Prods aren't sexy

[thejuice]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/22/northernireland.ianpaisley

A biopic of Ian Paisley has run into financial difficulties with its screen writer claiming it would have been easier to fund his script if it had been about the IRA.

Award winning dramatist Gary Mitchell has completed the screenplay and started auditioning actors to play Paisley, but he claims that financing the project is proving difficult 'because the Prods aren't sexy enough'.

Mitchell, who will also direct the film, also said the Paisley family no longer supported the film because it was a 'warts and all' story about the recently departed First Minister of Northern Ireland. The Observer contacted the Paisley family last week but they refused to comment.

Mitchell insisted that the film would go ahead. 'I hope that when we make it we can show that Northern Ireland is a good place to make a movie and, of course, that this place can be put on screen from a Protestant perspective for a change.' However, this final detail could be the main stumbling block to the financing of the film. It seems TV and film companies have no problem with dramas about the IRA or films from a Catholic/nationalist perspective, as Hunger, Bloody Sunday, H3 and The Boxer would suggest.

'Look at the talent these films have attracted over the years like Daniel Day-Lewis, Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson. I doubt very much that a film on this theme could attract this kind of attention,' he said.

The north Belfast-born writer said his script had already managed to upset both sides of the sectarian divide. On seeing the first draft the Paisley family pulled their support while a reader given the script to analyse said it was too pro-unionist, Mitchell said.

'That is the peril of attempting impartiality when you write about Northern Ireland - you end up annoying either side. It reminds me of The Force of Change [Mitchell's 2000 play] when certain Protestants said it criticised the RUC too much and certain Catholics said it didn't criticise them nearly enough.'

In the script, Mitchell places much of the responsibility for the origins of the Ulster Troubles on Paisley. He said this did not fit in with Paisley's new image as one of the so-called 'Chuckle Brothers' - the moniker used to describe him and his former foe Martin McGuinness. Last week in Paisley's home town, Ballymena, the pair were seen laughing and joking, as they were during the DUP founder's year-long reign as First Minister when McGuinness was his deputy.

The dramatist said he has included scenes of a group of nascent loyalist paramilitaries who followed every word Paisley spoke in the late Sixties but then became disillusioned with 'the Big Man' as the Troubles erupted and they went to jail. Mitchell's outspoken views have landed him in trouble with loyalist terrorists. Three years ago he was forced to leave his home on the Rathcoole housing estate on the northern outskirts of Belfast by local members of the Ulster Defence Association. They had objected to the way Mitchell portrayed them in his stage plays and on television.

The former writer-in-residence at the Royal Court Theatre in London won support for his plight from writers, poets, artists and intellectuals across the world. He has since returned to Northern Ireland and is currently a writer-in-residence at Queen's University Belfast.

[ziggysego]

I was watching the Top 100 Most Shocking Moments of the 80s.... Paisley featured in it and was in the Top 10.

[fred the red]

I was watching the Top 100 Most Shocking Moments of the 80s.... Paisley featured in it and was in the Top 10.

what was the moment???

[ziggysego]

Him ranting and raving at the Pope in Europe.

[donalmac99]

yer woman that does blue peter is quite nice

[ziggysego]

You watched it too donal?

[Rav67]

yer woman that does blue peter is quite nice

I heard she's going out with the fella from west Belfast who plays the bisexual drag queen in Hollyoaks.

[Donagh]

The Sunday Tribune ran the same story months ago. I don't know what's worse the sight of a fine playwright like Mitchell prostituting himself around town to get this film made or McDonald plagiarising a story by Suzanne Breen - a Trimble sycophant poaching stories from a Paisley sycophant. He obviously couldn't make it up...