WRITER director Martin Duffy admits there is more than a touch of autobiography in his debut feature film, The Boy From Mercury. "A lot of it is me. When I was a kid I thought I was from another planet, which is the starting point for everything in the film. It brought back a lot of things from my childhood that I realised were quite sweet and precious."
The 44 year old Dubliner's gentle comedy about a child's fantasy world has a wistful, whimsical quality that he hopes audiences of all ages will appreciate and enjoy. One of the most engaging aspects of, The Boy From Mercury is its affectionate depiction of suburban Dublin life in the early 1960s, based very closely on Duffy's own childhood memories.
"Far be it from me to stag off Jim Sheridan, but one of the things that disappointed me about My Left Foot was that it was set against this sort of Georgian tenement background. But in fact the Brown family lived just up the road from us in Crumlin. I could never understand why they changed that, and didn't show that whole exodus that happened out to places in the country like Walkinstown."
Duffy wasn't sure exactly how to explain what he wanted to production designer Tom Conroy, so he gave him his own family photographs from which to work.
"Tom built everything around those photographs. There are little things throughout the film that I associate very strongly with my own life, the absence of a father, the brothers being away - which made the experience of making it very emotional for me."
After an extensive search through schools and drama groups, Duffy finally settled on 10 year old James Hickey for the central role of the dreamy schoolboy who believes he's actually from the planet Mercury. Hugh O'Conor was always the first choice as the surly older brother, but casting Rita Tushingham and Tom Courtenay as Harry's long suffering mother and eccentric uncle had other, welcome resonances for the director. "I'm, delighted by it because Tom was in Billy Liar! and Rita was the Girl with Green Eye's at just about the time this film is set."
His 15 years as an editor, first with RTE and then as an independent, gave the grounding and confidence to move into directing. He left RTE (he doesn't argue with the suggestion that he "escaped") in 1986, at a time when he felt that there were fewer and fewer dramas and creative documentaries being produced.
"It became more about functional stuff like current affairs and gardening programmes, which I myself would be incapable of doing. There's nothing wrong with it just wouldn't suit my temperament. But I should say that RTE have been good to me since, and they did put money into The Boy From Mercury."
Editing films such as Margo Harkin's Hush A Bye Baby and Bob Quinn's Budawanny, he was moving towards directing his own work in the early 1990s, but the lack of opportunities at that time delayed the process. "It was a very barren, difficult time. I actually think that I was ready to direct my first feature about five years ago." It was only with the reinstatement of the Film Board three years ago that it became seriously possible to contemplate making a feature.
Now, with his first film behind him, and hoping to go into production next year on a movie called Mothership ("the first real Irish sci fi picture"), he believes the situation is better than ever for film making in Ireland.
"I feel incredibly lucky to be making my first feature films at this time.
