Originally from Mullingar, Terry McMahon is an Irish director, producer, writer and actor, known for his roles in Batman Begins, and also the award winning Patrick's Day which Terry is a Producer-Writer-Director of. He is also the Writer-Director of the multi award winning Charlie Casanova. Here, fellow Mullingar man Niall Breslin delves into a Q&A with Terry..
Introduction from Niall Breslin
For many years the discussion around mental health in this country has been non-existent and muted at best. The very fact that we are now discussing this openly among each other is something that must be nurtured and promoted, and we should never allow ourselves to go back to that archaic mentality of not speaking about our emotional and mental well-being, never.
The discussion surrounding mental health is a highly provocative and subjective topic that affects everyone differently and hence everyone has their own unique opinions on the subject. If we are to normalise the conversation, we must allow people speak freely. Terry McMahon for as long as I know him has been an incredibly passionate, talented and emotionally intelligent man, who never shy’s away from wearing his heart on his shoulder. Paul Weller once said, never confuse anger and passion, and this applies profoundly to Terry. He directed and wrote the film “Patrick’s day” which deals with mental health with such sensitive accuracy resulting in many awards all around the world.
1. People often say creative brains can be a gift but also a curse as it can be tough to switch the mind off. What do you do to allow your mind to rest?
The real curse is an indifferent brain, or, worse still, a lonely mind. In order to funnel my own mental mayhem into something semi-manageable I swim. Every day. Pushing the body hard in water frees the muscles in preparation for that mayhem and it’s good for the libido too; which helps the mind; and soothes the soul.
2. You seem to be a man that encourages self-expression and the embracing of identity. Do you feel it’s important for a person’s mental and emotional wellbeing to refrain from repressing their identity?
The bombardment of bullshit from government leaders, cultural manipulators, marketing assholes and degenerate controllers telling us who the f@$k we need to be, what the f@$k we need to be and how the f@$k we need to be is relentless. Sometimes the manipulation is orchestrated and fuelled by malicious intent and other times it’s a sincere belief that they know what’s best for you but both are born out of the same need to control you.
Our insecure instinct is to generate a limited worldview, protect our newly created prejudice and employ reductionism to punish those who don’t conform to our notional ideology. Concepts like community can be sublime but when individualism generates suspicion then community becomes cancerous. Family too. A magnificent idea but too often family is used as a qualification for disempowerment.
As Dylan said, “Everybody wants you to be just like them; they say sing while you slave….” When does I love you become how dare you? When do embraces become chokeholds, kisses punches and once warm words spew projectile bile? Self-expression is not selfish, the controlling of self-expression in others is, yet the one’s most accused of being selfish are invariably those trying to express beyond the repression of their accusers.
On a person-to-person level and a familial level and a community level and a governmental level we Irish are world-class experts at dangerous delusions. Some claim it’s the consequence of colonialism, some suggest it’s the fallout of the famine, while others connect it to the manifestation of malignant shame but, for whatever f@$ked-up reason, we are an incomparably damaged people and our continued acquiescence in our own downfall is devastating.
Not only is it important for us to “refrain from repressing our identity”, it is a matter of absolute survival that we find a way of transcending our disturbed DNA. We need to fight for individualism, just like all our great artists, leaders and heroes have done. Only then can we build societies strong enough to protect communal humanity from the curse of the controlling class.
3. Paul Weller once said that people often confuse his anger with passion. I enjoy your social media interactions as you have a very passionate and humanistic approach to life. What do you feel are some of the key issues in society when it comes to the stigma surrounding mental health illness?
The first stigma is the damned definition. We have to interrogate who defines mental illness and for what agenda. I was recently flown to Sweden for the Driving Us Crazy festival and got to spend time with some of the world’s most magnificent mavericks on mental health. John Read, Mette Askov, Olga Runciman, Laura Delano and multiple others presented a perspective on mental illness that was more empowering than a hundred hospitals. They spoke at length about the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) which turns out to be as disturbing a piece of reading as anything Stephen King might conjure. And just as fantastical. By creating a f@$ked-up paradigm for a reductionist notion of “normal” we can justify attacking the dissenters and qualify dehumanising the acquiescent.
When the pharmaceutical industry is allowed pimp prostitute psychiatrists to pump their pills then we are all f@$ked. When the evaluation of complex human beings is limited to a few letters from the alphabet and a high dose of drugs then we are all f@$ked. When we facilitate the pharma industry hooking us on pills from the cradle to the grave then we are all f@$ked. No doubt there are some superb psychiatrists out there but there are too many dangerous hacks too; deadbeats coercing vulnerable people into a junkie life when all they wanted was help.
The often-noble attempt to normalise mental illness has caused some folks to equate it with having a broken bone but that’s bullshit. Fifty people can have the same bone broken in the same place and the same medical treatment will work to fully heal all fifty bones. Fifty people with mental illnesses may require fifty entirely different humanistic approaches. To reduce those fifty to a few letters from the alphabet and a lifetime on drugs is criminal. When normal society allows the definition of mental illness to do more damage to individuals than the illness itself then it is the society that is sick.
There are powerful members of that society implementing policies on a daily basis that cause untold damage to people’s lives. Is that not obscene insanity? Is that not psychotically damaging behavior? Or is it only the powerless that are forced into psychiatric imprisonment while the powerful are protected?
4. We all go through darker times in life. Have you any effective ways of dealing with the tougher days?
Muhammad Ali talked about “the dark lights” before he fought George Forman in Zaire. Ali suggested that because George had never been knocked down he’d have no idea how to deal with those dark lights. When we’re on our knees, which is too fucking often these days, perhaps we should concentrate on the fact that those darker times tried to kill us before and didn’t succeed. It’s important we realise that vulnerability is not a weakness. Not doing what needs to be done is where you get weak but once we embrace vulnerability as a kind of gift and do what needs to be done to get off that canvas we learn we are better fighters than we thought.
5. Have you any active wellness routines?
No.
6. I grew up in the same town as yourself, Mullingar, so I was beyond proud to witness the success and incredible power of “Patrick’s Day” a film you wrote and directed, which received high acclaim and many awards. It deals with the subject of mental health illness in a way that I have never seen in a film. Did you draw on personal experience when creating this amazing film?
I had all the small town hatred that any teenager would have for the place they grew up in so I didn’t realise at the time just how lucky I was to have had my formative years in a place where community was a natural and essential part of every day. For various reasons that are irrelevant now I was fifteen when I thumbed a lift to Dublin and, having been homeless for some time as a teenager, fear became a common part of each day. That was okay but, Jesus, I wasn’t ready for the loneliness, which hurt in ways I didn’t think physically possible.
Later, working as an orderly in a special needs hospital, I saw how wonderful some of the people were who worked with society’s most vulnerable. At the weekends, when the parents or guardians would visit, there was some real love in the room but that love cost the residents a high price. If any of them showed aspirations towards intimacy they were shut down as if their desire was an aberration of mental illness rather than a basic human need. Years later I was brought over to New York to work on a screenplay with director Robert Pejo and ‘Patrick’s Day’ became the combination of those experiences.
7. The film deals with the head in the sand subject matter of suicide. Our suicide rate is frighteningly high in Ireland. Do you feel our past, culture, traditions and our general inability to discuss emotions have contributed to this high rate of suicide?
It’s the paradox of the Irish. We’re a beautiful but bizarrely broken people. Our innate collective belief in decency has allowed a few indecent rats among us to exploit the nation. From the church to the government to the banks we have allowed the worst manifestations of our character almost destroy the best in us. The national narrative set in motion by these scum informs us that we are worthless pieces-of-shit whose only reason for living is to be exploited by them.
When religion is rape, democracy a con and money a noose around your neck then what the f@$k do we expect? To enforce the devastation of austerity while claiming to assist the nation’s vulnerable is a like repeatedly punching someone in the face with the right hand while insisting you are doing them some good by mopping the blood away with the left hand. The erosion of hard-fought-for rights and the dehumanisation of entire sections of society is an explosive facilitator in mental illness. Poverty kills. It may not be lethal immediately but the long-term damage is irrefutable. Loneliness is the most common cancer out there, and probably kills more people than anything else, but, the problem is, many of these poor people are only dead inside; their body is still moving about, buying shit, eating shit, consuming shit. Historically we are an incredible people but the fallacy of the spiritual, political and financial constructs of this country make you wonder if change is possible. Yet, there are incredible people doing magnificent things every damn day.
Artists, musicians, nurses, doctors, midwives, athletes, therapists, lay people, scientists, students – the list will go on forever. Anybody who puts everything on the line because of a belief in something better is the essence of the beautiful Irish. Looking outward beyond our own fear or ego towards another sentient human being is where true alchemy begins and where we get in touch with the best parts of us. If we focus on the pragmatic application of that alchemy we might just thrive as a nation. In order to achieve that, there will have to be a clean and accountable sweep of our toxic systems. But it is possible. We are strong in numbers.
8. How do you feel we could help change attitudes towards mental health illness in this country?
We can start by further clarifying the umbrella definition to include the sociopaths we celebrate. A young man or woman tells the truth about hearing voices and they are pumped with drugs until both their individualism and their voices are silenced. A politician lies about the state of our nation and they are given every media platform to spew their propaganda. A man or woman who feels so emotionally, psychologically and physically vulnerable that they fear they are incapable of living another day calls a helpline only to discover funding cuts has resulted in the closure of that service. They are deemed to be the sick ones while the folks on expense accounts who forced the closure of the service in the first place are interviewed on the six o’clock news like they are people of greater substance and value?
Paying lip service to mental health awareness while aggressively cutting support is obscene hypocrisy. Our government’s policies towards all disenfranchised groups is already disturbing enough but it’s heartbreaking to know that there are people who felt so incapable of living with the imposed ugliness of austerity that they feel self inflicted death is the only alternative. To deny austerity’s legacy of paralysing poverty, neutered education, limited health services, crisis in housing and overall destabilisation of family and community is the ultimate f@$king lie.
To be afraid of being alone is normal. To be vulnerable to the point of hurting is normal. To yearn for help but be frightened to ask is normal. To fear losing your sense of self or losing your mind is f@$king normal. To generate fear for exploitation is not normal. To cut resources which saves lives is not normal. To rearrange history in order to propagate fallacy is not normal. To rob people of their self-respect and decimate their belief in the future is not normal. So you tell me. Who are the f@$king sick ones again?
9. I get so much solace and comfort from music and sport. It allows me better deal with difficult patches in life. Do you find writing offers you that same comfort, or does the creative process stress you out at times?
I hate writing the way a body hates a lover you can’t get enough of. The addiction hurts like hell but the yearning is heaven. I went to the Vocational School in Mullingar and it was a great school with superb teachers – including a wonderful English teacher by the name of O’Brien – but I was too busy being an asshole to absorb anything and I didn’t stay long enough for anything to stick. I don’t know what the f@$k a pronoun is or an adjective or any of the most basic grammatical prerequisites to constructing an acceptable sentence. Yet that lack of knowledge allows me to f@$k with language in the way that only a rank amateur can get away with. There is no birthright or sense of entitlement. A lucky swing from a chump can fell a champ. That lack of professional or academic grounding used to haunt me but having spent some time with occasionally jaded academics I realised writing is forever fresh to me. I’m always the curious virgin in the whorehouse and, as Einstein said, “Curiosity is its own reward.”
10. What is your next project?
I want to make ‘The Dancehall Bitch’ as the third film in a trilogy examining our national narrative. ‘Charlie Casanova’ was a dark satire about a self-appointed controlling class asshole who knocks down a working class girl with impunity then decides to push everything to see just how much he can get away with. An obvious metaphor for our current regime it won awards and all that and was picked up for distribution by Studio Canal but, on its cinema release, it was attacked in an unprecedented manner and I was depicted as a madman in the media. A bizarre place to be but it was an interesting experience. ‘Patrick’s Day’ was a broken love story about the systematic dehumanisation of a young mentally ill man who yearns for intimacy. Rave reviews and multiple awards made that ride a little easier but you can’t trust plaudits either and I happily stand by both films. ‘The Dancehall Bitch’ is a psychological prison drama about a dominant male who deconstructs a subservient male then psychologically, emotionally and – as close as possible – physically reconstructs him as an acquiescent female. It’s about the consequence of rape culture and the protection of a reductionist and violently masculine view of women. The Film Board read it and wondered why, after the success of ‘Patrick’s Day’, I would want to even think of making such a film but you have to go where the gut guides you. I’m also working on a modern adaptation of ‘Salome’ and redrafting a gross out romantic comedy with heart and balls called ‘Oliver Twisted.’
And, amidst all the bullshit with banks and bills, I’m trying to stay f@$king sane.
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