The McCourt family arrive back in Limerick: left to right, Frank (Joe Breen), Malachy Sr (Robert Carlyle) carrying Eugene (Ben O’Gorman), Angela (Emily Watson) carrying Oliver (Sam O’Gorman) and Malachy Jr (Shane Murray Corcoran).
angela's ashes
In 1938, aged four, Frank McCourt left New York for Ireland as part of “the only Irish family in history to be saying goodbye to the Statue of Liberty instead of hello”. Fifteen years later, he returned, alone, to seek his fortune. But it wasn´t for another half century, after a career as a high-school teacher in New York, that he published his account of the 15 years he spent in Limerick. Angela´s Ashes won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in 1997 and has been a worldwide publishing phenomenon. Here, director Alan Parker recounts aspects of how he turned McCourt´s unforgettable ‘Memoir of a Childhood´ into an equally memorable movie.
|
The first time I visited Limerick in April 1998, I was armed with a bundle of maps which we had downloaded from one of the Angela´s Ashes fan websites. This particular website was all the more remarkable, I thought, because it was Japanese. Why a culture so different to the Irish should have been so taken by Frank McCourt´s story intrigued me no end. I walked the streets so carefully mapped out and lovingly flagged by the Japanese fans who were obviously obsessed with every little detail of Frank´s book: ‘1st residence: Windmill St. (until Oliver´s Death)´; ‘St Joseph Church (First Communion, Confirmation)´; ‘Lyric Cinema (closed 1964, now parking)´.
As we walked the route, we found that even the landlord at South´s pub had started to pin up photos of himself hugging strangers with wide, non-Irish smiles. No doubt the ghosts of Malachy Sr, Uncle Pa and Mr Hannon, leaning on the bar supping their Guinness, were wondering why their local had suddenly become so popular.
I write now, after finishing the film, and the ‘In search of the McCourts´ obsession has gained even more momentum, as regular ‘Walking Tours´ are advertised... ‘Daily at 2.30pm´, the flyers pronounce, ‘Individual walks, 4 Irish punts ($6) per person!´ Bands of ‘McCourties´, clutching their much-thumbed copies of Frank´s memoir, regularly walk up Barrack Hill in search of Roden Lane, baffled that it´s no longer there. My personal impression is that everyone you meet in Limerick, of a certain age, falls into one of two distinct camps. Half of them claim that this uppity, now affluent, Irish-Yank exaggerated his childhood plight. The other half of Limerick lived next door to the McCourts.
Although some have said that Frank McCourt has done for Limerick what James Joyce had done for Dublin and The Irish Times has dubbed him ‘our first Irish Dickens´, it has to be said that not everyone in Limerick has 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 Frank McCourt´s name and, consummate politician that he is, riposted with, “Frank, you made a lot of money from the old Limerick, but I think I like the new Limerick better.”
|
