Catchin up with your bad self – Ben Kelly

Comedy Ireland popped along to the preview of ‘Your Bad Self’ In Dublin’s Lighthouse Cinema.

Here’s what producer, Ben Kelly had to say when he met with us, and our jester of course.

How did your bad self come about?

Your Bad Self has its origins in a 15 minute non broadcast pilot called ‘Joyball’ that myself and two friends, John Butler and Eoin Williams, wrote in 2001. We were all big fans of UK sketch shows like the Fast Show and Smack the Pony and thought it was time that Ireland had a sketch show that could compare with them. We wrote somewhat dark, slightly surreal material that celebrated the bad things that people maybe think but don’t say. It was more about situations than characters and unlike the Fast Show, wasn’t so much about catchphrases.

RTE funded the pilot and we shot it in September of that year. From the start we were keen to cast actors rather than stand up comedians. John and I were good friends with Peter McDonald, Michael McElhatton and Hugh O’Conor so we persuaded them to appear in it. We also cast Justine Mitchell and Karen Egan. John Butler directed it and it was produced by Treasure Entertainment, the company that produced ‘I Went Down’, ‘Saltwater’ etc. Although Joyball was well received within RTE, they chose not to take up their option on it so the prospect of a full series of Joyball disappeared. Or so we thought.

John went on to work as a director of promos, TV and short films. I moved to London and worked as a producer/director in entertainment shows.

In 2008 there was a new regime in RTE entertainment and the feeling there was that perhaps there could be life in Joyball after all. They decided to fund another pilot, this time a 30 minute, for broadcast version. We re-assembled the same cast from the original pilot and also added Emily Fairman, Justine Mitchell’s writing partner and a great comic actor, Andrew Bennett, Tom Farrelly, Domhnall Gleeson and John Light. This time I produced the show with Treasure and John directed again. Justine and Emily contributed as writers too along with John, Eoin and myself. Justine and Emily are fantastic writers and their style of comedy chimed perfectly with we saw the show. If anything their humour is even darker than ours.

How long did it take to film? When and where did it all start from?

We filmed the pilot in October 2008 in Dublin. It was done a bit of a shoestring budget but we managed to make a little go a long way. We shot it in 4 days around Dublin, pulling in favours from friends and family for locations, costumes etc. It was broadcast on Stephen’s Day on RTE 2 and although the ratings were modest it was critically well received.

RTE commissioned a series in June 2009 and we set about trying to re-assemble our cast for what would be a 4 week shoot.

From the word go we decided that the series needed to be broader than the pilot. We didn’t want it to be too dark and we needed a wide variety of material. We made the decision to invite the cast to contribute as writers. Peter McDonald, Michael McElhatton, Tom Farrelly, Domhnall Gleeson, Jason O’Mara and Karen Egan all contributed material. A friend of Domhnall’s, Michael Moloney also came on board as a writer. We had a series of writer’s meeting in London where we brainstormed ideas and characters. Afterwards we’d write up our material and email it to each other for comments and suggestions on how ideas could be spun out or developed. This was crucial in expanding the volume and tone of the material. Rather than relying on 5 writers, we had 12 people submitting material so there was a great deal of variety in the writing. It also invests the actors in the show in a way they wouldn’t be if they were on board purely as actors. Amy Huberman and Jason O’Mara also came on board as new cast members.

We shot the series in and around Cork in November 2009. We were based in holiday cottages in a hotel complex outside Cork. For us this was crucial as it meant we could minimise location moves as we could film in and around the complex. It also encouraged a creative atmosphere amongst the cast and crew and actually resulted in new material being generated during the shoot. If we had been based in Dublin we wouldn’t have been able to shoot anything like the volume of material that we shot in Cork. As it was it was pretty gruelling. We decided to over shoot by about 20% so we ended up shooting an average of about 10 pages a day, which meant that the schedule was pretty hectic. We had a fantastic crew though so everything went really smoothly.