It was a long shot. But after lifetimes of hard work, the two senior citizens saw their chance to hit it big and, despite the great risk involved, took it.
That’s the nutshell plot line for “Waking Ned Devine,” the English-Irish lottery scam comedy that’s become one of the season’s most popular specialty movies. But the same statements apply to the film’s two stars, 70-year-old Ian Bannen and 69-year-old David Kelly, acting veterans who are finally experiencing a bit of well-deserved stardom.
“Well, you see, there’s John Glenn taking off into space at the same rate `Waking Ned Devine’ is,” cracks Kelly, the remarkably bony, Irish-born member of the pair. “Actually, we went into space a long time ago and never came back. But hopefully, this will start a trend for us old guys. I’ve got a few years left.”
“It’s going well, and I like doing the autograph-signing stuff,” adds the fleshier, Scottish Bannen. “But when, at our age, women start writing love letters about how they’d like to sleep with you, you do wonder if it’s coming from an asylum.”
Not necessarily. Like “The Full Monty” before it, “Ned Devine” makes a virtue out of a few unlikely nude scenes. That business aside, though, the movie’s real enchantment lies in its portrayal of elderly schemers who think and act young, yet never lose touch with the wisdom of their years.
Set in an isolated Irish seaside village and filmed on the Isle of Man between Britain and Ireland, the movie is the first feature from writer-director Kirk Jones, an award-winning English commercial maker. Jones based both of the main characters — Bannen’s constantly calculating Jackie O’Shea and Kelly’s more timid but always game Michael O’Sullivan — on aspects of his own grandfather.
And he insisted on going with Kelly and Bannen in the leads, even though he could have gotten production money much more quickly with younger actors — or, as one producer suggested, by relocating the thing to Canada with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as the leads.
“I was very confident that actors with the stature of Ian Bannen and David Kelly would bring a huge amount of charm and character and presence to the screen,” Jones says. “That was very much the direction I wanted to go in.
“And I suspected that they were both thinking that they’d had a good run, made a living as working actors for 50 years and were very grateful for that. But in their heads, they must have felt that they had just been missing that one lead role in a feature film that they had never really had. This script gave them a chance to grasp that opportunity. If there is a special feeling to their performances in this film, I think that what you sense is these guys figuring this is pretty much their last chance for a role like this — and that they’re really going to go for it.”
You might recognize Bannen from one of the 70 or so movies (including “Braveheart,” “Gandhi” and “Hope and Glory”) he’s appeared in; he even earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in the 1965 “Flight of the Phoenix.” Kelly, meanwhile, boasts an extensive stage resume that includes his one-man presentation of Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape.” Kelly’s toured the world with that one, but everywhere he goes people recognize him as O’Reilly, the aggressively inept carpenter he played on John Cleese’s classic comedy series “Fawlty Towers.”
“I recently got my 31st residual check for that one,” he says. “I’m very big in Malawi.”
Remarkably, Bannen and Kelly had not crossed professional paths before “Waking Ned Devine.” But they both agree that their vast experience is what makes the film’s theme, as well as the central friendship between Jackie and Michael, so affecting.
“Casting two younger guys would’ve ruined the film,” Kelly says. “It then would’ve been about avarice and smart-aleck crooks. Whereas these two guys, who grew old together but never grew up, are rather endearing. It’s essential that they’re two old guys — and two old swingers. We didn’t play them old; Kirk told us, `Just be your own wicked selves.’ “
“These guys are having a wonderful time with this, which is something they never would have had when they were growing up,” Bannen reckons. “They came from farmers and fishermen, people who worked around the clock and had very little time for fun. Dashing about like madmen, trying to pull this thing off, is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to them.”
A little too exciting, as far as Kelly was concerned. Despite his vast experience, he had never learned to either swim or drive. “Ned Devine’s” skinny dipping scenes got no further than wading, so they weren’t a problem. But the nude motorcycle ride was a different matter.
“I just knew I was going to die,” Kelly recalls. “I kept thinking, `In a few minutes I’ll be talking to Steve McQueen, and I’ll say “You try doing `Bullitt’ naked.” ‘
“The nude thing, of course, is the immediate worry when you read the script. Then the day came, and I did have a little, flesh-colored piece of elastic to wear. But after I’d already done the thing — terrified, sliding off the bike and everything else — the cameraman said he could see the elastic, and did I mind taking it off and doing it again.
“I didn’t give a damn about the nudity at that stage. I was just cold and terrified — and wearing only a crash helmet that was heavier than I am!”
Bannen, who enjoyed the dignity of wearing underwear for his motorbike ride, had other uncomfortable moments. The worst was a scene in which Jackie carries a chicken dinner to the home of the mysterious Ned Devine in the midst of a nighttime gale.
“It was a bit hairy,” Bannen understates. “I was on the edge of a cliff and they turned on this wind machine to go with the rain. They hadn’t tested it properly — I believe it was an airplane engine, actually — and suddenly I was blown backward and nearly over the cliff!”
As Bannen and Kelly surely know by now, stardom does not come easy. But if making a movie that tickles and touches people in equal measure gets the job done, then their time may have arrived.
“The difference between this film and those `Grumpy Old Men’ movies is that those fellows dislike each other and we, actually, love each other,” Kelly notes. “There are some very moving scenes in the film where that shows through. And people do go for it, the tears are there — but immediately after a belly laugh, and followed by a belly laugh.”
