Animator John Kelly told David Hennessy about his award- winning short Retirement Plan which features the voice of Domhnall Gleeson.
John Kelly’s animated short Retirement Plan, voiced by Domhnall Gleeson, screened at London International Animation Festival recently. It is also available on the New Yorker YouTube channel.
A meditative reflection on how we use our time, Retirement Plan is described as a touching and funny examination on the beauty, curiosity and fears of our finite mortality.
Following a phenomenal festival run, including majors wins at SXSW, Palm Springs Shortfest and Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, the film has qualified for consideration for the upcoming Academy Awards.
In the throes of his overstimulated midlife, Ray (Domhnall Gleeson) fantasises about everything he’d love to do in retirement, once he finally has the “time.”
John Kelly’s touching and funny animated short is a meditative stream of possibilities on the beauty, curiosities and fears that we wish to embrace when confronted with an escalating awareness of our own finite mortality.
Since its world premiere at Galway Film Fleadh, Retirement Plan has won the Grand Jury Award and Audience Award in the Animated Short Competition at SXSW, Best Animated Short at Bali International Film Festival and the Best of the Festival Award at Palm Springs International Shortfest. It also screened at the recent Norwich Film Festival.
Donnybrook film maker John Kelly co- wrote Retirement Plan with Tara Lawall.
It was inspired by a panic attack.
John studied at the Royal College of Art in London, and lives and works in Dublin.
John chatted to us about Retirement Plan.
I understand the story was inspired by a panic attack, what happened?
“Yeah, I was on an airplane and had the same realisation as the character in the film.
“I realised I wouldn’t have enough time left in my life to achieve all the things I wanted to achieve and get through all the lists I wanted to get through.
“It seemed like a funny premise for a film because we’re surrounded by lists.
“I think the internet has opened up endless possibilities and we’re drowning in choice and sometimes you can kind of reach a paralysis instead of actually achieving anything.
“So with that kind of initial list structure, I approached my friend Tara, who’s a very funny writer, and the two of us wrote it.”
There’s something striking about that premise. We often say we’ll something when we get around it but one day that time will run out..
“The internet’s wonderful but it has provided endless possibilities for our lives.
“One of the surprising things about the film is I thought people my age and older would be interested in it but actually people in their 20s have really responded to it because they’re the ones that are most bombarded with choice.
“They’re the ones that are faced with endless Instagram ads and algorithms and stuff like that.
“We made it for ourselves.
“We weren’t thinking about film festivals or awards or things like that but the reaction to it has been really heartening.
“I think it’s emotionally connected with people in a way we didn’t expect and I think the humour helps because some people have been saying that they are laughing, laughing and then suddenly, before they realise, they’re crying.
“We did try and see how closely we could get the funny bits and the sad bits to sit alongside each other because one can be a gateway to another, and that’s my favourite kind of humour: Stuff that has a bit of an emotional depth or tries to use humour as a kind of Trojan horse to talk about deeper subject matters.”
That is the beauty of the film, isn’t it? It starts quite everyday but the subject gets quite serious and poignant..
“Totally, yeah.
“The first few things are, ‘I will answer all my unread emails’, or ‘I will read all the books on my bedside table’.
“But then as you get into the film he’s watching his friends dying and he’s talking about, ‘I will cry less’.
“The most fun aspect of it was the writing process and the editing process to try and bring the viewer through that journey because you start off thinking, ‘This is a very simple’.
“The style of it is very minimal and almost cartoony, I guess, and you go in with certain expectations.
“It’s a little bit sneaky that it can try and hit you a little bit harder but hopefully without being manipulative.”
It all hangs on Domhnall Gleeson’s delivery..
“Absolutely, I had heard him on a podcast interview saying that he was interested in doing more comedy.
“I knew he was the perfect person to thread the needle between the humorous aspects and the darker aspects.
“He really went for it.
“He gave us a load of takes and kept trying to push it further.
“I think the last couple of takes he was just completely improvising and he said, ‘Oh, you might not use any of this but here’s a version that’s sort of riding the script’.
“And a load of that stuff was great.
“He does a lot of screenwriting himself and has directed shorts so you can tell he’s a very accomplished, confident filmmaker as well as being a great actor.
“That made a huge difference, that suddenly elevated the film and it’s the perfect anchor to pull the whole thing along.”
His voice is very recognisable of course but the thing is I found, because the character on screen looks nothing like him, you can almost forget that it’s Domhnall Gleeson you’re listening to and that allows you to invest more in the character. Was that the intention?
“Yeah, definitely.
“The character design did come first in the initial sketches and when I was thinking about who would be the voice artist for it, I definitely wasn’t thinking, ‘It has to look like this character’.
“But you’re right, it does help.
“It helps you lose yourself in the story a little bit because there’s such a disconnect between what this character looks like and Domhnall Gleason.
“The design style is deliberately simple and stripped back because I think sometimes you add a lot of extra detail, like eyelashes and teeth and stuff, it can become quite complicated whereas I think with a simple character with just lines and two dots for eyes, you’re able to project on it a bit more as a viewer.
“It’s easier for anyone to see themselves in this slightly more abstracted style in a way.”
How have you found the reactions to it since you first screened it at Galway?
“It was quite an exciting, slightly pressurised screening in Galway.
“I was really nervous and then before our film, a fire broke out in the cinema and the whole building was evacuated.
“I just assumed that the screening wouldn’t go ahead because there was fire engines and firemen going in but all credit to Galway Film Fleadh, they got us back in after 45 minutes and then we watched the last couple of films.
“I think that really impacted the reaction in the cinema to our film because I’ve never heard a reaction like that.
“I recorded it for my co-writer who couldn’t be there.
“The people were screaming, laughing.
“It was brilliant because we’d all had a collective near death experience maybe but it has been really surprising.
“It’s doing well beyond animation festivals which is nice and kind of unexpected.
“To enter the Oscars, you need to win an Oscar qualifying award at a festival and the film has won four of them which is bananas.”
How mad is it to be talking about Oscars? Of course you weren’t thinking of anything like that writing it or making it..
“It’s totally mad.
“I think if I sat down and tried to write a film that would be Oscar qualified, I wouldn’t be in this position.
“We just made something that made ourselves laugh and feel something.
“It’s nice to dream about but I’m not a particularly competitive person which is why I’m an animator.
“I’m enjoying the journey but we’ll see where it goes, I guess.”
What do you think people connect most to in the film? Is there a moment that gets the biggest laugh or reaction?
“There’s a bit in it when the character says, ‘I’ll get a dog’ and this huge dog appears by him, just pops onto screen licking his face. And people laugh at that.
“But then the next shot is, ‘I will get a cat’ and the camera kind of whip pans over and there’s this cat screeching at the dog. That always gets a big laugh. Then suddenly both the cat and the dog disappear and he’s suddenly got a goldfish. It’s like, ‘No, I will get a fish’.
“There’s funny little, rhythmic moments like that but that’s one that always gets a bit of a laugh.
“There’s another bit which I can’t show my kids which is, ‘I will get better at saying yes’, and he’s suddenly at an orgy.
“But he says, ‘I will get better at saying yes’, and he’s in the orgy, and then ‘I will get better at saying no’, and then he’s walking out the door buttoning up his shirt, slightly shameful.
“My writer Tara wrote those lines.
“Her writing is really funny, stands up on its own but she often doesn’t put in any stage direction or scene description of what she imagines will be seen on screen.
“And that’s wonderfully liberating because then I could interpret those two lines in a million different ways. That was the fun kind of jigsaw piece of stitching that together.
“But the laughs have been lovely.
“It’s got a lovely reaction.
“A lot of people have told me that they see their own parents struggling in retirement.
“I think it’s a huge change for a lot of people and retirement itself is kind of a privilege that a lot of us won’t ever have also but for those that are kind of a few generations back or my parents’ generation suddenly you’re faced with, especially if you’ve worked in the same job in the same office for 40 years, you can feel slightly like a headless chicken when you’re let out of the cage.”
Do you find audiences are unprepared for some of the more serious subjects that come up?
“Yeah, I think definitely it has quite a dark ending.
“I think I have a natural inclination if there’s an emotional moment in life, generally I’ll throw in a gag and in the film every time there’s a little bit of an emotional dip, we throw in a gag.
“There was another ending of the film where I had a really broad joke at the end and my co-writer Tara was like, very politely, ‘Are you sure you want that?’
“And another writer friend was like, ‘Are you sure you need that at the end?’
“And then eventually Domhnall was like, ‘You don’t need that at the end’.
“So once all these people kind of said, ‘Look, you don’t need this kind of slapstick gag at the end’ I was like, ‘Okay, fine, I’ll take it away’.
“And it was one of the best decisions because I think it actually finishes the film on a thoughtful note rather than puncturing that thoughtfulness.
“People are left lightly hanging in the air and you can kind of hear it.
“It wasn’t the last line that Donal read so it’s kind of delivered not as conclusively as if it was the last line which I love.
“It just has that slightly open ended feel to it.”
That’s commendable that you listened to your fellow collaborators about that joke at the end, some creatives can get fixated on their story and their vision..
“I became an animator because I’m a bit of a control freak but there is something nice about that moment of letting go and certainly an acting performance is something that you can’t micromanage.
“When Domhnall’s in the recording booth reading that, there’s some kind of alchemy happening that the best thing you can possibly do as a director in that circumstance is stand well back and just let him do it.
“It’s the same with the animators.
“We had two animators that I worked with and I’d give them the design that I’d made and they could animate it 20 different ways.
“It’s just really interesting to see that interpretation of the performance inspired by Domhnall’s voiceover but also inspired by the scene design and the character motivation in that moment. It’s a fun process.”
Did you always know you wanted to be an animator?
“Yeah, I spent my teenage years drawing comics and selling them in places like Forbidden Planet and Sub City in Dublin.
“That was really just rewarding, just putting work out there and getting nice reactions to it.
“Then I went into graphic design, did that for a little bit but I kind of missed the storytelling aspect of it.
“And then kind of coming back to animation after that combined the best of both worlds so there’s definitely a bit of graphic design in the style and the choice of colours and the overall aesthetic but there’s also definitely that teenage me in a bedroom writing, drawing something slightly demented trying to get a laugh out of my classmates or whatever.”
How did you enjoy your time studying in London?
“The Royal College of Art is quite an intimidating place to study because they’ve got incredible, incredible graduates. People like David Hockney and Tracey Emin.
“When you graduate, it’s in the Royal Albert Hall. It’s a big thing and there’s this huge show at the end of two years that everyone’s working towards that can be a big make or break springboard for the rest of your career and you get people like Brian Eno buying.
“He bought a friend of mine’s work at the show so you’re immediately open to this unimaginable audience so it can be quite paralysing.
“I think I did struggle a little bit in my first year there but I think what I found was incredible inspiration.
“It’s an incredible place to study.”
What’s next?
“I have just received funding for another short film from Screen Ireland, the same body that funded Retirement Plan, and it’s actually set in London.
“It’s about the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me: When I woke up at 5am in our flat in Stoke Newington with a rat lying on my chest.
“All I know is I woke up with the weight of something on me and then when I turned the lights on, it was gone.
“I thought I imagined it and then I turned the lights off again.
“Then I just heard this scratching under the bed.
“Me and my wife spent three hours trying to chase it out of our bedroom.
“It’s sort of a documentary but it’s also an action film so I’m kind of billing it as a comedy/ horror/ action/ documentary.”
Retirement Plan is available to watch worldwide from The New Yorker’s YouTube channel.
