`I was walking into the prize ceremony at the Venice Film Festival and I was like, an arm's stretch away from Martin Scorsese. Stephen would have loved that" grins Irish director, Ian FitzGibbon. By rights, Stephen Tredre should have been in Venice last September and at the Cork Film Festival today, enjoying the prestige of being the author of Between Dreams, one of the 15 short films chosen from over 700 to appear in competition in Venice. But Stephen died of cancer two years ago in 1997 and the film might never have existed were it not for that fact. For Between Dreams is a 14 minute-long meditation on life inside the head of a cancer patient, taken from Tredre's diaries of his time as a terminal hospital in-patient. Slow, non-linear and imagistic, the film is at times disturbing and at others immensely beautiful, but never does it come across as a charity project.
However, for many of those involved, it was indeed a labour of love. Not only FitzGibbon but also most of the actors involved, including Irish actor Michael McElhatton, were in RADA with Stephen. Making the film, on a very tight budget, was as much a tribute to that friendship as an artistic project in its own right. "Stephen laid himself right open writing this so we really felt we had to do the same thing", says Ian. We had to do our absolute best and I think we managed that".
He and London-born Stephen first met in RADA, when they were both training to be actors. "I remember well the first time I saw him. He looked far too smart to be a student - he was wearing Paul Smith for a start." He remembers Stephen as a health freak, who never smoked, ate well and whose idea of drinking was a glass of very good wine. "What I always liked about him was his enthusiasm. As somebody who tends to be a bit cynical, I liked the fact that he never failed to get excited. It wasn't that he was naive so much as very, very focused." After college the pair drifted apart slightly as Ian immediately started getting work as what he terms a "jobbing actor" - he has appeared in television dramas like Prime Suspect, Staying Alive and The American with Matthew Modine and Diana Rigg. "I think Stephen got increasingly frustrated as he was just so ready to pounce, so he turned that creativity into writing."
Tredre and FitzGibbon revived their friendship some four or five years ago, when Stephen first heard about his illness. "We would have these long, intense phonecalls. By that I don't mean they were all serious - Stephen was hilariously funny - but I think he knew that he just didn't have time for anything else." It was Tredre who first encouraged FitzGibbon to start directing, encouragement which resulted in Stranded, FitzGibbon's critically-acclaimed first short film.
"When Stephen was very ill I went in to visit him once in hospital while filming Staying Alive. He was propped up and looked terrible - very bloated with lots of wires coming out of him and so on - but he was working on an Eastenders script on his laptop. I was giving out about some direction or something until he finally said `Will you quite moaning? If you don't like the way the director works, why don't you do it yourself?' Within a few weeks, I had started on the project. It still really bugs me that he never saw it - he died a month before the film was finished."
Ironically, although Stephen wrote many scripts before his death, it is really since his death that his work has come to prominence - this autumn, the BBC is filming a series called Fish, with Paul McGann playing the defence lawyer created by Tredre. It was Stephen's brother, Roger, who first approached FitzGibbon with Tredre's hospital diary, although Ian and Stephen had discussed doing something with the work before Stephen's death.
FitzGibbon shaped the screen play and, once funding from the Irish Film Board and RTE was in place, started getting the production together. He contacted some old RADA friends, including Lloyd Owen who recently starred in Patrick Marber's play, Closer in London and who plays Stephen in Between Dreams. "Not only is he a great actor but he was willing to shave his head, which is a bigger deal than you'd think. An agent said to me `You're looking for someone for one week's work, on little pay who won't be able to work for six months while their hair grows back, are you joking?' But then Lloyd came to see me and his mother had died of cancer three months previously, so I think he had a personal connection with the film as well as with Stephen."
Other friends and RADA alumni who came to Dublin for the shoot included David Westhead (Mrs Brown), David Harewood (Othello at the National Theatre), Michael McElhatton who had starred in Stranded and Jane Gwilliams, who was one of Stephen's best friends. "Filming was very intense. It was very bizarre, I remember being simultaneously horrified and thrilled - horrified by what my friend had to go through and thrilled that this actor was conveying it so well."
They all had strategies for getting through it - Owens would waltz around to swing tunes on the radio while FitzGibbon would finish the scene and then leave the room to cry. "We also had a great laugh. At times we were crying from laughing so much at stuff we had all done. Stupid school-boyish stuff that would drive anybody else mad but it meant a lot to us."
The finished film is something Ian is immensely proud of - "Professionally, it's the most satisfying thing I've ever done" - but not so proud that he will use any tactic at his disposal. For all that Tredre was the partner of actress Kate Winslet for five years (her parents and sisters came to see the recent premiere of the film in London), Ian has never considered creating publicity out of it. "People have said why don't you use the connection but I was never interested. I would do anything for people to see my film but I never wanted that."
Next up for Ian is three months playing "a psycho in Casualty. I always play psychos" and then directing a feature which, he says with some relief, is going to be a comedy romance. Co-written with David Freer who wrote the West End hit Burning Blue, in which Ian had the lead role, it will be about two New Yorkers moving to Dublin. Still there is a part of Ian that is wistful for missed opportunities. Out of the blue he says "You know, it's only in the last couple of weeks that I've realised how frustrated I feel. I think Stephen and I could have done some really good work together. Really good."
Between Dreams plays at the Kino Cinema today as part of the Cork Film Festival