Two boys, one Catholic and one Protestant, dream of escaping strife-torn 1970s Belfast in the lighthearted Mickybo & Me. Donald Clarke talks to director Terry Loane

IT IS an unhappy fact - often disingenuously denied by optimists - that, when meeting somebody from Northern Ireland, one's mind irresistibly starts to consider which of the two communities that person sprang from. Terry Loane, a fast-talking, well-mannered man with spiky urban hair, is the director of the pleasant new comedy, Mickybo & Me. Not much help there, then. Terry? Loane? Terry Loane? Hmmm?

Mickybo & Me, adapted from Owen McCafferty's popular play, Mojo Mickybo, tells the story of two kids, a Catholic and a Protestant, who, inspired by a screening of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, flee 1970s Belfast for adventures down south.

"It is my story a little bit," Loane says. "I grew up in north Belfast during the worst of The Troubles and we used to go for holidays in Cork. Then we'd come back and, like in the film, I would lie in bed hearing guns and bombs go off. My brother and I used to just think: why can't we live in Cork forever? It seemed like an idyll."

So, he used to holiday in Cork? That nudges us in a particular direction. What, erm, sort of background did he come from?

"Well, my dad was a Methodist minister," he says, unwittingly closing off that unspoken line of inquiry. "I think that's where I got this creative urge. There is a lot of performance in standing up once a week before a few hundred people: entertaining them, informing them, keeping them interested. My dad is from Dublin and grew up round the corner from Christy Brown. I heard a lot of stories."

Terry began his career as a photographer and artist but, soon realising that he felt more comfortable in a collaborative environment, moved into design for theatre and film. In 1998 he found himself designing the first production of Mojo Mickybo for the Kabosh theatre company in Belfast. "It was quite short and very stylised," he explains. "But it had this emotional punch that I felt could work really well on film."

Loane, who had completed his first short film, Cluck, earlier the same year, persuaded McCafferty that he was up to the task of directing and writing a big-screen version of Mickybo. Somehow or other they then convinced Working Title, the Four Bridget Joneses and a Notting Hill people, to come on board and secured a cast that includes Julie Walters, Ciarán Hinds, Adrian Dunbar and Gina McKee.

"I was lucky in that I got a producer, Mark Huffam, who had already worked with Working Title and had worked on The Hours with Stephen Daldry. And Stephen became our executive producer. After directing Billy Elliot, Stephen got loads of scripts about kids, but there was something about this.

"Now, executive producer can just mean bullshit, but Stephen was the exact opposite of that. He was able to send Julie Walters a quick letter saying look out for this script. Stephen really was our secret weapon throughout this."

After auditioning more than 400 kids, Loane offered young John Joe McNeill and Neill Wright the parts of, respectively, Mickybo and Johnjo. "They had an emotional maturity and a real lack of self consciousness. They could have improvised for days."

The resulting film seems, even to those of us who can remember Belfast in 1970, to take place somewhere in pre-history. The adult actors, who must have expected to be forced into loons and miniskirts, dress in chunky knits and dun slacks. The boys wear baggy shorts and tank-tops. Even before we see Mickybo and Johnjo gamboling about bomb sites like the young heroes of John Boorman's Hope & Glory, Mickybo & Me has cast certain odours of the 1940s around the auditorium.

"Well, we were very aware of some traps I have seen people fall into before," Loane says. "It's the summer of 1970 and, as soon as people hear that, they immediately start thinking flares and wild wallpaper. But Belfast, fashion-wise, was very much 10 or 15 years behind. Mickybo's wallpaper wouldn't have been changed for decades and, even though Johnjo's had, it is still very dour and, for want of a better word, Protestant."

He raises a potentially controversial aspect of the film. Mickybo's house, energised by a mother who is as much of a lark as only Julie Walters can be, is wild, noisy, and packed full of children. Johnjo, an only child, has to eat his dinner in icy silence with dad (a discontented Ciarán Hinds) and mum (that beautiful high-priestess of misery, Gina McKee). One might argue that the picture caricatures both Catholics and Protestants.

"Well, I think that, yes, there was a worry of doing that scene from Monty Python's Meaning of Life. Yes, there are bigger Catholic families and smaller Protestant families, but I hope we didn't overplay that. In the play their siblings are never referred to. The reason I gave Mickybo a lot of sisters is that it gives him another reason to have a chip on his shoulder. And also it means that when Johnjo walks into Mickybo's house, he enters an entirely new world."

Mickybo & Me is sufficiently soft-hearted to play to a wide audience, but Loane will have to go some if he is to equal one particular achievement of his brother Tim. Eight years ago the other Loane's short, Dance Lexie Dance, which Terry designed, was nominated for an Oscar. I would guess there must be some competition between the siblings.

"A lot of people assume that," Terry laughs. "He has just finished directing the second series of Proof for RTÉ, but we are very different in our approaches. After he got to the Oscars he discovered that nobody was handing him things on a plate and he has worked very hard."

Having directed a feature for Working Title, Terry, on the other hand, must have the world at his feet.

"I am reading some very interesting scripts," he laughs. "The dream is, you get your first feature and then you immediately say: what next? Unfortunately it's not that simple. But if all Ireland goes out to see Mickybo on the Easter weekend then it will make things a bit easier. I hope that doesn't sound too grovelly."

Mickybo & Me opens next Friday