Declan Cashin

Writing: the art of applying the ass to the seat

From the new movie Megamind, which I saw this morning and found surprisingly good.

Courtesy of fakemovieposter.com

Looking forward to this…great cast if nothing else. The reviews have been very strong so far

My feature on the new picture collection US2 – in aid of Barnardos – in today’s Irish Examiner

It’s not easy to try and capture a snapshot of a nation – particularly one in such a state of flux as Ireland – but on Saturday, October 2nd of this year, tens of thousands of people felt inspired to get snap happy and record something of a day in the life, and the life in a day, of the Irish nation.

The end result is US2, a new pictorial book compiled by Today FM’s The Ray D’Arcy Show, featuring photos taken by some 21,000 listeners on that random Saturday. The final product, which is on sale from early December, has been whittled down to around 2,000 shots, ranging from the personal to the public, the joyous to the poignant.

The D’arcy team undertook a similar project five years ago – on October 1st, 2005 – and the resultant book sold 30,000 copies, raising €300,000 for Childline in the process. This year the proceeds will go to children’s charity Barnardos.

“It’s not something you could do every year, but now seemed like a good time to revisit the idea,” explains Ray D’arcy. “Our world has changed so much in those five years. On a practical level, the technology has improved. Five years ago not everyone had a camera phone, but they’ve come on so much that a phone now has as good a lens as a digital camera.

“The book reflects all those changes in subtle ways, but it’s more feel-good than anything else. If you have a picture of a smiling child holding a carrot, that will always produce the same reaction regardless of what’s going on with the IMF or whatever else.”

That being said, there’s no escaping the fact that lots of the 2010 pictures and some of the stories behind them, are very much of their troubled time. “The last time we had a lot of things that were nods to the Celtic Tiger,” Ray says. “For instance, we had a good few pictures that showed crane-filled skylines; they’re not there anymore.

“We don’t want to upset people too much, but, for example, we have a picture of a little girl standing on a wooden fence with a ghost estate behind her. That kind of image will probably define 2010.

“There are other sad stories too; there are a good few ones about emigration. There’s a simple picture of an empty bed with an explanation from a mother saying, ‘This is my son’s bed. He’s gone to Australia. I don’t know if he’ll ever come home again’. There are also a few pictures of people leaving from the departures area of Dublin airport.”

On a lighter note, US2 may have uncovered at least one trend in Irish life that wasn’t so evident in 2005. “We seem to bake a lot more,” Ray laughs. “There are a lot of pictures of adults baking or mums with kids helping out or kids baking on their own.

“But a lot is similar: we have a lot of water pictures capturing things like surfing, and a lot of sports are still played on Saturday, for both adult and underage. I think the book is about celebrating the simple things in life. One of my favourites is of a girl with her back to the camera, walking down a laneway, and she’s doing that Morecambe & Wise heel-kick. It just captures a carefree moment.

“We’ve gone out of our way to present the mundaneness of a Saturday. People are sitting down to breakfast, or watching The X Factor, or there’s a shot of a man eating chicken wings in a restaurant.”

If nothing else, US2 appears to truthfully reflect that most endlessly debated and interchangeable aspect of Irish life. “October 1, 2005 was an amazing day – sunny with blue skies from start to finish – whereas October 2, 2010 was a lot more interesting weather-wise,”

Ray laughs. “There are more rainy pictures, such as the great one of a father and son in the Warren in Rosscarbery. It’s raining and they’re out swimming in their wetsuits, and all that’s above the water is their heads. The dad has this big smile, and the red-cheeked young fella is grimacing against the rain. It’s amazing.”

*US2 costs €18, and will be on sale in all major bookshops. €9 from each sale goes to the Barnardos Best Chance Programmes.

My feature on Buy Nothing Day in today’s Irish Examiner

Could you go a day without spending any money? Do you fancy boycotting shopping centres, High Street razzle dazzle, and continuous wallet/purse raiding in an attempt to appreciate the simpler, non-monetary things in life?

If so, then make a note of the annual Buy Nothing Day (BND) today, November 27, where the spend-aware step off the frantic consumer conveyer belt for one day in over 50 countries around the world, from the UK to Argentina.

BND is timed especially to fall on a Saturday – when most of us tend to splurge – and also at that point when the Christmas shopping rampage begins in earnest. The brainchild of anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, the point of BND is to make us all more conscious of how much we spend and waste, to highlight the environmental impact of our spending decisions, and to, hopefully, affect a long-term change in our collective consumerist thinking and behaviour.

But how simple – or difficult – is it to not spend anything? To get some sense of what it entails, I opted to do a ‘Buy Nothing Weekend’, where I’d go a full Saturday and Sunday without exchanging any of the filthy lucre.

I figure it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. I hate shopping as it is. Honestly, I get a pounding headache if I spend any longer than 40 minutes in the vicinity of a shopping centre or district.

Still, as soon as I leave the house on any given day, I seem to start hemorrhaging money. What I’m a divil for is newspapers, magazines, take-away coffees and the like. So those are the first spending impulses I have to fight as my Buy Nothing Weekend begins:

Saturday:

I’d made sure to do a big shop on Friday to stock up on any food and/or booze I think I might need over the weekend. First thing Saturday I make my breakfast at home as well as a pot of coffee to pre-empt any caffeine urges that may strike when I’m out and about.

Instead of buying the weekend papers, I look to the rather shameful stockpile of reading material built up over several weeks beside my bed. I crack into them over breakfast, and am shocked to find that some are from as far back as August – August! First lesson from my experiment: only buy a magazine when another one is fully read and/or recycled.

The plan for the day is to just hang out with some friends. Rather craftily I’ve arranged to spend time with a pal who is now a mature student. In short, every day is Buy Nothing Day for him, so I reckon he’ll be a good influence.

We both have pre-paid cards for our local cinema, meaning we don’t have to fork out every time we go. We take in a movie, but make sure to bring a bottle of water and snacks from home with us (the price of popcorn and drinks in cinemas is the real consumption scandal warranting a boycott).

I’d decided the simplest thing to do for the weekend is not to bring my ATM or credit cards out with me. This feels profoundly unnatural, and, quite honestly, it makes me nervous. To assuage the worry, I stuff an emergency e20 into my jeans pockets.

I’m a tad apprehensive as to how I’m going to make a Saturday night out work. As it turns out, it doesn’t deviate much from other Saturdays of late. Some friends come over for The X Factor, we have some drinks, and then make our way to some watering hole.

It’s free in to the pub, and – showing real commitment to the cause – I made sure to put away enough pre-game shandies before I left the house so that I’m happy to just drink water when I get out. Thankfully – erm, I guess – any prospect of buying someone else a drink doesn’t present itself.

On the way home I get the night bus (with a pre-paid travel card), crucially opting not to even walk past the chipper and be tempted for a late night three-in-one special.

Sunday:

Normally our posse tends to go out for breakfast on Sunday mornings, but today we decide to just throw everything onto the pan and – gasp – eat at home. Shocking, I know: can we still call ourselves Celtic Cubs?

Breakfast is actually lovely: there are no queues, there’s no noise around us, and we can just chat and munch leisurely for an hour.

My friends have some shopping to do, so I let them off, and make my way to my local park for a walk to clear the head. As bad luck would have it, the temperature seems to have dropped dramatically in the previous few days, and I haven’t done the all-important shop for my winter coat. I’m actually quite grateful that I have an excuse not to do it today so instead pack on the layers.

For the rest of the day, I stay at home, Skype-ing friends, and catching up with reading Harry Potter (it seems I’m as disgracefully behind in reading my books as much as my magazines). There’s a bit of a mini-emergency when I later discover that my housemate has finished all the milk. I ask him to buy more rather than me popping out for it. Not sure if that’s breaking the rules – the BND website isn’t too clear on the matter.

Going the weekend without spending wasn’t as tricky as I thought, once you use a little forward-planning. By giving myself an official excuse to avoid shopping, I didn’t feel as guilty about just chilling out, lying around reading, and spending time with friends. Doesn’t sound too shabby does it?

I mightn’t have reined in all my spending since that weekend, but I think I have been inspired by it. I suggest to my family that we do Chris Kindle for the first time this Christmas. Consequently we all only have one present each to buy. Let me tell you, I can only think of one word to describe getting rid of all that stress: priceless.

PANEL:

If you fancy really getting into the spirit of things on Buy Nothing Day, then its organisers have a few tips for how you might register your protest against consumerism:

*Create a shopping-free zone: Mark out a public area and fill it with people playing games, listening to music and chilling out on inflatable sofas or chairs. Hand out balloons with Buy Nothing Day written on them to the bemused onlookers.

*ZOMBI£ $HOPP£R$: Organise a group to dress up as zoned out zombies, shuffling from shop to shop chanting BUY, BUY – BRANDS, BRANDS! Stalk the high street.

*Swap shop: This is a fairly simple idea. Set up a table and ask people to do swaps. Just for fun – leave a set of bogus Porsche keys and see if anyone is tempted?

*Temper tantrum: Re-live those childhood tantrum moments – except this time you’re all grown up and should know better. Sit on the floor in any shop with a friend and throw a tantrum. Shout things like ‘I don’t want anything anymore!’

*See www.buynothingday.co.uk

The BFI held a screening of Woody Allen’s classic Annie Hall during the week, introduced by Allen fan Richard Curtis. It’d been years since I’d watched the film, and I’d forgotten just how funny, and smart, and clever, and sweet it is.

And this great rendition of It Seems Like Old Times, sung by Keaton, has stayed with me since.

I caught a preview screening of Morning Glory this afternoon – and I have to say I enjoyed it. Okay, it’s lightweight and fluff, but gets my vote for the Guilty Pleasure Watch of the year so far. Rachel McAdams is an engaging, winning lead, and Diane Keaton has some fun in a disappointingly underused role.

But Harrison Ford is the main attraction: he’s so good at playing a grump and someone who perpetually looks profoundly uncomfortable to be there that I do wonder if that how Ford himself feels about the movie he’s in! But whatever his motivation, it works. Good fun.

Oh and there’s a delicious fact/fiction blur for UK and Irish viewers too: the struggling, critically-slammed morning show is called ‘Daybreak’. Any resemblance to a certain morning show of the same name is purely coincidental.

My interview with Colin Farrell in Day and Night in today’s Irish Independent

Colin Farrell has been hard at it for hours. “Sorry about the delay, but Colin’s going to need a few minutes break before we continue,” whispers an assistant.

When Day and Night is finally ushered into the hotel suite, the 34-year-old is sitting back on a large sofa. “That last one was a right old session, it lasted an hour,” he exclaims.

“I hope you didn’t give all your good stuff to them?” I ask. “I think I may have burst my wad,” he replies. “You only get the…” At that he trails off and bursts out laughing. “That’s fucking rotten isn’t it?” he asks his sister (and PA) Claudine sitting in the corner, who tries to suppress a smile as she shakes her head.

Lest there be any doubt, Farrell has been sweating away here all day at interviews, and little else, in London’s Dorchester hotel. He’s in good form on this dank Friday afternoon: he looks tanned and healthy, dressed in jeans and a simple white sweater. He’s relaxed, but always moving and re-arranging himself on the couch, tucking his legs underneath him one moment, sitting forward with his eyes closed, lost in thought, the next.

Farrell is talking about his new movie London Boulevard, a blackly-comic crime thriller by William Monahan, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. Farrell stars as a newly-released criminal trying to go straight, who is hired as a bodyguard by a reclusive movie star (played by Keira Knightley), but ultimately finds himself drawn back into the dangerous underworld through his involvement with a psychopathic crime boss (played by – who else? – Ray Winstone).

Although initially reluctant to sign on for the role, Farrell says he was eventually won over by the tone of Monahan’s script. “The script was just full of oddballs, like the characters played by David Thewlis and Anna Friel,” he explains. “It has an eccentricity. My character Mitch is a very fractured man. In one sense he has this awful rage inside that can manifest itself in acts of extreme violence, and then in other ways he has this keen intellect and erudition and tenderness.”

On the matter of his leading lady Keira Knightley, with whom he shares more than one ‘horizontal dancing’ scene, I suggest that she’s always struck me as being too much of a prim British rose, and that there seems to be no craic about her at all.

“You’re going to hate me, man,” Farrell begins as way of a response, “but I’m telling you Keira is so much fun. She has a lovely, silly sense of humour, and she’s smart, and generous.” He pauses, before adding: “Just because she isn’t warm and fuzzy like Ray Winstone.”

Ah yes. London Boulevard necessitates that Farrell must go mano-a-mano with the frankly terrifying screen hardnut. “Honestly man, he’s lovely in real life, and yet still terrifies the shit out of me,” Farrell laughs. “He was nothing but deadly generous and kind to me, but I found it as dicey keeping eye contact with him as anyone I’ve ever worked with in 15 years.”

And what an eventful few years those have been for Farrell. Ever since his breakout role in Tigerland (2000), he has been one of Hollywood’s busiest actors, clocking up credits with the likes of Spielberg and Cruise (Minority Report) and starring opposite Al Pacino (in The Recruit).

Of course, much of his work tended to be overshadowed by the stories of his wild partying and various sexcapades (his 2005 sex tape went viral on the web). He’s been clean and sober since mid-2006, and indeed has kept a low profile for the past few years, concentrating on raising his young family, including his first-born son (with ex-wife Amelia Warner) James, whom, he later revealed, suffers from a rare genetic disorder.

Before our interview started, one of the movie’s publicists had issued warnings to all journalists not to get into details of Farrell’s private life. The most recent reports say that he has split with his Polish actress girlfriend (and mother of his one-year-old son Henry) Alicja Bachleda-Curus.

Farrell refuses to get into the topic, but does reveal something about what his home life is like these days. “I’ve lived in LA for five years. I have a really quiet life. Straight up, I’ll just be home with the boys.

“I like it there, but it took a while. Los Angeles is a strange place and I was very lonely there at first. Honestly if I didn’t have the boys I don’t think I’d ever have moved there. I would have gotten a place in New York or somewhere. But I love it there. I live in Los Feliz, just off Hollywood Blvd. It’s a really simple life. The nature is beautiful, the beach is nearby, and I have a beautiful garden.”

He says his son James (7) isn’t very aware yet of his dad’s job. “He exists in another place where that doesn’t hold interest for him,” Farrell explains. “His life is probably all the better for it.” And what about baby Henry? “He’s doing great, becoming his own little man now. It’s mad to watch it happening. The character presents itself very quickly.”

Does he look like you, I ask? “Not at all. The image of his mother,” he replies.

It all seems so placid, a world away from his former image as a womanising hellraiser. “There genuinely isn’t that much of a social aspect to the job these days,” he says. “I mean, there is if you want to have one. LA is about healthy living. It’s a good place to be a non-drinker.”

His current lifestyle has also enabled him to disconnect more from the celebrity world, and particularly his old bête noire, the paparazzi. “I wouldn’t be as emotionally connected to the paps as I once was,” he says, with a smile. “I used to be a fucking awful man. I’d chase those cunts around town in my car. I’d follow them, try get them in a cul-de-sac. Now, in honour of making my own life easier, I try to just not engage.”

That’s not to say that Farrell has disowned his former bad boy rep. To co-opt some Oprah-speak, he appears to have taken ownership of his past. “I’ve never really run from my reputation, that I can remember,” he says. “I think – I hope – that I’ve stepped up to the responsibilities I have to myself to completely own my own life and my own part in it.

“It may be an Irish attribute, but a lot of times one finds it easier to take full responsibility for the failures and not the successes, do you know the way? I’m trying to get more balance with that: I have a part to play in the good stuff that happens in my life, but also a part in the bad shit too.”

Part of that philosophy is learning to take career setbacks – such as the monumental 2004 flop Alexander – in his stride. “I don’t think I take it as personally anymore,” he says. “Look, I was a pretty important part of Alexander, and I was a pretty important part of why it didn’t work. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t.

“That was a tough time for me personally. I was tarred and feathered. But I’ve never had that level of glorious perceived failure since. Miami Vice was seen as a bit damaging, but as long as I don’t get to an Alexander-esque fiasco, again, I think I’ll be okay.”

It doesn’t seem as if Farrell will have to worry about any critical knock-backs in the very near future. He has no less than three upcoming movies on the cards with the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Marion Cotillard , and he’s also in the running to take the Schwarzenegger role in the remake of Total Recall.

However, next up directly is Peter Weir’s WWII drama The Way Back, co-starring Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, which is being touted as a major awards contender. Having bagged a Golden Globe for In Bruges in 2008, I ask if Farrell would like to win an Oscar someday too?

“I fucking wouldn’t say no,” he laughs. “It’d be an experience wouldn’t it?” He pauses before finishing with: “At the same time you wouldn’t want to be waiting around for it. You’d be living a life of awful disappointment.”

PANEL: For the Birds?

Alas, Farrell isn’t any wiser on the status of his friend Brendan Gleeson’s much-delayed adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s At-Swim-Two-Birds. “Brendan has done an amazing job of adapting that book which people said couldn’t be done,” Farrell says. “The script makes perfect sense. Brendan is chomping at the bit to shoot it, but it’s very hard to get the money together for something like this. It’s also about coinciding everyone’s schedules. So I honestly don’t know here it is right now.”

*London Boulevard is out today

Around the corner from me on Wandsworth Road in London

Some more recent ‘For Your Consideration’ ads for next year’s Oscars…