Just out of prison Joe, a young builder from Edinburgh who writes movie scripts in his spare time, randomly meets Audrey, a washed-up, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, middle-aged French film actress at his local film festival. After hitting it off and spending one crazy, magical night together, Audrey sees some potential in Joe and his writing and tries to help him win back his estranged daughter by getting his first screenplay made into a movie in Paris. And so, the adventure of a lifetime begins…
“So, what kind of movie nonsense are we going to see at this here film festival lark tonight?” Colm enquired, thankfully changing the subject to Joe’s relief.
“It’s a movie called Dominique. It’s meant to be really good. The next cult classic in European cinema, they say.” Joe answered, trying to muster up as much enthusiasm as he could without overdoing it and scaring Colm off.
Colm wasn’t a complete movie hater, just a hater of low-budget, artsy, fartsy, independent cinema with a well-written script that actually made him think outside the box. The less dialogue spoken on screen and the less complex of a plot, the better, as far Colm was concerned.
“Dominique, huh?” Colm pondered out loud, thinking on it a little deeper than Joe could ever have guessed he might. “Sounds feckin’ French, if you ask me.”
Joe took a long sip from his pint before answering.
“It is French.”
Colm’s eyes opened wide at that.
“It is? Jesus. But they’ll be speaking in English though, right?”
“No. It’s a French movie. They’ll be speaking French, but with English subtitles.”
Suddenly Colm slammed his pint glass down upon the wooden bar counter in a very loud and overly dramatic fashion.
“For feck’s sake, Joe. You could’ve told me this shite earlier!”
“Well, you wouldn’t have come along with me if I had, would you?”
Colm sighed hard and shook his head in disappointment. He covered his face with his hands like he’d just been told he had full-blown bowel cancer.
“Jesus Christ. I don’t go to the cinema to read feckin’ novels or to actually have to think about what’s happening up on the screen there. I thought it was gonna be like some relaxing experience, this film festival lark. Like leaving me bleedin’ brain at the popcorn counter and picking it back up again on the way back to the feckin’ pub. My mind’s far too small and narrow to learn a new language at this stage of me life.”
Jesus, Colm could be such a bloody drama queen at times, Joe thought. But he was funny at ranting and raving in that over-the-top demeanour of his. In fact, it was his speciality. He loved the attention of a good public audience for sure, like all good extroverts, but still, he could be a right insensitive prick after a few pints.
“Come on. It will be relaxing. It’s been getting some pretty decent reviews. Plus, it’s the premiere tonight, so most of the cast and crew will be there. And, there’s even going to be a really cool Q and A after.”
“No way? A really cool Q and feckin’ A with the cast and crew.” Colm replied in his sarcastic way. “So, not only do I have to sit through a book reading for ninety feckin’ minutes...” he continued to rant.
“Two and a half hours actually.” Joe interrupted, casually correcting him and feeling that it was just funnier to wind him up now than calm him down.
“Two and a half feckin’ hours? I could fly to bleedin’ France and back in that time, and I still have to sit through another hour of pish talk shite, listening to some dodgy, whiny, sound technician waffle more pish and shite about the latest audio technology in French feckin’ cinema?”
“It’s only going to be the director, writer, and actors speaking. For me, it’s the best part of the evening to mingle with the cast and crew afterwards.” Joe said, trying his best to put his case in for the defence.
“No way. Fuck that shite, fella. No feckin’ way. I’ll meet you back here just as soon as the credits roll, and that’s if I even make it that far, not having jammed me fat bleedin’ fingers into the nearest plug sockets first.”
“You do know that we’ve got another movie at the Odeon straight after this one, right? A German-made World War II movie.”
They didn’t, but Joe enjoyed making the whiny, over-dramatic wanker squirm when he went off on a rant like that. Colm rolled his eyes in absolute disgust.
“Jesus Bleedin’ Christ. You do know I could’ve stayed at home tonight watching reruns of The Crown and Downtown Abbey.”
Right on cue, the old man singing horrendously up on the stage finished rather abruptly or simply just died standing up. It was hard to tell which in the sudden silence that followed. Although, Joe’s eardrums began to swiftly de-swell by a good couple of inches immediately after, which he was extremely grateful for.
“Right. I’m singing me bleedin’ song then we’ll go to this feckin’ book reading of yours.”
Colm swiftly downed the rest of his pint before heading up onto the stage at the back end of the semi-busy bar to sing his second carefully chosen song of the evening – a cover of Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name, which he cheekily dedicated to Joe.
“This song is dedicated to me best lad Joe over there at the far corner of the bar. Recently out of the slammer and now he can’t even get anyone to go to the cinema with him anymore apart from gullible old me, the poor bastard. Oh, it’s a cruel bleedin’ world out there, people. A cruel bleedin’ world.”
Sean is an author from Edinburgh in Scotland. He is the best selling Kindle Author of 'The Old Man and The Princess' which was recently optioned to be a major motion picture.
Sean spent most of his childhood and teenage years on the move with his Scottish and Irish army Parents growing up in the likes of Cyprus, Germany, Wales, and England, as an army brat.
With a keen interest in both reading and writing, he was diagnosed with travel and writing bugs very early in life. Now, writing, travelling, reading, cinema, and Scottish football (Supporting the mighty Edinburgh City for his sins) are his main passions in life.
His main inspiration for writing today comes from living in such a beautiful, charming and hauntingly, Gothic city, such as Edinburgh. An awe-inspiring wee city that has given him so much amazing inspiration to write the more time he spends there.
Recently, Sean has been working on a couple of screenplay adaptations of his books. One of which 'The Old Man and The Princess' made the final of the Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition 2018 and has since been optioned by an award-winning Director /Producer team. Scheduled to go into production in Ireland in the summer of 2021 filming has been postponed until 2022 due to the recent covid pandemic.
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