Themes: Culture Clash, Faltering Friendships, Twentysomething Life
Main Cast: Eamon Morrissey, Stephen Brennan, Catherine Byrne, Niall Toibin, Joe Lynch
Release Year: 1986
Country: UK/IE
Run Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Irish youths Vinnie (Stephen Brennan) and Arthur (Eamon Morrissey) fight their ongoing boredom by running a video print of Elvis Presley's Roustabout. If you've seen that film, you'll remember that at one point, Elvis participates in "The Wall of Death," a dangerous cylindrical motorcycle stunt. Suddenly inspired, Vinnie and Arthur set about constructing their own Wall of Death. Supplies are costly, but the boys are benumbed to reality by their dreams of fame and fortune. Entering the picture (and foredooming the project) is con artist Boots (Niall Toibin), who claims to be an American showman bent upon giving Vinnie and Arthur a spectacular TV showcase. Like the later The Commitments, Eat the Peach deftly blends traditional sour-faced Irish pragmatism with pie-in-the-sky idealism. This time, however, there's no blarney: Eat the Peach is based on a true story! Privately financed in England and Ireland, the film earned good American bookings thanks to the sponsorship of filmmaker Jonathan Demme. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Tony Doyle - Sean Murtagh; Takashi Kawahara - Bunzo; Barbara Adair - Mrs. Fleck; Victoria Armstrong - Vicky, Vinnie's Daughter; Robert Byrne - Lookout At Border Bar; Martin Dempsey - Quiz/Master; Jill Doyle - Aileen; Don Foley - Journalist; Barry Kelley - TV Cameraman; Bernadette O'Neill - Nuala; Paul Raynor - O'Hagen; Maeliosa Stafford - Priest; Ronan Wilmot - Cahill; John Andrew Gallagher - Murtagh's Heavies; Dave Carey - Local; Akiko Hoashi - Japanese; Brian J. Hogg - Danny; Patricia Jeffares - Hospital Sister; Dick Keating - Nashville Three; Pat Kenny - TV Reporter; Kobayashi - Japanese; Edmond Lynch - TV Soundman; Jack Lynch - Man at Petrol Station; Fintan McKeown - Murtagh's Heavy; David Nolan - Murtagh's Heavy; Frank Quinlan - Nashville Three; Jim Reid - Nashville Three; Liam Sweeney - Cattle Driver; Charles Winter - Wall of Death Rider; Mark Shelley - Patrol Leader
Credit
Peter Ormrod - Director, J. Patrick Duffner - Editor, David Collins - Executive Producer, Donal Lunny - Composer (Music Score), Paul Brady - Songwriter, Toni Delaney - Makeup, David Wilson - Production Designer, Arthur Wooster - Cinematographer, John Kelleher - Producer, Josie MacAvin - Set Designer, John Kelleher - Screenwriter, Peter Ormrod - Screenwriter
Eat the Peach is a 1986 film, directed by Peter Ormrod. The title derives from the T.S.Eliot poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It was written by Peter Ormrod with John Kelleher. It is a film about eccentricity and companionship and was part financed by Channel Four.
Plot
The story takes place in an Irish village a few miles from the border with Northern Ireland. When the local Japanese owned computer factory closes, the principal employer in the area seems to become the mob that runs the smuggling. One day, Vinnie, (Stephen Brennan), one of the men thrown out of work, and his brother-in-law, Arthur, (Eamon Morissey), happen to see a cassette of the 1964 Elvis Presley film Roustabout, in the village bar. They see a cyclist in the film ride in a carnival Wall of Death - a high walled barrel-like tank where centrifugal force keeps the rider up in the air circling. Straight away Vinnie makes diagrams, and measures - and clears a patch of land near his house. His wife, Nora ,(Catherine Byrne - Alice More in the recent series The Tudors), protests and goes back to her mother with their little girl, Vicky. It's a new kitchen she wants, not a Wall of Death. The men however, continue with the work and sinking tree posts into the ground and putting up a huge cylindrical construction. They become energetic and resourceful. Vinnie believes his Wall of Death will be a source of income - that people will buy tickets to stand on a gallery around the top of the rink and watch him and Arthur give their daring performances. Nora returns.
The film is based on actual events. The director, Peter Ormrod, had seen a huge, wooden tank just off the road when he was looking for items for Irish television. It was reviewed , favourably, by the eminent critic Pauline Kael in her collection Hooked. "This film has wonderful uninsistent images. It's poverty-row film making, and often the shots don't match. But it's the kind of movie in which you rather enjoy the shots' not matching. It draws you into the moviemaking process; the informality is likable. After little Vicky has watched her father flying around the tank (he loves it, he's completely happy), she too, becomes obsessed, and there's a shot of her, her face as determined as his, as she rides her tricycle along the Wall, trying to climb it. She wakes up one night hearing the crackling sound of burning wood; she rushes out the front door and sees her parents and her Uncle Arthur watching a fire, and she stares at the spectacle without a sound, the flames lighting her awed, startled face. For an instant, with her hair streaming back from her head, she's the soul of Ireland, the way Sara Allgood was when she played in Juno and the Paycock."[1]
