Plotlines reinvented as GAA goes to Hollywood

It may be the off-season in Gaelic games but there are enough juicy plotlines out there worthy of being turned into classic movie remakes

‘YOU CAN’T PUT A PRICE ON A GREEN FIELD WITH TWO STANDS’

YOU know it is the off-season in Gaelic games when Jim Gavin is indulging his thespian alter ego. If you have not seen it, there is a footage doing the rounds of the Dublin manager in one of those fundraising ‘Oscar’ productions – now so beloved of club fundraising committees – where he literally has a walk-on role as a barman ferrying a tray of beer to a lottery winning syndicate.

‘Who is paying for this drink,’ he nails the line with the kind of conviction that is likely to leave the Fair City set blushing, and the rest of us wondering why a man, with such an obvious love of stage, shrivels in front of a dictaphone.

Anyhow, added to Kerry chairman Tim Murphy’s suggestion this week that his county may consider streaming their games live for the viewing pleasure of their own, rather than signing up to a centrally-negotiated broadcasting deal which can leave them light in the pocket, it set this column thinking.

Why stop at just streaming live games when blessed with such fine players and rich scripts, the GAA could come up with a whole slew of productions that would tease the subscription fee out of the tightest wallets.

To get it rolling, here are a few ideas Mayo: The Not So Quiet Man: A tale of an exile who, rather than returning, just sends remittances to the old country, having been reared on tales of clerical curses, epic failures and Billy Joe Padden’s fetching.

However, not all at home are enamoured with the stranger’s newfangled ways as he makes all kinds of demands for his generosity, including a receipt for his gift.

It fuels suspicion among locals, inflaming passions with claims the benefactor is nothing more than an absentee landlord in a pin-stripe suit.

And that is only when he keeps it on, the scene where the main character drops his britches ensuring this release has an 18-certified rating, but you won’t find any reviews in the press which was forbidden from giving it any publicity due to its unholy script.

Oh, and it has a soundtrack to die for, one that could set Brendan Shine on the road to international stardom. Cork: The Field – A modern adaption of the John B Keane classic but one which holds true to the central conflict of two contrasting outlooks, one which demands value for the tax payers’ money and the other which insists you can’t put a price on a green field with two covered stands.

The script is as excessive in emotion as the budgetary overflow.

‘It is my child, I nourished it. With my bare hands I filled out the application form for the grant and made a living thing out of it. All I want is that green grass, that lovely green grass,’ pleads Bull McCabe, in one of the greatest monologues since last year’s county convention.

However, despite that passionate intonation, the green grass has proved elusive.

In the original production, green seaweed was ferried to manure the field but in this contemporary take, they settle for wheel-barrowing in greenbacks.

It will be the spring before we know how it plays out, but as ever there are fears the production may be over budget. Antrim: Field Of Dreams – A very ambitious reworking of the original, where a farmer was intoned by ghostly voices to construct a stadium in the middle of his crop fields, with the promise ‘build it and they will come.’

But in this version, the stadium was already built in the middle of a city, but knocked to the ground.

The plot suffers a little in terms of its predictability, with no twist to the punch-line that when you knock a stadium, people don’t actually come.

However, it does the original – panned by some critics for a script devoid of realism – a favour by proving that you can have an even more incredulous plot.

And while the ghosts central to the storyline in the original possessed a charm, this just haunts for the sake of it. Kerry: O Brother Where Art Thou

– This amounts to no more than a hijacking of the title, but given the genius nature of the featured subjects, it is allowed.

However, like the original this is set against the backdrop of a great depression in the Deep South, and has quite the seductive soundtrack to it.

A tale of two brothers, one hailed as a wunderkind, the other left in the shadow, but perhaps not for long on the evidence of last weekend, where even David Clifford at his sublime best was left in the shade by his older, less-heralded brother, Paudie.

Suffice to say, the watching Peter Keane did not break into a verse of Man of Constant Sorrow.

Tyrone: The Godfather – The story of one man’s hold on a football family through the generations which extends to an All-Ireland winning trilogy.

He has gifted his clan incredible wealth and status and while he continues to command unquestionable loyalty among the majority of his foot soldiers, there are some who have become disaffected.

Indeed, one of his former captains suggested in late summer it was time to make a move against the head of the family.

Mind, he has been so quiet since he might as well be sleeping with the fishes.