The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll (25 page)

The money came in, in ‘dribs and drabs’, something close to £450,000.

‘But I wasn’t holding it together. There are scenes in the film where Sparrow has to look dreadful because he’s a man on the run. But I do look dreadful. I look out on my feet. I was knackered.

‘I remember on the third week of filming, on a Thursday, we were waiting on a payment of thirty grand and it was to pay the wages. And the money was due to come from Cork, by midday. Now, that day there was a minute’s silence all across the UK and Ireland for peace, ten years on from the bombing of the cenotaph in Enniskillen.

‘So, at midday, I was waiting for a call from the bank. And I asked everyone to stop for the minute’s silence.

‘And I looked across at Jenny. And she was as worried as me, knowing we desperately needed the money. And the silence over, I got back to shooting the scene and she waved over and gave me a thumbs-down sign. The money hadn’t arrived.

‘One day, I asked Robert Quinn, who was my first assistant director, now a great director, to get all the heads of department together. I said, “I want everybody to assemble in the function room of the hotel at two o’clock.”

‘And I told him why – that we had no money.’

Up until this point, Brendan and Robert had been at loggerheads. Robert Quinn in fact had left a movie set in Romania to come and make
Sparrow’s Trap
.

‘So he said to me, “Right, as far as I’m concerned, don’t think about paying me. I’ll finish this movie whether you pay me or not.”

‘I said, “You’ve no idea what this means to me.”’

Brendan was attempting what few had ever managed in film history. Jim Sheridan points out that Orson Welles received great plaudits for acting and directing, but Brendan was starring, directing and producing a movie, trying to make it all look good on screen while calling up greengrocers and the like, asking for cash.

Meantime, during the eight weeks’ filming, Brendan was still trying to move the
Agnes Browne
project forward. There were script meetings in LA to attend, casting decisions to be made.

With Rosie O’Donnell having thrown the production team out of the door, a new Agnes had to be found. Anjelica Huston stepped back into picture. ‘Looks like I’m going to have to play Agnes myself,’ she declared.

Sparrow’s Trap
, somehow, was finished. But it never did get a cinema or a video release. As a result, it was worthless.

‘
Sparrow’s Trap
was a disaster. It broke me, and not just in financial terms.’

There were many actors and extras who struggled to feed their families as a result of the movie crash, and there were some very angry investors too. Incredibly, Jim Sheridan stepped in with a cheque for £40,000. He and Brendan might have had their differences over the Agnes Browne story, but that didn’t stop the writer/director putting his hand in his pocket, for a film he wasn’t even part of.

Meantime, Brendan was flattened. He certainly wasn’t in the mood for doing comedy gigs.

‘My confidence disappeared.’

Brendan didn’t realise his resolve hadn’t yet been stretched to breaking point.

Mammy Films

BRENDAN had worked on
Sparrow’s Trap
for eight long weeks and, looking back, he knows his initial belief in the project was, at best, misplaced.

‘I should have stopped right there and then when the plug was pulled by the distribution company. But I didn’t. The ego was so big I kept thinking another company would pick it up. I guess I had become a bit arrogant. You think you can walk on water. I guess at this time I had the belief that if you read out a shopping list I could put it on stage or turn it into a film and it would be a success.

‘But then it all fails and on the day you learn the worst, you are less than an ordinary mortal, you are a failure. And the day after that, you are less than a failure, you are a bum.

‘So, all of a sudden, you are afraid to get back on the horse. You are terrified.’

Maureen O’Carroll would have been devastated to see her youngest so desolate. Sure, Brendan had had disappointments;
The Course
didn’t travel well and
Grandad’s Sure Lilly’s Still Alive
had cost the production company £80,000 – and didn’t get the audiences it needed for a second run. But those were irregular blips in the O’Carroll heart monitor. The
Sparrow’s Trap
fiasco had lost £2.2 million. This was flatline. A situation far worse than The Abbot’s Castle collapse. Brendan vowed somehow, someday, to pay back those who’d backed him. But that’s not to say the experience didn’t knock the stuffing out of him. (Or that the bank didn’t put him on the blacklist.) Brendan suffered severe depression and his balance of mind was seriously affected. On top of that, he had to contend with the ignominy; here he was a national figure, a huge comedy star, and all of a sudden no one was laughing.

‘I was well and truly fecked,’ he says, succinctly.

But he had to pull himself together. He had to come up with a way to rescue the situation. The bills had to be paid. The family had to be fed.

‘I started doing stand-up gigs again. It was a time of sheer desperation. What else could I do?’

The next few months saw Brendan and Gerry tour, raking in as much money as possible. But it’s fair to say relations were strained. Both were as miserable as every sin they’d ever committed.

Then filming for
Agnes Browne
was confirmed for July, and production offices set up in Sir John Rogerson’s Quay in Dublin, on the south bank of the Liffey. It should have been a wondrous occasion but Brendan couldn’t become excited, given the recent film failure. To compound matters, three and a half weeks before shooting, Brendan and Jim Sheridan still hadn’t agreed over the script.

‘Jim didn’t really like my screenplay. He’s very much into subtext and there wasn’t enough subtext for him. There certainly wasn’t enough confrontation in it. Jim wanted the mother and the eldest son to be fighting all the time. But that’s not what happens with mothers and eldest sons. Mothers and eldest daughters, sure.’

Brendan argued that everyone had loved the script he’d developed with Anjelica Huston. Indeed, he had recently read a story in the
Irish Times
by international movie critic Michael Dwyer, in which the writer spoke of being at the Cannes Film Festival, and how Princess Caroline of Monaco had revealed to him she’d read
The Mammy
, and declared it to be ‘the best storyline she’d ever read.’ What? How? Princess Caroline? It transpired that Grace Kelly’s daughter had an Irish butler and every time he came home he bought Brendan’s stand-up videos. He’d also got a copy of
The Mammy
that he’d taken back to Monaco
.
The princess became a Mrs Browne/Brendan fan and had managed to get hold of the film script.

But Jim Sheridan was adamant. ‘The script needs more.’

And for the next ten days there
was
more – heated debate, that is.

‘Jim’s basic problem with the script was the ending. He believed Mrs Browne’s desperate plight to keep her kids fed and watered and nurtured would be solved when a wonderful man comes into her life and saves the day.’ Whereas Brendan argued that Agnes could very firmly stand on her own two feet (lace-ups, with a small heel).

As a result, the producer and writer developed ‘creative differences’.

‘We agreed to try and settle the problem with the ending. Then, one day, when I was on the tenth draft of the script, Jim came up with the idea of getting out of Ireland. He said, “Let’s go to LA, take five days. I’ve got some meetings there and we’ll work and we’ll get it done.” So we took off and landed in LA and moved into the Chateau Marmont Hotel.’

Brendan adds, laughing: ‘Jim wanted the room in which John Belushi committed suicide. I don’t get that. Not for me, thanks. I was happy with a room where Tracy and Hepburn had their love affair. I wanted to have a vibe of passion, not of someone vomiting to death on a carpet.’

There was no love lost, however, between the collaborators. ‘We couldn’t agree on anything. And I was ready to hang myself. Well, not really. But I’d had enough. And I left the hotel one night, for a walk, which of course no one does in LA, but I reckoned I looked as odd as anyone else. And I really was depressed and I called Jenny, who was still just a friend at the time, on the mobile, and began to rant to her. “I can’t do this! I’m comin’ home.” And it was eight in the morning in Dublin. “I’m getting the first flight out of here, Jenny! I don’t want to see this little bollix ever again!”

‘“No problem, Brendan. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

‘And I said, “Thanks.” And then she added the footnote, “But I have to say this to you, Brendan. It’s not like you to give up.”

‘“No, but this is different, Jenny.”

‘“Yes, I’m sure it is. But I’m just saying, it’s not like you. And I’d hate you to come home and then maybe regret walking away.”

‘Well, I asked Jenny about this tactic later, if she were using reverse psychology, but she said she wasn’t. She really did mean to meet me at the airport. But she also believed I wasn’t myself, that I must be in a bad way. Anyway, I hung up the phone and started to walk back towards the hotel. And I reckoned it was pointless going out to the airport at this time. I’d fly home in the morning. So I got back to the room, turned on the telly. And I thought hard. I needed a way to turn this problem around. But how? Jim had me by the bollix. He knew I had massive debts. And he knew he had me cut off from the film pack. As a producer, he was in control.’

What was interesting about Brendan’s story was it revealed Jenny had been the person he’d called in his moment of crisis. He felt she had the answers. In an ideal world he’d have been calling his wife at home. The line between Brendan and Doreen hadn’t been disconnected, but it was becoming increasingly crackly.

Meantime, Brendan and Jim were not on the same line at all. What to do? Brendan’s mind flashbacked to the Positive Mental Attitude course.

‘I tried the PMA, to look at the negative and see the positive. But where was it? Then I realised it. Jim Sheridan had me isolated. That was the neggie. But it was also the possie. I had been trying to hang on to my script with all my might. And nobody knew what he was trying to do to it. So what could I do?

‘I let Jim win. I let him have his way, then faxed off the script and went back to bed for a very long sleep. And how I slept.’

But around two p.m., Brendan was awakened by the sound of the phone ringing. It was Anjelica Huston, on the line from Ireland.

‘Hello—’

‘Don’t hello me, you little bastard. I sent you over there with
It’s A Wonderful Life
and you sent me back some mother’s
My Left Foot
!’

‘Just a second, Anjelica. Jim? Can you hear me? Line Six. It’s for you.’

‘I got a taxi to the airport and flew back to Dublin. And I had a smile on my face for the length of the entire journey.

‘The script that had gone to Anjelica’s office after the all-night session was Draft Thirteen. The one that was finally shot was Draft Four. The one I wanted to film.’

Not quite. When Brendan read over Draft Four he realised one glaring omission: himself. So he wrote in a cameo, where he plays Seamus, an ever-present town drunk, a nice bit of comic relief.

‘I thought, “I’ll be fecked if I’m making a movie that I’m not in.” I wanted to bring a few more laughs.’

When filming commenced, there was a heavy atmosphere on set. Many of the crew had worked on
Sparrow’s Trap
and hadn’t been paid.

‘I was seen as the failure on the set. And here they were filming my next movie straight away.’

Brendan borrowed from Tom Cruise during the filming. Not in an acting sense, but the wig, one of the hairpieces Cruise used in
Mission Impossible
. But while Brendan’s head was a little warmer, Anjelica Huston blew ‘hot and cold’ during the six weeks’ filming.

‘She was like the rest of us. She can laugh a lot. And she had the will to make the movie. But I felt the process had chipped away at her. Some days she wouldn’t come out of her trailer until I went to talk to her. I’d have to say to her, “Hi, Angel, here I am. I’ve got a coffee for you. Why don’t you come out? There’s a whole big world out there waiting for you. And there’s a big machine that’s depending upon you. We all need you.” And she would say, “Are you sure, Brendy?” “Yes, I’m sure.” “Well, I’ll come out, then.”’

The director, it seems, was stressed to the eyeballs with the pressures of filming and acting.

‘You just don’t get time to think, really, or time to be alone,’ she said at the time. ‘The moment I’m on the set, I go into hair and make-up, because I’ve got to get ready for the scene. And everyone wants to know what’s going on. “What are you going to do for the next scene and do you want her to sing? And what should the child wear?” You literally do not have a second in which you are not preoccupied with some immediate problem, or having to plan, or having to figure out yesterday’s mistakes. And you have about five hours’ sleep a night and most of those hours are spent dreaming about it.’