Sex and that sort of thing

Tom (Sam Corry) and Rachel (Mary Murray) think about sex.

I was sent to ballet classes when I was a child. So were my two sisters. My three brothers were sent to scouts. It was deeply unfair, as I wanted to go to scouts, as did at least one of my sisters. The other one wanted to hang outside smoking cigarettes with her friends but even she, at eight years of age, thought that inappropriate (especially in a pink tutu and ballet pumps.) Sadly, none of the boys expressed any interest in ballet so a simple swap wasn't an option. The ballet was a waste of time  - I still receive frequent compliments on my distinct military walk (grandfather's genes.) My sisters faired no better although aren’t so burdened with quite such a pronounced gait. 

So, when I arrived at the Kenilworth square scout hall for my first day's rehearsals for the film, I was understandably intrigued. This is where it all happened. The chanting, the oaths, the knot learning seminars, the sheer boyish spottiness of it all. The first thing that hit me was the cold. It was about 10 degrees warmer outside than in and as I was to discover over the next two weeks, no matter how many heaters we introduced nor extra layers of bainín sweaters, things never got any warmer.

There was a huge room with a built in bench around all sides, which I immediately bagged. Off this room were about 8 tiny little rooms - you could even call them 'cells' they were so small. About five foot square. These too were lined with a bench and some brave youngsters had even dared to graffiti the walls. Mostly drawings of male genitalia. Some things never change although I don’t think we were prone to adorning the ballet studio walls with our creativity.

For the first few days I had individual sessions with the six leads - Diarmuid Noyes (Dave) Shaun Dunne (Vinny) Sam Corry (Tom) Julie O’ Halloran (Lauren) Mary Murray (Rachel) and Lorna Dempsey (Janice.) We chatted about the script and ourselves and I asked them a million personal questions about their lives. When you’re working with actors it very quickly becomes an intimate process where you each have to learn to trust each other. Each actor is of course, very different from the last and works in a different way and as a director you have to quickly learn what’s the best approach to facilitate that actor to give their best performance. For some the less you say to them the better, others want more from you. I’m always learning about this process so spending so much time with a bunch of twenty year olds was great fun and as it’s been a number of years  (think stripy woollen leggings and Abba) since I was anywhere close to their age – totally fascinating.

We then started to work on the different relationships – Dave and Lauren, Vinny and Janice and Tom and Rachel. All had at some stage to kiss or thrash about so I wanted to tackle this at the rehearsal stage. For Diarmuid and Julie (Dave and Lauren) I decided to do nothing and to wait until I was actually shooting the scene. Julie was naturally shy and reserved and it was very important that Dave was in awe of Lauren, that this girl was  ‘the one’ and not just someone he was going grope up against the wall in a nightclub on your average Friday night.

However, Vinny and Janice were totally different. They needed to be able to go for it hammer and tongs. I had just been to a seminar with director Mike Leigh who had dealt with how one approaches sex scenes with actors. He explained his technique, which amounted to getting the actors to go on hands and knees opposite each other and in character, have hand sex (i.e. they could only touch each other's hands.) Sounds odd but I tried it with Lorna and Shaun who play Janice and Vinny and it worked brilliantly. Within a very short amount of time these two strangers had overcome their awkwardness with each other and I knew that things would be fine on the day.  It was really important for me at the rehearsal stage to anticipate and deal with any potential problems. There was no room in our schedule for those dreaded moments when you see an extremely anguished actor approach you and take you aside with the words “Eh Lisa, I have just a little bit of an issue.” The resulting ‘issue’ usually takes at least a half an hour to resolve – longer if there’s tears involved (often mine) and results in the crew standing around scratching their arses, organizing their next jobs or stuffing away more biscuits whilst the minutes tick by.

When it came to the sex stuff with Rachel and Tom (Mary Murray and Sam Corry) I wasn’t so concerned. They’re both seasoned actors, totally focused and although it says in the script that they have sex, I never wanted it to be gratuitous (it’s a comedy for God’ sake!) so we discussed an approach and I explained how I wanted to shoot it and we just left it for the take where they were encouraged to improvise.

You’ll have to watch the film to see who ends up on top.