Santa Barbara There was a huge crowd - so many over 100 people could not be admitted - at a premiere screening of "THE NEPHEW" (first screening with a major general audience admittance). This was a movie premiere at The Santa Barbara Film Festival.
Pierce Brosnan produced his first movie with Beau St. Clair. It was a constantly mind moving and personal movie with lovely scenes of Ireland.
Chad ( Hill Harper, Beloved) is a cute 17-year-old mixed race nephew, whose Irish mother died. He comes "back to Ireland", living with the Curmudgeon Uncle, Tony Egan (Donal McCann). He meets Pierce Brosnan's character, Mr. O'Brady (or just Brady), because he falls in love with the beautiful daughter. There are many scenes (ah, character scenes) to laugh at, others pull some tears.
![[scenes]](nephew2.jpg)
The three mentioned above were at the premiere in the flesh, with the director Eugene Brady. After the movie they took questions. The movie was very good, if not fantastic! THE NEPHEW has not been "picked up" in North America but has been in the rest of the world.
THE NEPHEW is generation secrecy of a "Titanic" proportion. Let's hope the rest of America will be able to see THE NEPHEW.
![[more scenes]](nephew4.jpg)
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Sinead Cusack, Hill Harper, Donal McCann, Aislin
McGuckin.August 30 '98 (p.7.)
Pierce Brosnan has just become a grandfather and hard as it is to imagine 007 sitting by the fireside in his cardigan and slippers, that is what he plans to do.
For the next few weeks, he plans to whisper baby-talk into his new granddaughter's ear, and the rocker by the fire is not before time. It's 20 years since the Meath-born star got a 2,000 loan, left his job as a commercial artist in London and moved with his late wife Cassandra to become a Hollywood actor. The last few years have been a roller-coaster, with both his personal and professional life thrown into turmoil.
Today, after all the ups and downs, Brosnan's Irish Dreamtime, has just released its first film, The Nephew, and his oldest daughter Charlotte has just made the Bond star a grandfather at the tender age of 45. Technically, Charlotte is his stepdaugher -- she and her brother were born of Cassandra's first marriage to Dermot Harris -- but Pierce regards her, and refers to her, as his daughter.
So, what's next for Mr. Bond? Marriage to his girlfriend
Keely?
"Yes, I guess so, but not for a while," he tells me in "Myself and Keely have talked about it but we are happy for the moment. I'm far too busy anyway for a wedding. I've just finished filming Grey Owl in Canada with Richard Attenborough. Next week we finish this publicity tour for The Nephew and then I'm looking forward to spending some time with my grqnddaughter before going home to Keely and Dylan [their toddler son]."
The Nephew, which Brosnan produced with Beau Marie St. Clair, one of America's best-known producers and his partner in Irish Dreamtime, is his first move from straight acting. How did it feel to be on the other side of the camera?
"The whole experience felt nerve-wracking but magical," he says. "That's why I love film-making here. Whenever I come back to Ireland, I always feel it's magical and spectacular. I brought that vision into "The Nephew". Filming here was so much better than in Hollywood. It has the perfect filming environment....well, apart from the weather."
The Nephew is Irish Dreamtime's first feature film but Brosnan feels sure in his heart that it will be a success. "Irish Dreamtime is something special. Our next movie is a remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. The original starred Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway; the remake will feature me, Rene Russo and the lovely Faye Dunaway again. We start shooting at the end of September and then I have to go away to make another James Bond in January."
As we discuss Hollywood's attempts to make every Irish movie about the Troubles, Donal McCann -- the lead in The Nephew -- joins us. "F**king terrible, that's what I think of those films," Donal proclaims. "Justice with dollar bills. It's a terrible thing when all they feed on is dead bodies."
The young writer/director of The Nephew, Eugene Brady, joins in: "This is a feal film. It avoids showing the slow Ireland. We don't show scenes of the Cliffs of Moher -- it's aimed at the real Ireland, the Ireland of today." Having seen it, I couldn't agree more.
Brosnan's affection for Ireland is evident. "I think I may just move back here at some stage. That is, if there's anywhere left to buy. I hear the Germans and Japanese are buying up all the propery here, so I quess I better hurry up."
As he leaves, he jokes that after the two Bond movies he has lined up next year, he will retire. Somehow, in the back of my mind, I feel that his may not be that much of a joke for the new granddad.
Actor Pierce Brosnan makes his producing bow for his own banner, Irish DreamTime, in "The Nephew," marking the first Irish film in which he's acted in nearly a decade.
Debuting director Eugene Brady's dramatic treatment of what could have been good sitcom material makes for a strange beast, half culture clash, half family melodrama. Though Brosnan's star power is diminished in a supporting role, pic's emphasis on human relations and a warm ending, as well as its widescreen, tourist-board visuals, should help the film find its way to theatrical release for family audiences.
Set against the lush backdrop of an emerald islet, this is the unlikely tale of the tumult caused in a small community when the inbred denizens discover they have a young American cousin who is talented, handsome and black.
When Chad Egan-Washington (Hill Harper) shows up on the Irish island of Inis Dara to scatter his mother's ashes on her native land, his misanthropic uncle Tony Egan (Donal McCann), a farmer, is the first to be shocked. Having broken off contact with his sister 20 years back after a spat, Tony had no idea she had married a black New Yorker or that she ran a grocery store in Hell's Kitchen.
Chad, an extremely polite boy with dreadlocks and a talent for sketching, is soon accepted as an oddity. He doesn't take to farm chores much, but the girls in town are wild about his exotic looks and American accent. His romance with Aislin (Aislin McGuckin) makes her dad, Joe Brady (Brosnan), see red --- not because of Chad's color, as one might imagine, but because he once had a doomed love affair with Chad's mother and never got over it.
Tension also mounts with uncle Tony, as the boy's questions bring long-buried family skeletons out of the closet regarding Tony's unwarranted cruelty toward Chad's mother and toward his ex, the sensible, maternal Brenda O'Boyce (Sinead Cusack).
As the Irish-American hero, Harper, who has worked with Spike Lee, projects a non-threatening nice-guy aura even when he suddenly shaves his head mid-film. Jacqueline O'Neill and Sean P. Steele's soft-spoken script is determined to ignore the racial question his presence raises as much as possible, treating his color as just a good joke at uncle Tony's expense.
Brosnan's famous face makes for an eccentric island bartender, and his role as Aislin's irrationally jealous pater remains murky even after it's duly explained. Harper's likable Yank directness contrasts amusingly with the style of the top-drawer Irish cast, with McCann, Cusack and McGuckin giving their dramatic all.
Pic's best moments are its offbeat glimpses of local life captured en passant: two nuns fly-fishing in a stream in hip boots, the warm wake where Chad is introduced to the town, a farmhand (Niall Tobin) improvising rap from the top of a tractor. Stephen McKeon's rendition of booming, melodic folk tunes complements cinematographer Jack Conroy's eye-soothing Panavision lensing of verdant pastures and violet sunsets over the sea.
Variety (AMSTERDAM)Aug 25 If you want to get in touch with anyone in the film industry in Norway this week --- or just want a glimpse of Mr. 007 himself, Pierce Brosnan --- try Haugesund, a tiny port town of just 30,000 inhabitants on the west coast of Norway.
Some 1,200 Norwegian and Nordic industryites and other international film professionals, including Brosnan and French actress Jeanne Moreau, began gathering in the sleepy fishing village Aug. 23 for the 26th edition of the annual Norwegian Intl. Film Festival.
Once simply a venue for Norwegian distributors to showcase their fall and winter lineup of international films to the territory's municipal exhibitors, Haugesund has now become a key gathering place for Nordic filmers and a launch pad for their latest pics.
Before the event ends on Aug. 30, the fest will unspool more than 100 films from 16 territories around the globe, including six world premieres. It will also play host to an array of glitterati arriving for the Amanda Awards, Norway's annual film awards ceremony set for Aug. 29.
Historically a Norwegian event, the Haugesund fest's mandate over the past few years has taken on an increasingly pan-Scandinavian hue, largely due to its New Nordic Films section, a showcase to some 30 buyers from all over the world of 10 of the hottest feature films produced in Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland over the past year.
The increasingly regional nature of the fest is also highlighted by a special section of the Amanda Awards called the pan Nordic Film prize. With five films, nominated by the film institutes of each territory, up for awards, including Cannes fest winner Thomas Vinterberg's "The Celebration" (Denmark), the prize is increasingly being seen as the pan-Scandi equivalent of an Oscar.
Attendance at the fest has continued to grow over the past 25 years but the event's director Gunnar Lovvic tells Variety that for the first time this year he's put a cap on the number of those registering.
"The town of Haugesund simply couldn't accommodate any more people," he notes.
If the number of people is limited, the number of events at the fest are growing. In addition to the Retrospective, which features five of Moreau's films, and other regular events, the fest boasts several new sidebar events, including an American Independents showcase of eight films.
Director Christine Berg calls the pics "the soul of the American indie." Among them is James Yerkes debut film "Spin the Bottle," one of the six films having its world premier at Haugesund.
Brosnan will be at the fest to flag "The Nephew," an Irish film by World 2000 Entertainment that he produced and toplines.