Did anyone watch this on RTE last night? First of three programmes about the films of Roddy Doyle's Barrytown trilogy.
The bits where Colm Meaney and Roddy Doyle were watching and commenting on scenes were quite fun, but I thought it was going to be much more of a cosy reminiscence thing with the stars than it was.
Only Angeline Ball, Robert Arkins, Glen Hansard and the guy who played Mickah Wallace out of all the actors, a few cameos from the writers, producer and location scout, and all padded out with an awful lot of random street conversations with people from Sheriff St who'd been extras, or just remembered it being filmed.
I think what I thought was going to be a cosy nostalgiafest left me with more questions than answers -- did all the other stars refuse to take part because their memories of working on the film are not so great, or because maybe in some cases their lives have not been straightforward since? Was Alan Parker awful to work with? Did some of them feel being in the film had been a generally negative thing?
Even some of those who did participate in the programme seemed not to want to whitewash what it was like -- Glen Hansard said that Alan Parker calling him 'an awful name' when he played his first Frames gig during the shoot had soured his experience, and made reference to disputes about money, and Roddy Doyle had to fight for writing credits for the screenplay and clearly still felt that. Robert Arkins (who looked very unwell, I thought) seemed quite ambivalent about the whole thing.