Three Irish America Interviews with Acting Greats

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STARS OF THE SOUTH • GONE WITH THE WIND AT 75

IRISH AMERICA August/September 2011

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Outlaws

Billy the Kid & Whitey Bulger

Spider-Man Reeve Carney

The Wit & Wisdom of Malachy McCourt

Daniel O’Connell’s Fight to Abolish American Slavery

Gleeson FUNNY MAN AND SERIOUS ACTOR

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Brendan

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The Good, the Bad

and the

FUNNY

The dynamic Irish actor Brendan Gleeson tells Sheila Langan about his latest role in The Guard, working with the brothers McDonagh, and his upcoming directorial debut with Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT DEFEVER

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t’s a Thursday morning in late June, and I am sitting at a table in the empty ballroom of the opulent Beverly Wilshire hotel, waiting for Brendan Gleeson. The press conference scheduled prior to our interview is running a bit long, and I feel as though I’m waiting for someone at a grand, abandoned café.

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quickly from thoughtful and serious to wonderfully devilish. At fifty-six, after twenty-two busy years in film, Gleeson and his wife, Mary, still live in Ireland – in Malahide, not far from Artane, the Dublin suburb where he grew up. He’s here in L.A. for just a few days as part of a promotional tour for The Guard.

Then I hear a booming yet mild Dublin accent working its way down the hallway and Brendan Gleeson, grinning and wearing all black, walks into the ballroom.

“Not very L.A., is it?” he asks with a laugh when our photographer, Kit, compliments him on his jacket, and he settles himself cheerfully at our impromptu table for two.

Well, you wouldn’t really describe Gleeson himself as “very L.A.,” either. He is incredibly tall, with broad shoulders and a build that has worked equally well for his work as criminals both thuggish and smart in films like John Boorman’s The General and Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges; his turn as the vigilant and eccentric Mad Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films; and his Emmy Award-winning portrayal of Winston Churchill in the 2009 HBO mini-series Into The Storm. His floppy ginger hair is tinged with white at the temples, and his expressive face shifts

The first feature film by John Michael McDonagh (older brother of playwright and In Bruges director Martin), The Guard is a razor-sharp, at times uncomfortably dark comedy. It’s also a western of sorts, complete with good guys and bad guys, a final showdown, justice taken outside the realm of the law, and a soundtrack

by Calexico. But rather than Monument Valley or a dusty stretch of central Italy, it takes place in Co. Galway, along the verdant, rainy and totally desolate Connemara coastline.

And instead of John Wayne on horseback or a forbidding, gun-slinging Clint Eastwood, its hero is a burly police sergeant named Gerry Boyle, with a little too much time on his hands and a great talent for pushing people's buttons.

This is, needless to say, Gleeson’s role, and his performance is a triumph.

“Boyle was a brilliant creation from the start,” says Gleeson, fondly. “I just looked

at the script and said ‘God, this has to happen.’”

Gleeson’s Sergeant Boyle is a smalltown enigma. As Don Cheadle's character, American FBI Agent Wendell Everett, sums it up, he is either the dumbest person or the smartest. He is snarky to his coworkers and irreverent in the face of authority, but sweet and caring towards both his ailing mother (played by the always-wonderful Fionnula Flanagan) and the hookers from Dublin who visit him on his days off. There's a sense of loneliness about him, but it’s something neither he nor the film spends too much time dwelling on. Mostly, he seems wryly fed up with the ennui he's resigned himself to.

“He’s really bored, let's be honest about it, and he just wants something to happen; he wants somebody to lose their temper,” Gleeson explains.

Fortunately, perhaps, things get more exciting for Gerry and the Connemara police force when it turns out that a strange murder in the area might be connected to a large shipment of drugs worth either €500 million or maybe €100 million – nobody is quite sure – en route from Colombia to Ireland and set to dock in Spiddal, or Cork, or…somewhere else.

As all of his colleagues are either inept, corrupt or both, Boyle is forced to team up with the no-nonsense Agent Everett, who is totally mystified by his surroundings and the uncooperative Irish locals.

Everett is equally mystified by Boyle – by his penchant for breaking the law and his incendiary, sometimes racist remarks.

“It’s not unknown at home, people will kind of get up your nose a bit just to see how you react,” Gleeson says, raising a bushy orange eyebrow.

This is something, he admits, he’s a bit worried about: will American audiences get that Gerry doesn't always mean what he says? That the aim of many of his cracks is to get himself through the ridiculousness going on around him?

“I mean, he actually says it,” Gleeson points out, quoting the script in Gerry's defense: “I don’t mean anything by it, I’m only having a bit of fun, like.”

Even if viewers don’t quite get Gerry, they will definitely get the chemistry between Gleeson and Cheadle, who was also the film’s executive producer.

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“I stayed in [for the screening] last night,” he discloses. “I wanted to see what an L.A. audience would make of it since it’s so removed from L.A. Don is fantastic.

You see, he takes the American audience by the hand and leads them through it.

He’s equally as appalled as they are and he can guide them through the maze that is Connemara.” leeson didn’t begin acting professionally until he was 34, after a

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“When I first was able to fill in A-C-TO-R for the occupation line on my passport,” he says quietly, “that was the first time I really felt ‘Wow, I’m home.’

“One of the benefits of starting out so late,” he offers, “was that I never had to do soap commercials.” After frequent stage work and smaller roles in films like The Field and Into the West, Gleeson’s blockbuster breakthrough came in 1995 when Mel Gibson asked him to join the cast of

Secret of Kells, and hunted down Cillian Murphy in Perrier’s Bounty.

Does Gleeson think he plays a certain type? He tells me of a recent conversation with director Daniel Espinoza on the set of Safe House, a CIA action film co-starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds, set to be released in 2012. Espinoza remarked that Gleeson never seems to play good guys, to which Gleeson replied “‘Eh, that’s not true, hang on a second.’

PHOTOS BY JONATHAN HESSION, COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

TOP LEFT: Don Cheadle as Agent Wendell Everett and Brendan Gleeson as Sgt. Gerry Boyle.

TOP RIGHT: Sgt. Boyle with a young Connemara local.

RIGHT: Sgt. Boyle on his day off, with some friends from Dublin.

decade of teaching English and Irish.

“I felt pretty much there as a teacher,” he reflects, “and I was prepared to do it for the rest of my life.”

But a love of acting was also there, right from his “messing around” days, when he and his friends did amateur productions; through his time in college, when he started working with playwright Paul Mercier; and into his years as a teacher, when he acted, directed and wrote for Mercier’s Passion Machine theater company.

At a certain point it became impossible to juggle everything, so he made a choice.

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Braveheart as Hamish. Since then, he’s appeared in more than his fair share of Hollywood hits, including In Bruges, Mission Impossible II, 28 Days Later, Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain and Troy.

At the same time, Gleeson has remained fiercely committed to Irish cinema. He first starred as gangster Bunny Kelly in I Went Down, and later received acclaim for his portrayal of real-life Dublin crime boss Martin Cahill in John Boorman’s The General. He more recently played two estranged brothers in Boorman’s Tiger’s Tail, gave voice to Abbott Cellach in The

And then everybody I [mentioned] to him that I’ve played who I figured was a good guy, Daniel said ‘Yeah, but he was a tough dude,’ or ‘he was a hard man.’ So then I was asking myself ‘Do I never play any good people? What's wrong with me?’”

He realized, after the fact, that he just doesn't think about characters in that way.

“I tend to look for the good in bad people and the bad in good people, to make them human. ’Cause I don’t think that people generally are that black and white. Maybe in movie-land they can be…but that isn’t necessarily all there is.”

No matter how improbable they may sound on paper, all of Gleeson’s characters share a human quality rooted in a place other than “movie-land.” This makes him perfectly suited (and, in a way, vital) for the grim, not quite real but not quite absurd worlds created by both of the McDonagh brothers, who grew up in London but spent every summer in the West of Ireland. t’s almost irresistible to compare The Guard to In Bruges, so similarly dark are their plots and so related are their directors. If anybody is in a position to speak to

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what connects the brothers and what distinguishes them, it’s Gleeson. He did, after all, star in both of their first features: In In Bruges he played Ken, the older of two hit men laying low for a while in Belgium’s comically peaceful medieval city.

“I keep trying to emphasize the difference because I know it must be irritating at some point to always be mentioned in the same breath as the brother,” he says.

But he does concede to some similarities.

“They’re very fierce; there’s kind of a savage commitment to the quality of the writing. They aren’t easy on themselves or on anybody else…Their stuff is always economic, it’s always bright.”

On set, “they’re both very calm, quite painstaking,” he explains. “John in particular insists he’s OCD. I keep telling him that he’s just fussy, but right before a scene he’ll go up to you and just –” to illustrate, Gleeson carefully shifts my recorder a millimeter towards the left on the table between us and nods as though it made all the difference in the world. “But there’s an assuredness too. They’re very filmicly aware – encyclopedic, actually, in terms of film.”

The difference, he says, is between their voices and the worlds they create with them. “The only way I’ve been explaining it is, when I was working with John on The Guard there was nothing of In Bruges that ever came to mind. It’s a very odd thing. Even though there is that similarity of attack in terms of the humor, it was completely different.”

Even for an actor who looks for the good in bad people and vice versa, the darkness of the work can be hard to grapple with.

He recalls a discussion he had with Martin before filming Six Shooter, which won the Oscar for best live action short film in 2006. “There was a part about a cot death and I was saying ‘Martin…there’s stuff you have to be careful about in terms of pushing envelopes, some stuff you just don’t mess with,’ and all that. But we had a long discussion about what he was trying to do and in the end I was reassured.

“But then I remember, at some point after we wrapped, he said something about how in the end it’s all about love.

And actually, when you take any of Martin’s characters, no matter what they do, no matter how appalling their behavior – and some of them are seriously appalling – you find it very hard to hate any of them. You don’t do it. So in a way, what’s frightening is that you're under-

standing, you have some sympathy or empathy for people who are doing the most appalling things. And that to me is very singular.”

And does the same thing go for John Michael McDonagh, who Gleeson describes as a bit of a Gerry Boyle himself?

“I’m not sure if with John it works the same way,” he muses. “I think John is prepared for you to hate some of his characters…With Gerry at least you kind of have to take it, you know? Whatever his flaws.” s we talk about In Bruges, Gleeson recalls a radio interview he gave in Ireland with the other stars of the film. At some point, the host put the question of musical tastes to the group but added “Ah, I’m not going to ask you, Gleeson, you only go for this diddle-i-ay stuff.”

Gleeson, who did the majority of his own fiddle playing in Cold Mountain and appears on the traditional group Atlan's 2009 live album, replied that he was into more than diddle-i-ay. Later, he took some heat from his trad-playing friends.

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“You didn’t give us much good press,” they told him, “and I said ‘D’you know what, you’re actually right. I didn’t stand up for it very well.'”

He may regret that, but in the minutes that follow Gleeson gives one of the best defenses of diddle-i-ay music I’ve ever heard: “I remember, years ago, I didn’t get what some old guy was doing that was so special. I asked somebody, ‘It’s all scratchy and everything, what does everybody see in it? I don’t get it.’ And he said ‘Ah, it’s the small print, the small print.’

Irish music is about that. It’s not about the showy stuff, it’s about little, small variations. And once you start reading it, the intricacy of it, it’s like…it’s like lace or something, it’s what people do on the inside.” He pauses. “When I started out at about 19, 20, it took me two years just to tell the difference between a jig and a reel.

It does all sound the same, but what you can find once you go in – it’s never-ending. So that’s my love.”

His reverence for Irish music, for the literature, for the landscape, is palpable as AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2011 IRISH AMERICA 39

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he talks. But he also tells me, like many before him, that it’s been harder in the recent past to find motivation and imagination in his home country.

“I’d never had any problem finding inspiration; Ireland was always just there, you know? All this richness of culture was there to tap into. But I kind of felt like we’d been betrayed so utterly and completely by our own people in the last couple of years; we were the authors of our own disaster.” He somewhat ruefully implies that he and John Boorman tried to ring the alarm on the Celtic Tiger with the poorly received 2006 film Tiger’s Tail, but that “nobody wanted to hear it.”

When Gleeson wants to, though, he speaks up. And when he does, people seem to listen. Recognized for wisely choosing his moments (a thoughtful tirade against the Irish health care system on the Late Late Show in 2006; his staunch defense of the Irish Film Board before the Arts Council and the Dail in 2009), Gleeson agreed to be a part of the Irish celebrity welcoming committee of sorts that greeted President and First Lady Obama during their visit to Dublin in May. He was asked to speak at College Green about the kindred liberators Daniel O’Connell and Frederick Douglass, which he did – and well – but he also took the speech in his own direction. “Now we’ve had a rough few years here,” he said, speaking plainly to the crowd of a few

a long time coming. He will be directing his own adaptation of At Swim Two Birds, the notoriously un-adaptable novel by Flann O’Brien (a.k.a. Myles na gCopaleen a.k.a. Brian O’Nolan). The book’s layers are more numerous than its author’s pseudonyms, and Gleeson has set himself a definite challenge in translating the books-within-the-book and all the anarchy that reigns between them into film.

“I’m after talking it up so much that the only way is down,” Gleeson says when I first ask him about it. Then he laughs,

“I tend to look for the good in bad people and the bad in good people, to make them human. ’Cause I don’t think that people generally are that black and white.” hundred thousand. “I don’t know about you, but I’m fed up looking at the ground.

It’s time to stand up, breathe the air, look around: What a people! What friends we have! I’m bloody sure we can!”

“I want to stick to my job and what I know,” he’s quick to say when I ask about his rousing oratory. “I don’t want to be a pulpit crasher in any way, shape or form.

But there comes a time when you’ve just got to nail your colors to the mast, I think.” leeson will be doing just that with his next major project, one that has been

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“That’s a very Irish way of looking at it, isn’t it?”

Making At Swim Two Birds has been just out of Gleeson’s reach for a few years now, due to difficulty securing funding and various scheduling conflicts. But it’s been the subject of much hype and speculation, ever since word of the project got out following a star-studded script-reading in Dublin in December, 2006.

“I’ve had everything decided in terms of casting for ages,” he says, sucking air between his teeth excitedly, and proceeds to list a cast that sounds like a who’s who

of Irish actors: “Gabriel Byrne, Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy, Michael Fassbender, Eamon Morrissey, Sean McGinley, Marie Mullen –” and so on.

After all the delays, Gleeson is clearly reluctant to say too much about it. But he does divulge that they will begin shooting in the spring, in Ireland and, oddly, Luxembourg, and that he will be playing the main character’s hated uncle, who also figures in one of the books within the book. Gabriel Byrne will be playing the mystical Pooka McPhelimy. “You want to hear Gabriel do the Pooka,” Gleeson tells me enthusiastically, describing it as “languid, urbane and wicked.”

Another Irish actor joining the cast of At Swim will be Gleeson’s 28-year-old son, Domhnall, who plays Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films and recently appeared in the Coen brothers’ remake of True Grit. Brian, another of Gleeson’s four sons, has also worked with his father a few times – as his son in Tiger's Tail and as a fellow Garda in Domhnall’s recent short film, the family collaboration Noreen.

“I kind of dealt them one, as in ‘you’re on your own,’” Gleeson says when I ask what advice he’s had for his sons. “But generally it’s just been about how to work with your craft, how to counterbalance instinct and the intellectualization of the piece. How sometimes you can over-think something and then other times you’ve got to plan…Initially I’d go in and say ‘maybe if you took that down there,’ or ‘what are you thinking about here?’ And I enjoyed directing them in that way, I got a real kick out of it. And then they began to not need to ask me.”

He emanates clear pride as he tells me that Domhnall will be working on Joe Wright's Anna Karenina in the autumn, and as he hints at a part Brian might have landed – “I’d love to tell you about it, but it isn’t exactly sealed and dealed so I don’t want to put a jinx on it. But it looks like it’s going to work out for him, and I’m so proud of that because I had nothing to do with it.

“I mean,” he pauses, “you have to give everything a whack at some stage, don’t you? Just like Gerry Boyle.

IA Try it once.”

The Guard opens July 29th in New York and Los Angeles, and on wider release in August and September.

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IRISH AMERICA June /APRIL/MAY July 2011

2011

Canada $4.95 U.S. $3.95 $3.95

CHARTING IRELAND’S WAY FORWARD

TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY THE IRISH BRIGADE IN THE

CIVIL WAR REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND LOSS

MEGHAN O’ROURKE ‘GREEN GEORGETTE’ A STORY BY

EDNA O’BRIEN YOUNG LORDS AND LADIES OF

IRISH DANCE Re-Imagining Ireland with

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Gabriel

BYRNE

Byrne The acclaimed actor discusses his role as Ireland’s first Cultural Ambassador, his experience as an emigrant, and his thoughts on the strong ties and the disconnects between Ireland and America.

Re-Imagining

Ireland with

Gabriel

By Sheila Langan

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he most immediately striking thing about Gabriel Byrne, aside from his very light blue eyes and the chunky silver Claddagh ring he wears on his right hand (and the fact that he is Gabriel Byrne), is the thoughtfulness with which he approaches every question and topic. As many interviewers before me have commented, his answers do at times seem to verge on the tangential or even evasive. But he lets nothing rest at a superficial level. Sure, ask him a prying question and he may step nimbly around the issue with a quote from Shakespeare and a loosely related anecdote. Why not? Celebrities need to be artful to maintain some degree of pri-

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vacy. But ask him a question about film, or the Catholic Church, or what it is to be an emigrant, and you will receive a profound reply. These things too, after all, can be personal.

So I learned when we met one recent evening at a cafĂŠ in Soho to discuss his latest role, one he's held since St. Patrick's Day 2010, when then-Taoiseach Brian Cowen issued the official announcement that made Gabriel Byrne Ireland's first Cultural Ambassador.

It's hard to imagine anyone better suited to the part. Since 1988, when he moved to New York from London to be with his wife at the time, actress Ellen Barkin, Byrne has been, stardom aside,

PHOTO: JEFF LIPSKY

an Irish man living in America.

This, combined with his three decades as an actor in Ireland, in London, in Hollywood and on Broadway, puts Byrne at a fairly unique vantage point when it comes to considering Irish arts at home and abroad.

The question is, what exactly does a Cultural Ambassador do?

“Well, it's never been done before, so nobody really knows,” Byrne says matter-of-factly, sipping on an Americano and picking at some bread he winkingly told our waitress was “lethal.” “But the stuff that I have done so far I'm quite proud of.”

As Ambassador, he works closely with

Culture Ireland, the government agency for promoting Irish arts and culture, on an initiative called “Imagine Ireland,” an ambitious year-long program of Irish arts in the United States.

Byrne is quick to assert that he works on a strictly voluntary basis and that the job is “part-time.” This sounds unlikely at first – Cultural Ambassador isn't something that readily comes to mind when one thinks about part-time jobs – but it's the truth when you consider his work load. In the past year, as Dr. Paul Weston on HBO's therapy drama In Treatment, Byrne often worked fourteen-hour days to keep up with the show's demanding schedule; when we meet he has just

wrapped up a film in London with Charlotte Rampling. But in the midst of shooting various projects, Byrne has represented Ireland admirably – criss-crossing the States for various Imagine Ireland launches and events; recording his oral history at New York University's Archives of Irish America for an exhibition at Lincoln Center's Library for the Performing Arts; curating an Irish film retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Eugene Downes, CEO of Culture Ireland, calls Byrne one of the driving forces behind the project, which had been in the works for some time: “When I first met Gabriel four years ago,” he shared JUNE / JULY 2011 IRISH AMERICA 35

Gabriel via e-mail, “the range and depth of his vision for Irish culture in America threw down a gauntlet to everyone in the room.

His thinking challenged us to develop a more ambitious strategy for cultural engagement that reflected the changing dynamics of Ireland's presence in the United States. His ideas have helped shape the “Imagine Ireland” concept at every stage of its development…He has given a strong artistic voice to many of the issues at stake for Ireland as it comes through this time of crisis.”

add some personal flair to the role, stuffing a pillow up the back of his shirt to give himself a hunchback. It was something he liked to do at home when the men came to deliver coal: “I'd be sitting there with this big lump on my back and they'd look at me and say ‘Ah now, are you all right?’”

He mimics their maudlin tone. “Then I did it on the stage and, whereas my mother would think it was hilarious, and the coal men would have thought it was hilarious, here I just walked on stage and walked off, and nobody even noticed.”

His own career can be read as a sort of case in point for why Byrne feels so strongly about funding for the arts, for just how important and effective amateur groups and arts centers can be.

The Crumlin, Dublin native didn't start acting until his late 20s, save for once. At 12, he left Ireland to study at a seminary in England, which he firmly decided five years later was not the life for him. It was there, he tells me, that he stepped on stage for the first time – for “half a second” in the school production of the musical Oliver. Playing one of the men who bid on Oliver after he's kicked out of the workhouse, Byrne recalls that he decided to

After that, he stayed away from Drama until he was about twenty-five, when he decided that amateur drama, which he now describes as “one of the most powerful institutions in Ireland,” looked like “a cool thing to do at night instead of being in the pub.” Nobody actually told me,” he says “I just stumbled into it, I realized that it's a great way to spend your time. I couldn't wait for work to finish, to get to the theater, cause there were great people there. And leading up to a play, the tension of it. I remember we all went to Athlone to take part in the All Ireland Drama Festival, we all went on one minibus. I had never experienced anything like that.”

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One of the inspirations behind “Imagine Ireland” stems from Byrne's early years in the Dublin theater scene: his time with the experimental, modestly government funded Project Arts Centre. “In 1979 in Dublin you had the two establishment theaters, The Gate and The Abbey, and anyone who didn't fit in there went to The Project.”

The list of misfits who got their start at The Project is impressive, to say the least: Jim Sheridan, Liam Neeson, Neil Jordan, Ciaran Hinds, Nigel Rolfe, Stephen Rea, and many more. “It was great,” he continues, “nothing was off the table. John Stevenson, who was the administrator at the time, said “Let's take all this stuff that we do and bring it to England.’ And that was the first time that British audiences became aware of this Irish art. Imagine Ireland is a version of that.”

When an artist from one country brings his or her work to another, a palpable exchange takes place: both artist and audience are exposed to something new. In the case of the four-hundred-plus artists coming to the U.S. this year with Imagine Ireland, the potential for exchange goes both ways. On one hand, Irish artists stand to gain something from performing or exhibiting for audiences here. “If you're an artist and you want to grow and expand and understand new things, then coming here will expose you to different viewpoints and opinions and experiences. It won't necessarily make you any better, but it will do that,” says Byrne.

On the other hand, American audiences are getting a taste of more contemporary Irish art; a more comprehensive understanding of Irish culture today. “When we talk about artists here, we're not just talking about writers, artists, musicians, theater people,” he explains, “we're talking about performance artists, the full range.

There's Irish classical dancing; there's Irish mime; there are young artists who are Irish but who draw their inspiration from all kinds of places.” After a pause he continues, “I would say that the perception here is a very dated and very limited one. People know certain names, and some of those names are not even known outside a particular circle. Would everybody know U2? Yes. Would everybody know Seamus Heaney? Debatable.”

In this sense, in addition to recognizing the strong cultural bonds between Ireland and America, the aim also seems to be to refresh those bonds, to update them. To expose Irish Americans and Americans

Gabriel

PHOTO: PATRICK RAGOZZINO

who already appreciate Joyce and Synge O'Gill and the Little People to the Bobby pushed for it to be called “Imagine and Yeats, who have seen The Quiet Man, Sands biopic Hunger, the series will conIreland”). But he does offer this: “I think who know Riverdance and The sider themes of “emigration, exile, the the artistic influence is continuous; it's Chieftains, to a new generation of Irish role of the rebel, the religious part of who we are…We are also a result artists. The Cultural Ambassador confirms figure…identity, myth, ethnicity, assimiof our history, and our history and our litlation, gender, the role of the woman in this: “That's one of the things I want to try erature are entwined so that we have, on Irish film.” Beyond this, the aim is to and do. Well, it's the Culture Ireland agenthe one hand, the saddest music and the da, I suppose, to increase that awareness raise – but not, he emphasizes, necessarimost joyful music, and we have the sadhere. To bring it up to date and to break ly to answer – the questions “Who are we dest poems. If you look through an antholdown some of the outdated ideas that we as a group? How are we portrayed? How ogy of Irish poems, it's incredible how have, that people have here, about what is are we perceived?” It has always fascinatmelancholy we are. You know what G.K. going on over there.” ed him, he says, that “[As Irish,] in terms Chesterton said about the Irish? ‘The Irish In Byrne's opinion and experience, this of film, our story has, up to a certain were the race that God made mad. For all disconnect is one effect of the emigrant's point, been told for us, not by us.” This is their wars were merry and all their songs journey, and is especially central to that of problematic, he believes, because “a great were sad.’ Bit stupid as a remark, but it the Irish emigrant. He calls does capture something.” exile “the Irish story,” and is And who is he as a result of adamant that once you have left his journey? He doesn’t say a country, you can never look specifically, but he says a lot back on it and see it in the same generally. Of leaving one’s way. He raises the fascinating homeland, he remarks, “It allows point that this idea plays a part the artist a distance from where in Irish myths from long before he lives and where he was born emigration was ever a word or and the influences that shaped an issue. He re-tells the story of him, so that you can do a Oisín returning home from Tír different version of looking na Nóg, even though he was back. So that, instead of told not to, and aging the secyearning, you can look back over ond he sets foot on land. the other shoulder and do it more “That myth is [thousands] of with objectivity.” When asked years old. It's powerful, and its about Ireland today he expresses telling people 'You cannot great anger towards the Catholic return, it's not possible to come church – an emotional issue, back. You go to this place and considering his disclosure last you stay there.' It's a warning Gabriel Byrne and writer Colum McCann at the New York year of the abuse he suffered as a telling you to think very care- launch of “Imagine Ireland” in January 2011. boy under the Christian Brothers. fully about where it is that your He shows concern over the posdeal of what we know about each other as spirit settles.” Byrne moves on to the sibility that Ireland might be losing its people comes from our knowledge of Bible, to Lot and his wife, who turns into unique voice: “I could write you 20 pages film.” a pillar of salt for looking back; to the of words where, if I went back to the part One night of the retrospective will feaChildren of Lír, exiled as swans in their of Dublin where I grew up, kids there ture Byrne in conversation with Irish filmown land; to a tale from Co. Cavan he had today wouldn't understand them,” he tells maker Jim Sheridan. Another, with Martin read the night before about a woman who me. He’d like to see that voice grow Scorsese, whom he looks forward to talkis banished from her town and turned into stronger so that, particularly in film, ing to because “He's an Italian American. a hare. (Throughout all this it becomes Ireland can tell its own story. He also, He comes from, he understands, that dual abundantly clear that he used to be a however, seems genuinely in awe of the conflict about ‘Where am I from? And teacher.) “Before people even left talent that has emerged from Ireland in where is this place that I'm living in? Who Ireland,” he muses, “they were concerned the past few years – in spite of the Celtic am I as a result of that journey?’” about these things.” tiger and the economic downturn, or Listening to Gabriel Byrne pose these Exile and the emigrant experience are maybe because of it. questions, I get the definite sense that he two of the many themes Byrne aims to The connections still run deep. Despite doenn't do so with the detached curiosity address in his film series, Revisiting The having lived in the U.S. for more than Quiet Man: Ireland on Film, which is runof a critic or a scholar, but with real pertwenty years and raising his two children ning at MoMA form May 20 – June 3. sonal investment. He is, after all, not just here (his daughter is starting college in the John Ford's iconic and extremely romana spectator of Irish film but part of its fall), he still very much considers himself tic portrayal of 1950s Ireland will be the history, too.

Irish, not Irish American. But then, for starting point for a larger discussion So who are we, as Irish? Byrne doesn't him it seems that there are different kinds Byrne hopes to provoke. Via The Quiet think there can be one answer. In fact, he of home: “Home in the most profound Man and other films about Ireland, rangencourages everyone to imagine his or her spiritual sense is always Ireland. [But] ing from Robert Stevenson's Darby own Ireland (apparently, that’s why he your children determine where home is.”

38 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2011