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John Butler and Hugh O’Conor are friends going ba
ck years. John has directed Hugh and they’ve written together. They share early drafts of scripts with each other, seeking insights and reassurances on their direction and efforts. Now with Butler on the cusp of releasing his third feature film Papi Chulo and O’Conor about to break virgin territory with his debut Metal Heart, these singular talents sat down, on the balcony of Hang Dai, to reflect on their relationship and the industry in which they have made their careers. O’Conor has been immersed in the game since childhood. Butler recollects an image of him looking into the viewfinder of an enormous camera on the set of Lamb in which he starred alongside Liam Neeson as a tenyear-old back in 1985. “I remember having a video camera of my dad’s and making shorts with my brother Keith. We made re-makes of Home Alone where he died every time. I would edit them together on video recorders or cut in camera. I loved doing that even then,” recollects O’Conor. Butler found his way behind the camera via the world of TV promos, returning from a stint with a start-up in San Francisco to Dublin to work as a promo producer in the nascent days of TV3. O’Conor’s first foray in the world of shorts was Guilty of Love in 2001 which Butler remembers seeing before Conor McPherson’s Saltwater in the IFI. “I was really impressed,” he tells O’Conor to which he replies “Ah thanks very much. Well remembered.” Their chats are peppered with a lot of this mutual admiration and references which clearly show how rooted they have been to the development of the film scene here. They reference Damien O’Donnell’s 35 Aside and Lenny Abrahamson’s 3 Joes as influential and inspiring shorts for them. They co-wrote the 2008 short Spacemen 3 which O’Conor directed. “We had a discussion about two guys having an argument in space. So, John very kindly let me try that. I look at it now and think I did so many things wrong, but you learn from it.” In fact, the process of consistently putting work out there, making mistakes and learning from them is a unifier between these two. Far from the barstool pontifications of the shoulda, coulda, wouldas of this town, both these boys are prolific in their output. Butler has been a writer and director on his three films to date: The Stag, Handsome Devil and Papi Chulo while O’Conor is on stage and screen as an actor as well as an accomplished photographer. “I look at stuff I did earlier in my career and think it’s extraordinarily naive,” reflects Butler. “The pressure to put work out there that will be judged for all time and for all posterity as representative of you is so great. I much prefer to keep going and failing better, have a permission to fail and not be in jail career wise.” As to whether it gets easier is a moot point. “You get more experienced,” says Butler. “But you still question why you do it. It’s so fucking scary the night before you start or every night if I’m honest. You get home and you are already in a rush to get to bed. You get the bare amount of sleep. There’s a hundred things that are terrifying you about the next day. My first waking call every morning when I’m shooting is FUCK, I can’t believe I am doing this.” One of O’Conor’s concerns whilst shooting Metal Heart, his coming-of-age story, was the national concern that is the weather. “I remember on ours we were hoping for sun and every morning we would try every weather app. You’d still be getting up going, ‘Oh thank god, it’s not pouring rain’.” This is one concern Butler didn’t have to contend with given he shot his heartfelt friendship between a weather forecaster and Mexican labourer in LA. However, the reaction to working in the ‘traditional’ film industry is as changeable as the ‘what’s hot and not’ considerations of the social media season. “Everyone in LA is an ‘influencer’ now. You might be in a restaurant with six people and say I’m a film director and they’ll say, ‘Oh my god, that’s cute, what a fun thing to do.’ I feel there’s been a paradigm shift in that town. They all work in snapchat or TV. In some company, I feel like the weirdo guy making penny dreadfuls having made three features.” However, they both are aware of being arbiters of their own destiny. “Ultimately you have to generate your own stuff because the main furnace of your career has to be your own imagination,” says Butler. “It will be three years of your life to make a film so you have to desperately want to make it. You have to hedge that bet in a way because you can put everything into it for a year and a half and then it’s turned down.” Both are connected by their producers Treasure Entertainment run by couple Rebecca O’Flanagan and Rob Walpole. “It is important to understand producing is highly creative. You look into the whites of each other’s eyes, it is important that you trust producers enough to produce it. They shield you from things. They know what type of film you are trying to make, The main furnace of your own career has to be your imagination. 33