Peter Lavery told David Hennessy about his debut film All That Glitters ahead of his world premiere at Dublin International Film Festival.
All That Glitters, the debut film from London- based Dublin film maker Peter Lavery, will have its world premiere screening at Dublin International Film Festival which starts next week.
All That Glitters is described as a heart felt coming of age story about Ryan (Elliot Grihault), a teenager struggling to find his place at school and at home with his father coincidentally being his English teacher.
When he accidentally conjures the ghost of Shakespeare, Ryan is finally ready to step out of the wings. With the expert help of the man who wrote the famed words, he auditions for and wins the part of Romeo opposite his crush Jasmine, played by Flo Thompstone, in the role of Juliet.
Paul Ready, known from things like BBC comedy Motherland and the Irish rural drama Bring Them Down, plays Shakespeare.
Peter Lavery, from the Dun Laoghaire area of Dublin, moved to London in 2019 to study film at MetFilm School London in Ealing.
After his studies, he set up the company Clover Fox Films.
Peter is also nominated for DIFF’s Discovery Award.
He took time to chat to The Irish World about the film.
What inspired you to write All That Glitters?
“I wanted to write a coming of age story and I couldn’t really find a way in to tell a unique version of the story.
“I was doing just very run of the mill coming of age stuff and then I had this kind of light bulb moment.
“Everything when you’re a teenager always feels big theatrically.
“It feels like you’re on a stage in your own play.
“There’s your first love, your first betrayal, your first heartbreak.
“They feel so much bigger so I wanted to dramatise that and then I thought the best way to do that would be to have Shakespeare himself appear and sort of make it a physical dramatising of that kind of concept.
“It kind of came from wanting to do coming of age but lean into the theatrical nature of being a teenager.”
It is clearly something that interests and your shorts that preceded All That Glitters were coming of age stories or had elements of it..
“Absolutely, yeah.
“It’s something I’ve always loved writing and I think everyone can kind of relate in various different ways.
“It’s very accessible for most people.
“We’ve all done it.
“Everyone’s different in their coming of age that they have but it all kind of bubbles down to the same core principles and a lot of the feedback- it doesn’t matter age or gender, race, whatever it is, everyone goes and says the same thing, ‘Oh, it kind of reminds me of when I was a teenager’ and that’s always very nice.
“I think it’s very accessible.
“It’s universal in that way.”
The film has a very clear sense of place and that it is provincial England but I wondered with your being Irish if you ever saw it being in an Irish secondary school..
“I think it is universal in a way.
“The story is a universal story.
“I think in this case I kind of took a swing in that it is probably the most famous British person to ever live, William Shakespeare.
“We physically shot in the West Midlands not too far from where Shakespeare was from but it could easily have just been a different conjuring in a different environment.
“When I was a teenager in school I wrote a short story in English about a boy who couldn’t do his homework very well so he kind of enlisted the help of James Joyce to help him.
“I think that was a very early seed.
“I think the version of Shakespeare and all that is quite uniquely British.
“However in Ireland, obviously I did Shakespeare in school.
“It is universal that we do get Shakespeare kind of forced upon us a little bit and I think that this is quite a dramatized version of having to undergo Shakespeare’s works and learn to kind of deal with him in a school environment. Our character actually has to physically deal with him as a real life person.”
Out of interest would you be a Shakespeare scholar yourself? Or did you have to become one in order to write him?
“No, absolutely not.
“I struggled with Shakespeare in school.
“I just couldn’t quite understand it.
“I kind of workshopped the script and the character with Paul Ready who plays our Shakespeare brilliantly because he’s a Shakespeare scholar in that way.
“He came up in the National Theatre playing Romeo when Rosamund Pike was his Juliet and his wife is the artistic director of The Globe.
“He’s very high up in that and he is so respectful of Shakespeare and so wanted to do him right and not just make him a playful comedic character but bring a part to him which he did.
“So when I was writing it and drafting it in those weeks leading up to shooting, I would sit down with him a little bit and go, ‘Right. I’m the young protagonist in this story, you’re Shakespeare. Let’s find this story together in that way almost like you’re teaching me and then I’ll write the words but you teach me and you kind of help me understand him’.
“So no, I was never really good when it comes to Shakespeare at all in any way, shape or form but I grew to love him through this process.
“I think when you understand what you’re dealing with.
“One of the best things I’ve ever heard about him was that you never have to understand his words and what you’re saying.
“That’s not the thing.
“It’s like in music. I’m not musical, I don’t understand the chords or the keys to make a song. However I can feel an emotion from a song.
“So when Shakespeare’s done right, you should be able to feel the emotion as opposed to understand exactly what’s being said.
“I think that it kind of opened my eyes to that little bit throughout this process working with Paul.”
Speaking of Paul Ready. He is so different form project to project, he’s clearly an actor of incredible range..
“Yeah and he really, really cares about the craft and the work of it as well.
“With Shakespeare, he was so keen to bring the heart and show to the world the beauty of Shakespeare’s writing and how these stories can stand the test of time and he did that brilliantly by working with Elliot who plays Ryan and their chemistry in the film is so good and I think you can feel it.
“He’s an absolute joy to work with as well, Paul.
“He’s a brilliant actor and he just cares about the projects he works on which is very heartwarming that he wanted to be involved in this and speaking to him post-filming, he’s happy with the film so I’m delighted on that front.”
You were first time directing and working with a lot of young cast members. Was the experience of Paul and also Tim Downie, who plays Ryan’s father/ English teacher, important to have?
“Yeah, and it actually created a really nice atmosphere on set as well where we had obviously Paul and Tim who are very experienced and then we have Elliot and Flo who are younger cast, who are not as experienced but they could work with each other and bring the characters to life through that way. That was the ethos in everything.
“It was myself and Joe (Andrews, producer)’s debut feature and then it was Nicole (Atalla), our amazing cinematographer’s debut feature as well so we had a lot of debuts at the top of the hierarchy but then we had experience padded beneath us as well so that we could be very honest and say, ‘Oh, we’re new to this. We need your guidance. We’re bringing the excitement and the drive to make this film but we need your steady hands as well’.
“And I think both in the cast and the crew, that was apparent because the set was just such a warm, lovely place.
“It’s a cliche in film that sets become like families but we did become a family over that summer.
“Just to have such true, genuine people like Paul and Tim being there when things were a little tougher on set, to have that experience was just invaluable to me as a first time debut director.”
Did you feel like you unearthed a gem in your lead actor, Elliot Grihault?
“Yeah, and I think he’s absolutely one to watch.
“This was one of his first times doing comedy as well and he was just such a natural doing it.
“Obviously he’s done House of the Dragon but to kind of lead a film for the first time and go up opposite Paul as well, which is no easy feat, he absolutely held it and carried the film.
“That’s the risk.
“Going back to what we were saying about coming of age films, your risk is that you’re casting young people but we were just so lucky with Elliot and Flo as well who played Jasmine.
“She’s very, very new and she was just brilliant as well.
“She was brilliant from the very first time we saw her on the tape.
“I think it’s very heartwarming to see people care so deeply about a project that you’re kind of putting forward to them and wanting to do.
“And every day on set they would turn up, game faces on to be like, ‘I want to do the best work possible’.
“And all of them did.
“They absolutely smashed it out of the park.”
Flo reminded me of Emma Mackey, the actress from Sex Education among other things. Although there is a resemblance, they also share a quality in that like Emma, Flo can say a lot without opening her mouth..
“Yeah, absolutely.
“And she’s got such a natural charisma around her as well.
“You summed it up lovely there.
“At some points Jasmine was a very tricky character to get across but, even if it was just something small like a look or a smile, it carried a lot of weight in those scenes contextually.
“And again, she was very, very green to the process and this is her first kind of big credit in this way.
“I think her and Elliot had such a good chemistry as well that when we get to the end, without spoiling it, you can really feel for the characters and you really want both of them to do well.
“You’re rooting for them and that’s fundamentally all you need in a coming of age story. You need people to believe and want the characters to have their version of a happy ending.”
There’s another film that features the character of William Shakespeare that people are talking about. Of course I am talking about Hamnet. The timing is coincidental but do you think it could be a good thing?
“Yeah, I think so.
“We’ve been asked this a few times.
“Hamnet is a beautiful film but it’s very heavy whereas All That Glitters is not but we’re tackling some overlapping themes just from a different angle.
“I think where there’s light, there’s shade and vice versa so I think there’s space for both.
“I think there’s space for both and I think people who watch Hamnet and enjoy the themes and getting to understand Shakespeare as a person that might be of interest, not just his work but him himself, I think you’ll find something in All That Glitters as well.”
Did you look back at other portrayals of him like Shakespeare in Love? Was something like that a reference?
“Not massively to be honest.
“To write the most famous British person to ever live is quite a swing for the fences really and I recognised that during those first drafts and I think the only way I could live happily with the character that I would write is to almost park the real Shakespeare for a moment and focus on this version that I’m writing and try and get this person, whoever this is.
“Of course you have to be able to reference Shakespeare throughout the movie as being there because that is fundamentally the core of the film, that Shakespeare comes back to a modern world but I think in order for me to be able to not feel overwhelmed with trying to get across the most famous, brilliant person to ever live and do him justice was to just treat him like any other character that I would write fictionally and say, ‘Right, where does he begin? Where does he end? What do we need to do in between to get there? How does he interact with the people around him?’
“And then once I sort of did that it was like, ‘Okay, now I can relax and then build the rest of the context of him being Shakespeare around that’.
“Once I had him as a character fleshed out and solid, I could go, ‘Yeah, now I’ve earned the right to add the contextual history of the man’.”
It is apt that the film has its first screening at Dublin International Film Festival, isn’t it?
“Yeah, it is.
“I think it’s a lovely full circle moment.
“We did all of our post-production in Dublin and our post-production house, First Element, have been so good and so supportive with getting us through post-production which was not easy at times.
“They really believed in the project and they believed that we would get it over the line.
“I think it’s nice to be able to take it back to Dublin.
“Obviously it’s a home crowd for me.
“Dublin International Film Festival have been so supportive as well with the film.
“Gráinne Humphreys, the festival director, has spoken so warmly about the film at the launches and I think to have our very first public screening, our world premiere in such a warm place like that is really nice.
“I’m very relieved that it’s Dublin that we’re playing first.”
You are also nominated for the festival’s Discovery Award, you must be delighted with that..
“Yeah, having the Discovery Award nomination is really nice.
“I’ve been looking at the other people that I’ve been nominated with and they’re all so incredibly talented so it’s really nice to be recognised alongside them and just to get the nomination is really special.”
You have interacted with the Irish Creative Collective, do you find a supportive Irish arts community there?
“Yeah, definitely.
“I think the Irish tend to be very good at getting behind their own.
“We tend to mobilise and support each other and I think the Irish Creative Collective does that perfectly because it gives the opportunity for creatives who need support and need something to be able to come together and help each other out.
“I’ve met some very good friends here in London who are Irish through that group and stuff like that.
“We have been able to use people throughout this filmmaking process as well.
“For example a guy called Jack who kind of comes on and does our graphic design stuff for the film so he’s currently working on a film poster and things like that.
“We’re very low budget independent film.
“We need to utilize everyone’s skills so to have a resource like that is really nice because you can just be like, ‘We need this. Can anyone help with this?’
“And if they can, they will.”
All That Glitters screens at 1.10pm at The Light House on Friday 27 February as part of Dublin International Film Festival.
Dublin International Film Festival runs 19 February- 1 March. For more information, click here.
For more information about Clover Fox Films, click here.
