By Steph Green (writer/director of New Boy)
(February 2009)

Finding Roddy's story New Boy was a result of procrastination. I grabbed the short story collection off my flat mate's shelf during another afternoon of trying to feel brilliant about something for a couple of minutes to prove that the last five hours staring at the blank page had meant something. I take a lot more breaks now - maybe too many.

I also saw the story in Metro Éireann, Ireland's multicultural newspaper. I had never thought about adapting a short story, which had been a massive oversight. Here was a fifteen-minute experience with depth and simplicity, authentic characters and dialogue, and, just maybe, no one else had thought about it becoming a film. I wrote Roddy a letter and he was generous. In my experience so far, writers are some of the most generous people. And in this instance, it was contagious. The Irish Film Board and RTÉ were then generous with the financing, and the cast and crew were equally as generous with their time and ideas.

New Boy is told from Joseph's point of view as he relates a sort of stream-of-consciousness process of discovery. Everything is new and half of it is misunderstood, which provides a type of humor that was hard to get into the film. I tried to focus on the characters and relationships instead of using voice-over to relate Joseph's inner monologue. If this works, it is because of the kids. They were the smartest people on set. I hope I won't offend anyone by saying that.

In the short story, there is a dramatic massacre scene where Joseph's father is killed among the chaos. With limited resources, this was one of the scenes I had to re-think and simplify. In the end, I think this limitation worked to distill the scene down to its most important elements, and I hope the look between father and son, both knowing their fate, conveys enough.

I share with Roddy Doyle and countless other people an interest in stories about the new multi-ethnic Ireland. Many of the boys seen in the African scenes are the real-life "Josephs," who have recently moved to Ireland as well. But I hope the film, like the short story, is more about resilience and friendship than any particular place or scenario.

It's always my hope that my sets are enjoyable environments, but there's only so much I can control. It seems to be much more about the kind of people you have the luck of casting. Precious character Sinead Maguire (Hazel O'Hara) is pure sunshine on and off camera. In fact, Alan Parker called her "The Irish Little Miss Sunshine" when we won a festival he was judging. She was quite chuffed. The boys in the African schoolhouse were secretly freezing, but somehow were able to transcend the winter weather when we told them the camera was rolling. We tried to keep them warm in-between takes by running a football (soccer) match outside right up until we had to sit them down to shoot. I was the boss inside the classroom but they were the masters out there. Norma Sheahan (the teacher) was pregnant with her first children (twins), and was a much more patient woman than her character.

The three main boys became such good friends during shooting that every take of bullying was followed by outbursts of laughter once I called cut. They're hoping for a sequel where they are superheroes. Carpooling to set one morning, Fionn O'Shea's mother heard the following conversation from the three boys in the back seat: Tunji Ebun-Cole, who plays "Joseph" (father from Sierra Leone and mother from Zambia, but born and raised in East London, and identifies himself as English); Simon O'Driscoll, who plays Christian Kelly; and Fionn O'Shea, who plays Seth Quinn (both Irish).

Tunji: Why don't you speak the Irish language all the time?
Simon: Oh, because the English took over our country and made us stop a while back.
Tunji: Oh. [Pause - thinking] Sorry about that.
Fionn: Don't worry about it.

I repeated this conversation to my friend who works for Oxfam in war-torn parts of the world, and she described it back to me as the foundation concepts of the peace process. Superheroes indeed. -MPM

Oscar-nominated for a Live Action Short.

Photos by Lee Newman Gallagher; courtesy of the filmmaker.

With an abundance of festival awards already to the film's credit (visit IMDB), the last two Academy screenings where it can be seen:
Friday, February 13th at 2:50 PM at Linwood Dunn Theater (1313 North Vine Street, Hollywood, California)
Friday, February 13th at 7:30 PM at Academy Theater at Lighthouse International (111 East 59th Street, New York City, New York)