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On A Clear Day
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  On A Clear Day Production NotesTagline: All or nothing. Now or never. Sink or swim. This spring, dive head first into life.
Frank determines to salvage his self-esteem and tackle his demons by attempting the ultimate test of endurance - swimming the English Channel.
When you aspire to something extraordinary, you can find the hero within.
On a Clear Day is an inspirational drama with humor, about forgiveness and fortitude, from an exciting new voice in filmmaking. Filmed on location in Glasgow, the Isle of Man, and Dover, the film centers on Frank Redmond (Peter Mullan). After decades of laboring as a Glasgow shipbuilder, this no-nonsense 55-year-old working-class man suddenly finds himself laid off.
For the first time in his life, Frank is without a job or a sense of direction, and is too proud to ask for guidance. His best mates – rascally Danny (Billy Boyd), timid Norman (Ron Cook), and cynical Eddie (Sean McGinley) – are there for him, but Frank still feels desperately alone.
An offhand remark from Danny inspires Frank to challenge himself. Already contemplating the state of his relationships with loving wife Joan (two-time Academy Award nominee Brenda Blethyn) and all-but-estranged son Rob (Jamie Sives), Frank is determined to shore up his own self-confidence.
He will attempt the near-impossible – swimming the English Channel. As Frank plunges headlong into his new daily life, his astonished friends are swept along with him. Prodded by stalwart fish-and-chips shop owner Chan (Benedict Wong), the men support Frank, train him – and keep their goal secret from his wife and son.
Frank is unable to confide in those closest to him, but as the big day and moment of truth draw near, there is a sea change. Frank’s family confronts him, and he realizes that he must repair his strained family ties. As Frank and those closest to him discover – or re-discover – reserves of love and compassion, he realizes that he is also swimming from one part of his life to another.
About the Production: Taking the Plunge
Director Gaby Dellal recalls that she first heard about On a Clear Day when “my agent called me and said, ‘There’s this script about a man who swims the English Channel –’ I said, ‘Next! Pass!’ But he insisted. So I read the script and by the end, I was in tears. It was a beautiful story, one that I fell in love with.”
She soon met with screenwriter Alex Rose, and the two of them began an 18-month collaboration, moving the project forward with the full support of producers Sarah Curtis and Dorothy Berwin. As the latter reflects, “The filmmaking process is by nature collaborative. We worked and worked on the script until it was ready to send out for casting and financing.”
Rose adds, “You can’t write for film in isolation, and the development process was vitally important to take the script from its initial stages to its shooting stages. It’s easy to argue for a scene to stay the way it was first written just because it works. But Gaby pushed and prodded me and I’m indebted to her for it. She prompted me to find answers for things and, in finding those answers, to make the script stronger.”
Dellal elaborates, “On the surface, On a Clear Day is about a man who is ‘made redundant’ due to the scaling-down of his shipyard in Glasgow; his selfrespect and self-esteem are hit hard, and he has to build himself back up again – which he determines to do by, against the odds, swimming the English Channel.
“Yet it’s really about a man who lost a son 25 years ago, and who has shut down completely and incarcerated himself in his work. When that work is taken away from him, he must face up to those feelings he never dealt with decades earlier.”
Rose remarks, “The story slowly crept up on me and came together. I feel it started with my son. Because, when he was 4 years old, I’d drop him off at the school gate and he’d let me kiss him goodbye; now that he’s 7, he makes faces and squirms away. That hurt me – it was an element of loss, and it got me wondering how I’m going to feel when my son is 16 or 17 and I’m lucky if he says, ‘Right, see ya!’ From there, I got to thinking what it would be like to truly lose a child. I imagined a man who’s torn apart by a dual loss; one child has died and while another child is alive, he doesn’t speak to the surviving twin and can’t get along with him.”
“It’s quite an emotional story,” says Dellal. “I used to lean on Alex to make sure that nothing was too schmaltzy… “From my first reading of the script, Peter Mullan was the man I imagined straight away to play Frank.”
Curtis concurs, “We never considered anyone else for the part. Like everybody, I am an admirer of Peter’s work – especially in Ken Loach’s My Name is Joe – and I knew he would bring enormous truth and compassion to the role. But I also knew that Peter was off directing as well as acting these days, and couldn’t think how we would get him. Finally, Gaby wrote him a simple letter, enclosing the screenplay and saying ‘If you don’t respond to this script, I’m going to kill myself.’ He called within two days’ time and asked us to meet him in Glasgow.”
Mullan offers, “What I loved about it when I read Alex’s script, and what attracted me instantly, was the opportunity to look into an area of masculinity where everything is so internalized. The script was also a hair’s breadth from toppling over into sentimentality. I think Gaby did a very good job in terms of casting, because there was no one among us who would sentimentalize true human emotions and no one who would try to ingratiate themselves instead of trying to explore.”
“Peter goes exactly against sentiment every time,” confirms Dellal. “If it indicates, in a script, that a man might cry, he won’t do it. Instead, he’ll surprise you. He’ll only give you what’s good and true; you can’t push him in any other direction.”
The actor adds, “To me, On a Clear Day is not a ‘heartwarming tale’; it goes deeper than that. It’s not simple triumph-in-the-face-of-adversity stuff; hopefully, it’s something more poignant. It’s about something I deeply believe in, which is the meeting of human souls and the evolutionary need, if you like, to support one another in some shape or form. It’s also as far as you can get from the whole neo-conservative concept that you must look after Number One, because that, to me, is anti-civilization and anti-human, really.
“In terms of its narrative, the film is quite old-fashioned. To me, it recalls early 1960s English films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, and Billy Liar. Those are films that had a big impact on me. In On a Clear Day, Frank chooses to do the most singularly difficult thing he can possibly think of – to find out whether he’s actually worth something.“
“On a Clear Day is that rare film where men are as moved as women by the relationships and the story,” adds Berwin.
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