A life-size replica…
Twice, I tripped as I walked up the gloriously appointed steps of the Lighthouse. My mind and body confused, seperate. Everything akimbo.
Then I caught my reflection in a glass building as I cycled past. I swear blind my reflected self was cycling faster than my real self. Bizarre.
As I cycled on I saw a couple jog past. Literally seconds later the same couple jogged past in the exact same direction as before. How? I do not know.
The world seemed disjointed.
I guess that’s just what happens when you go and see Synecdoche, New York.
It’s just the way of the streets…
Having read Rosie’s short and sweet review, I went to see the Irish movie Kisses last night at the stunning Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield. It’s flawed, sure, and not strikingly original but that said it’s a fine, tender movie. Well worth a tenner of your hard earned.
Written and directed by Lance Daly, Kisses tells a Dublin story in a real, true to life way and it’s rare enough we see such on our big screens. It’s not twee or patronising and for that, and more besides, it must be commended. Here comes the pigeonholing… Prosperity meets Pavee Lackeen meets Les Amants du Pont-Neuf meets Somers Town. All on the mean streets and canals of Dublin, carefully told with the right accent.
When I got home I stumbled upon a new Louis Theroux documentary on BBC2. Called Law and Disorder in Philadelphia, it’s a really fine, engaging doc. Theroux joins the Philadelphia Police Department patrolling the most dangerous neighbourhoods of one of the most violent cities in America. Ross Kemp on Gangs it isn’t. Thankfully.
As he takes to the violent, crack infested streets, with Philadelphia’s rapid response team, Theroux is way out of his usual quirky comfort zone. Yet it really works. His trips in the backs of squad cars took him from addict to dealer to killer to corpse. The level of access was amazing and the insight given frightening. There were no holds barred as Theroux spoke to cops and killers in equal measure, resplendent in his stab vest.
Theroux has a way of getting people to trust him, confide in him and engage with him. Even when standing beside a recently deceased, freshly OD’ed junkie. A shocking yet compelling portrait of a city where drug dealers work on every corner. In “Killadelphia” homicide and thug life are “just the way of the streets”.
By its very nature America is a very fragmented country but this doc shone new light, for me at least, on how broken urban America actually is. Broken in a way that no-one, Barack Obama included, will ever fix or even finetune. The American dream has a dark underbelly and a lack of faith in the police and “the system” itself mean neighbourhoods, black ones in particular, won’t be in any state other than disarray for a long time yet.
And it set me to thinking of how good we have it here in Ireland, in relative terms. Of course we have our societal ills along similar lines. And the film Kisses details much of those ills in a realistic, gritty way. Heroin problems and homelessness are there for all to see in inner city Dublin. And of course our papers have headlines blazing about Gang Wars etc. But we’re nowhere near the shocking implosion seen in Theroux’s Philadelphia doc.
Here, there’s much less a gap between government and people. Our institutions seem closer to those on the ground. Our welfare system does have its merits. And our police don’t carry guns. It all just seems more normal and stable. Not quite dreamland but it could be a whole lot worse.
One final thought… Philadelphia’s junkies seem so polite, eloquent and engaging in comparison to their monosyllabic, monotonous, skaggish Dublin cousins. Why is that I wonder?
Life is what happens in between…
Ne’er a truer word spoken.
Life is what happens in between is the tagline from Intermission, a movie I was watching last night on RTÉ. It’s a fine movie, one of my all-time favourites, Irish or otherwise. It started at 21:35, and at 23:00, RTÉ cut in to the broadcast with a pre-planned news break. A 25 minute news break. Pure madness. Who decides that that’s a good decision scheduling-wise? It’s ridiculous. If the scriptwriter wanted a news programme rammed into his narrative he would’ve written it in. This process of interrupting films is disrespectful to filmmakers and shows a real lack of understanding of what audiences want. Surely there’s a better way of scheduling the late news broadcast around the movie without resorting to such measures?
Colin Farrell shows his annoyance at RTE's scheduling decisions
Does cream always rise? Does crime always pay?
Waiting for Godot
An article in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday caught my attention and set me thinking. The piece spoke of how London’s famed West End has been bitten by the Hollywood bug, ie, screen-to-stage adaptations are rampant. The crux is that writers fear new plays are being denied an audience as theatre-goers lap up silver screen re-enactments in place of new projects. It is stated that Hollywood has grown to dominate the serious West End theatre. And I guess this has merit but I wonder is this development such a new threat and if so is it such a bad thing?
Cinema and theatre are no stranger to one another. Transporting plays from stage to screen has long been a guaranteed formula for box office success. Now Britain’s beleaguered theatres are reversing the process – turning to adaptations of well-known films to bring audiences into the theatre. Examples given are Glengarry Glen Ross, 12 Angry Men, The Crucible, The Graduate etc etc. All fine narratives indeed. But if these re-drafted scripts weren’t picked by theatre producers would it mean new material would play at big theatres instead? I wonder. Theatre bosses want full theatres, and re-running classic plays is more of a banker than experimenting with new material. Shakespeare lives on as does Andrew Lloyd Webber. But just look at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. The Weir and Waiting for Godot are regularly re-visited. No harm in that but newer material by untested local writers rarely gets a look-in. That is why events such as the Fringe festival here are crucial to fostering new writing and theatrical talent. I firmly believe that grassroots, localised theatre needn’t fear these developments in the West End. Money talks there. Passion moreso at the lower levels.
On another note, there’s much skill and technique needed to bring a screenplay to the stage. Technical crafts are essential along with the standard arts of directing, (re-)writing, and acting so theatre is not necessarily dying at the hands of Hollywood. And what works on screen will very often not work on stage so it’s not as easy as it seems to just re-enact a tried and tested Hollywood narrative.
Maybe writers fear that what has happened to indigenous cinema will affect them. Just one look at the bill of fare at your local multi-plex is a very good place to start. Here in Ireland at present there is only one Irish-made feature showing on Irish screens (the very fine documentary Saviours). It’s becoming increasingly harder to get distribution for low budget, Irish-made movies. The situation in the UK is sklightly better but not hugely. Cinema owners want bums on seats with popcorn in hands. So for every Saviours there are a hundred Tropic Thunders. And maybe that similar fear is what is guiding theatre bosses and producers.
Another analogy that springs to mind is football related. With the influx of “foreign” investment into the Premier League, clubs have been outlaying massive amounts of cash on non-English, star players. In fact, this has been happening for years but when England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland all failed to qualify for Euro 2008 every hack and half-bit analyst wheeled out the cliché that the influx of Johnny Foreigner had damaged the game beyond repair. Blame apportioned but is it rightfully so? I doubt it. I firmly believe cream rises. Talent will out. Theo Walcott is an example of that. If the talent doesn’t exist it won’t. Spain, whose La Liga also experienced a similar influx as England, don’t seem to be having any trouble with home-grown talent. So much so that they won that very tournament for which “the home nations” failed to qualify.
So the same thing is now being touted about theatre. I’m surprised there aren’t the usual mis-placed, xenophobic complaints about American plays coming to the West End “taking our jobs and our girls” etc. But I firmly believe that if the writing is good enough it will rise to the top. May take a hell of an effort from the originators to get it there but everything worthy is, of course, worth the effort.
Link before you think…
The silent movie makes a comeback - A really well written article by Fintan O’Toole.
Why are beach-volleyball players always patting each other on the bum? – Slate
Green-Clad Olympic Archer Steals Gold Medals From Rich, Gives Them To Poor - The Onion
Irish band The Script knock Abba off the top of the UK album chart - BBC
Happiness brings up to 10 years longer life – RTÉ
A late addition:
Great article from the Independent on Sunday about Padraig Harrington. Under-appreciated, under-valued, under-rated.
