** pain and anguish of life.” I’m just not ready to explore that right now. We turn on the news at home at night with a little bit of trepidation because as you get older you realise how much time you have left.’
Sing Street is very much a spiritual successor to that other feelgood musical, The Commitments, with an unknown cast of non-actors who were hired because they could play music. And even before it opens next week the critics here and in the US are raving about it.
Carney explains just how he put his band together: ‘I did a big huge open casting call and I had decided that I wouldn’t use any actors for the kids in the band for various reasons. I had been there before on Bachelors Walk and a few other things I had made when we needed to get kids in,in and I felt that lots of them had learnt bad habits through drama teachers and I didn’t want any of that.
‘I didn’t want to have to unlearn them or unwind them every day from what they had learnt on set, so we invited anybody who had ever played a musical instrument to come in and tell us a story,story play us a song and read a line or two from the film and that was it.
So through that process we started to narrow things down and figure out the look of this band and the other kids in the movie. It was lovely as it was just these kids who had never acted before enjoying their first experience of being in a film,’ he says.
Although Carney has made his name with light-hearted movies with music at the centre of them his next project couldn’t be more different. Russ & Roger Go Beyond is the bizarre tale of how soft-core pornopgraphy movie maker Russ Meyer and acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert teamed up to make Beyond The
Valley Of The Dolls in the late 1960s with Will Ferrell set to play Meyer and Josh Gad playing Ebert. ‘I’m going to try and direct Russ
& Roger and I’m pretty close to doing a deal for it. It is a creative partnership, however barmy, it did happen and it’s a Hollywood story without being a typical Hollywood story,’ says Carney.
‘It’saweirdversionofHollywood and I love stories about films, I love movies about how movies are made, I don’t know why,’ he says with a smile.
‘So this is a film about this very quirky partnership between these two characters in 1969. It also describes a very interesting period of Hollywood history when the studios were really loosing their grip and the likes of Easy Rider were making a big noise because that film was made for nothing and took $25m – which was an astronomical sum in those days.’
Although he may be headed back to Hollywood and big budget movies shortly, Carney is very proud of Sing Street and the advance notices but he doesn’t take it all too seriously.
‘I’m very happily surprised
‘I didn’ t want actors for the band… we invited anybody who’d ever played an instrument’
by the reviews,’ he says. ‘I think the more I make of these things, the more I realise that it’s kind of getting away with it.’
His background is low-budget film-making and once he had the musicians for the band in place he needed a leading lady. And he found her in little-known English actress Lucy Boynton.
‘Lucy put herself on tape and if I hadn’t seen her audition, I would have said nothing would ever come of that approach to getting a part. But if you’re good at selftaping, it’s almost better than meeting a person.
‘If you’re a director and you’re meeting somebody reading for a part and they’re fantastic, but then they go out of character and you’re not that impressed.
‘You don’t get any of that looking at an audition tape and they either have it or they don’t. As soon as we saw her it was very much, “Well if we don’t use her in this film, then she has to be in the next one.”’
The key role of the hero’s big brother was a no brainer for Carney as he had known Jack Reynor for years. ‘I always wanted to make a film with him and this just came along and it was the perfect fit as he’s an older brother himself and he very much got the character – who is the kind of person who says yes to a kid rather than no and gives permission to a kid to explore who they are. He likes that idea a lot and he’s that kind of person in real life, he’s very generous, he’s non-judgmental and he was drawn to the character. It was perfect for our first film together.’