BBC Newsline has revealed there are now two projects to make a movie about Paisley’s life. The Paisley family is co-operating with one project and Gary Mitchell has been commissioned to write the script. Another Co Down production company has recieved support from the Film and Television Commission to develop a script. It is unknown if Liam Neeson is still interested.
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May I suggest Julian Clarey for the lead. John Inman would have been my first choice but sadly he recently died.
‘Something’s coming this summer…’
A tagline competition is surely merited.
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the altar…”.
They’ll never find an actor with a big enough head to truly play the role.
lol, Bemused. Pity “Never Say Never Again”‘s already taken.
A combination of “The King of Scotland” Amin, in the style of Ian Smith of Rhodesia, with the doctrines of Mugabe seems to be the best way to sum up the big mans bio?
Titles:
“A passage to Ireland”
“The last Jewel in the Crown”
“Dr Strangelove”
Wide screen version with extra loud surround dolby sound, what a prospect !!
” Never say never again*
I saw that on the news this evening and thought that the Beeb had broadcast the story about a fortnight too early. If someone like Paul Greengrass
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0339030 was writing it it’d be an interesting film to watch.No doubt if there ever was a film about the Big Man it’s bound to feature a soundtrack by Willie McCrea -God help us all!
If Gary Mitchell co wrote a film with John McBlain?
Robbie Coltrane to play Ian Paisley.
Coltrane would be good actually.
Jabba the Hut in the lead role?
Coltrane’s a good call.
Brian Blessed or Richard Griffith? I can’t think of anyone else large enough and Nolan’s probably too busy with the radio work.
Art Hostage: “Dr Strangelove†….
… ‘Or, How I Learned to Stop War-mongering and Love the ex-Bomber’.
Re: Coltrane, did any of you ever see the fantastic sketches he did in his early days with BBC Scotland of a character called “Mason Boyne”, the archetypal Glasgow tenement Orangeman who kept a framed picture of Paisley by the lightswitch so he could kiss it every time he either left or entered the room? Masterful stuff.
The Mason Boyne character prompted me to suggest Coltrane.
I liked the way he spent all his spare time painting the leaves in his garden orange.
The Long Good Friday
Look back in anger. Rebel without a cause .Pride and prejudice. Theme music ” Twelfth of never “. And many more ———–
might I sugest instead of a title a tag line
the surest cure for insomnia modern man has ever produced
Art Hostage: “Dr Strangelove†….
… ‘Or, How I Learned to Stop War-mongering and Love the ex-Bomber’.
LMAO
Buster Bloodvessel for the part of the Doc?
Aparently “mini me” is going to be involved in the production and coughing up some of the cash. I suppose the cash will be needed for the potatoes to remove the warts. I think we will have to wait until he dies to get to the real truth about Dr Stangelove.
What about the fat bloke in Hellraiser (not the one with the pins in his head) the scary one,you know the fat one with the strange raidio thing in his head !!
With Art Garfunkel playing Martin McGuinness (see pic in this week’s Private Eye)…doncha just love the big man???!!!??? Geddit???
How about Brendan Gleason to play the Rev. He’s big enough for the role, and has the power in his range that no N.I actor could match. Besides, he should have played Michael Collins instead of big Liam. Only N.I actor I can think of who could pull it off would be Ciaran Hinds.
Dr No.
Starring Brad Pitt as young Ian
Sylvester Stallone as mature Ian
Glenda Jackson as Eileen
Bob de Niro as Peter (‘you lookin’ at me?’) Robinson
Olivia Nash as Iris
Jeremy Irons as Gerry Adams
Directed by Ken Loach
Cinematography by James Cameron
Filmed on location in Rathcoole
In Aramaic
Stain glass windows in his church dedicated to his life. Now, a film commissioned by his family.
FALSE IDOLS no less!!
A Clockwork Orangeman?
Gabriel Byrne as the ghost of King William
Allan Rickman as Peter Robinson
Tom Hanks as Jeffrey Donaldson
Bruce Willis as Nigel Dodds
Matt Lucas as Jim Allister
David Walliams as Iris Robinson
and perhaps Clint Eastwood as Bob
Just a pity Brando’s dead- the obvious choice for the lead-
“I coulda been a first minister”
And remember
“In Stormont, noone can hear you scream”
I’ll get me sash
Darth
Ow! Much better casting for Robinson. But surely Bruce Willis is already taken for Johnny Adair?
Andy Serkis for Reg?
It’s potentially a brilliant idea. A genuine character who’s roots are in the bitter land struggle of the Clogher Valley.
Ian Paisley is a genuine living link to the Plantation, and the clash of cultures and values contained therein.
Always struck me as fundamentally Irish in a way most modern Unionists are not.
Go for it. Be authentic.
Joe Pesci would be a great Willie McCrea, reprising his “Goodfellas” character.
And if Brando’s agent turned it down from beyond the grave, I’d have liked Olly Reed to have been cast in the lead role.
And of course only Sir Anthony Hopkins could give the right air of understated menace to Jim Allister-”The St Andrews agreement washed down with a nice Chianti…. feffeffefefef!”
Will this movie be a comedy?
Bill Murray as Willie McCrea.
I think the title needs to be short, snappy and to the point so I reckon this would work.
“BASTARD”
How about John Goodman for the lead role ? However, as we need someone with an ego the size of Australia, we might need to look outside the acting fraternity, so how about Donald Trump or Dicky Branson ?
The film could be something along the lines of a Mr Bean storyline, containing scene after scene of unintended consequence. After all the bloodthirsty bigot did as ferment civil unrest as any organisation.
I would also like to see
willie mcrea – Joe Pesci
peter robinson – Al Pacino
nigel dodds – Samuel L Jackson
Ian Junior – Christopher Biggins
Jim Rogers cameo (if possible) – Ronnie Corbett
that sentence should have read:
“After all the bloodthirsty bigot did as much to ferment civil unrest as any organisation.”
The Vogon captain in the 2005 “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was based on pictures of Big Ian, as noted on Slugger back on April 13, 2005.
Don’t forget David Cronenberg as Willie Ross
Also…
Iris Robinson – Kathy Burke
David Simpson – John Malkovich
Jim Allister – Dustin Hoffman
Gregory Campbell – Denis Waterman
Jeffery Donaldson – Norman Wisdom
Sammy Wilson – Harvey Keitel
“Matt Lucas as Jim Allister”
LOL!!!! Brilliant!
Very cynical move by the Paisley sect. They know that Hollywood or others may make a less than complimentary movie about him given how his charisma has stoked the coals of distrust, which has manifested themselves in physical and mental abuse by others on others for decades, and now he seeking, like the PM, a positive lasting legacy.
Sinn Féin convoluted Irish history to show them as downtrodden freedom fighters in a State governed by an alien Oligarchy belonging to the Loyal Orders that oppressed them. Let us hope that the DUP does not use the same extreme techniques to rewrite the history books according to their own extreme mantra.
Philip
History is always written by the victorious.
What about;
“The Exorcist 2 – Revenge of the Reverend”
“I STILL cant forget what you did this past 30 years!”
“The Pope must die!”
“Never Never Land”
“Road to nowhere”
“Little Britain”
“In the name of the Reverend”
Very funny, everyone. However, I think it might be a fascinating film of a genuinely intriguing man, regardless of your take on his politics. Plenty of nationalists have been done on celluloid, but unionists have long been invisible on film, or else caricatured as one dimensional. I hope that any film would show unionists as real people with virtues and vices, and actually have something interesting to say as well about their society. If Gary Mitchell is involved then I am sure it will be sympathetic which is somewhat different from being uncritical.
It’s a pity Sir Walter Scott is no longer available to write the script as he had a great talent in his novels of showing how individuals lived their lives in times of social change.
Oh and Liam Neeson would be superb, and give it some major clout in the film world.
I doubt Liam would be interested, he has little time for Ian Paisley.
Actually one man who WANTS to play the role of Paisley is Liam Neeson, years ago David Niven was to play him but Paisley didn’t know who he was.
Watchman, intriguing may be one word to describe him, personally that does not resonate with me. Words which do however, when I think of him are dangerous and hyprocrite.
If the film tackles the paradox of how a so called man of God can be so hate filled then it might be a worthy project. Then again, I think Paisley’s God is not one of love.
Does anyone have any ideas on what the narrative substance of the film will be? I mean, it’s all well and good to say it’s “about Paisley” but more specifically, what is it about?
Are they going to attempt to tell his whole life? If so, how will they be able to turn it into a coherent narrative? What’s your beginning, middle and end? What’s the narrative arc?
Or will the film concentrate on a particular era in his life, a la Michael Collins (which concerned itself solely with 1916-23)? Or will the narrative focus on a specific era, with liberal use of expository flashback to earlier points in his life (as in Nixon, the great biopic of that other notorious “black Irishman”)?
I would suggest that the opening shot is easy: we open with a shot of a Catholic priest (obviously a Cardinal, as he’s wearing the hat) humming the Rite of Transubstantiation in Latin. The camera draws back and we see that the setting is a spectacular Cathedral, packed with kneeling Catholics mumbling their Latin prayers. The camera retreats further, out the door, and pans back to a wide shot of a vast, twin-spired Cathedral, magnificent to behold. A subtitle reads: St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, national Cathedral of Ireland, 1926. The soundtrack is still one of a priest reciting in Latin, and a sheepish-sounding congregation mumbling the responses. However, slowly bleeding into the score is the sound of a newborn baby crying. The camera continues to draw back, away from the vast doors of the great Cathedral, down the palatial steps, down the hill, out the gates and across the road to a simple house on Edward Street. * The sound of the newborn baby rises higher in the score as the mumbling congregation recedes, and eventually the howling of the baby is all that can be heard. The camera turns and enters the house. The baby is lying in a cot and screaming blue murder. A woman who has just given birth is lying in bed, being comforted by the midwife, and they marvel: “That child has some set of lungs on him!” Standing over the cot is a very stern, severe-looking man in a dog collar that instantly identifies him as a clergyman of a Protestant congregation. He tells the women to be silent, takes out his Bible and reads a passage, preferably something very Old Testament about damnation and being surrounded by evil. (Any suggestions?) When he finishes he says something like: “God has chosen you to do His work, my son.”
*Paisley was actually born on Loughall Road, which is a couple of hundred metres from the Cathedral in the opposite direction, but that messes up our shot, and a little artistic licence is surely reasonable.
That subtitle should read:
“St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Armagh. National Cathedral of Ireland, 1926.”
‘Passion of the Antichrist’
Dr Strangelove:
Jeffery Donaldson – Norman Wisdom
Surely you mean Daniel O’Donnell to play Donaldson?
Dr. Strangelove said “Then again, I think Paisley’s God is not one of love.”
- Well I think that anyone here who has ever paid a visit to ATW and the so called religously inspired views of its main writer will see that the Free Presbyterian God is a false one, or certainly not a Christian one at least!
Billy Pilgrim ” and then the midwife ran a stake through the little bastards heart thus saving many lives ” The End.
Up round Ballymena way all the wee farmers are preparing to be extra’s (as the third farce)and polishing up the ol’ shotguns for the Mountain scene. Now was it shotgun licences or toilet roll they held up.
Norbigit
Gav Belfast and Art Hostage, among others have got a mention in the Guardian. Not to mention slugger, look!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2039816,00.html
I heard this the other day on Rdaio 4, a friend said it was obvious: The AbominalNoMan! perhaps Yeti, YetIan?
Reckon this film will be boring. All Paisley did was talk vitriol all his life – what are they going to do? Shoot it as a series of rabble-rousing speeches?
He didn’t even make any major changes or take any grand decisions that posed any risk to himself. There’s no narrative here, no emotional crux, just endless stasis.
I do think there should be more films about the North from a Protestant viewpoint, but its up to Protestants to make them. Hopefully they can find more interesting subject matter than a loud-mouthed politician who played it safe all his life and never even challenged himself.