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Young Irish star of 'Sing Street' looks forward, while director looks back

"Sing Street" runs two ways.

For Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, the star of the new movie musical about a plucky Irish teenager who starts a band, the film is just the first step in what the 16-year-old newcomer hopes will be a long career.

"I've definitely been bitten by the bug," says the young actor, singer and musician, who is taking advantage of his school's "transition year" - independent study before the completion of secondary school - to participate in the movie's press tour as he contemplates his future. (Walsh-Peelo spoke by phone from Los Angeles, along with the film's director, John Carney.)

For Carney, however, the movie was a first of a very different sort. Although the 44-year-old filmmaker has made a name for himself as the writer and director of films centered around music ("Once," "Begin Again"), "Sing Street" was the first time he has worked with children.

He swears he'll never do it again.

"I don't think competition is good for children," says Carney, who made hundreds of Irish teens, including Walsh-Peelo, wait in line for hours to audition. "There's only so much you can say when you're sending a kid away empty-handed: 'Oh, we had these very specific parameters of what we wanted. Unfortunately, you're not the right age' or 'Your hair was the wrong color.' It's just a disappointment for kids, full stop."

That said, the director calls the casting of Walsh-Peelo - a multi-instrumentalist who comes from a musical family of six in County Wicklow and who toured with Ireland's Opera Theatre Company as a boy soprano - a no-brainer. "He just has super confidence," Carney says.

The choice of Walsh-Peelo, says Carney, helped steer the tone of the film, set in 1985 in a tough public school on Dublin's Synge Street, away from the gritty, almost documentary feel of "Once." "Sing Street" is closer to the esprit of a music video, he says, and ends with an elaborately escapist fantasy sequence.

"It's like 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off,'" the director says. "When you cast someone like Ferdia in that kind of role, you're not going to make social realism or cinema verite. People are not going to believe it."

The roots of the film are semi-autobiographical, inspired by Carney's memories of discovering the power of music - and music videos - as a teenager in his native Dublin. A bass player, he got his start as a director by shooting videos for his former band, the Frames. His passion for melding music and cinema shows in his most recent films, each of which uses song to advance the story.

"It's incredible how much a piece of music or a song can move drama forward, or slow it down," he says. "Even in life, like when you're at the end of a huge argument, and neither of you can find the word to describe how you feel, and the argument just keeps going. Then a song comes on the radio, and the argument is suddenly over. Words would be an offense - or useless - in a sense. That can happen in drama. Music can score your life."

Walsh-Peelo agrees, calling his own nascent songwriting a form of therapy. He has surprisingly mature and eclectic musical tastes for one so young: Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake and the Beatles are in his music library - on vinyl, no less - along with MP3s by the neo-soul singer D'Angelo and the retro-roots bandleader Pokey LaFarge.

"I was just listening to what was around the house," says Walsh-Peelo, who credits his mother, a professional singer and music teacher, with inspiring him and his three siblings to pursue music. Oldest brother Tadhg is a session musician; Oisin is studying composition at college; and younger sister Siofradh plays the violin.

Walsh-Peelo says his close relationship with his siblings informed his performance in "Sing Street," which spotlights the special bond between Walsh-Peelo's character, Conor, and his older brother Brendan (Jack Reynor), a mentor in matters both romantic and musical. "No woman can truly love a man who listens to Phil Collins," Brendan tells his baby bro, who has become smitten with a slightly older girl (Lucy Boynton) who is dating a Genesis fan.

The film is dedicated to "brothers everywhere," as a tribute to Carney's late older brother, Jim, about whom the director prefers to maintain some privacy. "I don't want to go into that," he says when asked about their relationship. "I think it's inappropriate to use people in your family in those conversations." What he will say is that the dedication alludes to "the siblings in one's life - older or younger - who give you permission to find out who you are, and to help you on that journey."

That theme is a recurring one in Carney's last three films, each of which revolves around beginnings - of relationships, of careers. It's underscored by casting newbies like Walsh-Peelo and the couple at the center of "Once." (Of that film's Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, only Hansard, Carney's old bandmate from the Frames, had ever acted, in "The Commitments.")

Carney says that, in some ways, he regrets his brief flirtation with Hollywood for "Begin Again," which starred Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo (along with the screen novice Adam Levine of the band Maroon 5 and TV's "The Voice").

"After the experience of working with (Keira), I really wanted to get away from the sort of movie-star thing and go back to working with nonactors and amateurs. Keira was - I'm trying to see how I can put it diplomatically - a little bit jaded," he says.

There's little of that in "Sing Street," which celebrates the optimism of youth.

"There is a certain realism that descends as the curtain comes down on life," Carney says. "Sing Street" is his attempt to recapture what he calls the "truth" of that youthful feeling. As for his own plans, Carney insists he has none. He's open for any offers, including a musical biopic - a popular trend - "if the right way of telling a story comes along."

His cinematic alter-ego is similarly up for whatever may come. "I have to keep telling myself I can do whatever I want," says Walsh-Peelo. "I'm only 16."

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