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Starring Nora-Jane Noone, Jarlath
Conroy, Frank O’Sullivan and I first encountered News For The Church back in 1989, deep in a volume of Frank O’Connor’s collected stories. I acquired the film rights at that time and promptly did nothing more with it. Since then I have probably read News For the Church hundreds of times. Early last year I sat down and wrote a screenplay of what had been floating around in my head for the last fifteen years. I then went about re-acquiring the rights and finding a leading lady. About that time I saw a beautiful Irish film called The Magdalene Sisters with a wonderful, fresh actress named Nora-Jane Noone. Nora-Jane happened to be in New York promoting her film, I sent her a script, we met, and she signed on. With Nora-Jane’s image in my mind, I then put the project on hold for almost a year as I returned to my day job, acting, to appear in Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital. As that project was winding down we dove fully back into News For The Church. As it turns out, that year wait gave the film valuable time to “percolate” in my mind. A seemingly simple seven page story of a young girls confession has revealed itself to me to be a complex microcosm of human relations, needs, desires and consequences. It explores, in O’Connor’s typically meticulous, pitch perfect fashion the perils of solitude and the price of self empowerment. It confronts our fundamental need to connect with another human being and share who we are, to tell our story, to be heard. O’Connor is one of Ireland’s great writers and News For The Church is, I believe, one of his most resonant stories. For more information, contact: |
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