Post by earl on Jun 3, 2008 9:13:17 GMT
JUST WHEN did the Midlands get sexy? This weekend, a new film, Eden, puts Offaly on the big screen when it is released in Dublin's swanky Light House cinema.
Birr man Mundy has just spent a month at No1 in the singles chart with Galway Girl. <a title="County Laois" href="/topics/County+Laois" >Laois</a> is gearing up for 35,000 visitors to the fifth Electric Picnic. There's even a Biffo in the <a title="Department of the Taoiseach" href="/topics/Department+of+the+Taoiseach" >Taoiseach's office</a>.
The Midlands counties -- Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath -- are at the geographic heart of Ireland, but for a very long time they were a cultural wilderness. Now, though, being located outside the Pale no longer means you are beyond the pale when it comes to the arts.
Declan Recks, director of Eden and the RTE series Pure Mule, has done more than most to inject sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll into the image of the Midlands.
Eden, based on the play of the same name by fellow Offaly man Eugene O'Brien, depicts a young married couple struggling against the isolation and drunken squalor of smalltown Ireland. Adultery, booze binges, drugs -- it was a heady mix for viewers at the recent Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
"Foreign productions tend to give a very romantic vision of Irish country life," says Recks. "When we had a Q&A session after a screening, the Americans focused on how big a part drink had in the film. In Ireland, that hasn't really been commented on. Even for Pure Mule, the complaints were about the drugs and sex. Never the drink. Funny, isn't it?"
When the six-part drama Pure Mule aired, it achieved RTE2's highest ratings. The debauched lives of its young characters, who pass their weekends in a daze of binge-boozing, drug-taking and promiscuity, was instantly recognisable to the bored, alienated kids it sought to give voice to.
"If anything, we tamed it down a bit," says Recks. "After episode three -- which has a good bit of sex in it -- Ryan Tubridy had his radio show in the supermarket in Banagher and there was a hostile feeling around us, mostly from older people.
"But then others would come up to us and say, 'You didn't show the half of it'."
The touching and critically-acclaimed Lenny Abrahamson film Garage turned another unflinching spotlight on the Midlands. Irish film-makers have gained the confidence to see the Midlands not just as a backdrop but as a rich seam of inspiration.
Award-winning film-maker Ken Wardrop has just embarked on a feature-length "creative documentary", which will see him interview up to 100 women from the Midlands about the story of their lives.
"As a film-maker I find that there is an untouched quality about the Midlands -- without wanting to sound patronising, people are delighted to have an interest taken in them. In Dublin, people see you approaching them with a camera and go, 'Oh no, not another one!'"
Wardrop is from Portarlington, Co Laois, and though he lives in Dublin, he has returned to his family and hometown time and again in films such as Useless Dog and Undressing My Mother. He says his subjects' ease with the camera comes not only from the fact that they are related to him.
"I remember in school learning that County Laois was the only county in Ireland that didn't touch a county that bordered with the sea. I was so proud of that!
"But that sense of being centred geographically might extend to the people in the Midlands. I think there's an underlying grounded nature to the characters you meet, an honesty and an openness."
Hopes for a new generation of film-makers from the Midlands are high. Belvedere House in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, played host to the Co-Motion Film Festival last month, where young film-makers got to attend free workshops. Their mission statement was to "be thanked by a teary-eyed young director on the Oscar podium by 2013".
In post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, the economic fringe benefits to this new focus on the Midlands is important.
"Even as people were giving out about Pure Mule," says Recks, "we had a few local businessman taking us aside, asking 'When are you going to film here again?' We had a budget of about e3 million and one-third of that ended up back in the local economy."
Electric Picnic -- now heading into its fifth year at Stradbally, Co Laois -- has also proven a real Midlands moneyspinner. Although always a commercial enterprise run by Aiken Promotions and POD concerts, it started out as a one-day fest but has now swollen in attendance and grown to a weekend-long extravaganza. The organisers and the performers reap the rewards -- but so too do local food producers, B&B and guesthouse owners, nearby towns and anyone who fancies turning their field into a car park for the three days.
If Pure Mule laid bare the Badlands, Electric Picnic has harnessed the spirit of the Madlands.
Other promoters have caught on, with smaller fests springing up in the area -- CastlePalooza in Tullamore, the Portlaoise Goodtime Jazz Festival and the hugely-popular Midlands Music Festival in the grounds of Belvedere House. The Phoenix Festival in Tullamore will be raking in the punters to more than 20 venues across the town in July. It's quite the feat for a festival that started life as a commemoration of the world's first aviation disaster in 1785, when a wayward hot air balloon crashed down on the coming-of-age celebrations of local toff, Lord Charleville.
Not that music-mad Midlanders must wait for the summer fests -- there is a vibrant live scene centred on a number of small towns, particularly Mullingar. According to Angela Dorgan, CEO of First Music Contact, which encourages the work of music collectives across Ireland, anyone who has done their time on the road has played The Stables in the town. It is also a regular stop on the 2fm2moro2our showcase. "Fans down there trust the promoters so much that, no matter who is playing the venue, well-known or not, The Stables will be full," says Dorgan.
The high profile of Offaly troubadour Edmund 'Mundy' Enright -- a song on the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack, Ireland's most downloaded single of 2007, a national anthem in July -- is welcome. But while he famously cut his teeth busking in Dublin, younger Midlands performers are looking closer to home.
Mullingar band The Blizzards -- currently holed up with their second album in a recording studio in Clara, Co Offaly -- say the support they receive from the local scene is vital to their survival.
"We're all mates from Mullingar," says lead singer Niall Breslin. "The scene here is so strong -- there is a real sense of all these bands getting behind each other, borrowing gear off each other.
"The support here really helped us -- we practice upstairs in a pub in Mullingar, called Danny Byrne's. We've never been asked for rent, they give us food and drink, and they let us leave our gear set up."
This co-op effect sees The Blizzards in turn supporting local rising stars such as The Aftermath, who have opened for them at several big gigs. Breslin also namechecks Waiting To Explode and Mark Hogan from Tullamore as ones to watch.
Fellow Mullingarites Not Men But Giants were one of the hits at last year's well-regarded Hard Working Class Heroes music showcase in Dublin.
But the Midlands as a glamour destination for international musos? The good folks in Grouse Lodge recording studios in Westmeath think so. Their two state-of-the-art studios, onsite spa and five-star accommodation have attracted the likes of Snow Patrol, Manic Street Preachers, Ms Dynamite, The Waterboys, Sinead O'Connor, William Orbit. And yes, Michael Jackson. Joe Dolan would be proud.
It's certainly all a far leap from the "sighing Midlands" once described by Sean O'Faolain. Longford is getting a new multi-million euro ballet school, Portlaoise has one of the country's most exciting youth theatre groups, Athlone is base camp for the All-Ireland Drama Festival, Westmeath has a thriving sculpture and art scene, the county councils are running creative writing classes for teens... take your pick.
The Midlands aren't sighing.
They're yelling. n
Birr man Mundy has just spent a month at No1 in the singles chart with Galway Girl. <a title="County Laois" href="/topics/County+Laois" >Laois</a> is gearing up for 35,000 visitors to the fifth Electric Picnic. There's even a Biffo in the <a title="Department of the Taoiseach" href="/topics/Department+of+the+Taoiseach" >Taoiseach's office</a>.
The Midlands counties -- Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath -- are at the geographic heart of Ireland, but for a very long time they were a cultural wilderness. Now, though, being located outside the Pale no longer means you are beyond the pale when it comes to the arts.
Declan Recks, director of Eden and the RTE series Pure Mule, has done more than most to inject sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll into the image of the Midlands.
Eden, based on the play of the same name by fellow Offaly man Eugene O'Brien, depicts a young married couple struggling against the isolation and drunken squalor of smalltown Ireland. Adultery, booze binges, drugs -- it was a heady mix for viewers at the recent Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
"Foreign productions tend to give a very romantic vision of Irish country life," says Recks. "When we had a Q&A session after a screening, the Americans focused on how big a part drink had in the film. In Ireland, that hasn't really been commented on. Even for Pure Mule, the complaints were about the drugs and sex. Never the drink. Funny, isn't it?"
When the six-part drama Pure Mule aired, it achieved RTE2's highest ratings. The debauched lives of its young characters, who pass their weekends in a daze of binge-boozing, drug-taking and promiscuity, was instantly recognisable to the bored, alienated kids it sought to give voice to.
"If anything, we tamed it down a bit," says Recks. "After episode three -- which has a good bit of sex in it -- Ryan Tubridy had his radio show in the supermarket in Banagher and there was a hostile feeling around us, mostly from older people.
"But then others would come up to us and say, 'You didn't show the half of it'."
The touching and critically-acclaimed Lenny Abrahamson film Garage turned another unflinching spotlight on the Midlands. Irish film-makers have gained the confidence to see the Midlands not just as a backdrop but as a rich seam of inspiration.
Award-winning film-maker Ken Wardrop has just embarked on a feature-length "creative documentary", which will see him interview up to 100 women from the Midlands about the story of their lives.
"As a film-maker I find that there is an untouched quality about the Midlands -- without wanting to sound patronising, people are delighted to have an interest taken in them. In Dublin, people see you approaching them with a camera and go, 'Oh no, not another one!'"
Wardrop is from Portarlington, Co Laois, and though he lives in Dublin, he has returned to his family and hometown time and again in films such as Useless Dog and Undressing My Mother. He says his subjects' ease with the camera comes not only from the fact that they are related to him.
"I remember in school learning that County Laois was the only county in Ireland that didn't touch a county that bordered with the sea. I was so proud of that!
"But that sense of being centred geographically might extend to the people in the Midlands. I think there's an underlying grounded nature to the characters you meet, an honesty and an openness."
Hopes for a new generation of film-makers from the Midlands are high. Belvedere House in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, played host to the Co-Motion Film Festival last month, where young film-makers got to attend free workshops. Their mission statement was to "be thanked by a teary-eyed young director on the Oscar podium by 2013".
In post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, the economic fringe benefits to this new focus on the Midlands is important.
"Even as people were giving out about Pure Mule," says Recks, "we had a few local businessman taking us aside, asking 'When are you going to film here again?' We had a budget of about e3 million and one-third of that ended up back in the local economy."
Electric Picnic -- now heading into its fifth year at Stradbally, Co Laois -- has also proven a real Midlands moneyspinner. Although always a commercial enterprise run by Aiken Promotions and POD concerts, it started out as a one-day fest but has now swollen in attendance and grown to a weekend-long extravaganza. The organisers and the performers reap the rewards -- but so too do local food producers, B&B and guesthouse owners, nearby towns and anyone who fancies turning their field into a car park for the three days.
If Pure Mule laid bare the Badlands, Electric Picnic has harnessed the spirit of the Madlands.
Other promoters have caught on, with smaller fests springing up in the area -- CastlePalooza in Tullamore, the Portlaoise Goodtime Jazz Festival and the hugely-popular Midlands Music Festival in the grounds of Belvedere House. The Phoenix Festival in Tullamore will be raking in the punters to more than 20 venues across the town in July. It's quite the feat for a festival that started life as a commemoration of the world's first aviation disaster in 1785, when a wayward hot air balloon crashed down on the coming-of-age celebrations of local toff, Lord Charleville.
Not that music-mad Midlanders must wait for the summer fests -- there is a vibrant live scene centred on a number of small towns, particularly Mullingar. According to Angela Dorgan, CEO of First Music Contact, which encourages the work of music collectives across Ireland, anyone who has done their time on the road has played The Stables in the town. It is also a regular stop on the 2fm2moro2our showcase. "Fans down there trust the promoters so much that, no matter who is playing the venue, well-known or not, The Stables will be full," says Dorgan.
The high profile of Offaly troubadour Edmund 'Mundy' Enright -- a song on the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack, Ireland's most downloaded single of 2007, a national anthem in July -- is welcome. But while he famously cut his teeth busking in Dublin, younger Midlands performers are looking closer to home.
Mullingar band The Blizzards -- currently holed up with their second album in a recording studio in Clara, Co Offaly -- say the support they receive from the local scene is vital to their survival.
"We're all mates from Mullingar," says lead singer Niall Breslin. "The scene here is so strong -- there is a real sense of all these bands getting behind each other, borrowing gear off each other.
"The support here really helped us -- we practice upstairs in a pub in Mullingar, called Danny Byrne's. We've never been asked for rent, they give us food and drink, and they let us leave our gear set up."
This co-op effect sees The Blizzards in turn supporting local rising stars such as The Aftermath, who have opened for them at several big gigs. Breslin also namechecks Waiting To Explode and Mark Hogan from Tullamore as ones to watch.
Fellow Mullingarites Not Men But Giants were one of the hits at last year's well-regarded Hard Working Class Heroes music showcase in Dublin.
But the Midlands as a glamour destination for international musos? The good folks in Grouse Lodge recording studios in Westmeath think so. Their two state-of-the-art studios, onsite spa and five-star accommodation have attracted the likes of Snow Patrol, Manic Street Preachers, Ms Dynamite, The Waterboys, Sinead O'Connor, William Orbit. And yes, Michael Jackson. Joe Dolan would be proud.
It's certainly all a far leap from the "sighing Midlands" once described by Sean O'Faolain. Longford is getting a new multi-million euro ballet school, Portlaoise has one of the country's most exciting youth theatre groups, Athlone is base camp for the All-Ireland Drama Festival, Westmeath has a thriving sculpture and art scene, the county councils are running creative writing classes for teens... take your pick.
The Midlands aren't sighing.
They're yelling. n