Gleeson plays gaffer in Studs
Burly actor Brendan Gleeson has called on all his coaching skills in the new soccer film Studs to kick a football team of no-hopers into cup winning heroes.
The former teacher plays an intensely driven renegade manager who ditches the league in the hunt for cup glory, using a few rogue methods along the way.
“The line I’ve come up with for him is a flawed Messiah,” Gleeson said.
As manager Walter Keegan, the star of Braveheart and The General takes the helm at Emmet Rovers and steers the rudderless team to glory in the rags to riches tale being filmed in west Dublin.
Studs hit the stage in 1986 and has been adapted in the 1.1 million euro production for the screen by director Paul Mercier.
Mercier has come off the theatrical bench for a rematch with Gleeson – the pair last worked together when Studs hit the stage in Liverpool.
Producers expect the film to be ready for cinemas by the time the Word Cup in Germany comes round next year and hope passionate fans flock to the cinemas in the build up to the competition.
Gleeson, who recently finished filming on Kingdom of Heaven, Ridley Scott’s “epic to end all epics”, has been teamed up with his son Domhnaill for the last four weeks near Lucan in west Dublin.
“Initially he appears quite harmless but it transpires that he’s quite intensely driven. He takes this lot and begins to inspire them, he has to convince them that winning is everything,” Gleeson said.
Gleeson claimed the heroic script is full of Biblical references, with one character named Isaiah, while the work of the prophets appears right through the cup run.
“There is an other-worldly experience to it. The cliché is that sport is the new religion and it was there in the initial play,” he said.
Mercier also noted that with no coaching staff on set the crew, extras and stars have so far managed to avoid any serious injury.
“We have had advice and guidance to warm up and warm down but it’s gruelling physically and requires intensive concentration all the time,” he said.
But with actors battling against eager local football sides filming does not always go to plan.
“When you ask the goalkeeper to let the goal in he just won’t let it in. What his body was doing was not what his mind was doing,” Mercier said.
Filming in west Dublin with stars Liam Carney, David Wilmot and David Herlihy is set to run for another week and a half with local teams running a few more rings around the stars.
