Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

(Busy week! Here's a little thing I wrote in praise of one of my favorite movies... new post tomorrow.)

Although this movie is included on my mental list of much-liked movies, I had never actually seen it - until today.

I had seen a goodly-section of it, on FilmFour one night, and had liked it a lot. So I taped it on a subsequent evening and put it with the sizable pile of things I have to watch.

So, today, left to my own devices, I knew this was the one I wanted to watch.

As people who know me will know, I can't do a 'Top Ten Movie' thing 'cos there are too many movies and not enough digits. But, man, whatever that Top Ten might be, this film has gone straight into it.

I'm not going to do the 'review' thing on it. I just completely loved it from start to finish.

If you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend you do and if you have well... did you like it like I did or am I just in some silly groove today?

Write Back, guys, let me know.

Lights, Camera…

Down through the years I’ve been lucky enough to have quite a number of my plays produced for Radio and Theatre and that, I can tell, you is an enormously satisfying thing.

But the overriding dream, ever since I was a nipper, has been the Movies.

Oh yes, the Movies.

Failing getting to play James Bond (I know... I know...), my dream has always been to be able to write movies and then get to see them flicker up on the big screen. In pursuit of this dream, I’ve studied the subject quite attentively and written quite a few screenplays to date. But, also to date, that screen has not flickered for me.

Until now, that is.


Because now, I am proud-as-punch to type, my short film script ‘Channel 31’ goes into production in Galway in very early July. I suppose I have been happier about some other things in the past… but not too many.

'Channel 31' will be directed by Dermot Tynan for his own company Claddagh Films. It will star Conor Irwin, Cora Fenton, Pat Collins and Owen Mulhall. I will fill in more details of cast and crew later. Hopefully I’ll be able to do a post from the set and show you some of the stuff that will be going on there.

The film started its life as a radio script in London back in the Eighties. It was then produced by IRDP and directed by Tim Crook and I have always been extremely happy with the resultant radio play. The story is a weird cross between Edgar Allan Poe and Smokey and the Bandit and I cannot wait to see how it all pans out on screen.

So thanks to Dermot and Lara for taking this homeless puppy in (the screenplay, that is, not me) and here’s wishing you a fun and rewarding shoot. I’ll get to do all the things the writer is required to do on set (Milk? Sugar?) and I predict I will be a wide-eyed youth again in the face of all this cinematic excitement.

Dermot and I have worked together on some full length screenplays too – ‘An Autumn Affair’ and ‘Packy’s Cousin’ are two I particularly like – and the treatment we are currently beating each other up over is, literally, a blast.

So maybe there’s more movie-making down the road?

Let’s do this one first… and then see.

The Foible is in Your Court

So, on Twitter today, eBeth asked people about their foibles. There were interesting answers because, you know, Twitter can be an interesting place.

I threw in a few of my own foibles and, as I did so, it struck me that there might be few things more revealing than those quirky dislikes which we save in our night stand drawer. Here’s some of my odd dislikes:

The Dog-From-Behind Thing:
You know when a dog walks past you and you can sense him turning and coming around the back of you? Well I don’t like that. It’s not fear, I’ve never met a dog I’ve been afraid of. It just seems sneaky and disrespectful. I will often reprimand the dog verbally. Yup, it’s a foible all right.





The Car-In-The-Box Thing:
Yellow boxes have been painted on the road for a good reason. We don’t go in them unless we are turning. It’s quite simple and it helps keep traffic rolling along. In my town, every bugger goes in the yellow boxes. In the car park outside my office, there’s only one yellow box and the locals treat it as the best parking spot. If every other parking spot is empty, they will still stop in the yellow box. Someday I will get a gun and start picking off these yellow-box-parkers from my office window – like in that movie ‘Two Minute Warning’. And Charlton Heston has passed on now, so he won’t stop me.

The Car Door Thing:
I am often in a hurry. Sometimes I move so fast that I close the car door before I am fully inside. This hurts.

The Remote Thing:
I can’t sit down and watch the telly without having the remote beside me. How can you expect me to? What if the programme starts to annoy me? What do you mean I can tell you to switch over? That’s not gonna bloody work. Give me the remote! Please, give it to me…

The Tight Sheet Thing:
I can’t be trapped in a bed with the sheets tucked in tightly all round. It’s like being in some awful kind of solitary confinement or something. What if I get one of those involuntary thingies in the night? Arterial damage could be done.

The Un-Reciprocated Greeting Thing:
I’m walking along and some bugger looks at me (that’s allowed… wait, the cat has leave to look at the Queen, as my Mum used to say) they look at me and keep looking so, out of awkwardness, I say hello… and they don’t answer back. I tell you, I bloody hate that. Where’s my gun? What do you mean the car park people took it?

The ‘Garp’ Thing:
I live on a Cul De Sac – a dead end street. Still cars speed up it like nobodies business. Garp used to chase them and warn them to slow down. I do that too. No apologies for this one, it’s my kids we’re talking about here people.

There you have it, a brief selection of (true) foibles. What do they reveal about me, I wonder? Would you care to share some of your own?

That would be nice.