An Irish actor's sideways view of American life from within...
It was one of those miserable post-Christmas weeks in Kerry a few years back when a local correspondent in The Kerryman summed up the news succinctly as: “No news this week”. A grey January in Sneem, where the biggest event might be the odd sheep wandering into the village, doesn’t lend itself to breaking headlines. But as I sit here in sunny Los Angeles, in the middle of a sprawling city brimming with election fever, I’m struggling to come up with real news myself.
My father, Billy Heffron, was enjoying himself, mid-flow in conversation, a cup of tea in his hand and biro-filed paperwork strewn across the kitchen table of his host — a small farmer outside Ballyhaunis. As agricultural consultant, Billy had called to his farming client a few hours earlier to complete forms for some farm scheme or other. However, in the lively talk and laughter afterwards, which is a well-known feature of my father’s visits, the evening had closed in quickly. Too quickly. The farmer jolted forward and yanked up the volume on the radio which had been infusing the room with low-level MWR FM in the background.
It is one of the most memorable moments in movie history. Set in a stifling courtroom, during one of the final scenes of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson (as Colonel Jessep) delivers his greatest monologue, relishing the opportunity to teach Tom Cruise (as upstart lawyer Lieutenant Kaffee) a few home truths of his iron-fisted command over Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. However, Cruise’s character has instead set a ‘gotcha’ trap for his ego-charged superior, with the provoking demand ‘I want the truth!’. Without awareness of his hubris and impending legal peril, Jessep famously replies with, ‘You can't handle the truth!’ and then is drawn him into admitting that he ordered an illegal punishment of another soldier, resulting in his arrest on the stand. It is one of the ultimate gotchas of our shared cinema culture.
