You were listening to The Next Best Picture podcast, and this is Daniel Howard's interview with the Director for Retirement Plan, John Kelly. The

The Well, John, thank you so much. My name's Daniel. I'm from Next Best Picture. I am so thrilled to talk with you. I love retirement plan.

You know, I watched a lot of shorts this year, and yours is the only one that I've rewatched multiple times,

because there's just so much there. There's so much there. So I can't wait to dig in. So I appreciate your time this morning.

No, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

So what was Oscar nomination morning like?

We have to start with the congratulations for that. Were you watching the nominations or did you

try to like shut it out? Yeah, it's a weird thing, isn't it? I know previous years, I think

Screen Ireland, who funded our film, have arranged events where everyone gets

in a cinema together and watches it, which is like my worst nightmare. You know, because if you

don't get it, obviously, it's like you've brought all these people out and taken all their time.

And our crew was quite spread out. So, yeah, Zoom was really the only option. We didn't have

massively high hopes for it. It was a bit of an outsider film in a very strong year of animated

shorts, like the shortlist was incredible. And I think you probably know there's a few that were

just certainties to get in and then suddenly didn't.

But I know it's very unpredictable. This is a very long answer.

But yes, no, I think I was there with my wife and yeah, we had lovely little celebrations.

The LiveLine, which is the kind of national radio drive time show here in Ireland, rang.

And that's like got the biggest listenership.

It's kind of an institution here.

And that was actually ringing just after they announced.

So somehow they'd found my number.

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