In my spare time I enjoy the YouTube channel Pitch Meeting, which imagines a pitch for Hollywood movies and points out some obvious flaws.
As I am feeling a little whimsical I decided to indulge in a pitch meeting myself inspired by the great folks at Pitch Movies, pitching the idea of yet another film set in Ireland.
Pitch: I have a movie idea that is set in Ireland.
In Ireland, that sounds great. So much fun there, the pubs, the countryside, the warm atmosphere.
No, we won’t be doing fun. None of the movies are ever about fun when they are set in Ireland. This is because before the 2000s Ireland was awful, it was indeed fucking awful and that’s all we ever like to discuss. No stranger comes to town, no hero goes on a journey. Just everyone stays in the awful town called Misery, in Co. Darkness.
Em, wasn’t there a boom in Ireland before the 2000s? The Celtic Tiger. You could do something great on that. Something with energy. Something with imagination. Something original. Lots of booze, lots of sex, people getting no change from 10 punts after buying a gin and tonic in Café en Seine. That would be great – that would get the punters in. The music, the colour, aw it’s all coming back to me now. You know people love to reminisce and that generation has all the money now.
Colour? Is that some kind of sick joke? Don’t you know that Ireland was permanently a dark place before the 2000s. The clothes were crap and there was no diversity. Everyone was made to watch Fair City on just one tiny telly, in the corner of their freezing kitchen of their damp little cottage. Just to ram the point home we will shoot this thing in black and white and everyone will look permanently wretched. If you are not miserable at first, you will be fucking miserable soon enough and certainly once you leave the cinema.
But why would anyone like to see this film? Especially as that’s not what actually happened?
Oh, but this part of the ‘Ireland was awful’ derangement syndrome and you know and I know that if you tell the Big Lie, and you tell it for long enough people come to believe it. Do you know that there are women out there who went to Mount Anville and were getting hot and heavy with the lads from Blackrock every weekend but after looking at Philomena, The Magdalene Sisters, and now Small things Like these they actually think they personally did a stint in a Magdalene Laundry? In reality, they spent most of their time in Café en Seine followed by Annabel Nightclub, but looking back they think their youth was closer to Annabelle the movie. They also think they had a terrible education provided by the nuns, although somehow, they are now a partner in McCann Fitzgerald. Something about oppression or not taking up too much space.
Right, so where is this set?
Well, it is set in a little town somewhere in little Ireland, where there are little people, and the only people who aren’t little are the Priests. And it features a Magdalene Laundry.
What again? But we just had one of those. I think maybe you should move on. The sex and booze of the 90s boom does have more appeal. You can do the economic crash and of course the reckoning. You could do lots of things.
No, we want to do the Magdalene Laundry. Again. We think this reflects the more authentic, lived experience of most Irish people even today.
Em, didn’t you go to St Michael’s, take a gap year, graduate UCD and then Smurfit but fancy yourself a creative?
I mean I may have done that. But I want to give the little people a voice, all the others who were so thoroughly oppressed up until about the 2000s.
Were your friends oppressed?
No, we all went to Ibiza after the Leaving Cert but not everyone did. Some of them had to slum it in Gran Canaria. Some really believe they went to a laundry.
What in 1999?
I mean 1999, 1989, 1979. This is the movies. Total historical accuracy is not necessary.
If you wanted to be serious you could do the banking bust. An Irish version of the Big Short, really go after the banksters who screwed over the Irish middle class. You sex it up – I really like that scene of Margot Robbie in the bathtub in the Big Short explaining mortgage-backed securities. Genius. Goodness what I could do to Margot Robbie in that bubble bath……
Anyway, sorry, lost my train of thought.
But we’ll also point out how the little guy was screwed over. Maybe hint at the sheep like thinking of the public who were too busy buying coffee machines and outside heaters to really question whether buying a 1 bed apartment for E800,000 was such a good idea.
I was one of those people. You’ve hit a sore sport.
Sorry.
No problem. Daddy took the hit. But I am glad we are back to the little guy. My film will feature a little old woman, who tries to shelter a fallen woman who if she doesn’t shelter her will go to a Magdalene laundry or a mother and baby home.
But no one was forced into the mother and baby home. I do remember that from the report. In fact, mostly they provided the last refuge to some women when everyone else turned them away.
Em, no. As I said, this is the movie and total historical accuracy is not necessary. We just lie about that and imply all the girls were incarcerated. Mother and baby home, Magdalene Laundry, it’s all the same. The main thing is the awfulness and darkness and how everyone is cowering from everyone, even though somehow this was a decade where Brit pop and Brit football seemed to dominate even in Ireland. You know people would go to an Oasis concert and then come home and lock their daughters up in a Magdalene Laundry? Now and again the nuns in the Magdalene Laundries would let their girls out to go to a Blur concert, or a Pulp concert if you wanted to be different but they had to be back by midnight.
Emmm. I think that would require quite a lot of cognitive dissonance. Perhaps the dialogue will improve things.
No. We don’t do dialogue. There will be a lot staring, and knowing eyes, and misery, and oppression, and some more staring and such. Couple lines here and there.
So, we have another movie set in Ireland about the Magdalene Laundry but somehow in the 1990s, where it rains all the time and it’s just fucking awful? Ok let’s do it.