Celluloid dreams

ON one of the coldest days this winter, Eugene Brady, director of Pierce Brosnan's latest film, The Nephew, was bundled in layers…

ON one of the coldest days this winter, Eugene Brady, director of Pierce Brosnan's latest film, The Nephew, was bundled in layers of Arctic-style clothing behind the lens of a movie camera. Two young actors, Hill Harper from New York and Aislin McGuckin from Dublin, listened intently to Brady's directions on a cliff south of Wicklow harbour. Pierce Brosnan stood behind him, watching, listening and, every now and then, smiling at the seals swimming beneath the cliffs.

First-time director, 31-year-old Eugene Brady, must have been dreaming.

Strangely, the dream began when teenage Brady and a few friends unofficially visited Ardmore Studios in Bray during the filming of Excalibur. The studio seemed a mysterious and magical place to him that night. Brady took more from that experience than just a souvenir from the set, he took a little hope for his future.

The dream world of the studio contrasted with his hard days as a dyslexic at Presentation College in Bray, run by the Christian Brothers. Like many dyslexics, Brady had a photographic memory and, although he couldn't read, he remembered pictures and memorised everything read out from the page. Unfortunately, he was often asked to identify one word at a time and, failing to do this, he was beaten. "I felt really persecuted and put my mother through hell because I really hated school."

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Before the beginning of each school year Brady's anxiety grew and even "the smell of the new books from Greene's used to put me in a bad mood".

He later attended St Gerard's secondary school, and his Leaving Cert results were disastrous and led his guidance counsellor to remark that the most he could hope for was a job as a labourer. In the early 1980s, a disillusioned Brady moved to England. "I left, hating Ireland. No art college would take me because I had dyslexia. They didn't really know about it then." He worked in the kitchens of North Thames Gas, peeling potatoes and carrots and cleaning trays. To maintain his sanity, he continued to take his beloved black-and-white photos and draw on the weekends. It was the lowest time of his life.

Eventually, he was accepted into an English art college and within a few years he was making short films for the BBC. Brady felt his accent and lack of an Oxford or Cambridge degree would hamper his career in England, so he moved to Los Angeles to attend the American Film Institute. After receiving his Master of Fine Arts, he produced commercials and worked as an assistant director on several feature films.

In the early 1990s, Brady began scratching out the plot for The Nephew. "I was going through a massive identity crisis in America. I didn't know where the hell I belonged anymore. I was a stranger when I came home and I was a stranger in America. I was an outsider wherever the hell I went. I was mid-Atlantic and drowning. I just put everything into Tlie Nephew." With the assistance of several other writers, including Jacqueline O'Neill, Douglas Mayfield and Sean Steele, Brady solidified the script and started "pounding the pavement" in Los Angeles and Dublin.

The pages under Brady's arm described The Nephew, Chad Egan Washington, as a 17-year old from New York who journeys to Ireland to meet his uncle Tony and to distribute his late mother Karen's ashes. Although Tony is initially shocked to discover that his nephew, Chad, is black, he invites him to stay in the island town where he lives. During his visit, Chad discovers that Tony has some secrets of his own relating to Karen's departure from the island over 20 years before.

When Morgan O'Sullivan of Ardmore Studios agreed to see him, Brady was 555,000 in credit-card debt for pre-production costs and was living on a friend's couch. Miraculously, O'Sullivan liked the script but felt it needed some work. Back in LA, Pierce Brosnan's new production partner, Beau St Clair, also read the script, liked it and showed it to Brosnan.

By this time, Brady was back in the US, producing a commercial to cover some of his debt. During a crew meeting, his assistant announced that Pierce Brosnan was on the phone. The room was silent as Brady went out to take the call. "Here was this man, Pierce Brosnan, and he was a Paddy like me and he was nice. He knew my name; 007 knew my name. Pierce said he liked the script and he said

`Let's go off and make a small movie together, Eugene. I've never produced, you've never directed, but I really love the story'."

Not only did Brosnan agree to produce the project, he agreed to a minor role and subsequently took a huge pay cut to ensure the project was financially viable. Thanks to Brosnan's box-office appeal and the casting of actors like Donal McCann, Niall Toibin and Sinead Cusack, the film raised £2.6 million through the Government tax incentive scheme and £800,000 in private investments.

Nervous on the night before his first day of shooting, Brady relived a bit of his past as a boy in Bray. "It was like going from the junior school into the senior school with the anticipation and the smell of the hooks from Greene's. I could actually smell the hooks. Although there were no Christian Brothers in this new secondary school, I still wondered if I was going to get the shit kicked out of me. All these people had been there before and I'd be the only stranger. It was true, because everyone had worked together before, even Pierce. The only outsider was, basically, me because I'd never worked with anyone here. So, there I was, this schmoe from across the road in Clover Hill who wasn't even allowed inside the gates of the studio. Once I started [filming] I realised you didn't get your head hit everyday."

Some days, however, things didn't go as planned. "On the first day of photography, we were shooting on a boat with Niall Toibin out at Lambay Island and I wanted bright sunshine. It was a helicopter shot and I had two cameras - one on the helicopter and one on the boat. So, we get out in the Irish Sea and there are gales force winds and torrential rain and the helicopter can't take off. Seventy per cent of the crew got seasick, starting off with the unit nurse.

Brady was keenly aware of the anxieties felt by the producers and financial backers on shore, so he shot the scene in gale force winds from a boat.

Brosnan joined the crew a few days after this incident, fresh from the set of Dante's Peak. "They'd already been shooting two days and I was in the trenches, so to speak, and I didn't know where to put myself on the bloody set. I know what to do as an actor, where to go and what to say and who to talk to but as a producer I was suddenly adrift," Brosnan has said.

Brady had the ultimate confidence in Brosnan. "Without him, I wouldn't be here now. It takes a lot of bottle for a major, motion-picture movie star to take second billing on a small picture in Ireland with a first-time director. For that, I'll be ever grateful because through thick and thin I knew that he was always there," says Brady.

DESPITE the pressure of new roles for Brosnan and Brady, it was the support band skill of the veteran Irish cast and crew that both credit for the quality and completion of the film. "I was very fortunate, very lucky to have these wonderful Irish people, who had worked with my heroes, on my crew. Ironically," said Brady, "practically everybody on my crew worked on Excalibur."

He describes shooting the film as his coming of age. "After the last day of shooting I felt like I was leaving Ireland again, I felt completely empty." Unlike his emigration 15 years ago, Brady had the maturity to deal with the loneliness and realised that "you have to turn over every stone. If #you want something bad enough you can have it; you can get it but you have to turn over every stone. You have to just keep going, keep going although people knock you down."

Although Brady claims he is an ordinary guy who just got lucky, he is more like the characters in his film and shouldn't be judged by outward appearances. His big blue eyes, closely cropped hair, and preference for plaid shirts, boots and jeans do make him look like an ordinary guy. But the fact that his first film stars Pierce Brosnan, Donal McCann, Niall Toibin and Sinead Cusack and is being edited by Patrick Duffner, who most recently cut Michael Collins, shows that Eugene Brady was not just dreaming.