STONES IN HIS POCKETS
by Marie Jones
9 April - 18 May 2002
Act 1
Forty Pounds for each day’s filming with meals included appears to be the ultimate for a somewhat underemployed Irish village community. A true stroke of luck to be chosen as the setting far a Hollywood epic and to portray “Ireland” as the Americans imagine it to be. However, the initial symbiose between the film team and the village “extras” rapidly develops into a relationship akin to that between colonial rulers and the indigenous people; Hollywood film teams are scarcely known for their sensitive demeanour in foreign environments. And so the inevitable comes to pass – comic and tragic incidents which bewilder the villagers and plunge the film team into chaos.
The colourful array of characters and anecdotes is presented to the audience by two of the film extras. Charlie and Jake are both more or less failures. They meet for the first time on the film set as Charlie hails from outside the village and has just left a broken relationship and a bankrupt video shop behind him. Jake has returned to his village after a longer stay in America where the success he had hoped for failed to materialise. While Charlie confronts his fate with stubborn, if not entirely genuine optimism, Jake practises an uncompromising realism which Charlie regards as pure pessimism. Charlie has even written a film script and is convinced of a future film career if only the script falls into the right hands at the right moment.
In the dressing room they encounter the young Sean Harkin, a distant cousin of Jake. Sean is drunk and enraged that he has not been employed by the film team. Since the sale of the family farm, Sean’s sole prospect far the future, he has lost all sense of direction and is inwardly torn apart between unrealistic dreaming and bitterness over his fate.
Later in the pub, Charlie and Jake are astonished to see Caroline Giovanni, the “inaccessible” female star, seeking to improve her Irish accent by mixing with the locals. She is the cynosure of all eyes when she unexpectedly goes over to Jake and ends up by inviting hirn to her hotel room. Unfortunately far Jake her interest lies solely in the study of her script and she soon dismisses him with a further invitation to meet her the next day.
Meanwhile Charlie is making scant progress with his film script; when he approaches the ambitious film assistant Aisling he is promptly snubbed. When lake is called to Caroline Giovanni the security guards treat him like a potential IRA terrorist. He is led unwillingly to her Winnebago where he is permitted to read her text aloud, with the desired Irish accent for the designated ten minutes. He is so disgusted by her impatient, egocentric and arrogant manner that he so on takes flight. In the middle of the next crowd scene, the news breaks of a tragic event. The young Sean Harkin has been found drowned. When his fully clothed body was recovered from the sea, the pockets were found to be heavy with stones.
Act 2
Progress with the filming has become difficult; the scenes which should depict happy and rejoicing villagers are anything but successful and to make matters worse the fine weather is coming to an end. When the day set for Sean’s funeral collides with the day scheduled for the filming of the lavish climax scene where thousands of fresh flowers are to be delivered, the Irish become rebellious.
In the meantime lake tries to discover the reason for Sean’s suicide. He soon finds out that Sean, after trying to enter into conversation with Caroline Giovanni in the pub was thrown out by her bodyguard. This trifling incident sufficed to complete Sean’s feeling of estrangement: in his own village and in the pub where he is a regular he is rejected and thrown out by a stranger. When a little later, he sees lake leave the pub with the film star it is the last straw. While the film team feels in no way responsible, lake is tormented by self reproach for not having shown more concern far Sean who had always admired him.
The rebellious villagers get their way and united, they pay their last respects to Sean. lake who senses an element of the theatrical in the foregoing events resolves, together with Charlie, to incorporate them into a film script. After all, they have nothing to lose, and nothing can hold them back.
Forty Pounds for each day’s filming with meals included appears to be the ultimate for a somewhat underemployed Irish village community. A true stroke of luck to be chosen as the setting far a Hollywood epic and to portray “Ireland” as the Americans imagine it to be. However, the initial symbiose between the film team and the village “extras” rapidly develops into a relationship akin to that between colonial rulers and the indigenous people; Hollywood film teams are scarcely known for their sensitive demeanour in foreign environments. And so the inevitable comes to pass – comic and tragic incidents which bewilder the villagers and plunge the film team into chaos.
The colourful array of characters and anecdotes is presented to the audience by two of the film extras. Charlie and Jake are both more or less failures. They meet for the first time on the film set as Charlie hails from outside the village and has just left a broken relationship and a bankrupt video shop behind him. Jake has returned to his village after a longer stay in America where the success he had hoped for failed to materialise. While Charlie confronts his fate with stubborn, if not entirely genuine optimism, Jake practises an uncompromising realism which Charlie regards as pure pessimism. Charlie has even written a film script and is convinced of a future film career if only the script falls into the right hands at the right moment.
In the dressing room they encounter the young Sean Harkin, a distant cousin of Jake. Sean is drunk and enraged that he has not been employed by the film team. Since the sale of the family farm, Sean’s sole prospect far the future, he has lost all sense of direction and is inwardly torn apart between unrealistic dreaming and bitterness over his fate.
Later in the pub, Charlie and Jake are astonished to see Caroline Giovanni, the “inaccessible” female star, seeking to improve her Irish accent by mixing with the locals. She is the cynosure of all eyes when she unexpectedly goes over to Jake and ends up by inviting hirn to her hotel room. Unfortunately far Jake her interest lies solely in the study of her script and she soon dismisses him with a further invitation to meet her the next day.
Meanwhile Charlie is making scant progress with his film script; when he approaches the ambitious film assistant Aisling he is promptly snubbed. When lake is called to Caroline Giovanni the security guards treat him like a potential IRA terrorist. He is led unwillingly to her Winnebago where he is permitted to read her text aloud, with the desired Irish accent for the designated ten minutes. He is so disgusted by her impatient, egocentric and arrogant manner that he so on takes flight. In the middle of the next crowd scene, the news breaks of a tragic event. The young Sean Harkin has been found drowned. When his fully clothed body was recovered from the sea, the pockets were found to be heavy with stones.
Act 2
Progress with the filming has become difficult; the scenes which should depict happy and rejoicing villagers are anything but successful and to make matters worse the fine weather is coming to an end. When the day set for Sean’s funeral collides with the day scheduled for the filming of the lavish climax scene where thousands of fresh flowers are to be delivered, the Irish become rebellious.
In the meantime lake tries to discover the reason for Sean’s suicide. He soon finds out that Sean, after trying to enter into conversation with Caroline Giovanni in the pub was thrown out by her bodyguard. This trifling incident sufficed to complete Sean’s feeling of estrangement: in his own village and in the pub where he is a regular he is rejected and thrown out by a stranger. When a little later, he sees lake leave the pub with the film star it is the last straw. While the film team feels in no way responsible, lake is tormented by self reproach for not having shown more concern far Sean who had always admired him.
The rebellious villagers get their way and united, they pay their last respects to Sean. lake who senses an element of the theatrical in the foregoing events resolves, together with Charlie, to incorporate them into a film script. After all, they have nothing to lose, and nothing can hold them back.
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