Last of the High Kings is David Keating's first feature film but he has certainly served his time. The first step was a summer job in Ardmore Studios as a general trainee in the sound department. He was shifted from department to department and worked in various places in Ireland in third and second assistant director positions. Then he moved to London which was experiencing something of a commercial boom, with plenty of work in features and advertisements for television. "I got to travel a lot and looked over the shoulders of a lot of very interesting people, but I didn't want to go on being an assistant director and had been writing in my spare time. Then I got a break into making documentaries for Channel 4, so I went in one stroke from being a well-paid film technician to being a penniless documentary director."
After a couple of years, this too lost its charm for him. "When I started we shot everything on 16mm and cut everything on film. The move to tape coincided with shorter post-production schedules and it just seemed like less fun. So, I wrote a screenplay and because of that my career just changed."
Last of the High Kings is a rite of passage film. In the lead, Jared Leto plays a confused Howth youth, finishing his Leaving and heading out into the world. "A lot of it is to do with his family, who, rather than being a typical, Irish type of family are quite eccentric. He's an individual who breaks from the pack of guys he runs with and makes the break from his family. So, it's not unfamiliar coming of age territory. Films often tell the same stories, even when they're original pieces but fables can work extremely well. People sit around the fire and don't mind hearing the same stories over and over again. It's just when we start telling the stories in the same way over and over it becomes a pain in the ass."
Keating was always very keen to make the film, having been extremely impressed and excited by Ferdia MacAnna's book. He showed the book to Tim Palmer who felt equally enthusiastic and they approached MacAnna who, while delighted, told them that Gabriel Byrne was also interested in the film rights. At that point Keating felt sure Byrne would capture the project but contacted him nonetheless.
"We contacted Gabriel and he said 'If you guys want to do it, go ahead'. And then I think he phoned back about an hour later and asked if there was any chance of letting him do the script. I'd always thought I would write it but I had read a script Gabriel had written and I really admired his writing so I thought, 'OK, so you do it'. He entered into it in a very open and big spirited way. The first draft he wrote had some terrific elements but didn't quite work as a script. He knew this and was happy for me to take over the writing. He stayed in the loop and we would discuss it and meet whenever we could. But we never worked together as a writing team. He did some early work on it, some of which has made an important contribution to the script and it's developed since then. I was always keen to keep him involved in that process and I had always wanted Gabriel to play the father in the film."
Where the project ran into difficulties was in the process of raising money. "Initially, our plan was that we would try to make the film with purely European money and then find an American distributor or sales agent later. But that wasn't possible", Keating explains. "One of the things about making a film in Ireland is that the rest of the world regard Britain as our home territory and expect you to have some sort of British deal in place. The first port of call for most people making a film here would be BBC and C4. I think we would have set it up a lot easier if we'd had a television deal. And once you're not getting anywhere with them you have a major hurdle to get over. While looking for funding, the funny thing is that 'yes' is wonderful to hear but the second best thing to hear after 'yes' is 'no'. Because 'no' is a positive answer because you can get over it and move on. But 'yeah well, maybe', that's what you mostly hear and that's tough."
Working with a major American studio has also been an experience. Maybe somewhat terrifying but edifying for a first time feature director. Obviously, American involvement influenced the casting decisions, an American company naturally requiring faces familiar to the American public. The American dependence on market research was another new experience for Keating. This, he believes can be both beneficial and destructive. Films which rate poorly in polling never find funding and the blockbuster becomes the staple Hollywood product. Last of the High Kings has already fared well in front of recruited American audiences. "It was a big screening in a 500 seat theatre in the depths of New Jersey and it was quite nerve racking but very exciting. It's really your opening night. It's as much about understanding how to market the film as what it is that appeals to the audience. Some things that an Irish or English audience might really enjoy, French, German or American audiences might react to quite differently. We'll have to make some dialect changes where we lost the audience but we can fix that quite easily with accent and intention. You can learn a lot watching your film with an audience and then interacting with them afterwards - if you're open to the experience! On the other hand, it's a shame Hollywood has become so dependent on market research because now they don't want to make films that you can't describe in one line."
"I would have to say that if Miramax hadn't come in then I'm not sure it would have been made at all. If you take money from a Hollywood studio then baggage comes with it. And it's a range of influence, from that company being downright interventionist to being quite subtle. But your source of finance ultimately has an influence on the way the film turns out. I think that's pretty much inescapable. I think it turned out differently than if we had done it solely with European money. I was very passionate about the spirit of the book and I think I preserved that."