From Beara to Butte

[boyonarope]

Hello, Philip...Saw two shows during the SF Fillmore run in October. Outstanding. Last time was early 90, the Palladium, NYC. Have been listening to the band for a hundred years...Here's why I write now: I'm the co-writer and associate producer of a dramatic documentary film about Butte, Montana, once the largest producer of copper in the world, also once the most Irish town in America (according to a prominent historian of the diaspora). Called "Butte, America," this is a very ambitious film, of the highest quality (we shot on super 16mm), using veteran and, in some cases, Academy Award nominated cinematographers, editors, sound people, etc. The film will be shown in theaters and at festivals in the U.S. and overseas from Fall 2007 to about Fall 2008, when it'll then be broadcast on national public television here in the States...We already have sponsorship in Cork City--University College Cork (our friends in the history department there). And we'll probably end up submitting the film to the annual festival there. While in Cork last year, we traveled out to the Beara Peninsula, to Allihies, where the copper mines were located, and from where so many of the early Butte miners came...There's much more I could say, including that I'm writing a book that will come out with the TV broadcast (the publisher is Houghton Mifflin). The point I wish to make here is that Butte is still a very Irish place and the story is very much an Irish one...It's also a story of industrialization. Butte was the only mining camp in the American West to become a full-blown city--an industrial metropolis on the frontier. Very different from other Western towns...Which, finally, brings me to this: When I was living in Manhattan and visiting my favorite bar, I'd always play the same song first on the jukebox: "Dirty Old Town." Because it took me home, if only in reverie. That song is forever tied in my mind--and heart--to my dirty old town...We're just now starting to add sound. We have a composer who's overseeing that and writing music especially for the film. We also have a sound designer/editor (he works for George Lucas) who's creating sound effects. And we're beginning to consider any other music we'd like to use in the film. So, here's the question: Is it even possible to make arrangements to use a portion of "Dirty Old Town?" If so, please get in touch with me, and we can talk about terms, etc. Here's my address: EddieD@in-tch.com. Sorry to use the forum to do this, but didn't know how else to reach you...Just one last note: This is all on the up and up. I'm a former magazine editor in NYC, longtime contributing editor with Harper's, multiple teaching fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley. Rattlesnake Productions, the independent nonprofit production company that's overseeing the film, has been around for about 25 years. All of its films have been broadcast on national public television in the U.S. and distributed overseas via film festivals, etc. One of its films, Ishi: The Last Yahi, was nominated for an Emmy...Okay, enough...If you've come this far, you've already been quite generous...And should nothing come of this exchange, you might add Butte to your personal map of America. It's truly a place apart...Cheers, Ed.

[philipchevron]

Hi Ed

Although I've never been there, I'm aware of Butte's importance in the Irish-American story and have a secondhand affection for the place.

I'm sure it would be possible to license our recording of "Dirty Old Town" for your movie, but it's not an area the band or their management ordinarily gets involved in. You will need to write to the relevant department of Warner Music (UK) or possibly Rhino (USA). Mention you have broad support for the request from myself if you think it'll help your case. Naturally, they will want a licensing fee, part of which will be passed on to us, but this is usually determined with at least one eye on the film company's budget or resources.

I am not sure if you will also need the permission of the Ewan MacColl Estate, but the record company should be able to tell you that.

Good luck with your picture.

PC

[Guest]

Many thanks, Philip, for the swift reply, also for the kind words and encouragement. We'll contact those you mention regarding licensing.

If ever you should find yourself in the neighborhood, surely a fall from grace, give me a call. We'll tour the ravaged and strangely ravishing place that is my home...

Meanwhile, I must add something: I recently saw the doc If I Should Fall from Grace. Two things now come back to me. First, Nick Cave's comment, "From this shambling wreck comes such things of beauty." We know whomof he spoke but he might just as well have been talking about Butte. As well as, come to think of it, the world as a whole. Amidst the wreckage of our lives, may all of us stumble upon a little beauty...

And this: I think the most eloquent and illuminating moment in the film came when you said that the Pogues couldn't have happened on the island itself, that it was something other, something more than an indigenous phenomenon. The two Irelands idea. And most especially the implication of that idea, which I believe is that both are needed to fully appreciate what it means to be Irish today. At the risk of sounding both self-serving and obsessive--well, Christ, what's the risk, since my obsessions are what define me--this is akin to one of the themes I'm exploring in my book about renouncing, then returning, then, against all expectation, falling head over heels in love with the Irish-American island where I was born...One foot in, one foot out. I couldn't love the place the way I do had I not left--because I couldn't have come to know it the way I do, and free myself of all that made it oppressive, had I not been able to put the whole experience within a larger context...

By the way, I wrote a long piece about Butte for Harper's Magazine: "Pennies from Hell: In Montana, the Bill for America's Copper Comes Due." October, 1996. Though it focuses on the environmental aspect of the story, it also conveys something of the character of the place. It might amuse you.

I'll close on a personal note, a ramble concerning land, blood ties, and the strong links between Butte and Ireland: When I was a boy I spent a lot of time with my older cousins, Mick and Con Dennehy, whose mother was a Doherty, the biggest and most influential clan on the Irish side of my family (I'm also descended from Cornish tin miners). The Dennehys lived just below the O Sullivans, on North Wyoming Street, across from St. Mary's and the Steward Mine, which was one of our playgrounds, just as the piles and fields of mine waste were. Sarsfield and Eamon O Sullivan's father Sean came from Inishfanard, a now uninhabited island visible from the old cemetery at Kilcatherine, way out on the Beara Peninsula. Sean was an Irish patriot and republican through and through. He started the first Gaelic language school here, early in the 20th century. His greatest gift to his sons, both of whom became priests, was his love of language, especially the spoken word. According to Sars, when young Sean performed a task for a neighbor on the lonely windswept isle of his birth, instead of asking for a piece of candy or other treat, he requested a song or poem...Sars, still alive today, though surely not much longer, is one of the town's great storytellers. His brother Eamon, who died young, could've been a first-rate poet had he not pledged allegiance to the Church...All of it was mixed together here, Catholicism, nationalism, clannishness, a tragic sensibility, the cause of ordinary people, including the miners and their families, as they tried to hold their own in the face of unbridled corporate capitalism. When Sars was a kid, in that house next to my cousins', he was witness to many things that you might not expect in such an out-of-the-way place, including the arrival of none other than James Connolly, Eamon de Valera (who returned to Butte after he became president), and James Larkin, all sitting at the kitchen table with Sean, debating the fate of Ireland. Connolly and Larkin gave impassioned speeches at Finlander Hall, the Hibernians deciding the two firebrands were too controversial. They addressed not only disgruntled Irish and Irish-American miners, but Socialists, anarchists, and Wobblies, of which there were many here. Their message? That the cause of Ireland and the cause of working people were one and the same. Butte was so thoroughly Irish that the civil war and partitioning split neighborhoods, friends, families, and some of that enmity survives to this day, indeed, won't die until those that lived through it do...

I've gone on too long, as I often do.

Cheers.

Edwin Dobb

[Mark_Wafc]

2 of my great uncles worked in the Copper Mines, they are located a few miles from where the Irish side of my family’s home still stands is Rossmackowen, which is situated a few miles from Castletownbere and where we still visit several times a year to see the few family members that still live in the area.

The Copper mines are fascinating place to visit I’ve always found – if a bit dangerous as a few of them are still open in the ground!!

Best of luck with the picture, sounds an interesting subject.

[boyonarope]

Thanks for the best wishes, Mark. When the film director and I visited Beara (mid-Oct, 2005) we stayed in Castletownbere. O Murphy's B&B, on the main street, next to the harbor. Felt very much at home, but especially the Saturday night we wandered into McCarthy's (hadn't read the island-wide pub-crawl book of the same name, so an accidental--and, therefore, all the more delightful--discovery). What a fine time we had there. But even that part of Ireland is changing, though, and in ways that many are starting to regret, under the pressure of economic and cultural forces unleashed just within the past few years. Late into the evening, a local musician took me aside to give me a CD of a song he'd composed and that had been getting air play on an area radio station. The song: "They Call It Progress." And it was abundantly clear that the "they" being invoked didn't include most of the people in McCarthy's...who knew in their guts that they risked losing something essential in exchange for that progress.

On my last morning in Castletownbere, I rose before daybreak and drove to Ballydonegan Bay, below Allihies. The story, as you may know, is that the sand there washed down from the copper mines, a story that enhanced the pleasure I took in walking down the beach to the water. Just as darkenss gave way, I went for a solitary swim. That was my favorite experience of the entire stay in Cork. The faraway cottages with comforting lights in the windows. The green hills clad in a gentle mist. The soft air that's one of the Beara's most attractive characteristics. All while I was held in the invigorating embrace of that wild-hearted sea.

When we bring the film to Ireland and the UK, we'll make sure it's well-publicized. And in addition to screening it in Cork, we may well take it to Dublin, too.

[firehazard]

When we bring the film to Ireland and the UK, we'll make sure it's well-publicized. And in addition to screening it in Cork, we may well take it to Dublin, too.

It sounds fascinating. Good luck with the project, Edwin. Please make sure you tell us all about it on here.

[Mark_Wafc]

Yes, Castletownbere is a very much changing place, as I guess is the rest of Ireland. But not necessarily all for the worst – not from the experience I’ve had anyway.

The most noticeable thing in the town over the past 5years or so is the sheer number of young people who now remain in the area which in the past just didn’t happen. My Nan who was born at the family home just outside the town in the late 20’s was one of 17 children and all but 3 left the area on a permanent basis, returning only to visit The 3 remaining worked between the farm and the mines (indeed her youngest brother still runs the farm today) . She tells the story of the other 5 farms round them having similar size families and all following a similar route throughout the 30’s and 40’s. My cousin who lives over there now has 6 children and all are now in their 20’s and all are still in area working in the hospital, school, and hotel and building trade. There are even 2 nightclubs in the town, an amazing prospect not so long ago! Add to that the German guy who sells his own unique style food from a stall in the town square and you've got a changing place!

ONe thing that is a major issue at the moment is the old Puxley House by Dunboy Castle, which im sure you visited when over there. It was burned down by the IRA 80 or so years ago and has stayed the same ever since - however it was bought in the past 2 years by an American Company and they are currently in the process of overhauling it and turning it into Ireland's Premier Hotel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunboy_Castle

Ballydonegan beach is a fantastic place, even if its golden sandy beach looks a tad bit out of place among the pebbles and rock of the other beaches on the area. The Seafood bar in Allihies is well worth the visit, and thrives on a reputation that seems to stretch far and wide – last time we were in there in July we were the only English speaking people in there!

[boyonarope]

I'm afraid I'm guilty of having diverted the discussion "off topic," as the webmaster puts it.

To bring things back round: I bought tickets to the Thursday show at Roseland. A what-the-hell moment of self-indulgence. My companion in debauchery and I will be making the cross-country journey from Montana to Manhattan. She and I will spend a week in NYC, celebrating our birthdays, Valentine's Day, St. Paddy's, the spring equinox, our fifth anniversary, and much else...She's never heard the Pogues live. I haven't heard them often enough. Doubtful I ever will...

Okay. Time for me to fall silent and slip out the back door.