Writer and director David Gleeson introduces his new movie Once Upon a Time in a Cinema, an autobiographical coming-of-age he calls "a powerful love letter to the cinema experience".
The first time we projected the movie-within-our movie onto the screen in the Royal Cinema in Limerick city, the surge of emotion I felt in the projector's flickering light was overwhelming, for ours was the first light that storied venue had seen in decades.
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Listen: David Gleeson talks Once Upon a Time in a Cinema with RTÉ Arena
Opened as a theatre in 1852, this is where Oscar Wilde and P.T. Barnum had once orated, the same venue where movies had been projected for 70 years, then afterwards when the screen went dark it became the stage where Father Ted sang My Lovely Horse and The Cranberries played their first gigs.
Now as we prepared to shoot a movie set in a cinema during a movie in 1984, the entire history of that hallowed place had come full circle and I was the one to close the loop.
CUT TO: 4 YEARS EARLIER
Rule No. 1: 'Write what you know'. Having grown up in a family that owned and operated cinemas in Counties Limerick and Tipperary, the darkened confines of a movie theatre remains the world I know best. Molded by the enormous variety of films we showed - the very best of world cinema alongside the very worst, and often on the same double bill! - I mulled for years over how to craft a film set in and around a cinema, a film that wasn't Cinema Paradiso. And just when I had given up, the concept for Once Upon a Time in a Cinema popped into my head.
those bonds of community we forge in the darkness'
If there was ever going to be a script I’d nail on the first pass (my personal Holy Grail), then this would surely be the one.
CUT TO: 27 DRAFTS LATER
Having scouted the length and breadth of Ireland for the perfect location, the movie gods with a little help from 'Film in Limerick' finally landed us at the Royal Cinema (last film shown, Police Academy 2) on Cecil St.
If we’d had an unlimited budget to shoot entirely in a studio, we’d have recreated exactly what existed in reality right under our nose in the city of my birth, the place where I also shot my first film Cowboys & Angels and directly across the street from the very first flat (and by far the worst) I ever lived in.
For all of us who worked on Once Upon a Time in a Cinema - the dozens of crew, the hundreds of supporting artists and the people of Limerick who had our back at every turn - this was an experience that became so much larger than the story we were telling.
More than being a celebration of cinema, the film exists as a reminder of those bonds of community we forge in the darkness, bonds we long for today more than ever. Consider this your invitation. All are welcome (but no chips allowed!).
Once Upon a Time in a Cinema is in cinemas nationwide from May 1st
