You know, after over 20 years in this business you become pretty much immune to rejection. You go for parts in stuff that, when you see it turns out to be awful you just shrug it off. You apply for funding for something really important to the development of Irish talent and get your one-paragraph letter of dismissal and you just chuck it in the fire. You do everything you can to offer interesting things to those funding bodies that control these lakes of cash, and yet today something a little different really got to me. Over four years ago Company D Theatre produced Skinners, Michael F Kennedys play about clerical child abuse in Irelands Industrial School system. It was very brave and risky and 6 amazing kids played out the first ever stage play in Ireland dealing with the issue. Since then I have been writing the screenplay biopic of Michaels extraordinary life, from a number in a prison at the age of two to the dresser of some of the twentieth centurys finest actors including the late Peter Otoole. This screenplay has travelled to Austria and Germany and been pondered and pored over by the finest minds of European cinema. Seven incredible drafts later, it is a mighty entity. Surely, if anything, this is the story that Ireland needs to hear, that it still has sons who struggle and win, who never give up, who hope and dream and look at the stars and get there despite the worst possible beginnings, the worst injustice stacked against them and the worst of men standing in their way. And yet today the Irish Film Board one-paragraph letter arrived through that awful slit in the door to tell me it aint worth their time even to consider for development. Even the thickest skin has to feel the stab of that one. But like Michael himself, there is no impossible. The sun will rise tomorrow and this script will still live. It only dies if it dies in our minds. And that will never happen. My own great teachers voice always rings in my ears at these moment. Stop expecting people to understand. They never will because they dont want to. You are never going to be more important to important people than important peoples chums. and my favorite, Never become a waiter. Wait for nothing. Theres much to be done.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 20:05:38 +0000
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