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How To Be the unlikely hero of cult cinema
Sheffield-born film-maker Oliver Irving's debut film has been winning awards around the world and now local audiences can see it. Nick Ahad met him at a screening in his home town.
Oliver Irving relates a quote he's heard that inspires him.
Incorrectly – and not entirely unexpectedly – he attributes the quote to a film star.
"I think it was Jack Nicholson who said 'the harder I work, the luckier I get'," says Irving.
He's wrong. The famous quote is actually attributed to the golfer Gary Player.
It's not really a surprise that Irving has convinced himself that the phrase was uttered by a movie star. The film-maker has been obsessed with the movie industry since he was a child and, for the past five years it has literally been the focus of all his energies. The determination has led to him making his recently-released first feature film How To Be.
During the filming of the movie, Irving got very lucky. His lead actor was Robert Pattinson. At the time Pattinson had a little bit of fame from playing the character Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter movies. Pattinson was cast in How To Be, finished filming, then in a twist of fate went off to Hollywood to star in the vampire movie Twilight.
"He was perfect for the part. He came in and we met and straight away we knew he was right – he already had a bit of a fan base from the Harry Potter movies, but was a bit fed up because all he was being offered were fantasy movies. At one point he was talking about giving up acting altogether. He also told me about this movie Twilight – he was going to audition but didn't really think he was in with a chance. But, he got the part, finished our film then went to Hollywood to film that," says Irving.
"It was lucky, but it is true that the harder you work the luckier you get. It was hard work to find Rob – it took a year and a half to cast the film, but once we got him we were very lucky with what happened next."
Irving certainly has worked very hard to get this project off the ground. It began in 2003 when he first wrote the script How To Be, the story of Art, a frustrated musician, undergoing what he sees as a quarter-life crisis when his girlfriend dumps him and he has to move back in with his middle-class parents – who are far from thrilled at the prospect.
Growing up in Sharrow in Sheffield, Irving went to school at High Storrs and Norton College, where his media course taught him the basics of film-making. After completing a directing course at Bournemouth, Irving moved to London and began trying to find the funding to get his movie off the ground.
Teaching drum lessons in between trying to get the movie made, Irving took the unusual step of approaching anyone he could think of to raise funding for the movie.
Last month Irving returned to Sheffield for a screening of the movie at the city's Showroom cinema. At a question and answer session following the screening he told the audience: "Because I was giving drum lessons, a lot of the parents of the kids I taught clearly had a lot of money, so I would approach them and ask if they wanted to invest in the film.
"If I was on the tube and saw someone in a suit who looked like they had money, I would approach them and ask them. I was doing anything I could to try raise the money for the film."
This slightly unconventional approach was slowly working for Irving. It was when he met Justin Kelly, a film lawyer who had aspirations to be a producer, that things really started happening. "It took a really long time, but we set up a company, managed to raise the funding and finally got things moving," says Irving.
The five-week shoot took place in February and March 2007. Irving says: "To actually be on set and making the film was one of those moments where you remember all the work you've put in and can't quite believe it's really happening."
Once filming was finished, the journey was far from over. Irving spent the next 12 months in post-production, getting the film just right.
While that was happening he sent a rough cut of the film to the Slamdance Festival, a festival run at the same time as Sundance, and it was accepted. It meant a deadline which the film-maker just managed to meet.
"When we found out we were in Slamdance, we were still finishing the film. It was crazy, we finished grading the film and then literally the next day we got on the plane to America and got it there just in time for the screening," says Irving.
The stress of getting the film there was worth it. How to Be won the grand jury honourable mention. From there things just kept rolling. The film played at festivals across the US, with Irving travelling around seeing screenings where the movie was well accepted and taking part in talks at festivals.
The movie is now available, along with the soundtrack, on general release in the UK. Last week, in a rare quiet moment, Irving popped into HMV. It is still a thrill for the 28-year-old film-maker to see his movie on the shelf.
"We knew we were always going to be making a little cult film that would hopefully have a cult following," he said. "I went into HMV, just to have a look and see how it was doing. It's number 21 in the chart."
Not bad for a little cult movie.
Irving is now "essentially homeless", living between New York and London, filming episodes of a television series which will be screened on the internet.
How to Be is being screened at York City Screen at 2.10pm tomorrow.
Log on to www.howtobemovie.com
For more on Irving's latest project visit his Facebook site.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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