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www.celtic-connection.com
DECEMBER 1999/JANUARY 2000
Frank McCourt's Tale of Grinding Childhood Poverty Comes to Life in New Film
By MAURA McCAY In January, Paramount Pictures and Polygram will launch the much anticipated Canadian release of Angela's Ashes, the adaptation of Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, which has become a worldwide phenomenon.
The dramatic and often humorous account of Frank's impoverished childhood in Limerick during the Thirties and Forties has now been published in 25 languages and sold over six million copies in 30 countries. Unbelievably, it maintained a position on the New York Times hardback bestseller list for 117 weeks.
The cast of Angela's Ashes includes Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves, The Boxer and Hilary and Jackie) as Frank's beleaguered mother Angela; Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty. Trainspotting, Riff Raff) will portray his alcoholic father Malachy.
Portraying Frank McCourt at different ages are Joe Breen (8 years old), Ciaran Owens (13 years old) and Michael Legge (19 years old).
The film is directed by Alan Parker (The Commitments, Mississipi Burning, Midnight Express) and it is always a daunting task for a filmmaker to take such a widely read book such as Angela's Ashes and transform the printed word to film. Parker says, "Everyone who has ever read Frank's beautiful memoir will have come away with a thousand images of their own."
Early in the planning stage, he met with Frank to discuss the screenplay and says, "Frank was as always, most generous, constructive and totally unprecious about his words. Frank is a delight to talk to. A natural raconteur, articulate and witty, it has been said that if conversation was a category of the Olympic Games, then 'Frank would talk for Ireland'."
Although the film is based in Limerick, Parker found considerable challenge in trying to reconstruct a period 60 years past. He said, "the Production Designer, Geoffrey Kirkland and I travelled all over Ireland to seek out our locations.
"One of the negative aspects of the thriving economy in Ireland (the so-called "Celtic Tiger") is that it has become more and more difficult to make a period film there.
'What little architecture the country once had has either been torn down or rebuilt in a modern manner, and only the most obvious Georgian architecture survives.
"All too often, nasty, modern bungalows thumb their noses from pretty green hillsides. Once monochromatic streets are now transformed by a curious national penchant for bright purple, yellow and pink exterior paint.
"In short, a nightmare for a de-
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sign department set the task of creating a world of 60 years ago.
"Limerick, the real centre of our story, offered us the beautiful Georgian Crescent, with O'Connell's statue, adjacent to South's pub and the River Shannon....the damp heart and, in many ways, the silent villain in our story.
"Even the Shannon itself offers fewer and fewer riverbank views as the city hurtles into modernity, changing the historic riverscape. But the ancient river still has a raw and aggressive power that roars through the centre of the city as well as our film."
In addition to location issues, another issue to overcome was a sense in some circles that Frank had denigrated the city of his childhood in his book.
Parker says, "Although some have said that Frank McCourt has done for Limerick what James Joyces has done for Dublin, The Irish Times dubbed him 'our first Irish Dickens', it has to be said that not everyone in Limerick embraced Frank's book.
"Indeed, on President Clinton's visit to Limerick in 1998, he detected some coolness in the crowd when the Irish Taoiseach (Prime
Minister) mentioned McCourt's name.
Frank
"Consummate politician that he is, Clinton riposted with 'Frank, you obviously made a lot of money from the old Limerick, but I think I like the new Limerick better'. Obviously, the American President was not aware of the Irish nickname for present day Limerick is 'Stab City.'"
Parker asserts, "Frank has always made it clear that the book was not a personal attack on Limerick. As he put it, 'A lot pf people did not understand that the book was not about Limerick, it was about poverty'."
Despite these drawbacks, Parker said any enmity in Limerick soon evaporated when the crew began filming. In fact, he says, "Traffic ground to a halt for hours at a time with few honks of protest. Children took the day off from school the watch the proceedings (sometimes with the blessing of their teachers, sometimes not).
Another obstacle to overcome was a certain reluctance by the Catholic Church in Limerick to allow the film crew into St. Joseph's and the Redemptorist churches where much of the film is set.
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DIRECTED BY ALAN PARKER, Angela's Ashes is based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning book by Frank McCourt and stars Emily Watson as Angela and Robert Carlyle as her alcoholic husband Malachy.
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