High Time

After a long wait, Headrush is finally approaching release. Rebecca kemp talks to Shimmy Marcus, the film's director, and producer Edwina Forkin to find out what it was like to work with big people on a samll budget

Like its title, refering both to THC-induced euphoria and the arresting experience of life, Headrush is a film which operates on more than one level. It's a comedy caper, a modern day Lavender Hill Mob that swaps a Paris Eiffel Tower for an Amsterdam windmill; it's a bloke-down-the-pub gangster romp, à la Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrells; a lovestory; a tale of friendship, and a testament to self-belief. Above all it cheerfully celebrates the unglamorous, serenades the mundane, and salutes the disenfranchised.

Although Headrush marks the debut fiction feature for production company Zanzibar Films, it has been a long time in the making. Written nine years ago by director Shimmy Marcus, it has suffered from a lengthy gestation, while many other similar productions have pipped it to the post. Despite this, its humour, characterisations and poetic moments make it sit more than comfortably alongside the likes of Danny Boyle's Trainspotting and Shane Meadows's TwentyFourSeven.

Mates Charlie (Wuzza Conlon) and T-Bag (Gavin Kelty) concoct an elaborate plan to raise enough money for Charlie to start his own business and win back his girlfriend, who is fed up of his bombed-out life on the dole. Set around the time of Ireland's Celtic Tiger economy, Charlie is trapped in a recurring scenario of mundane jobs relieved by some narcotic escapism. But instead of wallowing in a dope-addled stupor, Charlie uses these moments of free-thinking to come up with a solution to his unemployment problems - and even a business plan. 'I'm not confident,' he spits at a bank manager, in one of the film's most charged moments, 'I'm pissed off!'. In contrast to the cocksure noughties yuppie, our turn of the century anti-hero exudes shat-on desperation.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 98