WEST Cork connections to the Hollywood acting legend Bill Pullman are to be explored over the next four weeks as he continues to shoot a new movie in the area.
On stage, on Sunday, at the Schull Harbour Hotel as part of this year’s Fastnet Film Festival, the actor introduced Julie Pullman who travelled from the UK to meet her long-lost relative.
Despite having exchanged emails, it was their first time meeting face-to-face and they posed happily together for The Southern Star.
Clare Watson, Pat Moynihan and Maggie Cahill at the launch. (Photo: Carlos Benlayo)
Both Bill and Julie’s great-great-grandfathers were brothers in Skerries in Dublin before some family members left for America.
Bill told the audience that with the assistance of the Skibbereen Heritage Centre, he hopes to explore his connections to one ‘John Pullman’, who has documented ties to West Cork.
Steve Park, a director with the West Cork Film Studios (WCFS) in Skibbereen, explained that the actor was only too happy to be interviewed at the festival, which is now in its 17th year, and proved to be one of the biggest and best to date.
On stage, Bill shared his insights into his career and his method of acting, essentially how he inhabits a character.
As a line of questioning, it proved popular too with the Dublin actor Barry Keoghan, whom filmmaker Carmel Winters desribed has having an on-screen presence, or instinct, as similar to that of an untamed animal in nature.
Donal McSweeney and Brendan Hurley enjoying the Fastnet Film Festival in Schull. (Photo: Carlos Benlayo)
In a thoroughly engaging interview with the casting director Maureen Hughes, with whom he has a long association, Barry demonstrated how he flirts with the camera by avoiding its gaze.
Open to the people he met on the street, and later name-checking them on stage, the Saltburn actor was considered charmed the audience.
Maureen outlined how the young Barry, who couldn’t get a place in any drama schools despite his highly creative and exhaustive efforts, approached her and gave her a list of the directors he wanted to work with.
It was to thunderous applause that Maureen confirmed he has since worked with every one of them, including Christopher Nolan, Martin McDonagh, Andrea Arnold and Yorgos Lanthimos who directed The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which saw him hold his own opposite Nicole Kidman.
A video montage of all of the ‘faces’ he has presented in his varied roles over the last 10 years meant that Barry Keoghan wasn’t beyond asking if he could get a copy of it.
Julie Pullman travelled from the UK to Schull's Fastnet Film Festival, where she met her relative, the Hollywood actor Bill Pullman. (Photo: Jackie Keogh)
For the next 15 months, Barry Keoghan will be immersing himself in a four-movie deal – one for each of The Beatles, with him starring as Ringo.
Maureen admitted she was nervous about interviewing the talented actor and it was another acting legend, Domhnall Gleeson, who calmed her down saying: ‘We are all here to bask.’
The younger Gleeson summed the festival up in a nutshell, because the five-day event attracted hundreds of young filmmakers who travelled from all over the world to support one another.
Hilary McCarthy, the communications and programme manager with Fastnet Film Festival, said 600 short films were submitted for consideration, and 25% of these were chosen and shown, free of charge, in venues around the village which famously does not have a cinema of its own.
What it does have is a dedicated administration centre at the former convent building, which proved to be perfectly situated to provide free parking, al fresco films, and a centre where the shorts were shown.
Like the Cannes Film Festival, which runs over a similar timeframe, Schull enjoyed lots of good weather apart from one day of rain which helped to drive people indoors for the screening of the short films, as well as workshops on all aspects of movie making.
