'Pixie' Director Barnaby Thompson Talks Ireland, Family and Olivia Cooke
Photo Courtesy Of Olivier Van-Den-Abeele
“There was a kind of a mutual respect between the two of us. And I think that, you know, being family, you just trust each other.”
Barnaby Thompson, director of the new crime-comedy ‘Pixie,’ revealed to Filmspeak that he and his son Preston Thompson, who wrote the screenplay for the movie, took inspiration from gorgeous Irish landscapes when crafting the film. In this beautifully shot crime-comedy starring Olivia Cooke (Ready Player One, Sound Of Metal) as the eponymous ‘Pixie,’ the Thompsons and their delightful cast play around in a part of the world that doesn’t always get the spotlight. Barnaby says, “Yeah, I mean, I first really discovered the west of Ireland, in my 20s and I made a couple of documentaries there. I really fell in love with the place. It’s an incredible wild expanse of a sort of wilderness that is unchanged by time not unlike the American West; just damper. The movie actually came about because I took my son Preston, who wrote it on a road trip down the west coast of Ireland, because I wanted to show him that area. And that's really where he got the idea for the movie. So, the landscape was always a fundamental part of the film.”
Thompson also teased a little about working on set as both a father and a director, “It was the threat of the baby photos that really kept him in line, you know, so I'm happy to say that I never actually had to, you know, pull the trigger, but no it was great working with him. I mean, you know, we get on and that's obviously important. I think that there was a mutual respect. I think because the film was about kids of his age, we had a sort of natural balance. He had a kind of authority over how they speak and act that I couldn't question and equally I've obviously got a lot of experience that he couldn't question. So, there was a kind of a mutual respect between the two of us. And I think that, you know, being family, you just trust each other. And I think that that's certainly as the director, it was great having the writer on set knowing that, you know, he was only thinking of your best interest.”
The cast of ‘Pixie’ features a few young faces as well as some veteran screen actors. Alongside, Olivia Cooke is Ben Hardy (X-Men: Apocalypse, Bohemian Rhapsody) and Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders) as the film’s leads Pixie, Frank and Harland, respectively. Olivia Cooke’s portrayal of Pixie is a witty, no-nonsense, sexually fluid force that commandeers each scene. “Well, Olivia is, I think that, you know, she's an incredible character. I mean, she's got great charisma, and has this sort of natural kind of naughty cheekiness to her, which she brought to the part but she also brought to the set. There was a group of us who was there, we shot the film in Belfast, so most of the crew were Irish but the were a group of us who were visitors and she would sort of be the concierge and organize dinners or social events and activities for the group. So certainly, she and Daryl and Ben and Preston are all you know, they were same age, they were all tearing around Belfast when they weren't on set. So, it was a very good vibe on the film. I think we just all love being in Ireland and it's just that moment on a film set, which happens quite quickly, where everyone decides whether they're gonna get on with each other. If they do that it's happening and if they don't, it's never quite the same. But from the word go, I think we all knew we all wanted to have a good time making a film that is hopefully to be enjoyed and you know, not to be taken too seriously.”
“Olivia is, you know, she's a pistol. She's fantastic.”
He continues, “ She and Ben both, they’re English so they had to learn their Irish accents. And Daryl is from Tipperary so, he's he's the real thing. So, Daryl had power over them because they look to Daryl for approval of their accidents at the end of every take- you can see them both look at Daryl just to see if he was twitching nervously because they've got the accent wrong. But Olivia is, you know, she's a pistol. She's fantastic.”
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Alec Baldwin (The Departed, 30 Rock) plays Father McGrath and Colm Meaney (Layer Cake, Star Trek) plays Dermot O’Brien in some hilarious supporting roles that Thompson specifically had in mind. “When we wrote the script, we knew that there was a fantastic band of character actors in Ireland to play the parts in the sense that our threesome come across on their journey across Ireland but Alec is an old friend, so he was actually the first person on the movie. I saw him at a party and he was asked me what I was up to. And he said, if there was anything for him, and I said, ‘Do you want to play a deadly gangster priest?’ And he said, ‘I’m in' and that was early on. He stuck with it and really helped get the film made and he showed up on set and, you know, really gave it his all. In regards to Colm Meaney, “We really wrote that part for Colm Meaney, because what's great about him is he has this steeliness to him. So you know, he's capable of bad things. With him, you don't have spent a lot of time establishing that he's a gangster because you know that you wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of him. He's playing a gangster who's sort of had enough but really what he wants to do is to cook. And he's got these three troublesome children are always fighting with each other. So Colm was able to bring that kind of world weariness to being a gangster, but also having a single father coping with these fighting children. So, you know, he was great. And then, I mean, Chris Walley is a young actor who is well known in Ireland and Dylan Moran, who has a lot of movies like ‘Shaun of the Dead.’ You know, they all came in and did their bits and so when we were making the film, first three weeks was kind of Ben, Daryl and Olivia, the scenes with a car. Then each week, we would have sort of guest stars. So, we would have Chris Walley for a few days, and then Dylan Moran and then Colm. Then, Alec was sort of the cherry on the cake at the end of the shoot.”
This next bit might be a light spoiler so warning. Thompson describes filming the climactic finale. “We found this great, abandoned church to shoot that scene in. And that was just a blast. I mean, it's a bigger action scene than I've ever shot before. So it was, as as the director, it was quite scary, but it was very exciting to see it come to life. It's really my first shootout. So, I didn't know what to expect but you know, when they all start firing guns, they all go off. You lay up little explosions so as the guns go off, there are bits of pew exploding and stuff. I mean, it feels like you're in the middle of a shootout. There aren't any visual effects added afterwards. That's what it looked like.”
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Thompson explains why they decided to tell the character from a female point of view, “I think we're in interesting times, because to me this is exciting having a female lead, because it's just, it's just fresh, and it's, you know, you haven't seen it that often. You go back to people like Godard, and the challenge is to do it in a way where she's not just a girl playing a man's part. She's actually doing it and that's what Olivia completely got that and I think really just personified Pixie’s openness. You know, it's not quite clear that she's good and she was prepared to play that. But I think that she has a natural empathy you wind up supporting her, but she makes some pretty tough decisions.”
Finally, as a producer for the original ‘Wayne’s World’ movie, I couldn’t resist asking if he had seen the recent reunion with Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey. “Yeah, no, I saw that. It made me laugh. You know, because Mike and Dana weren't young men when we did Wayne’s World so the fact that they're still donning the wigs is fantastic. We actually had one of those lockdown reunions quite recently with them and with Aerosmith and Rob Lowe and it was great to see them all. I mean, it was a fantastic experience, you can imagine, as a young Englishman I was hired by Lorne Michaels to run his movie division and our first film was ‘Wayne's World,’ which was number one for five weeks. And was this incredible cultural phenomenon. I mean, it was just a great ride. We had a good time making it and it's amazing to see it still have currency.”
Barnaby finished the conversation by giving a little tease to future projects with his son; “So, Preston and I are working on a thriller now, which we hope to make later this year, which is sort of Hitchcockian thriller, set in the south of France. So excited to do that.”