The foyer of the Shelbourne Hotel at noon last Sunday is filled with agitated guests, intent on getting the hell out of Dublin and home to Britain, Europe or wherever, at all costs. But British director Peter Howitt doesn't seem to be too bothered about the prospect of an extra 24 hours in Dublin because of airport disruption, having flown in to introduce his romantic comedy, Sliding Doors, to an appreciative Dublin Film Festival audience the night before.
This is the amiable, energetic Howitt's feature film debut as a writer/director after 20 years as a jobbing actor in British film and television, including roles in the likes of Civvies and Bread, and it's a new enough experience for him to be fretting over the quality of the projection - the first reel was out of synch the night before, and the picture a bit soft, he reckons.
"I may have to do what Stanley Kubrick does, and check every print personally when the film is released!" he says.
It's appropriate, Howitt feels, that before being seen in Britain, Sliding Doors should be screened in Dublin, as that's where he wrote most of the final draft that caught the eye of Sidney Pollack, who ended up producing the film. "I was sitting in a horsebox in Dublin, waiting not to go on set for a bit part in Some Mother's Son" (in which he played the leader of an SAS snatch squad). He was used to the waiting game in the "horseboxes" used to house the lesser cast members on location shoots.
"I'd also played Man on Cutting Room Floor for Jim Sheridan in In The Name Of The Father. You're picked up at seven o'clock in the morning and you're saying to yourself: `Oh God, another day in the horsebox!' They really are awful, and you need to have something else to do. I had a little computer with me, so I could pretend I was doing something worthwhile. Sheridan would come in and ask me what I was doing there, and could he see the script when it was finished, and I'd say: `No you can't'!
"Sidney called us up and offered to help at a time when we had almost given up getting the film [Sliding Doors] made. He made one phone call, after we'd made about 400, and got the English money that we couldn't get. He also told me that I had picked a story that would be very tough to pull off at any time of a career, that even Mike Nichols would think twice about taking this on. But if you're going to drown you might as well drown in deep water."
The premise for the script came to Howitt when he narrowly missed being knocked down on Charing Cross Road five years ago. "I stepped off the pavement just by Leicester Square tube and just avoided a car which screeched to a halt. It then struck me that that split second could have changed my life as well as that of the driver and of all the people connected to us both. What if that car had hit me? What if my whole day had changed? What if my whole life had changed?"
In Sliding Doors, Gwyneth Paltrow plays a young Londoner who arrives one morning at the PR company where she works to find that she has been fired. On her way home, she misses her train by a split-second - or does she? The film's storyline splits in two, following the very different consequences of missing or catching the train. It's a neat idea, the sort of cinematic trick that works well for romantic comedy (Howitt admits that one of the inspirations for Sliding Doors was Groundhog Day).
"When I had the idea, I immediately thought it was a good one. You see things all the time, where you think what a bloody good idea, why didn't I think of that? I've spent my life doing that, so when this came to me, I immediately said to myself that this could be it. But it was a very, very difficult film to write, with the two different storylines happening side by side - it kept branching off in different directions. I finally realised that the best thing was to keep it as simple as possible."
Sliding Doors is a very New Labour-looking version of Britain - all shiny surfaces, modern interiors and attractive cast (Paltrow is joined by actors John Lynch, John Hannah and Jeanne Tripplehorn). "We wanted to make a film that looked like a major motion picture, that would be pleasing on the eye. We weren't so concerned about it being entirely accurate - more that it should be attractive to look at. A popular film that people would enjoy seeing, and that wasn't up its own arse."
It's an unabashedly commercial approach that recalls slick American comedies such as When Harry Met Sally or Sleepless In Seattle, he agrees. "But I didn't try to copy anything specific. I don't think I'm clever enough yet to say I'm going to make it in the vein of a certain kind of film. I think people don't find out what their style is until they've made three or four films, and people tell them. It's all London, we didn't pretend that it wasn't what it was. But we didn't want to thrust the London aspect of it down people's throats either. Because the premise was so universal, we wanted to make the film look like it could be happening anywhere. It's not a British thing, it's a human thing. It's only British because we're British."
He winces, however, when I mention some of the script's more blatant compromises for the American audience. At one point, a character complains he's being asked more questions than you'd get on Jeopardy. Jeopardy? "Yeah, that's the one that makes me go ouch - that's a cop-out. It was supposed to be Fifteen To One, but not a lot of people are at home at four in the afternoon to watch Fifteen To One. Writers and actors know all about that show because it's on before Countdown, where you get to use your brain at least once a day, if you can stick Richard Whiteley.
"But the Americans kept asking what Fifteen To One was. That was the line you'd hear all the time - Americans won't get it - and I'd usually say tough shit, it's not an American movie. Their position was that we were going to make most of our money there. There's no harm in thinking commercially, that's why the British film industry didn't have any money for so long, because nobody was thinking commercially. But I admit that the Jeopardy line is a sell-out."
Sliding Doors was the opening film at this year's prestigious Sundance Festival, and its American producers are gearing up for a major release in April. For Howitt, the directing bug has definitely bitten. "I don't think I could go back to acting now. It just doesn't seem as challenging. I'm not belittling it as a profession, but I like the fact that directing is more dangerous. With acting, unless you get really good parts, it's not hard enough, and so much of it ends up being about keeping your rent paid. It just becomes a job. But making a film is a vocation. You can create something that hopefully a lot of people can be proud of it. John Hannah's proud of it. Gwyneth feels it's the best film she's done."
He's upbeat about the film's prospects at the box office, and it's all still new enough for every favourable response to be a source of glee: "We got three-and-a-half Bunnies in our Playboy review, whereas Wag The Dog only got two, so I can say I've got more Bunnies than Barry Levinson. Hey, Barry, I've got more Bunnies! It's great.
Sliding Doors will go on general release in Ireland on May 1st