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Tuesday March 8, 2011

White Irish Drinkers

Geoff Wigdor and Nick Thurston star

An Interview With Actor Nick Thurston

By Sean McCarthy N.U.J.

When was the last time you ran stark naked through a graveyard in broad daylight with your love interest in fleshy youthful pursuit? Whose got those Rolling Stones tickets anyway? And just who is that guy down at the local pub able to mesmerize a gawking crowd with lightening-strikes of inspiring homegrown talent? For the Leary brothers of good old Bay Ridge Brooklyn, it's all in a day's trouble.

Every so often, a movie emerges with a story that mulls in the mind long after leaving the cinema, well after the crowds have trailed off.

White Irish Drinkers is one of those rarities in film making, and comes to us from the adventurously dark and intriguing psyche of Brooklyn-born writer director producer John Gray, creator of TV's The Ghost Whisperer, who says he had a different intention when he returned to the Brooklyn of his formative years for the setting and characters of this, his new film.

"I've always wanted to make a movie about growing up in Brooklyn," says Gray. "I remember re-watching Boyz in the Hood several years ago, which I really liked, and it occurred to me that I haven't seen many movies that deal honestly and authentically with the white urban, working class experience, especially in the 70s. Coming of age in the Brooklyn of that era, I witnessed a lot of violence, but not always on the streets. For some people I knew, the most dangerous place was behind the doors of their own apartments."

With a title already stirring up intelligent debate and family-friendly controversy on the RADIO IRISH Facebook profile, White Irish Drinkers stars a tightly knit cast featuring Stephen Lang (Avatar), Peter Riegert (Animal House), Karen Allen (Indiana Jones series), Geoff Wigdor (Sleepers), Leslie Murphy (House MD), and San Francisco-born actor Nick Thurston (The Ghost Whisperer, Cold Case) who plays the movie's central character Brian Leary.

The film is produced by John Gray, Melissa Jo Peltier, Paul Bernard and James Scura and enjoys a riveting original music score from the hugely gifted Mark Snow who brought us magnificent compositions for The X-Files, Kojak, Dynasty, Starsky and Hutch, Hart to Hart among numerous others. Snow's music is in everyone's head.

Framed to a backdrop of beautiful cinematography (Seamus Tierney) and fortified with masterful performances throughout, there emerges an honesty and sincerity to this home-spun tale, set in 1970's Brooklyn, which sees two brothers battle against all odds on a range of issues affecting their lives, from their running conflicts with and avoidances of their abusive alcoholic father Paddy, to their compromising relationships with an ineffective but well-meaning mother who ultimately can't manage the madness unfolding around her. Margaret Leary has had it up to the rafters, and all of the time.

The film opens on the autumn of 1975 in Brooklyn where 18-year-old Brian Leary (Nick Thurston) is killing time, committing sporadic petty crimes with his street tough older brother Danny (Geoff Wigdor), whom he both idolizes and fears. Brian doesn't see himself as a criminal, but he doesn't share the dreams of his old friends from their working class neighborhood either. They all long for those culturally approved 9 to 5 civil service jobs with benefit packages that will carry them through weekends of beer into lazy retirement.

Brian doesn't want to end up in a soul-numbing job like his buddies, but he's damn sure he doesn't want to be like his best friend Todd (Zachary Booth) either. Todd has betrayed their blue-collar roots by accepting a scholarship to college. So what was it like for actor Nick Thurston to be transported by John Gray back to the director's own nineteen seventies?

Nick Thurston and Leslie Murphy

"Exciting as hell," exclaims Thurston. "You know, my Dad actually graduated from high school the same year as Brian my character does, and so I had heard a lot about what that life was like. But it was so much more exciting to be able to walk out on set every day, and you really have to give it to John Gray and the production crew for this, they had everything so well set up ... with the cars on the streets all from the seventies, and everything just felt so right on place. It was really fun to just transport yourself back to that time ... and the music! A friend of mine made me a play list right before I left and it had a bunch of the Stones stuff on it, and the Beatles, and probably the most exciting part about my job is getting to live in times and places that I didn't live in."

In White Irish Drinkers, brothers Brian and Danny Leary strive to live and struggle to thrive amidst a constant sense of failure fueled by a lack of confidence and self-esteem that seems sadly inherited.

Slaves to the trudge of a working class environment they have been born into and are now bogged down in, the Leary brothers become hell bent on escaping their separate but equally as paralyzing states of being. But can they flee their societal drudgery by co-operative means and agreeable methods, be they criminal or not? And who, if anyone, can drag themselves up and out from the quagmire? Yet is there something uniquely Irish about the film's story, or could these circumstances be playing themselves out in any family?

"Well you know I certainly think they could be playing themselves out in any family," says actor Nick Thurston. "I think it's more the tone of it that makes it Irish. The director John Gray grew up in that area (Bay Ridge Brooklyn) so it's a lot about his life story in many ways. He grew up in an Irish household, and a lot of the same sort of ... I wouldn't say values but just the tone of it is very Irish. He explained that to me before we started shooting, talking to me a lot about the identity. Everybody felt very strongly on that identity of being Irish. Everybody needed to, in that neighborhood, be apart of something. And where he grew up, that was what he was apart of. He felt very strongly about his Irish ancestry and his background and I think that translates in the film as well."

Thankfully, Thurston's character Brian in White Irish Drinkers has a secret - he's a talented artist. In the basement of the bagel shop beneath his parent's apartment, he creates impressionistic charcoal and watercolor images of the stifling city that surrounds him.

When he puts on his headphones and paints, shouting matches between Brian's longshoreman father Paddy (Stephen Lang) and world-weary mother (Karen Allen) fade into the distance. But even his private world can't block out the brutal beatings a drunken Paddy inflicts on Danny.

Though Paddy has never been physically abusive to Brian, every time he sees his brother's suffering, his heart breaks a little more. With the heart of an artist, Thurston explains to me why his character Brian Leary is so shy about his hidden talent: "Growing up in Bay Ridge, especially the way it was back in '75, there wasn't a whole lot of room for this kid to be doing that kind of stuff," says Thurston. "It's a really rough neighborhood, he's had a rough upbringing, so being an artist kind of makes him a bit of a black sheep, and he's never had a chance to validate his art work so it isn't something he can just tell everybody about without fear of being called any number of names under the sun in Brooklyn at the time."

Besides his art, Brian finds respite in working for Whitey (Peter Riegert), a kindly curmudgeon who runs the failing Lafayette movie theater in Bay Ridge. Brian's been helping Whitey pay his debts to local mobster Jimmy Cheeks (Ken Jennings) by bringing in rock groups to play gigs at the theater.

With money problems mounting, Whitey decides to call in a lifelong favor from an old friend, now the tour manager of the Rolling Stones.

Writer Director John Gray (center) with Stephen Lang as Paddy Leary (left) and Nick Thurston

The Stones will stop to play the Lafayette for one hour only on their way to Madison Square Garden, a plan Whitey hopes will solve his loan shark problems forever.

When one excessively violent beating from Paddy convinces Brian's tragic brother Danny he can't stay at home anymore, he tries to enlist Brian in one last scheme - to rob the Lafayette on the night of the Rolling Stones concert.

Danny sees this as their only chance to get enough money to skip town and start them both off in a new life, somewhere far away from Brooklyn.

As the theater fills with revelers, Brian is torn between his love and loyalty to Danny and his real fondness for Whitey.

In the twists and turns that follow on that fateful night of the concert, both brothers must re-examine their dreams, and make decisions that will change their lives forever.

I'm curious to learn something about how actor Nick Thurston slipped into the local skin to prepare for this meaty role:

"It happened pretty fast", says Nick Thurston. "I found out about getting the role with only about a month to spare, so I did pretty much everything I could to explore what that would have been like for John, and part of that was ... John drove me around Bay Ridge and he told me a lot of stories about his growing up there and about what it was like back then for him. I tried to get into his head as much as I could and gather up those experiences and make them my own. But also, I lived in the house that we shot in, which is in Bay Ridge and right around where John grew up. And as soon as I saw the place which was really kind of a wreck when the film crew got hold of it, they let me tour the house, and as soon as I saw it I called John up and I said, I don't care how I have to do it, but I want to live in that place while were shooting! So I did. I lived there for the whole month while we were shooting, and that probably taught he more about it than anything else because I had a lot of experiences around the neighborhood. I was walking around there every day, I was waking up and drinking my cup of coffee at the diner right down the street, I was meeting all the people. The neighborhood's feeling was something I was able to pick up on while doing that ... trying to talk like the people from there, and trying to see how they went about their daily lives."

The film's dramatic storyline unfurls onscreen with the small Brooklyn neighborhood buzzing with anticipation of the Rolling Stones' arrival for a concert, which gives Brian the courage to talk to pretty Shauna Friel (Leslie Murphy), the girl he was too shy to approach in high school.

Shauna, a travel agent, is awaiting transfer to a glamorous new job in Los Angeles, and dreams of traveling the world before she's 25.

She and one of Brian's other friends, the college-bound Todd, begin to plant new seeds of hope in Brian's doubtful mind.

Perhaps his art could be a ticket for him out of his dead end life and into a future of possibilities, as his rollicking relationship with Shauna develops.

"I think they both see a way out," says Thurston. "They're both feel like outcasts in the neighborhood that they're growing up in, you know? They want to experiment with different things.

Karen Allen as Margaret Leary

Shauna wants to travel, and Brian wants to be able to explore his art without worrying about retribution. And so he, in Shauna, sees a way out of that situation ... and in Brian, she sees a way out as well."

The story of Brian and Danny Leary is not wholly autobiographical, writer director John Gray explains, but the events and situations in the film are based on very real people and experiences. Creating the authenticity of the time period in the script was one challenge; but making 1975 Brooklyn come alive on an independent film budget - with a tight shooting schedule of 17 days - was another.

Gray's long experience in directing features and high profile movies for television, as well as five years immersed in the episodic world on the series he created, helped him pull off the near impossible.

"Often, people making a feature at this level are first time directors", Gray explains. "I had the great advantage of not only my own twenty plus years of experience, but also an incredibly seasoned team of producer-partners. Melissa Jo Peltier, Paul Bernard and James Scura have all been in the trenches for years and have learned how to work efficiently and cost effectively. We all know that preparation is the key."

Delivering a strikingly powerful and highly memorable performance as Brian Leary, Thurston, though already a familiar face from a variety of TV shows, has arrived in White Irish Drinkers as an actor to be reckoned with. His talent has mega bucks written all over it like a big red flag in the snow, yet the actor appears to be taking his new found success with a practical, casual stride.

His is not an overnight success story either, for Thurston has been in the business since childhood.

Indeed, the actor has received training at several theatre schools, including the American Conservatory Theatre and the British American Drama Academy in London.

He recently graduated from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting, and spent a semester abroad in England, opening his eyes to the masterful artistry and fresh energy of European theater.

He has also completed the Lifetime movie Reviving Ophelia in Toronto, Ontario, and will play the role of Dante in the thriller The Truth Below directed by Scott Glosserman and written by Wendy Diane Miller.

Recently, he spent two weeks volunteering in Haiti where he worked with the Jenkins/Penn Haitian Relief Organization.

"I was there in July, and since I got back two of my best friends were inspired to go down there and work with JPHRO as well," Nick says. "One of my friends is actually down there right now still working. It's hard, it's really hard. It is a very poor country, it is a country without a lot of central leadership, and they've had a whole lot of disaster. It's both difficult to be down there and see those things happening but it's also incredibly inspiring. That experience was one of the best I've had in my entire life, and it's something I will do for the rest of my life."

White Irish Drinkers receives its US premiere at this year's Craic Fest in New York on March 10th and will be officially opened by Screen Media Films on March 25th 2011. Visit the film's official website now at www.WhiteIrishDrinkersTheMovie.com for show times and venues nationwide.

The film also enjoys the distinction of being an Official Selection of the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, an Audience Award Winner of the 2010 Woodstock Film Festival, an Official Selection of the 2010 Torino Film Festival, and a Finalist of the 2010 Gotham Festival Genius Award 2010.

White Irish Drinkers is also an official selection of the 2011 Atlanta Film Festival and is nominated for the 2011 Prism Awards in the category Feature Film/Substance Abuse. (You'll recall that the film Crazy Heart won the Prism Award last year after first scooping two Oscars, Best Actor for Jeff Bridges and Best Original Song for The Weary Kind by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.)

Tune into America's Only Irish Station RADIOIRISH.COM for a specially extended audio interview with actor Nick Thurston, also being broadcast YouTube, Twitter, and on Facebook at: facebook.com/radioirish

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