Meantime, there was a little problem in Brendan meeting with Aidan Quinn. The actor lived in New Jersey, on the other side of the country. Brendan managed to get hold of Aidan’s number from a friend, though, and rang him. The actor answered.
‘“How do you do, Aidan? You don’t know me. It’s Brendan O’Carroll. I’m a writer from—”
‘“Yes, I know you, Brendan. I’m sure I saw you when I was home in Ireland. Was it on The Late, Late Show?”
‘“Grand. Well, Aidan, I’m just getting your thoughts. I’m making the movie Sparrow’s Trap and your agent said you liked the script but that scheduling could be . . .”
‘“What movie? What script?”
‘So I told him about the story. And Aidan was interested. And as it turns out I had a guy in New York who had three copies of the script.
‘I got one sent out to Aidan while I was on the flight and I let Aidan know which hotel I’d be at. So I got in at ten o’clock that night and Aidan promised he would ring me, before midnight, once he’d read the script.
‘I had a bath, called Jenny to fill her in on the news, and had something to eat. And then I looked at the clock and it was ten to one. I thought, “Well, that’s that.” But then I realised the light on the phone was flashing. It was a message from Aidan. He said he’d meet me the next day in a coffee shop in the village at two o’clock. Well, my heart lifted at this. And I rang Jenny back and told her.
‘She was curious. “Do you think it’s good news?”
‘“Well, Jenny, he’s not meeting me to tell me he doesn’t want to do it.”
‘“Do you think he’s in?”
‘“Sure, I do.”’
As John Lennon said, ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.’
The next day, Brendan was picked up and taken to the Princess Hotel and he met with Aidan Quinn as arranged. The meeting began well enough. Aidan complimented Brendan on the script.
‘It’ll make a nice little movie, Brendan. But listen, my agent wasn’t lying. I’m doing a little Irish project myself, me and my brother, based on my father. And I wouldn’t do anything that would compromise that project.’
‘Does this film compromise it?’
‘No. It’s a million miles away from it.’
‘Great.’
‘But I have a couple of difficulties.’
‘Well, run them by me. As long as it doesn’t change the basic tenor of the story, I’ll be glad to make changes . . .’
‘No, no, it’s not the story. It’s fine. It’s a personal thing. My wife is about to give birth. So I’ve got to run it by her, to make sure she’s okay with it.’
‘Sure, Aidan.’
‘Look, I’ll let you know by midday, Monday. Irish time. Is that okay? And I have to say I’m predisposed to do this.’
‘Great, Aidan. I really appreciate that.’
Brendan could have flown home without the plane. Aidan Quinn was as good as signed. That meant he had his star. And that meant he had the £4 million he needed to make the movie – and make some serious money.
‘On the Monday, we set about auditioning kids in Jurys Inn in Dublin, and a few adult actors. But what a horrible day we had. Jenny’s hairdresser’s pal Paul, we discovered, had been killed crossing the road while on holiday in Spain. And she was devastated. And I was trying to console her. But while doing this I looked at the clock and it was half past twelve. No word from Quinn.
‘I thought, “I can’t wait any longer.” So I rang his office. And a secretary answered. I said who I was and she said, “Oh, hi. Did you get the message?”
‘“No, what message?”
‘“I left a message on your answer phone.”
‘“No, I’m not at home. What is the message?”
‘“Aidan can’t do the film.”
‘My chin dropped to the floor. “Is there nothing I can do to change that?”
‘“I don’t know. All I know is that he can’t do it.”’
This didn’t mean the film was cancelled. No, Brendan hadn’t lined up a star name, but the deal was so far down the line it couldn’t be halted now.
And the day wasn’t all about bad news. Just ten minutes later, purely by chance, Brendan took a phone call from actor Bryan Murray, who starred in the TV series The Irish RM and in Channel 4 soap Brookside, in which his character, the evil Trevor Jordache, came to be buried under the patio.
‘Bryan had heard about the film and was asking if there was any work going. He said that just because he was in England, directors in Ireland had forgotten about him.
‘“Any chance of a crack at something, Brendan?”
‘“Crack at it? You’ve just got yourself a leading role.”
‘“What? With this phone call?”
‘“Yes, can you be here next Monday?”
‘“I most certainly can.”’
So Brendan had a terrific actor in the cast. But not one the film company would back with £4 million. It didn’t matter, though. A deal with a distribution company had been agreed verbally. Brendan and Gerry would still be able to cover the cost of making their movie.
But three days before shooting, the letter of guarantee from the distribution company hadn’t arrived. They’d pulled out at the last minute.
Brendan wasn’t sure if he should be worried, but rang again repeatedly until he finally spoke to someone. To his horror they blithely told him they’d changed their minds and Brendan’s reaction was understandably furious. Now, Brendan had a major decision to make. He had a movie and cast standing by, which was budgeted to cost £2.2 million. But he had £25,000 in the bank. Disaster. Major disaster.
And the film was cancelled. The dream of bringing Sparrow McCabe’s story to the screen was over. Or at least it should have been.
Brendan refused to throw in the towel. This was just another challenge, he reckoned. He’d make this movie somehow. Think PMA. But who to play the lead role? He’d do it himself. So what if he were a little old? He looked like a boxer. And he could play Sparrow McCabe wearing a wig.
But what about the money to make the movie? He got on the phone. He and Gerry Browne called everyone they knew with cash to invest. They asked friends, Dublin businessmen, anyone they could think of to get the film moving. And they told them they’d not only get their money back, they’d make a few bob. It meant begging and borrowing – if not stealing – money to make the movie.
Dublin responded. The money emerged to pay the basic costs of film production, of hiring cars, Winnebagos, use of venues, etc. And his cast responded. Brendan called in the actors’ union and told them he wanted to make the movie. He said he would direct the film himself, but asked permission to get the actors to work for next to nothing until he could get backing.
The actors’ union backed him. Then Brendan spoke to his cast and crew and explained the situation, and said he would understand completely if anyone chose not to work on the project.
Incredibly, such was their belief in Brendan, very few walked out. The scene was so powerful it could have been part of a movie in itself.
Brendan was incredibly touched by the backing, but he also had support from close quarters. Eilish stepped up to the plate, doing whatever necessary. Jenny became Brendan’s assistant director. And between them they determined to make the worst of times something close to bearable.
‘I’d get up at five a.m., be on the set at six, start shooting, acting and directing. I’d shoot till six, then I’d go and watch rushes till eight, and by half eight I’d have dinner with guys who were potential investors. And I’d schmooze them until ten, half ten. And then I’d go home to sleep.’
The money came in, in ‘dribs and drabs’, something close to £450,000.
‘But I wasn’t holding it together. There are scenes in the film where Sparrow has to look dreadful because he’s a man on the run. But I do look dreadful. I look out on my feet. I was knackered.
‘I remember on the third week of filming, on a Thursday, we w
ere waiting on a payment of thirty grand and it was to pay the wages. And the money was due to come from Cork, by midday. Now, that day there was a minute’s silence all across the UK and Ireland for peace, ten years on from the bombing of the cenotaph in Enniskillen.
‘So, at midday, I was waiting for a call from the bank. And I asked everyone to stop for the minute’s silence.
‘And I looked across at Jenny. And she was as worried as me, knowing we desperately needed the money. And the silence over, I got back to shooting the scene and she waved over and gave me a thumbs-down sign. The money hadn’t arrived.
‘One day, I asked Robert Quinn, who was my first assistant director, now a great director, to get all the heads of department together. I said, “I want everybody to assemble in the function room of the hotel at two o’clock.”
‘And I told him why – that we had no money.’
Up until this point, Brendan and Robert had been at loggerheads. Robert Quinn in fact had left a movie set in Romania to come and make Sparrow’s Trap.
‘So he said to me, “Right, as far as I’m concerned, don’t think about paying me. I’ll finish this movie whether you pay me or not.”
‘I said, “You’ve no idea what this means to me.”’
Brendan was attempting what few had ever managed in film history. Jim Sheridan points out that Orson Welles received great plaudits for acting and directing, but Brendan was starring, directing and producing a movie, trying to make it all look good on screen while calling up greengrocers and the like, asking for cash.
Meantime, during the eight weeks’ filming, Brendan was still trying to move the Agnes Browne project forward. There were script meetings in LA to attend, casting decisions to be made.
With Rosie O’Donnell having thrown the production team out of the door, a new Agnes had to be found. Anjelica Huston stepped back into picture. ‘Looks like I’m going to have to play Agnes myself,’ she declared.
Sparrow’s Trap, somehow, was finished. But it never did get a cinema or a video release. As a result, it was worthless.
‘Sparrow’s Trap was a disaster. It broke me, and not just in financial terms.’
There were many actors and extras who struggled to feed their families as a result of the movie crash, and there were some very angry investors too. Incredibly, Jim Sheridan stepped in with a cheque for £40,000. He and Brendan might have had their differences over the Agnes Browne story, but that didn’t stop the writer/director putting his hand in his pocket, for a film he wasn’t even part of.
Meantime, Brendan was flattened. He certainly wasn’t in the mood for doing comedy gigs.
‘My confidence disappeared.’
Brendan didn’t realise his resolve hadn’t yet been stretched to breaking point.
Mammy Films
BRENDAN had worked on Sparrow’s Trap for eight long weeks and, looking back, he knows his initial belief in the project was, at best, misplaced.
‘I should have stopped right there and then when the plug was pulled by the distribution company. But I didn’t. The ego was so big I kept thinking another company would pick it up. I guess I had become a bit arrogant. You think you can walk on water. I guess at this time I had the belief that if you read out a shopping list I could put it on stage or turn it into a film and it would be a success.
‘But then it all fails and on the day you learn the worst, you are less than an ordinary mortal, you are a failure. And the day after that, you are less than a failure, you are a bum.
‘So, all of a sudden, you are afraid to get back on the horse. You are terrified.’
Maureen O’Carroll would have been devastated to see her youngest so desolate. Sure, Brendan had had disappointments; The Course didn’t travel well and Grandad’s Sure Lilly’s Still Alive had cost the production company £80,000 – and didn’t get the audiences it needed for a second run. But those were irregular blips in the O’Carroll heart monitor. The Sparrow’s Trap fiasco had lost £2.2 million. This was flatline. A situation far worse than The Abbot’s Castle collapse. Brendan vowed somehow, someday, to pay back those who’d backed him. But that’s not to say the experience didn’t knock the stuffing out of him. (Or that the bank didn’t put him on the blacklist.) Brendan suffered severe depression and his balance of mind was seriously affected. On top of that, he had to contend with the ignominy; here he was a national figure, a huge comedy star, and all of a sudden no one was laughing.
‘I was well and truly fecked,’ he says, succinctly.
But he had to pull himself together. He had to come up with a way to rescue the situation. The bills had to be paid. The family had to be fed.
‘I started doing stand-up gigs again. It was a time of sheer desperation. What else could I do?’
The next few months saw Brendan and Gerry tour, raking in as much money as possible. But it’s fair to say relations were strained. Both were as miserable as every sin they’d ever committed.
Then filming for Agnes Browne was confirmed for July, and production offices set up in Sir John Rogerson’s Quay in Dublin, on the south bank of the Liffey. It should have been a wondrous occasion but Brendan couldn’t become excited, given the recent film failure. To compound matters, three and a half weeks before shooting, Brendan and Jim Sheridan still hadn’t agreed over the script.
‘Jim didn’t really like my screenplay. He’s very much into subtext and there wasn’t enough subtext for him. There certainly wasn’t enough confrontation in it. Jim wanted the mother and the eldest son to be fighting all the time. But that’s not what happens with mothers and eldest sons. Mothers and eldest daughters, sure.’
Brendan argued that everyone had loved the script he’d developed with Anjelica Huston. Indeed, he had recently read a story in the Irish Times by international movie critic Michael Dwyer, in which the writer spoke of being at the Cannes Film Festival, and how Princess Caroline of Monaco had revealed to him she’d read The Mammy, and declared it to be ‘the best storyline she’d ever read.’ What? How? Princess Caroline? It transpired that Grace Kelly’s daughter had an Irish butler and every time he came home he bought Brendan’s stand-up videos. He’d also got a copy of The Mammy that he’d taken back to Monaco. The princess became a Mrs Browne/Brendan fan and had managed to get hold of the film script.
But Jim Sheridan was adamant. ‘The script needs more.’
And for the next ten days there was more – heated debate, that is.
‘Jim’s basic problem with the script was the ending. He believed Mrs Browne’s desperate plight to keep her kids fed and watered and nurtured would be solved when a wonderful man comes into her life and saves the day.’ Whereas Brendan argued that Agnes could very firmly stand on her own two feet (lace-ups, with a small heel).
As a result, the producer and writer developed ‘creative differences’.
‘We agreed to try and settle the problem with the ending. Then, one day, when I was on the tenth draft of the script, Jim came up with the idea of getting out of Ireland. He said, “Let’s go to LA, take five days. I’ve got some meetings there and we’ll work and we’ll get it done.” So we took off and landed in LA and moved into the Chateau Marmont Hotel.’
Brendan adds, laughing: ‘Jim wanted the room in which John Belushi committed suicide. I don’t get that. Not for me, thanks. I was happy with a room where Tracy and Hepburn had their love affair. I wanted to have a vibe of passion, not of someone vomiting to death on a carpet.’
There was no love lost, however, between the collaborators. ‘We couldn’t agree on anything. And I was ready to hang myself. Well, not really. But I’d had enough. And I left the hotel one night, for a walk, which of course no one does in LA, but I reckoned I looked as odd as anyone else. And I really was depressed and I called Jenny, who was still just a friend at the time, on the mobile, and began to rant to her. “I can’t do this! I’m comin’ home.” And it was eight in the morning in Dublin. “I’m getting the first flight out of here, Jenny! I don’t want to see this little bollix ev
er again!”
‘“No problem, Brendan. I’ll meet you at the airport.”
‘And I said, “Thanks.” And then she added the footnote, “But I have to say this to you, Brendan. It’s not like you to give up.”
‘“No, but this is different, Jenny.”
‘“Yes, I’m sure it is. But I’m just saying, it’s not like you. And I’d hate you to come home and then maybe regret walking away.”
‘Well, I asked Jenny about this tactic later, if she were using reverse psychology, but she said she wasn’t. She really did mean to meet me at the airport. But she also believed I wasn’t myself, that I must be in a bad way. Anyway, I hung up the phone and started to walk back towards the hotel. And I reckoned it was pointless going out to the airport at this time. I’d fly home in the morning. So I got back to the room, turned on the telly. And I thought hard. I needed a way to turn this problem around. But how? Jim had me by the bollix. He knew I had massive debts. And he knew he had me cut off from the film pack. As a producer, he was in control.’
What was interesting about Brendan’s story was it revealed Jenny had been the person he’d called in his moment of crisis. He felt she had the answers. In an ideal world he’d have been calling his wife at home. The line between Brendan and Doreen hadn’t been disconnected, but it was becoming increasingly crackly.
Meantime, Brendan and Jim were not on the same line at all. What to do? Brendan’s mind flashbacked to the Positive Mental Attitude course.
‘I tried the PMA, to look at the negative and see the positive. But where was it? Then I realised it. Jim Sheridan had me isolated. That was the neggie. But it was also the possie. I had been trying to hang on to my script with all my might. And nobody knew what he was trying to do to it. So what could I do?
‘I let Jim win. I let him have his way, then faxed off the script and went back to bed for a very long sleep. And how I slept.’
But around two p.m., Brendan was awakened by the sound of the phone ringing. It was Anjelica Huston, on the line from Ireland.
‘Hello—’
The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll Page 18