Trick or treacle?
It’s the year’s unlikeliest buddy movie, throwing together an Irish eccentric and a homeless englishman who’s walked out on his family. Actor Aidan Gillen tells us about the real life inspiration behind his oddball character, and gives us the inside beef on the next season of fantasy sauce-fest Game of Thrones, which has just started shooting in Belfast.
Stuart Clark, 29 Aug 2011
Aidan Gillen has a reputation for being a reluctant interviewee, but he couldn’t be more forthcoming as we sit down in a Dublin 2 hotel to discuss the new £30,000 independent film he stars in alongside Van Helsing and The Illusionist man Tom Fisher and supremely talented big screen newcomer Riann Steele.
No, I haven’t missed a few zeroes off that figure. Treacle Jr. – see page 103 for Roe McDermott’s excellent review and synopsis – really was made for less than Jennifer Aniston’s annual hairdressing bill.
“The writer and director, Jamie Thraves, re-mortgaged his house to fund Treacle Jr. knowing that it’ll do well to break even,” the Dublin actor reflects. “It was a three-week shoot, which is incredibly quick. We’ve had great reviews and festival reactions, but this isn’t the new Once. We’re not going to have Steven Spielberg saying he loves it or two of the characters appearing in The Simpsons! None of us were in it to strike gold. The goal was to make the film we wanted to make and hope that enough people like it in order for Jamie to hang on to his home!”
Although set in contemporary inner city London, Gillen’s character is based on the young Aidan Walsh, the eccentric fiftysomething Irish promoter and performer who was the subject of Shimmy Marcus’ 2000 Master Of The Universe documentary.
A so-called “blue baby” who was deprived of oxygen at birth, Walsh was given away by his parents and spent his formative years in the not always benevolent care of a religious run orphanage.
“Aidan’s been a figure of fascination for me since I was eight and an altar boy at Gardiner Street Church where he used to live and work in his pre-album recording and cowboy days,” his namesake resumes. “I was drawn to the fact that he looked strange, talked strange and despite having all the odds stacked against him, was wildly optimistic. He’d been dealt a shit hand but wouldn’t allow himself to be put down.
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