Of terrible and splendid things…

In 2016, the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising will take place in Ireland. A rebellion that raged swiftly and momentarily in an era when the First World War was raging on (a war that, under British rule, many Irish men had already signed up for and were fighting in…and dying for) and when ordinary citizens of the time frowned upon, and indeed spat upon the rebels on their capture and surrender.

Only after the execution of so many of those young leaders, Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and Thomas McDonagh amongst them; teachers, poets and artists, did the general public take heed of what WB Yeats described as the terrible beauty born…and the quest for independence raged on through the youth of the Irish Volunteers…

Through the medium of film and cinematic exploration, there has been little made in the telling of the stories of the male and female insurgents of 1916, Michael Collins being the exception. Interned at the age of 25 in Frongoch in Wales, for his part in the Easter Rising, upon his release, Collins went on to mastermind the guerilla war against British Rule, which resulted in a truce that enabled him to lead a delegation to London to sign the Treaty in December, 1921…a move that divided a nation and culminated in the Civil War of 1922. In August of that year, Collins was dead, and Ireland was changed, changed utterly.

Now, with the centenary beckoning to offer us all a time to reflect on how far we have come as a nation,  it is no surprise, that in the writing world, a plethora of ideas for novels and scripts are circulating already. So, it was interesting for me to go along to an event recently organised by the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, and co-hosted by the Irish Film Board,  to see the five finalists of the UNTITLED Screenwriting Award pitch their film projects.

All exploring some aspect or theme of that historic year, the award to the winning project, a first draft development loan from the Irish Film Board, would be €12,000 for a single writer applicant, and €16,000 for a team, ie, writer and director. In my humble opinion, all five shortlisted pitches, each presented to an audience and in front of an industry judging panel, had potential for support towards further development.

Anne Marie Casey pitched a biopic she is writing with her partner, author Joseph O’Connor…Grace 1916: The story of Grace Gifford, woman, artist and icon of a revolution…the only project to look with any real depth at a compelling aspect of a woman’s life during the period, and one I would definitely want to see!

Hugh Travers gave a very entertaining pitch with his project, The Players :  A black comedy about ex-IRA members who join an amateur drama group to commemorate the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Jasmina Kallay presented her drama Das Irland: A tale of what if.  What if promised German help had materialised in 1916? and Virginia Gilbert pitched her drama The Boys: Everybody remembers a great teacher but how many are willing to die for one?

The winning pitch came from Jamie Hannigan and Michael Kinirons with their noir thriller Come Monday, We Kill Them All:  April 1916:  A down on his luck smuggler reluctantly agrees to help a wealthy politician find his missing daughter only to become embroiled in murder, conspiracy and rebellion…potentially fascinating…trench coats and tribly hats at the ready!

Each project was very different, and as alluded to earlier, there is a wealth of varied ideas out there that have the potential to create exciting, dramatic insights into the lives of not just the key characters of the rebellion, but also, to be a window into the lives and struggles of the ordinary people who lived through those turbulent times in Dublin, 1916.

Which begs the question…if they could see now what they fought for, what they suffered for, and what they died for, what would those men and women of 1916 think of Ireland, one hundred years on?

Featured Image: The Women of 1916, Cumann Na Mban, sourced from http://saoirse.21.forumer.com/a/

I never did cheesecake; I just used my hair…

What defines ‘sexy’ in a woman?

From a female writer’s perspective, I ponder this question time and time again. Now, I’m sure that if I carried out a survey, I would be overwhelmed with varied and perhaps, batshit crazy responses from both sexes, and would probably be none the wiser at the end of the process.

It’s personal, after all.

And while I know it when I see it, it can be hard to define. It’s intriguing that while physical appearance has a huge role to play in the make-up of sexual allure and magnetism, I’m sure we can all name at least one symmetrically, flawlessly-formed specimen of human perfection that is the furthest from sexy as you can imagine…I’ll mention no names on that one…so, perhaps it is more about attitude, a way of walking, talking, glancing, or even, a flick of the hair…

The title for this article is a quote from1940’s icon, Veronica Lake. Famous for roles such as Jennifer in I Married a Witch and Ellen in This Gun for Hire, she is almost as equally famous for her peekaboo hairstyle… a classically sexy look, and one which is constantly emulated by women to this day.

Though her life was full of tragedy and upheaval, for the camera, Veronica Lake carried herself with an air of beauty and mystique. She died aged 51, having experienced a troubled childhood, several broken marriages, the death of her infant child, alcoholism and periods of mental illness. A year before her death, she is quoted as saying, “I was always a rebel and probably could have got much further had I changed my attitude. But when you think about it, I got pretty far without changing attitudes. I’m happier with that.”

So then, if it worked for Veronica, the mystery is no mystery at all…the secret is in the doing. Of simply being confident enough in one’s skin to get the glad rags on and face the world, no matter what…and to meet, full on, the challenge, and in the film industry certainly, the rewards, of the unrelenting ‘male gaze’…

Which makes me think of Marlene Dietrich, who famously said, “Darling, the legs aren’t so beautiful, I just know what to do with them.”

Enough said.

King, Kubrick and The Ahwahnee Hotel

Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining, forever deemed a classic of the horror genre, is nonetheless, a thing of contradictions and theories that run a gamut of themes and ambiguities. The talented legend that is Stephen King, who has admitted that while writing the novel, he was an alcoholic with tendencies of rage, was exploring the themes of the disintegration of the family and the dangers of alcoholism through the medium of the supernatural.

It is suggested that he was not happy with the downplaying of the supernatural element of the film, which he felt “took the “bite” out of the story and made Jack a less sympathetic character.” [Quoted from an interview with Laurent Bouzerau for a television production, A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King.] According to King, he viewed Jack as being victimized by the genuinely external supernatural forces haunting the hotel, whereas Kubrick’s take viewed the haunting and its resulting malignancy as coming from within Jack himself.

There are also many social interpretations and references in the film that could allude to Kubrick’s concern for The Holocaust (the flowing of blood scenes and the motif of the number 42) and also of the genocide of the Native American Indians ( the rich tapestry of motifs throughout the hotel set), and the reference that The Overlook was built on an ancient burial ground.

All of these theories are well documented and are open to discovery and further interpretation, so let’s leave that forum to run on and on…

In this article, there are three photographs, not, as Shining fans might first presume, of images of the fictional Overlook Hotel, they are in fact, from the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. The Ahwahnee, built in 1927,  and named from an Indian word meaning “deep, grassy valley” is now an American national historic landmark building, which I had the pleasure of visiting during a recent trip there.

At the time, though I can admit to a slight sense of déjá vu, while warming up in front of the gigantic open fire, and walking through the big old generous spaces, steeped in native american imagery, rich heritage and art deco, I had no idea of the connection of the place to the film, but have since learnt that Kubrick based some of the interiors used in the film on this very hotel.

Although neither is an exact likeness, Kubrick modelled the lobby and the great lounge for the movie’s Overlook Hotel set, and the Ahwahnee’s lobby elevator doors, with their vivid black-and-red frame, are very clearly featured in the film.

The Ahwahnee is no stranger to Hollywood, having also been featured in the movies, The Caine Mutiny (1954) and  Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day (1996) and has also been host to guests such as Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, Gertrude Stein, Ansel Adams, Lucille Ball, Will Rogers, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Greta Garbo. In 1943, the US Navy used the hotel for the convalescence of war veterans…

In the script, written by Kubrick with Diane Johnson, the character of Halloran, played by the wonderful Scatman Crothers, explains to the telepathic young Danny, played by the amazing child actor, Danny Lloyd, of the mystery of The Overlook Hotel…

“Not things that anyone can notice,  but things that people who shine can see.  Just like they can see things that haven’t happened yet. Well, sometimes they can see things that happened a long time ago,  right here in this particular hotel – over the years, and not all  of them was good.”

Good or bad, I can’t help but feel that The Ahwahnee itself must harbour many secrets from its interesting past, that perhaps only people who shine can see!

Apart from my personal journal, for this article, I have also researched information from wikipedia.org, and yosemitepark.com and I do not own the copyright to the images reproduced here.