Gary McKendry told author Colum McCann that if he let him make a short film of Everything In This Country Must he would get it nominated for an Oscar. He did. Donald Clarke talks to the Co Antrim-born director
WHEN Gary McKendry, then a top commercials director, was trying to persuade Colum McCann to allow him to make a short film of that writer's acclaimed story Everything In This Country Must, he exhibited neither false modesty nor fear of hubris.
"I got him on the day after I had read the story," McKendry, his Northern Irish accent softened by years spent living in New York City, says forcefully. "I said: 'I love this story and my aim is to get the film nominated for an Academy Award.'" Sure enough, a month ago Everything In This Country Must did indeed appear among the films short-listed for the Best Live-Action Short Award.
"I got a message saying you will be told online at 8.38 and 20 seconds in the morning. Adrien Brody read out the first 10 - the ones that people care about - and then the rest were listed on the Internet. We just pressed refresh, refresh, refresh. And the last refresh was followed by a glass of champagne."
Raised by working-class Protestant parents in Ballyclare, Co Antrim, McKendry, having failed to get into film school, studied at Belfast College of Art and then St Martin's College in London, where he gained the skills he later used to design storyboards for the advertising industry. "Then I began to actually read these things and thought: 'Fuck I can do better than this!'"
His rise through the industry was precipitous. Now 39, he has directed spots for Ikea, Porsche, Budweiser and Coca Cola, but, like so many people in the advertising game, McKendry harboured ambitions to move into feature-film directing. He read "literally thousands" of stories while seeking out material for the short that he hoped would act as a stepping-stone to Hollywood. Then - having hitherto been adamant that he didn't really want to make an Irish film - he came across McCann's story while strolling round a Manhattan book shop with his child.
Everything In This Country Must follows the story of a young girl who, some years after her mother and sister were killed by an Army Saracen, finds herself accepting the help of soldiers to rescue a trapped horse from a turbulent stream. McKendry showed the tale to a South African friend who agreed that it had universal appeal. The director just had to persuade McCann to take a punt on him.
"He wanted to test me because he knew I was a Protestant," McKendry laughs. "So he took me to an Irish bar and sat me under a photo of Gerry Adams - just to see my reaction. We started drinking and talking films. His wife didn't know me, but she said you should give this guy a shot. And with that, and him being drunk, we did the classic napkin contract. We actually did draw it out on a napkin."
The film's central sequence, in which the horse thrashes about in the busy stream, is carried off quite brilliantly. "I brought six guys from America. I brought a safety crew and some effects guys from Dublin. And the horse guys and the rain effects guys came from London. And then a local gaffer and so on." Knowing the scale of the production - small for a commercial feature, huge for the average Irish short - it is all the more impressive to hear that the director financed the picture entirely out of his own pocket.
"I can't actually tell you how much we spent, but my wife eventually said, 'Is this film finished? Because we have 350 bucks left to our name.'" And commercials directors make a lot of money.
"Yes, we make a lot of money," he laughs. "But that is the danger with commercials: the golden handcuffs. I meet a lot of people in the industry who complain they never got the chance to shoot a feature and then they jump in a Ferrari and zoom away. Whose fault is that? You could always pony up the Ferrari and shoot a short. Now, mine didn't cost a Ferrari. But still."
Happily for McKendry the gamble paid off. Having carefully targeted industry screenings in Los Angeles, he managed to engineer that nomination and has now signed a deal to direct an adaptation of Sir Ranulph Fiennes's SAS thriller The Feathermen.
Sadly, we will not see him and his fellow nominees scattered about the screen in the traditional neat little boxes on this year's telecast.
"We are all going to be on stage like the Miss World from Hell. Five directors on stage. I don't mind not winning, but not winning in front of 500 million people I do mind. I think they have made a mistake on the drama. The great reaction is never from the directors; it is from the wives. I'm sure that the reaction from all the nominees will be pretty much the same. Directors aren't exactly the most demonstrative people in the world." And dour Northern Irish directors still less so? "Exactly!"
