Image: Loosehorse productions Image: Loosehorse productions BOBBY COOTE WAS a man with a simple mission: he wanted to fly, and in a new film coming out next week, that’s exactly what the 80-something bachelor farmer from Co Cavan did.
There was an elderly man with a baseball cap standing outside, a white car behind him. “Was that you up there in the sky?” he began. “I want to do that.” It started a five-and-a-half year process of filming and editing The Man Who Wanted to Fly. Shouldice and Perry followed the journey of Bobby and Ernie, along with their neighbours, family and community as the older Cavan native went about fulfilling his flying ambition.“We got to know them, they got to know us,” says Shouldice of the Cavan community where the story takes place. Bobby has a dream to fly, but it’s much more than that.
He says a lot of goodwill was shown to Bobby, and as an extension the filmmakers, even during the slow periods when it seemed Bobby’s plans might not work out.