Dublin Opinion

I didn’t notice this on Slugger O’Toole yesterday but it seems that Ian Paisley has commissioned a biopic of his life.

Writing in Comment is Free, Malachi O’Doherty suggests that

“commissioning a film makes as much sense as Tony Blair digging out his old CND badge. And Tony was at least a leftie once; Paisley has never been inside popular culture.”

Considering that the head of the Free Presbyterian Church has a die hard allegiance to the Tenth Commandment and abhors how modern culture is so in lust with the craven image, it would seem more appropriate for him to commission a Bayeux style tapestry, or perhaps a lithograph or a polemical woodcut but not a film. But it seems that another Northern Ireland film company has won funding for a biopic but it doesn’t have the approval of the family.

According to the Guardian today the Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell has confirmed that the Paisley family has commissioned him to write the screenplay of Ian’s life. Already of course, comments are coming ‘thick’ and ‘fast’ with suggestions about who can play the lead. Liam Neeson seems like an obvious choice but Peter Bradshaw says that he’s already turned it down, which is perhaps understandable. I think though that if Neeson could leave aside his perhaps Nationalist objections that playing Ian would nicely bookend his career playing famous Irish political leaders.

The commenters on Sluggers provided several suggestions for a title:

“Look Back in Anger, Rebel Without a Cause, Never Say Never Again and Doctor Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Warmongering and Love the Ex-Bomber - a reference to the DUP sharing government with Sinn Féin.”

Bradshaw worries that a film of Paisley might be difficult to sell in Hollywood as the portrait would need to show a soft sensitive side at some point. But there is also the danger of the whole project becoming unintentionally satirical.

Just quoting him makes you laugh.

”Pope John Paul II – Antichrist” followed swiftly “I renounce you as the Antichrist.”
Said during a speech to the European Parliament by Pope John Paul II.

‘She, the Queen, has become a parrot’

‘Line dancing is as sinful as any other type of sexual gestures and touchings. It is sensual … an excitement to lust’

The last one must have been very controversial with his own people, considering the popularity of Country and Western among Unionists. ‘An excitement to lust’? An excitement to vomit maybe.