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According to the recorded message, “For The Most Fertile Man in Ireland, dial 5,” which perhaps must speak for itself.
Add to all this shooting on The Corrs Unplugged for MTV, seven music inserts for RTE and long-term plans to film all of Samuel Beckett’s plays, then it’s not surprising that at the moment Moriarty is a rather happy man: “It’s lovely to have the situation where’s there’s a steady flow of activity. We’re also now of sufficient size to be able to cope much better than we once were. That also makes it easier to have some kind of long-term plan.
Hepburn and newcomer Anthony Hopkins. Grim 12th Century Chinon Castle sprang into being through the efforts of art director Peter Murton and his team on three acres of land at Bray. Insisting on maximum period authentici- ty, director Anthony Harvey ordered that the Ardmore interior sets be refrigerated for early morning sequences set during a medieval Christmas season.
This called for the installation of three vast air conditioning units to be started up at 4am daily so that when the cast arrived on set at 8.30am it was so cold their breath was visi- ble. “We all nearly turned blue,” grumbled a freezing King Henry II, alias O’Toole.
From Odd Man Out to Michael Collins, the Irish Troubles have provided background material for many a film drama. In 1972, American TV director George Schaefer shot his touching A War Of Children in and around Dublin and the Wicklow Hills - doubling for strife-torn Belfast and its environs - about a pair of young lovers, one Protestant the other Catholic, played by Anthony Andrews and Jenny Agutter. Also shooting around the streets of Dublin’s fair city at the same time was another made-for-TV movie called And
No-One Could Save Her, a Hitchcock-style psy- chological thriller with Lee Remick, Milo O’Shea, Jennie Linden and Abbey Theatre play- er Frank Grimes. Both leading ladies were coached in their Irish accents by O’Shea. “I’ve found the air is very relaxing here in Ireland,” Lee told me at the time. “You can’t fight it, so you just sit back and enjoy it.”
This assessment was seconded by John Boorman in his professional capacity as Chairman of Ardmore’s Board of Directors dur- ing the 1970s as he declared: “It is the happiest of places, a studio run by film-makers. My experiences go back eight years and four pic- tures. I can testify to the rich diversity of loca- tions and the light is magical, like the land itself.” Never a truer word was uttered.
Boorman brought some of that magic to his own films like Zardoz, a sci-fi fantasy set in the year 2293, starring Sean Connery and Char lot t e Rampling. Better still was his Arthurian epic Excalibur (Nicol Williamson, Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson). All the interiors were shot at Ardmore while the courts of Tintagel and Camelot were created on the stu- dio’s back lot as well as a wealth of surround- ing locations from Sally Gap to Sugarloaf
Mountain, all places well known to local resi- dent Boorman. Amonng Irish directors who have used Ardmore and/or its post production facilities are Pat O’Connor with Cal (Helen Mir ren) and Circle Of Friends (Chris O’Donnell, Minnie Driver), Jim Sheridan with My Left Foot (Daniel Day Lewis) and In The Name Of The Father (Day Lewis again), and Neil Jordan with films like Michael Collins and The Butcher Boy (featuring a remarkable juve- nile performer in Eamonn Owens).
But even Ardmore would be hard pressed to recall a more polyglot cast and crew than that assembled in 1976 for The Purple Taxi (Le Taxi Mauve), a Franco/Irish/Italian co-produc- tion headlined by Fred Astaire, Peter Ustinov, Charlotte Rampling, Philippe Noiret, Edward Albert and Agostina Belli. Yves Boisset direct- ed in both French and English versions. While the leading players were predominantly bilin- gual, what made the film unique was the eclec- tic mix of a French director and co-producers, an Italian cinematographer and his crew while the gaffers hailed from Rome, Paris and Ireland. The Irish special effects team was headed by Gerry Johnston, who also came from Dublin. With its babble of different lan-
guages, including Gaelic, the unit resembled a mini United Nations, and sounded like it.
Co-star Fred Astaire’s Irish connections went wider than most, although his memo- rable Blarney musical Finian’s Rainbow was, of course, all filmed in Hollywood. He told me: “My sister and former dancing partner Adele married Lord Charles Cavendish and came to live at Linmore, Co Waterford. And my daugh- ter Ava is married to American painter Richard McKenzie and they have a beautiful house on the coast at West Cork. They were both with me during the filming of Purple Taxi which made it a very happy family occasion.”
Like the Irish and indeed like the Emerald isle itself, Ardmore is a wonderfully relaxing and beautiful environment, magical and myste- rious, and perfect for making movies.
Apart from the shared language and cul- ture there’s a wealth of skilled craftsmen and acting talent available in a studio boasting all the tranquillity of a woodland setting sur- rounded by rolling mountains and rural coun- tryside. Adding to the magic, driving through the studio gates on the return journey to Dublin you may, like me, be lucky enough to see that a perfect rainbow has formed on the
“What we need now is much more certainty about the future because at the moment there is the general perception here of a stop-go policy. So we are waiting for the next budget which, hopefully, will provide an extension of financial initiatives. That would then ensure much more stability over the coming years.
Says Moriarty: “It’s so important for us to try and take up the challenge of the new technology; part of that challenge is to try and work out how to marry the entertainment side of film with the expectations of people now coming along who’ve got used to, as it
were, pressing buttons rather than turning the pages of novels. Given proper Government support, I’d be confident that Ireland is in a very good position to capitalise on all these developments.”
And with that Emerald optimism, all one need add is what’s helpfully written on a board at the side of the road just as you drive out of the studio: “Buckle up... that’s a wrap!” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Photos: stills from The Commitments; Zardoz; Angela’s Ashes; Far And Away (All courtesy BFI Stills & Posters).
NOSTALGIA
NOSTALGIA