Читать книгу In the Name of the Son - Richard O'Rawe - Страница 10

Prologue

On the night of 21 March 1994, two limousines pulled up at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel for the contingent of In the Name of the Father. The film’s producer, Jim Sheridan, screenwriter Terry George, Gerry Conlon and his friend Joey Cashman all climbed into the back of the same limousine. Knowing they would never again be back at an Oscars ceremony, Conlon and Cashman were determined to make the best of it. As soon as the vehicle had taken off, Cashman asked if the driver would stop at a drinks store so he could buy Tequila. It would be surprising if warning bells did not ring in Jim Sheridan’s head at Cashman’s request. Giving these two boys access to bottles of hard liquor on the way to the biggest awards ceremony in the film-producing world was questionable at best. Prudently, Sheridan said he did not think that was a good idea. Predictably, Gerry sided with Joey: ‘If Joey wants to stop at an offie [an off-licence], we stop at the fucking offie.’

The limousine stopped at a drinks store and several bottles of Tequila were bought. Not long after that the fun began. Conlon and Cashman stuck their heads out of the top of the limousine, started shouting and waving to pedestrians in the streets and guzzled down their bottles of Tequila as if tomorrow was for saints and suckers. There was a huge queue of limousines waiting to pull up outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Cashman said: ‘We were off our heads before we even got there, and Jim was really embarrassed by it all. Just before we hit the red carpet, Jim managed to get Gerry down, and then he almost had to sit on him to keep him from going back up again!’

Mustering all the decorum at their disposal, Conlon and Cashman got out of the limousine. While Sheridan was being interviewed by the press, no one was paying Conlon any attention, so he went up to the podium where only the top stars are interviewed and introduced himself to a television producer. Soon after, with his Tequila-guzzling buddy standing alongside him, Conlon gave a very coherent interview, during which he endorsed the film.

The Oscars ceremony lasts for approximately four hours. Conlon and Cashman found the whole thing excruciatingly boring, so, after two hours, they retreated to the toilets for the remainder of the ceremony, where they wiled away the time smoking crack cocaine. Then, realising they were hungry, they left the building and searched the neighbourhood for a restaurant. The two made sure they were back in the Chandler Pavilion before the ceremony ended – just in time to join the first of the night’s parties: the Governors Ball. Cashman had fond memories of the event:

Afterwards, you just walk out the door and there was a party in the building, or connected to it. It was really big, and the public had no access. And there was loads of booze and champagne and all that. There was plenty of good stuff to eat there, you know, caviar, smoked salmon, grilled shrimps. I like that sorta stuff. So me and Gerry dug into that. Then we gatecrashed the different parties for the rest of the night, and we ended up back in our hotel and all these women stripped off and jumped into the pool. I stripped off and jumped in, and Gerry jumped in after me. We’d great craic. I’ll tell ya – it certainly beat going down to the local. Like, I can look back and if someone asks me, ‘Where were you at the weekend?’ I can say about that weekend: ‘I was at the Oscars.’ Know what I mean?