Jonathan Lambert told David Hennessy about Hometime, his new short film written by comedian/ actor Joseph McGucken, that looks at issues like alcohol around young children and which is about to screen at Ealing Film Festival.
The Irish film Hometime is set to screen as part of Ealing Film Festival.
Hometime tells the story of Sam, played by young actor Cole Murray, a boy who spends his tenth birthday in the pub waiting for his mam, played by Lauren Larkin, to finish and take him home.
But as the night progresses, things deteriorate and end with an event that will be devastating for Sam.
The film is written by comedian and actor Joseph McGucken and directed by Jonathan Lambert.
Jonathan has filmed videos for big names like Damien Dempsey and Shane Filan.
Joseph and Jonathan have collaborated on previous projects like the comedy series, Darren and Joe’s Free Gaff.
Jonanthan Lambert told The Irish World: “Me and the writer Joe McGucken have been collaborating on projects for a few years now, mostly comedy centric stuff.
“We’ve done branded online viral videos that have went down fairly well for a couple of Irish companies like Chadwicks.
“They’ve done well on social media and we made a comedy series for RTE as well called Free Gaff. that Joe acts in as well as writes.
“We’ve been kind of hatching a plan.
“I know him a long time now but nearly five years I’d say we’re kind of trying to make a short, ‘Let’s make a short’.
“And Joe had written this short early in the year and it was based on his own childhood, some of his own experiences sitting around in pubs and waiting for his mam to finish up and take him home.
“He actually sat down to write a funny song, like a nostalgic comedy song and what happened was this poured out of him because he actually said he felt kind of sad thinking back on those experiences.
“This is what poured out of him so he sent the script straight to me and we kind of looked at the possibility of making it through the means of funding, or should we just go and put our own money where our mouths are.
“When we looked at funding options, the timeline could have been anywhere between 10 months to a year and a half before you would actually get the money and get to make the film.
“So we just went ahead and fast tracked it and we put our own money into it.
“Once we decided, we set a date for the end of March and we had about seven weeks to prep the film, including casting, locations, crewing up, everything.
“In one sense it’s something that was a long time coming but when we decided we were going to do it, it happened really fast.
“It just so happened it suited both of our schedules work wise.
“My bread and butter is TV directing more so than narrative but that’s where the passion and the love lies, is in narrative storytelling.
“TV work would be more stable than film work and it’s kind of just the ladder I’ve ended up climbing since graduating from college.
“It just happened there was a bit of a gap there and we went and we made Hometime.
“I make it sound easy, it wasn’t that easy.”
I really admire that. The thing is once you decide to put your money where your mouths are, as you put it, you can just crack on. All the question marks about funding and when you can film and so on are gone..
“You’re so right.
“That was a great propeller for us because we’re both married, Joe has a young family so if you’re going to take time out and obviously we’re not making any money, we’re just spending money and short films, you’re really only investing in your in your future as a means of showing what you can do.
“There wasn’t really much return or anything.
“It was definitely a creative endeavour for that reason.”
Did it come with a certain amount of responsibility for you being such a personal story for Joe?
“Yeah, absolutely. I think he did have a harder time growing up than I would have but we’re both from working class communities and that’s something that we’ve always connected on throughout the years working together.
“I think a thing that we agreed on was we’ve seen this story being told before about this certain group of people or class of people but it’s not necessarily told from the point of view of the persons that come from that background.
“I wouldn’t have been privy as much to it, maybe more so on holidays and things like that sitting around in pubs and kind of falling asleep on couches and what have you in a pub.
“But I definitely witnessed it and I have a lot of friends around me who were affected by parents who went to the pub very often and it’s had a knock on effect on their lives as well as they’ve become adults themselves.
“I think it was very important for us to tell the story in an authentic way from our own point of view and that was the beauty, I suppose, about not having finance or investors to answer to or that might have an agenda.
“We did have freedom in that sense to tell it the way we felt was authentic and true and honest.
“When he sent me the script, it was just very raw and that’s why it hit home.
“And I know that was the case for a lot of the people that worked on it.
“A lot of them connected with the material because it did feel like it’s like when you read a poem, it’s not the world you live in as such but because the emotion is so honest, you can just feel the authenticity and you can connect with it in that sense.
“And that’s the way it was with the script.
“I know that sounds very airy fairy but that’s why it happened so fast as well.
“I read it.
“I think we met for a coffee two days later and then, within a week we kind of put together a few sloppy figures on the phone using a calculator and it was like, ‘Right, let’s do it’.
“And obviously it ended up costing more than what we anticipated but that’s part of the adventure.”
So much of the film rests of the young shoulders of Cole Murray who plays Sam. Much like how they found Catherine Clinch for The Quiet Girl, it seems like you had a little find there..
“Totally, yeah.
“We were really lucky in terms of the casting process.
“We reached out to a lot of youth clubs around the north inner city and we spoke to some drama groups as well further afield but we just found with the drama groups, you were getting very rehearsed and very performative auditions.
“So we went and did a workshop in a place called the Swan Youth Centre.
“It’s actually where Barry Keoghan would have first acted on camera because they facilitate the local kids with a lot of courses in acting and film making.
“So myself and Joe went in and did a bit of an acting workshop with them.
“Cole didn’t come through that means.
“He was actually a relation of an actor friend of ours so he got Cole to self tape.
“We had a good few self tapes sent in as well on phones.
“You could even tell from the self tape there was something there.
“Then it was a case of doing a chemistry test with the actress Lauren, who plays Leanne, who plays the mother.
“And again, he was just on it.
“He just took direction very well and took notes very well and could very subtly tweak his performance, like an adult.
“It’s actually crazy.
“I don’t even think he really realises how in tune he is because he can be so subtle. A lot of it, it’s just those looks or breathing.
“You would given him notes and he’d smash it.
“I think it really would have lived or died on that performance and he was fantastic.
“He’s an inner city kid.
“His parents are from more or less where the film is set around the Summer Hill, Dublin 1 area.
“He’s as authentic as it gets.
“He’s brilliant so we were really lucky, really lucky.
“I hope he goes on to do bigger and better things, I think he will. There’s no doubt about it.”
The other side of it is the mother character played by Lauren Larkin who we have seen in things like Deadly Cuts.
I think it would have been easy to make her ‘the baddie’ but she is shown as someone who is basically good but has her own demons..
“I’m glad you took that away from it because when you’re making something, you have an intention with the characters and how you want to portray them.
“But I suppose something on this scale, the film’s only been screened twice, maybe only a dozen or two dozen people have seen it but most people seem to get that, have that same take on it that you have.
“That was totally what we were trying to do: Portray the character without judgment and she’s kind of a product of her own environment, her own upbringing, that society, the hand that society has dealt her.
“She has that toxic relationship with alcohol and you could see it as being villainous.
“You could see people in in the periphery of the film, in that world looking at her and saying she’s a terrible mother but she is struggling with her own demons, like you said.
“Lauren was brilliant.
“Because some of her act actions are for the benefit of herself and not of our son so in a black and white world, you could definitely see it as her being more of the villain in the piece.
“There’s a selfishness alright and her decisions are motivated by her demons or her addiction to alcohol, her reliance on it.
“That’s kind of the real message of the whole film really, how that culture of drinking and alcohol and when it goes too far, the knock on effect it can have on the people closest to you.”
Although it ends in tragedy, it all started with Leanne’s decision to have ‘one pint’ and take her child with her that time of the afternoon..
“Yeah, there was an innocence behind the decision on her part.
“I suppose it’s got the better of her really and then again, the knock on it will have on her son.”
The film has a shocking ending and leaves off with Sam himself being confronted with a pint of beer never to know if he picks it up or leaves it behind..
“I’ve got a bit of feedback about the ending.
“Some people thought it was too harsh.
“I don’t want to diss other short films or anything like that but I feel sometimes with short films they can be very flighty, just kind of a sense of something, as opposed to actually saying something or being a bit more straight with what they’re trying to get across.
“When myself and Joe were picking apart the script we did question, ‘Is that the right ending? Is it really the punctuation we want to make?’
“But I kind of thought, ‘What’s the point in saying it if we’re not going to leave people with an impression?’
“We wanted to give it a punctuation that I sometimes get frustrated with not seeing in other short films.
“With feature films it can be a very defined ending but I just find some shorts are almost like a couple of scenes from it from a larger film or they’re a little more abstract in what they’re trying to say, whereas we were trying to give a perspective on this story and this theme about the relationship with alcohol or relationship with an addiction, and how that will affect the people closest to you.
“I still see it as there being some sort of hope at the end because the pint is put in front of Sam but he might drink it, he might not, he might totally reject it.
“There’s hundreds if not thousands of different scenarios that could play out so it’s more of an open ending in that sense, I think.”
What sort of reaction have you got to the film so far?
“People are, for the most part, connecting with it.
“We put the trailer out a couple of weeks ago and it probably has over a million views at this stage.
“It seemed to kind of catch on with a lot of people.
“There’s full blown conversations with people- and this is on a 50 second trailer- now telling their own stories.
“Some people are saying, ‘Why does it look so depressing? They were the best days. They were great with my bottle of lemonade and my pack of Tayto’.
“And then other people are saying, ‘It was great fun until I had to carry my parents onto a bus and then when we got home, they started fighting’.
“There’s been a crazy reaction.
“I’m kind of taken back.
“I’ve put a lot of work online, music videos and other types of stuff but it’s been really interesting to see people engage with it.
“It seems to resonate.”
This upcoming screening will be your first outside of Ireland for the film?
“Yeah, it is.
“Ealing obviously has such a connection to the history of film.
“My mother and father both worked in cinemas in Dublin when they were young, the Carlton cinema and the Adelphi, so we were brought to the cinema a lot as kids.
“And then throughout my teenage years films were just really big between myself and my brother and my dad.
“We were either watching Die Hard or action movies, or we were watching the older stuff, like Laurel and Hardy or Chaplin or Bogarde.
“Then getting a little bit older, my dad loved the Ealing comedies like so box sets of those would be in the house.
“For that reason alone, it’s really cool: That connection.
“It seems like a really, really cool festival.
“It’s a good badge of honour.”
Hometime screens 3.30pm Saturday 30 November at Ealing Picturehouse as part of Ealing Film Festival.
Ealing Film Festival runs until 30 November.
For more information, click here.
