The long and short of it.
By Robert Goldrich
With a long-running career in commercials, director Gary McKendry has managed to extend his creative reach in-between spot assignments, diversifying into short as well as feature-length films.
The former came with Everything This Country Must, which earned an Academy Award nomination for best live action short in 2005. Based on a tale in Everything In This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories from author and fellow Irishman Colum McCann, the short is set in Northern Ireland and centers on a man and his daughter trying to save their horse as it struggles in a river on a stormy night. Soldiers come to their aid, hearkening back to an incident years earlier in which soldiers crashed into a car with a woman and her young son. At its core, the short explores the human dynamics that exist when a nation is in a warlike state.
Fast forward to today and McKendry has just wrapped shooting of his feature film directorial debut, The Killer Elite starring Robert De Niro, Jason Statham and Clive Owen. It’s a project McKendry has had in development for years, penning it with another writer. McKendry held out so that he could direct the film, a key catalyst for his getting that chance being Everything This Country Must getting an Oscar nom.
“I was best known in commercials for comedy and getting performances from actors,” related McKendry. “My short film was necessary in order to show people I could take on real drama, a dark drama. Commercials alone might not have been enough to convince people I could direct The Killer Elite. I made the short to help sell myself for the feature film. The short was my calling card of sorts for the feature.”
That calling card helped to bring major Australian studio Omnilab on board, which gave McKendry the green light to direct The Killer Elite.
However, paradoxically, McKendry does indeed have spot work that demonstrates dramatic and emotional range. Via Blinder, his production company affiliation in Ireland, McKendry directed late last year a PSA for children’s charity Barnardos out of Dublin-based agency The Hive.
The :30 shows us the life of a young boy who has to endure an alcoholic father and physical abuse, witness the physical, emotional and mental abuse of his mother, as well as see an older brother who hangs with the wrong crowd, enters a life of crime and ends up dead. All these tragic chapters, though, unfold through the young child’s eyes, a POV that at times appears strangely lyrical and which is accompanied by a song that is the hopeful antithesis of what is being experienced. There are scenes of drug dealing and abuse, as well as vandalism, which includes spray painting of a public place and the firebombing of a car.
At the end, as we see the lad look up at us, a supered message simply reads, “We are what we remember. Help children make good memories,” followed by the logo and website address for Barnardos, which offers kids and their families the chance for a better life through educational and support services, and counseling.
McKendry described the scenes in the PSA–at times brief moments, expertly pieced together by editor Juniper Calder of Screen Scene, Dublin–as “the unvarnished truth” of what many at-risk youngsters face in Ireland. Many of the scenes are real-life instances captured by DP Simon Walsh in depressed, impoverished areas of Dublin.
Last year, McKendry signed with Aero Film for U.S. spot representation. His American ad work over the years spans such clients as AT&T, Ikea, and Porsche. Irish fare includes some notable Heinken commercials.
McKendry’s industry roots are as an agency creative at such New York shops as ChiatDayMojo (now TBWAChiatDay), Ogilvy & Mather, and Margeotes/Fertita + Partners.
The Killer Elite
McKendry described The Killer Elite as a large-scale, reality-based dark drama/action thriller. The feature was shot in Australia as McKendry worked closely with cinematographer Simon Duggan, ACS.
Duggan–who has a track record of spotmaking as well as features connected to directors with strong commercial backgrounds (he shot Alex Proyas’ I Robot, for example)–said that McKendry “easily segued into the additional complexity and demands of long-form work with a formidable cast of actors.”
McKendry observed that his work in commercials helped to make the transition to feature filmmaking a smooth one.
“You’re thrown into the deep end with weights on your feet,” observed McKendry of the pressures involved in movie directing. The clock’s ticking, you have a crew of 250, the sun is going down, and there’s a fight scene on a train you need to get with De Niro who’s only available for a limited strech of time. Thankfully, advertising gave me the wherewithal to work under the pressure of time, money and high expectations.
“Advertising is my training,” he continued. “I’ve been on countless sets, stood on cranes, used helicopters, been under water for commercials. One of the great lessons I learned in advertising is when you’re under the gun with time, you must work with the right people. The same applies to a big budget film–especially one where the film is bigger than the budget. Instead of a five-day shoot for a campaign, though, it’s a 60-day shoot for a feature.”
Therein lies the big difference, observed McKendry, that separates the feature experience from commercials–the endurance test.
“You’ve shot for umpteen consecutive days–the routine being going to bed late, waking up in the same clothes to go to work again the next day. It’s the sheer duration of a theatrical feature that advertising doesn’t prepare you for.”
Now McKendry is fully prepared and excited to jump back into commercialmaking via Aero.
“After a long feature, the chance to work with new concepts and storylines–and new creative faces from one project to the next–is something I crave and value.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More