Film-spotting: During a rare sighting of what was once a commonly found species in rural Ireland - a film crew - actor Aidan Quinn and writer Patrick Galvin talk to Kevin Barry about Song For a Raggy Boy
Outside Kenmare, as you belt along towards Kilgarvan, you'll pass a farm on your left with a field full of freshly stacked hay, all neatly wrapped in black plastic and emblazoned with four-foot-high white letters that spell out the immortal legend: "FEK OFF CROWS!" Now you know you are in a deeply cultured neck of the country when even the crows are literate and, sure enough, as we drift further along towards the fiefdom of Jackie Healy-Rae (all bow, genuflect, thump craws three times), we can record numerous sightings of creative types gambolling amid the hedgerows and the humming summer meadows.
They can be distinguished by their unusual facial hair and their distinctive song, the latter being warbled hoarsely into walkie-talkies and consisting of snippets like "More shorties for the A.D. [assistant director\]", "Quiet for rehearsals now please!" and "Aidan's coming in the Lexus!" Stalk after these high-pressured folks into the lush woodland around the Ardtully fishing grounds and we indeed find ourselves on a film set. This prompts a tear of bitter-sweet nostalgia: it's like the mid-1990s all over again, when you couldn't turn sideways in the Irish countryside without falling over a working film crew.
The film being shot here now is Song For a Raggy Boy, starring everybody's favourite Irish-American actor, Aidan Quinn, and based on the book by Cork-based poet Patrick Galvin. More about the story later, but we should first point out, Mr Quinn, that we're actually a bit sick of looking at you.
"I know," he says. "I've made three films in a row here now and something like six or seven altogether. I mean, it's definitely an added temptation to me if I read a script that's set in Ireland."
Why not just move over and be done with it? "My wife. We've already got two houses, one upstate in New York and one near the city, and she says that two is plenty to take care of. But I'm working on her and I'm going to wear her down eventually."
You may hear in the background some blood-curdling yelps and howls. This is because the Raggy Boy cast includes a couple of dozen young boys, who are using the downtime between shots to stage a mass open-air brawl, the object being to decapitate and eviscerate as many opponents as possible.
"Ah, the kids are great," says Quinn, gazing fondly at the carnage. "There's a couple that can be quite a handful, but they're worth it. I think the director made a great decision in hiring non-actors, because these kids don't have any of that Dublin 4 bulls**t, the I-wanna-be-a-movie-star thing, they just are what they are. And listen, we better move this car before those cows get down here or we're f**ked."
Having suavely evaded a horde of galloping bovines, we are now free to take a closer look at the set. And it is much like any other, a strange kind of half-world where long stretches of brain-wiping tedium are occasionally perturbed by panicky bursts of vaguely controlled chaos. It would be a good idea to expose to a day on a film set the many thousands of deluded Irish adolescents who are currently embarking on courses in media and communications so that they might one day work in this industry. They would learn that there is more glamour to a job in a slaughterhouse, and lugging film gear around is generally far less fun than electrocuting pigs.
There is a peculiar and rigid sort of class system that pertains on a film set. Actually, it's more of an eco- system, with the director and star hovering above the treetops, while below falls a descending order of assistants, and grips, and assistants to assistants, and wardrobe, and publicists, and the folk making the "making of" video, and camera operators, and the people who drive the trucks and fry the burgers. Visiting hacks are, of course, the amoebic pond life of the set-up and, being happily ignored, we can sneak off and put a call in to writer Patrick Galvin.
"This is all going on for six or seven years now," he sighs, having come to terms with the treacle-slow mechanics of film production. "With a small project like this, it can take that long for everything to fall into place. I really have huge admiration for Aidan Quinn in that he's stuck with it all this time - and that's been crucial in getting the thing made."
Raggy Boy represents something of a new wave in film financing. It's the type of film they call a "euro-pudding", with financiers from four countries involved. The budget is small, around the £5 million sterling mark, and the production at this point has a shoestring feel, as if it's held together at the edges with masking tape and Bostik. But Quinn and the young director, Aisling Walsh, have a palpable faith in the project, believing it's a story that deserves to be told.
GALVIN mined from his own background to write the book. It's about a young man who comes back to Ireland from the Spanish Civil War to teach at a Christian Brothers industrial school. It's dark and brutal, with a heavy undertow of death, abuse and the abject horrors of everyday corruption.
"When I first started the thing it was really difficult," says Galvin. "I had to ask myself: 'Jesus, do I really want to go through all this stuff again?' "
"It's been very emotional," says Aidan Quinn. "Some days on the set we've been really going through the wringer, but then we look at the rushes and we know how good they are and that gives us the energy to keep going."
The advance word, as they say, is positive. With the six-week shoot on Raggy Boy almost complete - around Ballyvourney and Coolea and Macroom, as well as down here in Ardtully - everybody seems reassured that they don't have a "squawker" on their hands.
On a set, you can't always tell if a film is going to be good, but you can tell if it's going to be bad.
Today's filming involves disguising this countryside at the verge of the Beara peninsula as the Spain of the 1930s. The crew prays to God and the Healy-Raes that They might grant an occasional sunburst, and for a time the light indeed peeps through. Even after 12 hours on the set, the crew seems eager for more, but the evening fades fast now in deference to the coming autumn.
The light has thickened, and the crows of Kilgarvan make wing toward the rooky wood, and the shoot is done.
Oh, FEK OFF CROWS!
