Lance Daly says he likes to use a certain surreality as the best way to tell his stories. As in a kind of alternative reality. It doesn't have to be a real world like our world, it just has to be a coherent world within which what happens in the film makes sense. Then the characters and the plot and all can fit into place. You can make people laugh, and make people cry, as long as you convince them of the film's own strange logic.

Daly came up with the idea for The Halo Effect, or at least a film set in the murky world of the late night take-away, when he was working "in the industry, well the fast food industry … running around by night delivering all kinds of stuff, and trying to finish my last film during the day." He was having such a strange time he decided to base his next film around a chippers, and started paying plenty of attention to what was going on around him. He watched, and learned, and then went home and wrote it all down.

So he had a script, and his old crew from Last Days in Dublin, his moderately successful micro budget first film, but it was still far from certain they would be able to put the film together. Then a "total fluke". Producer John Kelleher ran into Stephen Rea at the airport and gave him a copy of the script to read on the plane.

A few days later Daly came back from lunch and there was a message on his answering machine. It was Rea: "We put it on speakerphone and Stephen came on going [Daly puts on gruff, faltering voice] 'Hallo, I read the script.' And we were like going, oh he doesn't like it, listen to him he sounds really bored by the whole thing, but then when we listened to what he was actually saying he was really into it. He was just being his usual enigmatic self and not giving anything away." A few days later Rea was signed up, a few more things had come together and the lads had their 1m budget in place. The Halo Effect was go.

Fast forward a year or so and they have rented a building on Dorset Street in Dublin's north inner city, and turned the bottom floor into Fatso's Takeaway. As well as Stephen Rae as Fatso [yes, he's still skinny, it was called that when he bought the business], they had a fantastic cast including Simon Delaney, Kerry Condon, Gerard McSorley, Mick Lally and Fiona O'Shaughnessy. They were filming mostly at night, right out on the street, and things occasionally took a surreal turn.

"Shooting on Dorset St. was very tough. Kindof took our life in our own hands. We were robbed, the crew were beaten up, we got threatened, pretty much everything in five weeks that could have happened happened you know? One night some lads came round the back of the building and poured all the petrol that we had for the delivery bikes around and set it on fire. We had a week's rubbish out there and it was getting pretty serious. Richie, our grip, grabbed a fire extinguisher and put it out. We had leased the whole building without any insurance and we couldn't really afford for it to burn down. We got it on camera, I was just watching it this morning actually, it should go on the DVD."

Even when people weren't consciously trying to fuck them up, there were problems. "At two in the morning on Dorset St the passers by just can't see what's in front of them. So we had this giant take away sign, and no matter how many security men we had drunk people just managed to wander in in the middle of filming a scene. They wouldn't even see the camera. You'd say eh this is a film, and still you'd have to chase people out cause all they wanted was chips."

While I think this is a funny story, it seems a mental way of making a film. But it worked, cause The Halo Effect is out in the cinema on Friday. Rae's character is it's centre. He is a kind of reluctant nice guy, surrounded by all these losers and ne'er do wells. There's a gambling priest [Lally], a loudmouth delivery guy who calls himself Rock Steady Eddie [Delaney], some random tough guy debt collectors [John Kavanagh and McSorley], and a filthy miserly scrap merchant [Wilie Higgins]. The only help he gets is from slumming photography student Jean [Condon] who serves up the batter burgers and chips, and the other delivery boy, quiet, introverted Mick [Grattan Smith] who is the plain chalk to Eddie's cheesy mouthing off.

Fatso is a compulsive gambler, it's cost him his family, but despite his mounting problems he can't help helping others. Like making a habit of flipping burgers onto the ground so the homeless couple who live outside have something to eat. Or vouching for Fr. Mackenzie's debts when he really shouldn't. Plenty happens, but nothing happens too quickly. Fatso slips further into the mire, Eddie ends up in hospital, Mick gets to have sex with Fiona O'Shaughnessy. An ambulance is needed with appalling regularity. The surreal moments are the highlights, like when a dwarf falls on Rock Steady Eddie's head while he's having a bit of a free for all with some young fellas who disrespect his car. Even if things get a bit too much toward the end. Rea is excellent, as are most of the cast. Delaney is very, very funny. It's no Adam and Paul, but it's a decent Irish film.

Daly did Communications Studies in DCU. By his own admission he "didn't kill himself", wasn't involved in the Media Production or Film societies, and ended up graduating near the bottom of his class: "You can't fail Communications Studies". He did enjoy some of the theoretical courses, semiotics and film studies and the like, but didn't really learn that much. He did the photography option, not video production. When he graduated he applied to various Film Board and Film Base schemes, got shortlisted for a grant, and went into talk to them but nothing came of it.

Still he wanted to make a film so he scraped together the 10 grand or so he needed and got it made over a few years. Last Days in Dublin got mixed reviews. Then while he was finishing it off he put the script together for The Halo Effect and nothing was really finalised until the producer met Stephen Rae in the airport and a few months later there were drunk people wandering on to their set on Dorset St. and another few months later The Halo Effect was the closing film in the Dublin International Film Festival.

So, it's a bit of a surreal story really. But fair dues to Lance, his film's in the cinema, and all is good in his world. The Halo Effect goes on nationwide release tomorrow, Friday 19th November 2004.

Previously published on oxygen.ie