LIGHTS, camera, action - and so it was in the monastic village of Timoleague on Monday and Tuesday for filming on the low-budget independent production Hemingway’s Bar.

Director,Keith Nelson took time out to speak to The Southern Star and explained why he chose the West Cork village.

‘I’ve been looking for a location like this for two years. I wanted a long straight street with older houses or older-fashioned houses, but I needed two-storey houses. I was driving from Kinsale to Clonakilty and just happened to come through Timoleague and it was the most perfect location possible for the film.’

He revealed that the movie had been in the pipeline for 15 years. ‘I’ve been sending it to production companies and actors and whatnot. Everybody likes it, but it’s very hard to get a project like this off the ground. So we’re using this as a proof of concept.’

Not even the Brad Pitt AI pranks could deflect from what was really happening in the village during a 12-hour period from 4pm on both Monday and Tuesday.

Keith revealed: ‘‘It’s a traditional comedy, similar to Waking Ned Divine. It’s about two old geezers who wake up one morning and realise that their lives are completely and utterly meaningless.

‘So, they go on a quest to find something magnificent to achieve and they end up robbing a bank and running away to the Ritz Hotel in Paris and throwing the party of a lifetime.’

As residents slept, scenes of a garda car chase and the bank robbers running down Main Street and out of sight towards Abbey Street unfolded - all in the deadly night silence broken only by film-maker Wesley O’Duinn callings of ‘action’ or ‘cut.’

The crew and cast received a warm welcome in Timoleague. Keith enthused: ‘Everyone’s been so friendly and so welcoming, they cleared the streets of cars for us and we’ve got the retired gardaí helping us out with traffic management and they’ve been super, super friendly.’

Keith was buzzing after the first day on location - they went for ‘lunch’ to the Timoleague Community Centre at midnight. ‘The rushes from last night looked just fantastic. It’s just absolutely perfect,’ he said.

On the Pitt prank, he added: ‘We were a bit nervous that lots of crowds were going to suddenly turn up or something. The locals were talking about Brad Pitt turning up, but it’s just not happening.’  He joked: ‘I hear there is a guy called Brad (Harte) locally, so maybe Brad is here then, yeah, Brad’s in the house.’

Filming took place in Castlefreke yesterday (Wednesday) as he explained its context within the film. ‘We’re going to be shooting in the tunnel under Castlefreke, which is this beautiful sort of medieval brick tunnel, because when they rob the bank, they go underground into the sewers and blow up the roof of the sewer with dynamite and climb up into the bank vault and rob the money. It’s very old school. It’s very cool. And so we’re using their tunnel as a fake sewer.’

Aside from the 15 years in the making and the two-year search that led him to Timoleague, Hemmingway’s Bar is about 100 minutes long.

‘I’m actually self-financing this, so we’ve re-financed a house at home to get this bit done. And we’re hoping that this is going to come out well enough that we can approach various investors or organisations for the completion funds,’ said Keith.

Shooting has already taken place in George’s Street, Dublin and in County Wicklow and on Friday the entourage are in Skibbereen before finishing in
Castletownshend.

Keith grew up in North London and has Irish grandparents ‘apparently’ from Cork. He concluded, ‘So, I wrote this script as an Englishman in Los Angeles writing about two older Irish guys, which was rather surreal. I think it’s done some way of closing the circle on a long-lost family history, because I never got to meet my Irish descendants.’