Our intention is to create a compelling, happy, naughty and emotional feel-good story, which will absorb, move and delight the audience.
We want you to laugh and feel rejuvenated, leaving with a smile on your face.
We all have problems in life and have to learn how to deal with them.
I chose the easy route and blamed my parents for mine, until co-writer, Eoin McGuirk became a father and I reassessed my views. Before his child was born we agreed that we were the victims of 1970s parents, but fatherhood had an impact on Eoin’s thoughts. He began to make excuses for his parents’ failings, saying things like ‘it wasn’t a stable political environment back then’. He joined the clique of parents who make excuses for each other and I realised that becoming a parent enables you to understand how difficult it was for your own parents.
I tried to imagine how my life would be if I stopped blaming my parents, my neighbours or anybody else but myself. Suddenly I was on a rock, alone, my anger aimed at my own shortcomings. But it felt good. I had set myself free from blaming other people for my problems. By doing so I stopped being dependant on those people and, in turn, I became a nicer person. Instead of blaming others, I started to co-exist with them.
Oisin, the brother that Patrick has to fetch, is an Irish transvestite.
We were looking for an issue which remains publically unacceptable. Just being ‘gay’ doesn’t cut it anymore. It had to be a characteristic that we still find difficult to understand. We then placed that difficulty within the dynamic of a conservative Irish family. We show that Oisin’s family doesn’t accept her desire to be a woman but we show that, when she rises above their narrow mindedness, her family can still be a part of her life and she can remain true to herself.
This is the story that we want to tell in Fetch. It’s not simply a story about brothers coming of age and confronting their father with the shortcomings they blame him for. It’s a tale of men who decide to take charge of their own existence. Fetch shows that we all hold the solutions to our own problems within us. It is a remarkably ordinary concept, but one of which we need constantly to be reminded.