Cardboard Gangsters is nothing short of an incredible film. Set in North Dublin’s Darndale, it is full of talented local actors and Dublin music. It explores the multifaceted nature of gang culture in Darndale as it follows a group of young men who get involved in selling drugs. Their initial respect, fear and power dwindles as they get into dangerous territory. Their desire for more money, more power and more sex leads to mounting tensions and rivalries flaring with a much more experienced and established drug gang.
Cardboard Gangsters is an authentic and captivating take on the lives of those involved in street gangs, not shying away from showing the highs and the lows of the lifestyle. It reveals the many personal and systematic hardships often faced by those who fall into the trade. With artful cinematography, the film explores themes of revenge, masculinity and community. John Connors’ performance as lead character Jay is fantastic, his capacity to excel in a whole range of settings and scene types is incredible to watch and makes for a profound film. Coming from Darndale himself, it is clear from such a credible performance that parts of his life have inspired the film’s story.
Mark O’Connor and John Connors have previously worked together on Stalker and King of the Travellers. Cardboard Gangsters has won three awards at the Manchester Film Festival for Best Actor, Best Feature Film and Best Film of the Festival. It also won Outstanding Achievement in Filmmaking at the Newport Beach Film Festival in California.
In preparation for your imminent trip to the cinema to watch Cardboard Gangsters, here is some deeper insight about the film to prepare! I sat down with director Mark O’Connor and screenplay writer and lead actor John Connors to talk about their most recent collaboration.
I first wanted to ask you about the title. How did you come up with it? It’s really appropriate for the film.
John Connors: That’s a title that’s very common in Darndale, cardboard gangsters. It means wannabe gangster. Somebody who was never going to reach the top, maybe because they haven’t got a psychopathic quality or they’re just stupid. But I thought it was a catchy title. I remember early on it was just something I ran by Mark because I went a long time without a title. And before Mark came on board as a director or writer I ran it by him and he said that’s deadly, and that was it.
What inspired the idea for the film? Were there any experiences or influences that helped create it?
JC: Yeah there were, experiences and stuff I saw. I grew up in Darndale so there’s a lot of me in it, there’s a lot of people I know in it. So that inspired it and sort of being freaked out by the desensitised youth. But then also always checking in and going ‘never preach’ because preaching is not powerful, it’s not going to get home.
What did you do to make sure the film would be as authentic as possible? How did you achieve the balance between having an entertaining film but also showing the reality of street gangland in Darndale?
Mark O’Connor: I suppose casting people who were realistic in the roles. A couple of Dublin rappers, and also guys that were just able to pull it off in terms of the characters. Shooting it all in Darndale, enclosed within the neighbourhood so it’s all on location. Incorporating the people from the area in the small roles, the kids from the area. In terms of the story, that was easy because it was coming from a real place, real things that had happened. Myself and John, we were driving around the area and he was telling me, pointing out different places, things that had happened, so it was based on those things.
Did you face any difficulties when you were trying to film it? Were there any problems along the way?
MO: Yeah, there were a lot of problems.
JC: Four years of problems!
MO: There were huge problems, like with the funding and then when we were on set with the noises because planes go over Darndale all the time, every couple of minutes. We’ve got kids on their motorbikes, everything, so sound issues. We had 15 days to shoot it, small budget, lots of problems but we were kind of prepared beforehand. The lads stayed together in a house for seven weeks, they lived together, they were ready with their characters. I worked with the cameraman for a good while to work out all the shots so it was just preparation beforehand to be ready.
JC: I’d say the biggest thing I’ve learned on this, is preparation and I suppose preparation like that is actually a privilege. It’s a privilege to have that. Because you don’t get that in many. If we didn’t do that we were fucked.
One thing that I found really amazing in the film was the cinematography. Did you work with Michael Lavelle [director of photography] on how you’d create the shots?
MO: I was just working for months beforehand on the storyboarding and the blocking of the scenes. I have never told you this before John but, you know, even the…
JC: Are you about to insult me now?
MO: Even the moments where John is having an emotional moment with one of the girls whatever like, myself and Michael are there working, like actually acting it as actors and trying to see where the camera is going to go. So it was a weird kind of thing. Also talking about it cinematically, we watched a lot of films that we find inspiration from, myself and the cameraman, and we looked at the colours. The colour was very important within this film, you know the danger, the dark and the reds and all that stuff versus when he’s at home and he’s got the light greens and the pinks and stuff. It sounds pretentious but anyway that was it!
There are so many different themes in the film. One of them was how there is a lot of pressure on young men to act a way they mightn’t be. You know at the start there’s a scene where Dano’s completely taking the piss out of someone for having a small penis, when they see Kim in the car. But then you see later on that he actually has difficulty having sex. Loads of little things like that.
MO: Yeah, that was a huge theme within the film which was masculinity and the feeling that these guys, they want to be the man in the neighbourhood. And some of them are missing their fathers, they don’t have a father, like in terms of Jay’s character. You’ve got other fathers who are not great fathers, to say Sean and they’re trying to make up for that by being the man.
JC: The real man.
MO: Being the man and that comes through.
JC: That came from me as well, remember you kind of grilled me on how I got into boxing, and the match fights, and the fighting that I done. And I didn’t actually fully even realise where that was coming from but it was kind of missing a father growing up. Not that my father was… my father was a great father until he died, you know. But that was a missing, and I definitely replaced that with a bit of ‘machoism’.
MO: The replacement of that was a huge theme that we were looking at throughout the film. Dano especially, because you don’t even see his father in it, he’s not even mentioned.
Do you have any projects coming up and would you like to work together again?
JC: Yeah, I’m sure we will.
MO: Of course we would. We’ll do another project again hopefully soon.
JC: I’m going to direct me first film, a short film. It’s a rom-com about the generational impact of clerical abuse told through the eyes of a heroin addict after he gets out of an industrial school thirty years later and all that.
MO: A rom-com?!
JC: Yeah, it’s a rom-com… Mark, do you not pick up on sarcasm?
MO: No, I thought you were mixing, I thought you were mixing!
Cardboard Gangsters reaches Irish cinemas 16 June 2017.
