More Power To His Elbow

Kevin Power’s BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK (2008) is a very fine novel, and one in the mould of Eoin McNamee in that it fictionalises a real-life event, getting under the skin of the newspaper headlines - and boy, were there headlines. In essence, the story Power tells is one of the Celtic Tiger’s cubs at lethal play, yet it prefigures the economic bust in the way it investigates how, in Ireland, your socio-economic position dictates how severely you will be punished if and when you transgress. Then again, what’s the point of being rich and powerful if you can’t bend the rules once in a while? Quoth the blurb elves:

On a late August night a young man is kicked to death outside a Dublin nightclub and celebration turns to devastation. The reverberations of that event, its genesis and aftermath, are the subject of this extraordinary story, stripping away the veneer of a generation of Celtic cubs, whose social and sexual mores are chronicled and dissected in this tract for our times. The victim, Conor Harris, his killers - three of them are charged with manslaughter - and the trial judge share common childhoods and schooling in the privileged echelons of south Dublin suburbia. The intertwining of these lives leaves their afflicted families in moral free fall as public exposure merges with private anguish and imploded futures.

  The excellent Irish director Lenny Abrahamson is currently filming BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK, which will appear on our screens next year as ‘What Richard Did’, courtesy of Element Pictures, whose most recent production was the black comedy ‘The Guard’. To wit:

Element Pictures are delighted to announce that Principal Photography begins this week on Lenny Abrahamson’s new film ‘What Richard Did’. Set in present-day Dublin, the story follows a group of privileged teens over the course of the summer after they leave school, focusing in particular on Richard, a popular sports star, whose life is changed forever after a senseless act of violence. ‘What Richard Did’ is directed by Lenny Abrahamson (Adam & Paul, Garage, Prosperity), written by Malcolm Campbell (Skins, Shameless), produced by Ed Guiney and executive produced by Andrew Lowe both of Element Pictures (‘The Guard’, ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’). It is loosely based on Kevin Powers award winning 2008 novel Bad Day at Blackrock. The film stars an ensemble of young Irish actors including Jack Reynor, Sam Keeley and Roisin Murphy as well as established talent including Lorraine Pilkington and Lars Mikkelsen (star of the Danish hit series, ‘The Killing’). The film will shoot in and around Dublin and Wicklow for five weeks and is backed by the Irish Film Board and Element Pictures.

  I’m looking forward to this one in a big way. Lenny Abrahamson made the best Irish movie of the last decade with the pitch-black comedy ‘Adam & Paul’, and it’ll be intriguing to see what he does with Power’s source material. We’ll keep you posted …