Screenworks are going into production this week for a series of Christmas links for RTEjr and TRTE. The links will air over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and on St. Stephens Day - and feature many of the RTE Young Peoples presenters along with a new face.
This is the new little fella - we call him Grubble (always in Trouble) - and he was designed by Screenworks own Enda O'Connor - Watch out for him on your TV over the Christmas period.
Very Extremely Dangerous
Paul Duane's Irish Film Board supported feature length documentary is in the final stages of post production
Jerry McGill spurned a rock’n’roll career for a life of crime, robbing banks & running from the FBI, while touring with legends of country music & appearing in movies. After three jail sentences, aged 70 & suffering from terminal cancer, he announced his return to recording. I followed a heavily armed McGill and his longsuffering fiance Joyce thru four states as he stole whatever’s not nailed down & charmed his way into & out of trouble.
But when you point a camera at a man who will do anything for notoriety, how responsible are you when he goes too far?
PAUL DUANE SAYS:
This is very much a first-person documentary. I’d only read about McGill in books and seen him in Stranded in Canton when he contacted me early in 2010. He wanted to get back in contact with his old Memphis companions, something I was ideally placed to do through my work with author/filmmaker Robert Gordon, and I had some long phone conversations with Jerry (some of which I recorded), from which this film eventually grew.
The helter-skelter way things got started (an email saying, basically, “Jerry’s just discovered he’s got cancer, he’s going to Memphis next week and wants you to meet him there”) led to a style of filming that puts me in the centre of the action, participating, not off to one side, observing. There are also some slightly eccentric elements, for instance Jerry's girlfriend Joyce’s desire to remain off-camera while her voice and conversations with Jerry continue. These add to the film's uniquely ad-hoc feel.
This is in one way the story of an Irish filmmaker fascinated with the South who is suddenly dragged into close involvement with a man who symbolises everything both good and bad in the clichés of Southernness, a man whose racial insensitivity can be shocking but who is obsessed with and knowledgable about black music and culture, a Confederate flag-wearing self-described “Yankee killer”, a beer-drinking, moonshine-drinking, pill-popping wild man of rock’n’roll whose adherence to his own myth has finally (almost) killed him.
The story arc has a momentum all of its own, from the excitement of McGill’s initial return to Memphis to his final heedless race to the casino at Tunica. I was along for the ride, and realised towards the end of the filming process that myself and my producer were just the latest in a long line of temporary companions who had joined McGill for part of his demented journey. I feel privileged to have filmed it but it was heavy going at times, dealing with the constant craziness. That gonzo energy comes across in the rushes and our challenge when assembling the material into a feature was to harness the energy but also to tell a clear and distinct story. Our ambition was for this to be about, not just the USA and Europe, but also the parasitic nature of film, the symbiotic bond between the born performer and the viewer, and the way that con artists tell you the truth even while they’re stealing your possessions.
Visually, it speaks for itself. The camera examines Jerry's face in extreme close-up as he goes from macho swagger to tearful remorse, and we follow him over the course of a few months change from a penitent cancer sufferer to a bombastic outlaw, and further – and then into unexpectedly moving territory, underlining the unknowable nature of the human soul.
Our 4x52 drama series, Amber which is directed by IFTA winning Thaddeus O’Sullivan (Single-Handed, Into the Storm, Stella Days), was shot on location in suburban Dublin from late August 2011. It stars Eva Birthistle (Walking the Dead, Glenroe) and David Murray (Zonad, Raw) as the parents of missing 14-year old girl ‘Amber’. Director of Photography was IFTA nominated Peter Robinson (West is West, Inside I’m Dancing) and it was filmed on Red.
‘Amber’ was co-written by Gary Duggan and Screenworks own Rob Cawley, who produces alongside Paul Duane (Barbaric Genius, Director: The Royal, Casualty) of Screenworks, the Dublin based production company behind the series. The series received funding from the BAI Sound and Vision Fund. Further details will be announced closer to its scheduled TX in Spring 2012. For more details about AMBER - go here.
1hr 12min - Rated 15 - Documentary - English
Director: Paul Duane - Cast: John Healy
Paul Duane's documentary will screen in The Filmhouse in Edinburgh this weekend.
The story of John Healy, who went from street wino to world-class chess player to award-winning author and then disappeared from view. An extraordinary man's remarkable life, a struggle against himself and society, a story of violence, art and possible redemption.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Paul Duane.
Press for Barbaric Genius AKA ‘John Healy – You Have Been Warned’ (tv version)
“Paul Duane’s superb, deeply moving documentary… five stars.”
(Evening Herald 12 January)
“A remarkable story, an absorbing film – I never read The Grass Arena (though I shall now), but clearly the man is some kind of genius.”
(Irisn Independent, 15 January)
“Quietly powerful…Paul Duane’s patient, revealing documentary captured the dislocation of being second-generation Irish in London and the ravages of alcoholism and gave an insight into the creativity and intelligence of a most enigmatic man.”
(Irish Times, 15 January)
TV Pick of the Week in Sunday Times and Metro Herald.
“Bloody Hell. That’s quite a documentary… from about two minutes in I was glued to it. I guess when you pick such a fascinating person to make a documentary on you are most of the way there.”
(Film Ireland Online, full review at http://www.filmireland.net/2011/02/19/john-healy-barbaric-genius-at-jdiff/)