Spiderhole The Movie ( The Story Begins )

Since that first day (Thursday, January 31st 2008) when I strutted about Daithi Magner's (my friend and the Production Designer) apartment and pitched the energy and attitude of a Producer in declaring to my friend Daniel Simpson the script writer/Director that we make SPIDERHOLE, his script, here in Kerry and that I will get the money, as my mind tossed wildly impinging that THIS can be done, we have rocked forward with great results. I recall phoning Brian Nolan (Final Cut Pro aficionado) and arranging for an impromptu meeting (February 2nd), where Dathi and I sat before his capable experience and assaulted his thought process with that initial mind set necessary to MAKE anything happen. WE CAN DO THIS. WE ARE GOING TO DO THIS.

Brian was the classic realist in the seat of devils advocate, bating back at my ping pong mind, as we played a fast paced service. Yes, No, Yes, No, maybe, No-WAY, We simply must! I don’t think so! I don’t agree, BUT PAT!!! Brian, look, WE WILL!! PAT DO YOU REALIZE!! I will deal with that when the time comes!! and so and so forth. We began the process of trashing. And Daithi sat their having met Brian for the first time, with his usual deep seated wisdom and patience observing THE RANT and play of one of the our first actual steps in pre-production.

The stage was being set, and I needed Brian on board. I showed him Daniel’s short film ‘The Uninvited’ which we had to skip on through as his mind was not really in need of this but for a few scenes to get the deal, I was attempting to express and hint at the quality of this venture, and where we intended to go, and show that this was going to be something more than perhaps he might have come to expect around these parts. What I consider to be a necessary arrogance!! And the fuel of desire for me to project to others the FUCKING wherewithal to want to do it in the first place.

We left with a new list of requirements, camera considerations, possibilities of 16 mm, and or shooting on the Sony XD CAM EX 1 with a Brevis Lens adapter. And allowing Brian to believe that it would all be shot here with local talent, something I had very little intention of doing as I felt we will need to go further afield to get the positivity and talent required to set up a production with any real chance of a pretty good result. Smoke and mirrors to distract from his grounded understandings.


I wanted to gather a team, and I had little intention of calling up too much local Irish input as in my experience that would be fraught with a baggage train I was not intent on tirelessly transporting. All those people that say ‘I will come out next week and see what you are doing.’ (And of course never arrive) when I have attempted to instill ideas before their thought processes, are not the kind of individuals I want to be around when it comes to making something like this a real possibility, I needed fast creative and inventive minds. And more to the point, minds that get in on the level of conception, and not minds that want in when the entire bigger picture is manifested before their eyes. I needed mavericks, as well as solid square realists, of my choosing.

I left Brian with the script, I had only just read it myself that morning, Daithi had read it the night before and loved it. Now I had to get someone to offer money on the strength of this as yet tenuous proposal. My initial possible investor was pretty quickly knocked out of the equation via the process of friendly advice, not denigrating the individual as such, but simply informing that he may not be the easiest of people to deal with once the money is pledged, and so my first major source was no longer and now I was facing into a temporary vacuum. FUCK, where to now?.

A few weeks previous and down in a local bar one night, I had listened to Alan O’Sullivan talk about a possible business plan, and he had asked me to get involved with designing a website. This then placed a seed in my mind in relation to something more plausible that Daithi and I had discussed, as we had been shooting and editing some little short video sketches together, and had worked on a fifteen page script to be sent to a friend of his who is a Producer in LA for a potential TV series. Daithi has an exceptionally inventive mind and I believe his ideas for possible ventures are winners.

I had some wee phone salvos with some friends about maybe getting together a patch work of investors, perhaps all pitching in a barrel full of euro’s each. This was unrealistic and I immediately skipped ahead and phoned Alan one night and asked him to come and see me if he would the next afternoon, that was if I recall correctly Sunday, February 9th. I pitched the project to him and he was as I had hoped immediately intrigued and positive, that positivity he has brought ever since to this production. And by then we had found a great location and had had another meeting with Brian. Brian had also recommend a great Irish DP named Owen McPolin who I had a series of e-mails and phone calls with, but he ultimately could not get involved in the project, although he did love the script.

One of our first finds for the film was the make up artist Samantha Sheehan.
Daithi came across her name while searching through the net for possible choices, we saw pictures of her work and made contact, then sent her the script. Sam has been delightfully enthusiastic from the get go and exceptionally detailed in her work on breaking down the script in relation to her requirements. This will be her first involvement in a feature, and she has a lot of work to do, and a lot of energy with which to carry it out, and definitely a daunting task ahead of her.