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IFTN talks to ‘Mattress Men’ Director Colm Quinn
04 Oct 2016 : Esther McCarthy
Following a well-received run at Hot Docs and the Sheffield Doc Fest, ‘Mattress Men’ opens in Irish cinemas on October 7th. The debut feature from award-winning short film maker Colm Quinn, it’s a film as intimate and moving as it is funny.

The story of how struggling businessman Michael Flynn attempted to turn his fortunes around after befriending Paul Kelly, who came up with the Mattress Mick persona, at times feels like Ireland’s recession struggles in microcosm.

It’s a fascinating depiction of how two very different personalities form a bond as they battle to make Mattress Mick a viral hit in the hope of turning their lives around. We spoke to ‘Mattress Men’ director Colm Quinn about chasing goals, battling austerity, and finding redemption.

IFTN: When did you first meet Paul and Mick and can you describe the early genesis of this project?

Quinn: It was August 2013 when I first got chatting to Paul Kelly. I was strolling up Pearce Street one evening when I saw Paul standing at the door of the mattress shop, smoking a cigarette. He’s in the habit of talking to passers by. I don’t know what it was about me, but we made eye contact and he brought up the Mattress Mick videos. I’d seen them, and he said: ‘If you want to see where they get made, I make them all here in the shop’. Curiosity got the better of me, and in I went. There was a mattress shop that had seen better days, with this green-screen studio down the back. We got talking about himself and what was going on in his life. What interested me was in his office, he had an image pinned to the wall of a house for sale up in Santry. He’d photoshopped his partner Cathy and their kids into the driveway. And he said this was his dream.

IFTN: Do you realise early that Paul and Mick’s story had documentary potential?

Quinn: When you’re thinking in terms of a story, of committing to something, you’re looking for somebody who has a goal. And you think about what the wider context has in store for him. I think he saw these videos as an opportunity to build Mattress Mick’s brand, and in turn to get a bit of security for himself. The relationship between Paul and Mick, as well, was an interesting one. They’re very straight talking, they’re good mates, but it’s also a business relationship, and it exists in a space between the two.

I’d done a short a couple of years before, called Needle Exchange, that was about a friendship between these two lads who are tattoo artists, who were trying to stay clean, trying to get off heroin. That was a film about friendship, essentially, and the challenges that it can be put under. With Paul and Mick, it felt like they were in a challenging situation.

IFTN: Were you a fan of Mattress Mick or aware of his persona before you got on board this documentary? Why do you think he has such wide appeal?

Quinn: I was, and I think most Northside Dubs are. He was one of those familiar, eccentric faces, and you’d see the videos on your social media.

I’ve asked myself a few times about why he connects so much with people. I think it’s the complete lack of inhibition that Mick shows. You’ve got this guy in his early sixties who wasn’t Mattress Mick six years ago - he was Michael Flynn, a struggling businessman. It was the invention of this persona that created opportunity for both Paul and Mick. With Mick it’s a case of putting himself out there, and to hell with what people think of him - Paul encourages that in Mick too.

IFTN: There’s a great dynamic between the two men, but their central relationship is a complex one. Did you feel a sense of loyalty to both men in documenting their stories?

Quinn: Absolutely. Myself, Paul, Mick and Brian Traynor - the Mattress Man - would all be mates at this stage. So from a personal point of view, there’s absolutely a sense of trying to do them justice, to honestly capture their struggle. They were incredibly honest to reveal as much as they did in terms of their personal struggles, what they were facing, that sense of coming back from failure. They’re all things that are difficult to talk about, but they were very upfront about it. Some of the other people who featured in the film displayed this incredible level of openness towards us as well, and put up with our cameras being around.

IFTN: The film feels like Ireland’s recession in microcosm in that it tackles the very real struggles and fears encountered by a great many Irish people. How important was making that statement to you?

Quinn: I think it was clear from the start that Paul and Mick, their relationship, their struggle and their hopes, were very representative of what a lot of people were going through - not just through the course of the recession, but in austerity Ireland. Possibly even more so in the conditions of austerity that people have faced. There’s a lot of talk about equality, opportunity, can equality of opportunity exist in those sort of conditions? The truth is, it can’t and I think that’s what makes Paul and Mick’s achievement all the greater. They’ve managed to go against that trend, to find their way, to find some security. Even when chatting to Paul, in the course of making the film, about some of the more sensitive material that was coming up, it’s really to his credit that he understood that his story could be representative of something a lot greater. That he could open up a conversation about what people are going through, when they’re somewhere between the dole and a form of casual employment and they’ve got a young family relying on them.

IFTN: You’ve said that you feel Ireland’s austerity measures are destroying lives. As a filmmaker how important is it to you to explore the personal costs of such measures?

Quinn: I think it’s pretty crucial, to be honest. This is what’s going on around us. If you’re going to make a film that’s reflective of our current situation, you want to try and capture it as honestly as possible, as authentically and as openly as you can. I think it’s so important that these stories are being told, because they’re reflecting the conditions that people are living under. There’s an onus on us as documentary makers, or even as drama makers in general, to look at what’s actually going on around us and to try and reflect that back.





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