Last week was a busy one for Shane Connaughton, the Cavan writer who was Oscar nominated for his screenplay for My Left Foot. His third novel, Big Parts, was launched and he also learned that his new screenplay is to be filmed this summer, directed by Jeremy Irons.
Connaughton's new novel is set in London in the 1970s in a house shared by an eccentric bunch of people, including an elderly cross-dressing playwright, his young (female) lover, an ex-jailbird and other exotic creatures. It may sound too bizarre to be true but the novel is based directly on the goings on in a real house near Camden Town in London where Connaughton had a flat at the time.
It's a big change from Connaughton's previous novels, which were both rooted in Cavan where he grew up -- the award winning A Border Station and Run of the Country. But this new novel represents the next stage in his own story and brilliantly captures the London of shared houses and squats at the end of the swinging 1960s.
Although his novels have been acclaimed by the critics, Connaughton is probably better known as a screen writer for both cinema and TV. His adaptation of the Christy Brown book My Left Foot won him an Oscar nomination in 1989.
His screenplay for The Playboys, a 1992 film starring Albert Finney, Aidan Quinn and Robin Wright, also based in his home territory, was highly praised. More recently, he wrote the screenplay for Maeve Binchy's Tara Road, starring Andie Mac Dowell and Stephen Rea.
He has also done a lot of screenplays and adaptations for TV, including a series for the BBC based on the writings of Donegal writer Patrick McGinley. Speaking at his book launch last week, Connaughton remembered that Natasha Richardson's first adult screen role was in a film he wrote about the Northern painter William Scott, Every Picture Tells a Story, a Film Four production made in the 1980s.
"She was absolutely wonderful. She played the art teacher who taught Scott when he was a boy. She was terrific in the role. I've seen her in several roles on stage over the years, including an Ibsen play, and she was always wonderful. I always liked her as an actress. But, of course, it was in her genes. She'll be missed for her ethereal beauty and her great acting talent. Her death is absolutely tragic," he said.
Connaughton's latest work for cinema is a screenplay for The Misremembered Man, the first novel from Derry writer Christina McKenna which is set in rural Co Derry in the 1970s and is about a lonely bachelor farmer and a rector's daughter. The film is to be directed by Jeremy Irons this summer, his first feature as a director, and is backed by the Irish Film Board and a major American producer.
"So it's going to be a busy summer for me," Connaughton said, "because the film of my first novel A Border Station (about his childhood in Cavan and his father, a garda) is also scheduled to be filmed over the summer by Picture Palace."
Big Parts by Shane Connaughton is published by Muswell Press
