Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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My name is Harrison Gardner and I have Claire Dunn sitting across from me today. Claire is an actor, a writer, an incredible singer and rapper, which I found out a few weeks ago, and soon to be a director. She's known to a lot of people in Ireland as Amanda Kinsella in Kin. Kinsella. Kinsella. Kinsella. Kinsella. Kinsella, yeah. She's known to a lot of people in Ireland as Amanda Kinsella in Kin.
But the Claire I want to talk to today is Claire Dunn, the worldbuilder. You made a film called Herself, maybe back in 2018 or 2019.
Yeah, we shot it in 2019.
Yeah. And so many people in Ireland saw the film Herself, were really inspired, felt really seen. It was really addressing something that was a big concern for people. And they went on to the internet and they Googled how to build my own house. And they found me and the courses that I was running down in Clare at Common Knowledge. And that's how I found out about you.
Because people were showing up to these courses that I was running, teaching people how to build with a set of plans from Dominic Stevens. And this story about like, well, I saw a woman build her own house from these plans in a movie. And I would like to do the same thing.
And I really just want to talk to you about what it was to create something that was so empowering and inspiring for people that created this real world effect that happened afterwards. This wasn't just something that...
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Chapter 2: What is Clare Dunne's journey in creating her film 'Herself'?
And I used the Internet. I started trying.
In many ways, you're doing the same thing that you then inspired other people to do. You weren't building a house, but you were building a film. What made you think you could do that?
I don't really know. I just knew that the idea came to me and it wouldn't let me sleep. Like I had an audition the next day and I didn't care about it. Like suddenly everything changed. I don't know what happened in my psyche. It was crazy. It was like overnight. I just went... That's a story. Like, that's a story. And in my head, for some reason, I was like, I think that's a feature film.
It's too big of a story to put in a short film. It's not a TV thing because I knew instinctively TV things are ideas that expand and they have to grow and go on forever. And you just be looking at Sandra then go on in her life. And then what happens with the B character, C character? Like, I knew it wasn't that. I knew it had an arc. And that was my instinct telling me something.
And so when I when I bought a notebook, the first thing I was doing weirdly was like storyboards and like pictures of her in a courtroom trying to talk to a judge. And I had all these images and then I was kind of writing almost like mini novellas of what would happen because I was just trying to write like what happens in this at first. It was really instinctive. And then I had to look up.
you know how to start putting things into like I guess what people use is final draft but I used a free thing for a couple of years because I couldn't afford final draft so I used Caltex and it was kind of that like it was just me just like following the the trail and and what was the context around that time for you like what what things had you made or done up to that point Oh, yeah.
Well, I had done, so weirdly at the start of my career, not career, start of my journey. What's a career anyway? I couldn't get into drama school.
I think you're definitely in a career right now, Clare. You're getting paid to do something. You're a careerist.
I'm a careerist. I'm getting paid to do something, which means I'm in the system. I'm making the money. Now, at the start of things, I was quite crap at auditions and I couldn't get into drama school. So actually, the first things I ever used to do in terms of creating anything for myself was I used to write little songs. Like, I'm not a great musician, but I can do a few chords on a guitar.
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Chapter 3: How does Clare's film address the theme of empowerment?
So right from the get go, I didn't realize I was learning how to collaborate and build stuff together with other people. And I really feel so lucky that I went to Royal Welsh College because of that, because I wouldn't have learned that in a college in Ireland. Like maybe you would now. I don't know what the courses are like now, but I was so glad that I decided to go there and do that.
So was Herself your first?
That was my first screen thing.
Amazing. You wrote yourself into a feature film as your first.
Actually, I didn't write it for myself. I wrote it for other girls to play. So I sent it to like Rebecca Grimes, Shauna Karras, like loads of really more established actresses at the time. Going like, what do you think of this and blah, blah, blah. And it's funny, the thing about Irish actors is we're a lot less Mayfair than most actors in the world. Like we'd be real, did you go for that job?
you'd be great and I had an audition for somebody this is a weird thing where like about 80 to 90% of Irish actors would go actually I know a great person that'd be good for this like there's a weird thing where of course we want the job halfway through the audition she'd be like actually I actually know someone who's soothed better than me
There was a bit of that going on with the women around me, thank God. They were like, Clare, you should play this role. And I was like, no, I can't. I have no screen experience. I won't finance the film. And I was right about that. Eventually, when producers came on board and stuff... I remember, like, it was Philadelphia Lloyd.
We were in a meeting, like, where I had suddenly somehow gathered this powerhouse team together that all came together in a weird happenstance way. And I was at the Christmas party of Element Pictures. And I remember just sitting across from Ed Guiney, who had just read the script the night before. yeah, absolutely want to get on board with this.
Sharon Horgan's sitting to the right of me and Phyllida's on the left. I mean, I didn't mean no one Phyllida was going to do this. She was like, but the only condition is, is that Claire stars in the lead role. And then like, I remember Sharon Horgan just like grabbing my leg onto the table and like digging her nails into my leg. And I was just like this.
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Chapter 4: What impact did 'Herself' have on audiences and the community?
You can wave. Hello. I felt strange, like a person knowing I had this thing going around inside me the whole time. And yet I wasn't homeless, but I was pretty...
like low on money so there was just phases where yeah I was kind of like living with family or like kind of moving around a bit but the weirdest thing was like I knew I had this thing and this was good because it was like a little bit of an inner anchor probably shouldn't have been my inner anchor should be myself but for a while It was the film because it kept me a bit sane.
It kept me creative. I kept researching, kept meeting people, kept interviewing people. And it was because for self is so about home. It was like in that time, I realized that home was also, it's not just a physical space. It's also like an idea and it's a feeling and it's a choice. And it's a thing that's a bit more, it can be sometimes a little bit less tangible than you think, you know?
So I must have had to learn that in order to do that role. I don't know.
It's a feeling. It's a feeling, right? I mean, I work with so many... It's just a feeling. I know it sounds so sappy, but it is, I think. And that's when we talk about security of anything. You know, we talk about housing security. We talk about... food security, we talk about whatever. Whenever we talk about that feeling of security, what we're actually talking about is a feeling.
We feel secure that that thing is going to be there in the future. And that is just a feeling. All that is, is just knowing where you're going to sleep tonight, where you're going to eat today, how these things are going to be delivered to you, when your next paycheck is coming. All those feelings of security are just that. They're just feelings. They're not actually guarantees.
Yeah. It's like you realize as you go on life, you're like, oh, the thing I'm seeking is actually a feeling. It doesn't necessarily have to be produced by outer conditions making that happen. It does help, though, if you have food, shelter, water, I guess, like some basics. It's like I think we all hope for more of that in the world.
But I yeah, I feel like I definitely could agree with you there. I don't know why, but I wrote this, I found this note in it, in an iPhone note thing. And it was something that I wrote in the couple of months just after filming herself. And I was like, I'm not even sure what home means in the physical sense anymore.
It's people, it's now, it's love, it's connection, it's whatever's best for your, I don't know, highest, most authentic, truest self. And eventually you land and then you land again. And then I wrote another note, which must have come from another moment, but I wrote like land value is not created by the land owner. It's created by the people around it and how they're in tandem with it.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Clare face while making 'Herself'?
Doing a yoga course in Bali with my film money. Exactly. I mean, come on. What a fucking privilege. But yeah, I don't know if that really answers anything, actually.
It answers so many things. Tell me a little bit for the people who might be aspiring to do something similar. Tell me a little bit about the nuts and bolts of it. You had this idea. You wanted to create it. You got a great team around you. You went and got people on board. You were suddenly going to be the person leading, being lead actor in the piece.
What happened in those three years in between? I guess it was the raising finance part.
Yeah, which most of the producer people were doing more than me. Because at that point, I had done the thing of getting funding from Screen Ireland for script development and stuff myself. But then it kind of was out of my hands, I guess. It's weird, but you have to be ready to... When you're saying your idea to people... About anything, actually, maybe.
I feel like there's this moment when an idea is ready to share. Like, don't share until you're absolutely really feeling strong. Like, you feel really like, yeah, this is the idea.
It's not that it has to be complete and totally fleshed out, but that, like, it's got this, I don't know, you've got this faith in it that even if that person, like, laughs in your face, you'll just be like, okay, yeah, no, I know you think that's crazy, but actually... Yeah, this is the thing on me. Like, I remember I was dating a guy at the time that I only thought of herself.
I think I only thought of it a few months before. And we were walking along the canal in Dublin. He's actually a really nice guy. It's nothing personal against him. But I just said the pitch of the film, you know, and this is back in 2014. So, my God, was it unbelievable then to conceptualize self-building? Like, people were really, like, not awake to this 10 years ago or 12 years ago.
So I just said this idea. He kind of was like, I mean, that'd be impossible. Like that could never happen. And I was like, I remember being like really gutted. There was also another moment about a year later where a teacher had taught me in a PLC course once or something. And I say this with absolute love and gratefulness in my heart. Like, he really shot me down.
But it was a great test of my faith in the idea. Yeah. So what happened was, like, I talked out the idea to him and said, like, yeah, I'm just trying to figure out how to get funding and how to do this, that and the other and all this kind of crap. And he just was like, well, I mean, you'll never make that film in Ireland.
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