'In America' is personal for director Jim Sheridan
In the film, which opens Friday at the Metro and Uptown, we follow an Irish family — mother, father, two young daughters — as they arrive in New York to begin a new life. As they settle into Hell's Kitchen in pursuit of their American dream, it becomes clear that this family is haunted by a ghost — a son, Frankie, who died back home in Ireland.
When the words "In memory of Frankie Sheridan" appear on screen at the end of the movie, it's easy to conclude that this very personal story is from Jim Sheridan's life — particularly since his two daughters, Naomi and Kirsten Sheridan, are credited as co-screenwriters. And it is indeed Sheridan's life — mostly.
"Ninety percent of it happened," said Sheridan, in a phone interview. "But my son didn't die, my brother died. I transported that into my own life, to get a perspective on the character (of the father). Once I had him made up of a couple of people, he wasn't totally me."
Though 10-year-old Frankie Sheridan died of a brain tumor many years ago — Jim Sheridan was 17 at the time — his memory is still fresh in his brother's mind. "I took him out for his 10th birthday, before he died, bought him an ice cream," he remembered. "Nobody knew there was anything wrong with him at the time."
Years later, at 31, Sheridan left Ireland with his wife and daughters, hoping to jump-start his career as a stage director in New York. As in the movie, they arrived through Canada, moved into a shabby tenement occupied by artists and junkies, endured a sweltering first summer (with little help from a stolen air conditioner), and at one point gambled the rent money trying to win an amusement-park doll. ("I lost $128," remembered Sheridan ruefully.)
The Sheridan family's odyssey in New York ended in 1988, when they returned to Dublin. A year later, Sheridan's debut film "My Left Foot," about the quadriplegic artist and poet Christy Brown, changed his fortunes. The film received six Oscar nominations (winning two, for actor Daniel Day-Lewis and supporting actress Brenda Fricker), and gave the Irish film industry a much-needed boost.
A chance encounter
And it also, through a chance encounter, provided the seed for "In America." In Los Angeles for the Oscars, in his tuxedo, Sheridan walked past a club and heard a familiar voice greet him. It was a former neighbor from that Hell's Kitchen apartment building, now a successful artist. "He said, 'Jim, you should make a film about that house. That house was blessed.' "
So he approached his daughters, who were 5 and 9 when the family emigrated to New York. "When I started writing with them, they were only 16 and 19," Sheridan remembered. "They were always very creative." The two young women — now grown, and both filmmakers in their own right — drew on their memories of those years to create the characters of Christy and Ariel, for whom New York is a magical rabbit hole, despite little money and parents who sometimes seem inexplicably sad.
In the movie, young Christy serves as a narrator and guide, using her own filmmaking ambitions (she has a treasured video camera) to tell us the story; calling on the memory of her brother to help the family in a crisis. "Do you still have a picture of me in your head? One that you can keep forever?" she asks the audience at one point, and we do: The performances of Sarah and Emma Bolger, the real-life sisters who played Christy and Ariel, are honest and enchanting.
Sheridan has an audible smile in his voice as he describes casting the girls. After hearing 6-year-old Emma read for the role of Ariel, Sheridan passed the script to the next girl, but then noticed that "my coat was pulled from behind by Emma, who was looking at me as if I'd crossed an invisible line of etiquette. She said, with pity, 'Jim, is she reading my part?' And I wanted to say 'This is an audition,' but I couldn't break her belief. I found myself saying, 'Nobody's reading your part, you're cast.' "
And Emma turned out to be a good agent as well. "She said, 'My sister's downstairs in the car,' " said Sheridan, who then asked Emma her sister's age. "She said, 'She's 10.' I said, 'Too old.' She said, 'You should see her anyway.' " Thus came Sarah Bolger to "In America." They were "the image of my own girls," remembered Sheridan fondly.
Morton was right choice
Age was a factor in casting the parents, as well. Though Sheridan had loved Samantha Morton's work in "Under the Skin," he initially thought she was too young to play the role of mother Sarah. When another actress fell through, Sheridan went with Morton. "I turned it to advantage, I think," he said, of casting the film younger. "Really the parents are children as well."
Paddy Considine, an up-and-coming British actor, was cast as the father, Johnny, after Sheridan saw him in "A Room for Romeo Brass." It was a daunting prospect for a filmmaker to direct a slightly fictitious version of himself, but Sheridan felt that the slight changes to the story gave him just enough distance.
"Though it's me, it's a combination of me and my father," the director said of Johnny. "It's odd, you know, but (Considine) had to play a character at the end of the day."
Life and art intertwine in "In America," and the result is a movie laced with magic and made with palpable affection — a holiday gift to audiences.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com