Declan Cashin

Writing: the art of applying the ass to the seat

This week’s ‘Reel Life’ column from ‘Day & Night’ in the Irish Independent

*Last week Reel Life was invited to a preview of eight scenes from James Cameron’s 3D upgrade of Titanic, his 1997 (ice)blockbuster that’s sailing into cinemas again on April 6^th.

Reel Life is ordinarily suspicious of any kind of 3D retro-formatting, but we must admit to feeling a bit of a thrill seeing Kate’s endearing puppy fat, Leo’s so-90s hair curtains, and Billy Zane’s incredible eye-brows popping out in stereo depth. And, of course, the 3D conversion certainly adds to the sense of scale when watching those final boat-sinking moments (sorry, should we have said ‘spoiler alert’?).

“It’s the exact same cut as in 1997, but now you get to experience the movie as it was originally intended,” explained Oscar winning producer Jon Landau.

“Every shot in the movie is now a special effects shot,” Landau said of the painstaking process of conversion that has required the services of 450 people at a cost of $18m. “But it’s all about enhancing the story. 3D should be a window into a world, not a world coming out of a window.”

*Ah, but what of the reports that stars Leonardo diCaprio and Kate Winslet are sceptical about being involved with the Titanic re-release? “I screened for Leo in Australia and he couldn’t be more enthusiastic,” replied Landau. “Kate is going to be seeing the footage soon, and from everything I understand she’s excited too.

“I think what part of it comes down to is that it’s very unusual to have a movie re-released. We’re not asking them to do a whole ton of marketing or publicity. We understand that they have other priorities and professional commitments today.”

*Making Margin Call, the new movie about the 2008 economic crash, seems to have prompted something of an existential crisis for British actor Paul Bettany.

“I think anymore we are judging the success of our lives by our ability to purchase things, and not our ability to make things,” Bettany mused to Reel Life.

“I found myself saying the other day, ‘I can’t use a PC; I’m a Mac person’. What am I fucking talking about? What does that mean? Wow.”

The engaging star also opened up about what it was like to twice work with his actress wife, Jennifer Connolly. “It’s fucking intense when we’re working together,” he said. “On [the 2009 Darwin drama] Creation, it was 24 hours a day. She’s so fastidious when working. She just wanted to be up talking about it, and I was like, ‘Fucking hell, go to sleep woman!’”

*In the first of Reel Life’s occasional series, ‘Where/Who Are They Now?’, we turn our attention to Heather Donahue, the female star of the 1999 horror movie phenomenon, The Blair Witch Project.

Audiences might remember Donahue better as ‘Snotty Weepie Girl’, but the 38-year-old can now go by another sobriquet: ‘pot farmer’.

In her new biography entitled Growgirl: How My Life After The Blair Witch Project Went to Pot, Donahue documents her career-reinvention as a Californian medical-marijuana farmer.

She also talks about her discomfort with the level of fame that Blair Witch thrust upon her, even going as far as to fight against the movie’s title from appearing on her book cover.

Once more, it seems Donahue lost out to the power of the Blair Witch.

My ‘Upfront’ column from ‘Day & Night’ in today’s Irish Independent

Call me batshit crazy, but I’ve applied for an audition to be a dancer during the opening and closing ceremonies of the London Olympics, which you might have heard are taking place this summer.

Technically, the audition is to be a “performer”, but the ceremony director, Danny Boyle, has made no secret of the fact that organisers are desperate for more male volunteers to come forward who are willing to shake their thang.

As an adopted citizen of London town, I feel it behoves me to do my part, even if it goes against all my instincts that London isn’t ready to stage the Olympics, and that the strain on the public transport system, to take just one example, will make life in the capital unbearable for the duration of the Games.

So instead of fleeing the city, as I’d originally planned, I may yet end up strutting, bopping, pirouetting, and jazz-handing around the Olympic Park in Stratford.

At this point you might well inquire, in the words of Cat Deeley: ‘So you think you can dance?’

It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately as it happens, and not just because I reduced my niece to tears of laughter/fear on Christmas morning during a dance challenge on her Xbox Kinect in which I flapped about like an epileptic seal at feeding time.

I’ve always thought I was a decent enough hoofer, but maybe that’s just because I’m often more willing than others to muster up a little soft-shoe gentle sway at social gatherings. Naturally, such enthusiasm is usually drink-fuelled, and, being a total lightweight in that regard, a mere sip of wine is now enough to have me dancing on the bar a la Coyote Ugly.

But just because I’m usually willing to dance doesn’t mean I should. Or can.

I had two weddings last year where my dance – let’s just say “skills” for now – came under intense scrutiny, my exertions on the floor earning me a slew of knowing winks and smiles over breakfast the next morning and even the ambiguous complimentary nickname “Twinkle- Toes”. Personally, I’d have plumped for “drunken asshat”.

There’s a disconnect in all this, of course. I’m a gay man. Stereotypically, at least, dancing is supposed to be in my genes.

Alas, I have to face the truth, and admit that I’m an uncoordinated biological aberration. Like a lot of guys, I work best when my dance songs have specific instructions for me to follow. Example: “Put your hands up in the air” and “Side to side like you just don’t care” are perfect. Similarly, “Jump Around” is pretty self-explanatory.

Looking at my moves in as clinical and sober a manner as possible, I guess I do over-rely on my little feet-shuffle/shoulder-shrug dances, incorporating a few of the legendary hand gestures and shapes known as ‘Shuffing the Deck’, ‘Dealing the Cards’, ‘Painting the Ceiling’, ‘Rowing the Boat’ and the seminal ‘Big Fish, Little Fish, Cardboard Box’.

So how does this all bode for my Olympics audition? I guess it depends on just how desperate Danny Boyle et al really are. Presumably I’ll have to be fully sober for some or all of this process, so I’ll have to get past the awkward self-consciousness that holds so many of us back when it comes to bustin’ a groove (oh yes, I just said that).

Oh, and if you’re reading Mr Boyle, this audition will work better for all of us if you use one or more of these tracks to gauge my level of dancing ability: Westlife’s ‘World of our Own’ (officially the only acceptable pop song to which men everywhere can dance), Jackie Wilson’s ‘Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher’, Amy Winehouse’s ‘Valerie’, or White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’. Don’t even think about springing any Beyonce on me.

Whatever happens, I’ll report back later next month after the audition. Now to finish: jazz hands!

My interview with Ralph Fiennes in today’s ‘Irish Examiner’

SITTING on a sofa in a West End hotel in London, Ralph Fiennes’ intense eyes are focused intently on a prize.

A waiter is removing a plate of cakes and buns from the table, prompting Fiennes to politely reach out to keep the confectionery in place, and then order a fresh cup of tea.

Fiennes needs the sugar rush. He has a mild dose of flu, and sounds disconcertingly like his raspy uber-villain Voldemort from the Harry Potter series.

The 49-year-old is meeting the Irish Examiner to discuss Coriolanus, his directorial debut, in which he also stars. It’s a modern-day adaptation of one of Shakepeare’s lesser-known plays. Set in a contemporary cityscape, the film retains the Bard’s language.

Fiennes lived in Ireland as a child in the mid-1970s. The eldest of six children — his siblings include film-maker Martha and fellow actor Joseph — he spent four years in Kilkenny, and later west Cork, after his parents, Mark, a photographer, and Jennifer, a writer, moved the family from Ipswich.

Continue here.

My interview with Paul Bettany for ‘Margin Call’ for movies.ie

Hailed as the best movie yet about the 2008 economic crash, Margin
Call has wracked up some of the strongest reviews of the past 12
months.

Set in the offices of one fictional New York investment bank over the
course of one night on the eve of the financial calamity, Margin Call
boasts a whopper of an ensemble cast including Kevin Spacey, Stanley
Tucci, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Zachary Quinto (also serving as
producer), Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Mary McDonnell, and Paul
Bettany.

Q: How did you become involved in the movie?

A: My agent sent me the script, and I thought it was great. I went to
meet the director, JC Chandor, who was incredibly enthusiastic and
knowledgeable about this world. Plus it already had Zach Quinto
producing it as well as Kevin Spacey and Stanley Tucci, and it was
going to be two-and-a-half weeks out of my time. I thought that was a
good punt.

Q: How much research did you do for the part in Margin Call?
A: All I knew about the banking world beforehand is that I had a bank
account and a PIN number. So I went on a trading floor and shadowed a
guy who did my character’s job, listened in on his calls, and asked
him questions. It was really enlightening. It’s surprising because I
guess you have certain preconceptions about the person you’re going to
meet. Then you’re actually sat opposite a human being and it’s quite
confounding because they have a wife and kids and a mortgage, and they
felt like they tried to tell their boss what was about to happen and
their boss didn’t listen. They’re human.

Continue here.

See more here.

My interview with the stars and writer of Steven Spielberg’s ‘War Horse’ in today’s Irish Examiner.

NOT many young actors go from playing a tree on stage to being cast as the lead in Steven Spielberg’s latest blockbuster.

That’s what happened to then unknown British actor Jeremy Irvine, who plays Albert, the naive protagonist of War Horse, an epic, old-school adaptation of Michael Morpugo’s 1982 novel (and also an acclaimed stage play) about a young boy’s bond with his steed, Joey, and their separate experiences of fighting in World War I.

Kathleen Kennedy, Spielberg’s long-time producer, says the director knew Irvine was his man when the actor walked in for his audition.

“Well, he didn’t tell me,” says Irvine. “At no point did they even hint that I’d get this job. My agent would say after every audition, ‘this is great experience’, and that’s all it ever was.

“I hadn’t had much work for two years. I was doing things like a theatre show with no lines, where I was playing a tree. I was just out of drama school, spending a lot of time walking around London putting CVs through letterboxes. I wasn’t even getting call-backs for commercials.”

Continue here.

My ‘Mantalk’ column from yesterday’s ‘Weekend’ magazine in the Irish Independent

It’s a familiar feeling to all of us. It’s a Friday or Saturday night, and, either by reluctant choice or unavailability due to a prior commitment, you have to pass on friends’ invites to the pub or a house party or some other shindig.

The pangs begin as soon as you’ve ended the call or replied to the text. You immediately doubt your decision. You start to imagine the kind of night out your posse will have without you, growing ever envious of the hijinx they’ll get up to, and the people they’ll meet.

You might discover that someone you fancy is also out and at that same event, sending you into a mini-panic about lost opportunities to meet them, accompanied by visions of them getting together with someone else.

Suddenly your own plans seem lame in comparison, and the anxiety caused by what economists would call the ‘opportunity cost’ of committing yourself to one course of action begins to erode any enjoyment to be had from and at it. All that’s left is an epic sense of inadequacy, giving way to irritation and even misery.

This paralysing social problem is what the cool kids call FOMO, or ‘Fear of Missing Out’. It’s a prime example of a ‘first world problem’, which the increasingly vital online source Urban Dictionary describes as a condition afflicting (relatively) wealthy, industrialised countries like Ireland that people in poverty-stricken, third world nations would give anything to have to endure.

An early definition of this very modern, very middle class phenomenon was actually articulated in an early episode of Friends, where Chandler lambasted Ross for moaning about having to juggle two female lovers. “Oh no, two beautiful women love me,” Chandler mocked. “And my wallet’s too small for my 50s [dollar bills], and my diamond shoes are too tight!”

Of course, FOMO has always been with us. Its past incarnation was known simply as ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, ostentatious displays of which will be painfully, cringingly familiar to all of us who lived through the Irish boom years.

But what makes FOMO notably different – and more agonising – is that the likes of Facebook and Twitter ensures that you can’t escape the horrible comparisons raging in your head. Indeed, these outlets provide you with enough real time updates of the event you’re missing to make it even harder to feel good about your choices.

Social media really has a lot to answer for. Everyone who has their own account knows that the format is all about presenting your best self online. Your profile is the ultimate personal PR exercise. We’re all complicit in the game; locked in that cycle of perpetuating FOMO feelings amongst one another with our updates, pictures, and location check-ins. I’m the first to admit my guilt.

Just the other night my news feed on Facebook was inundated with pictures and comments from friends (the real and “inverted comma” kind) who were bopping away at a concert that I had declined to attend in favour of a night in on the couch.

It was hell, and the only thing I could do to stop myself clawing at my own face was to pop some herbal sleeping pills and pray for unconsciousness to escape the crippling FOMOness of it all. The sad thing is I’m barely exaggerating.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Facebook and especially Twitter, as those who have ‘friended’ (and, more than likely, blocked) me can attest. But the potential to torture and taunt yourself as I did that night is simply too great. Maybe this is the way the machines will ultimately – and, let’s face it, inevitably – overthrow and enslave us all? If so, all I will be able to say on the day of the Mac-pocalypse is: well played.

It doesn’t stop with FOMO either. A quick search on our future overlord Google tells me that FOMO is so prevalent and pervasive that it now has its own offshoots.

For instance, ‘Weekendvy’ is the term to describe those specific feelings of shame and inadequacy you feel upon coming into the office of a Monday morning to hear about Mary from accounting’s dirty weekend away, or IT guy John’s two-and-a-half day drinking session, or the glorious two days of pampering enjoyed by Sorcha from marketing.

Then there’s so-called ‘Decision Fatigue’, as identified by American social psychologist Roy E. Baumeister. Apparently our meagre human brains only have so much energy and capacity to consider choices, and having to make one decision after another causes the old grey matter to give up, leaving us paralysed and robbed of all willpower.

So what options are open to a man to fight back against the likes of FOMO? Avoiding social media on a night out (and, more crucially, a night in) is an obvious start, or, at the very least, hiding/blocking/unfollowing the updates and Tweets from the most egregious bragging offenders.

There’s also the (new)age-old advice to just try “living in the present”, to enjoy what you’re doing in the here and now.

The problem with that suggestion is that it may induce FOMO in those of you living in the past or looking to the future. You just can’t win.

My Reel Life column from ‘Day & Night’ magazine in today’s Irish Independent

*Reel Life got to fulfil a long-held ambition last week by chatting to actor Ralph Fiennes about our mutual experiences attending the same school.
No, not RADA darling, but rather St Kieran’s College secondary school in Kilkenny, where Fiennes was a student between 1975-76, when the family lived in the city (and later west Cork) for a period of four years altogether.
St Kieran’s is a strong GAA school, having supplied dozens of All-Ireland hurling stars down through the decades, but perhaps, unsurprisingly, hurling wasn’t really Fiennes’ bag. “I got out of doing it,” he recalled, with a smile. “They wouldn’t have wanted me anyway.”
Fiennes, who was doing promo duties for his latest movie Coriolanus (out next Friday), was also staying annoyingly tight-lipped about his role in Bond 23, Skyfall, which is currently shooting. His exact part in the film is still vague, with contrasting rumours that he’s a villain and/or the new ‘M’. “Oh all this speculation is classified information,” is all he had to say.

*Margin Call, a sharply focused and insightful look at the 2008 economic crash that’s released in cinemas today, boasts one of the finest ensemble casts in an American film from the past 12 months: Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, as well as young bucks Penn Badgley and Zachary Quinto.
Indeed, Quinto – best known as Spock in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek reboot – also serves as a producer on the movie.
It’s a big coup for the 34-year-old’s hitherto small-time production company, Before the Door. Margin Call was shot in just 17 days with a $3m budget, and was still able to draw that level of talent, marking the savvy Quinto out as a definite power-player to watch.

*Last Sunday, Reel Life spent the afternoon on a press junket with various members of the cast of Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, out today. One of quirkiest stories to emerge from those encounters came courtesy of star Emily Watson, who argued that the War Horse set felt “very un-Hollywood” despite the whole operation falling under the auspices of Tinsel Town’s most successful director.
When pressed to name the most “Hollywood” experience on a set thus far in her career, Watson reminisced about ome particular day during the making of Hannibal Lector movie Red Dragon.
“The director [Brett Ratner] knew everyone, so one afternoon Michael Jackson just came by to say hello,” the actress recalled, still looking a bit baffled at the memory.

*Meanwhile, Watson’s War Horse co-star and weird-crush-du jour Benedict Cumberbatch, was slightly defensive when asked about his recent casting as the villain in the next Star Trek movie. “I’m supposed to be playing a villain,” he emphasised tersely. “I can’t say anything about it. I’m very excited, and can’t wait to get over to LA to begin.” Then, almost by way of apology, he added: “There are lawyers…I’ve got to keep quiet.”

*If ever you find yourself at a loose end in London town, and fancy a bit of celebrity stalking, you could do worse than setting up in the bar/restaurant of the Soho Hotel in the West End. Over the course of two days last week, Reel Life spotted Gerard Butler, Meryl Streep, and Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock grabbing a snack in there. Just have your picture-phone at the ready.