| Company History Part 6 For his cast members, Stephen turned first to his now regular partner, Andy, for the leading role of Reader. Andy accepted the part. For the smaller role of Wanker, Stephen asked his friend Paul if he would be interested. Paul, who is not an actor at all, had previously turned down the role of White Man in Admonition, and repeated his reaction here by again turning the role down. Stephen then approached Martin to find out if he would be interested in the project. He was, and thus two of the founding members of the team were finally working together again. For all its problems, CherryPie Productions had survived, and although it was in a different guise than when created, it was as strong as ever, and would soon prove itself extremely tough. On January 3, 2001, Stephen directed Andy and Martin in The Verisimilitude of All Literary Endeavours, the first film Stephen had ever made where he didn't write the dialogue, instead he had composed the piece entirely of quotes from poems, plays and novels, cutting them up and jumbling them around to form an incoherent, grammatically erronous and totally nonsensical narration to go over the whole film. Now all Stephen had to do was edit the film, and this was where, once again, the trouble started. Stephen returned to college on January 8, the only person in his class of twenty three to have actually completed all principal photography on his film over the Christmas. He immediately approached Liam Regan, the first year course co-ordinator, and the worlds most idiotic person, to get access to editing facilities, not only so he could edit The Verisimilitude of All Literary Endeavours, but so he could complete the final sound mix on The Gates of Paradise. He was assured the equipment would be ready by the beginning of next week. Needless to say, it wasn't. The same thing happened the following week. As week after week went by, more and more people who had access to digital editing at home began to present their completed films, while the CherryPie effort, the first to be completed, was still waiting to begin editing. The weeks extended into months and the almost surreally ridiculous situation developed where The Verisimilitude of All Literary Endeavours became the only project not finished by the February deadline. On assessment day, February 20, the very same casting agent who had praised The Gates of Paradise, attacked Stephen for failing to have his new film ready for the deadline. Enough was enough. Stephen launched an unrelenting assault on the film department in general, and Liam Regan in particular, the outcome of which was that the department promised not to take any marks away from Stephen due to his film being incomplete and to grant him editing time (the content of this rant was something along the lines of finding it hard to respect people who were clearly incompetent at their jobs, the blatant favouritsm that certain students received, and the general all round patheticness of the whole cesspool known as DLIADT). On March 5, Stephen completed The Gates of Paradise and on March 6, he edited The Verisimilitude of All Literary Endeavours. Despite taking two days to write, one day to shoot, one day to record the sound and one day to edit, the project had actually taken some three months to mature into its final state, but such delays were fast becoming the trademark of the company. Inactivity, Rebirth (again) and Return At the end of his first year in DLIADT, Stephen left the hated college forever, and applied to the MA in English in NUI Maynooth (a real university). He was accepted into the course and an extremely busy year followed. During this time (late 2001/early2002), Martin returned to St. Pat's as a part time English tutor and as the college's first ever theatre technician. This would prove most important in the future. As the summer had begun in 2001 (after Stephen had left DLIADT), Stephen had decided that it was time to revive Cassandra. He contacted Martin and Andy to check on availablity and as it seemed possible to get the film made, Stephen did an extensive rewrite (including the pivotal decision of making the blind man a blind woman) and the film was recast. However, with everybody taking different holidays, it proved impossible to get everybody together at one time for long enough to rehearse and shoot, and so the film was postponed until the academic year began. Stephen however, after starting in NUIM, quickly realised that he would not have the time which the project needed and so it was again pushed back, this time to the academic year of 2002/2003. On to page 7 Back to home Back to page 5 |
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