8h 15min, nov 6, 2020 y - BELFAST TELEGRAPH Divine intervention When Johnny Depp came to Ireland

Description:

Divine intervention: When Johnny Depp came to Ireland

The fallen star's libel defeat this week brought back mixed memories for the inhabitants of one sleepy east Cork village

by Ivan Little

One of the last far-flung outposts on earth you'd expect the ripple effect of the Johnny Depp libel case in London to be felt is in the sleepy, yet beautiful, village of Ballycotton in east Cork.

But the daily reports of his unsuccessful libel action in a London court against the Sun newspaper, who branded him a wife-beater after his assaults on Amber Heard, were pored over in Ballycotton because of Depp's links to the place a quarter-of-a-century ago, when he and Marlon Brando came to the breathtaking and intoxicating little fishing village to film a movie which never actually got made.

Not that Ballycotton didn't already have an A-list celebrity of its own in its midst, because it had been for years a hideaway for Murder She Wrote star Angela Lansbury (aka Jessica Fletcher), whose sprawling house overlooking the Atlantic was impossible to miss. She was said to have enjoyed walking along Ballycotton's windy and spectacular cliff paths, which wend their glorious way for five miles along the coast.

And not many people know that the late Irish blues guitarist Rory Gallagher also spent many happy hours escaping the pressures of his hectic lifestyle by roaming the magnificent clifftop rambles.

He also credited Ballycotton, where nobody ever bothered him, as a haven which had inspired him to write two of his more laid-back and contemplative songs, A Million Miles Away and Lost at Sea.

Ironically, it was the waters around Ballycotton that thrust the village onto the front pages and into the national news bulletins earlier this year when a "ghost" cargo ship, the Tanzanian-registered MV Alta, mysteriously ended up on the rocks with no crew on board. It was the Marie Celeste stuff of movies, but in Ballycotton no one was in the mood to think about writing a screenplay.

For the village had had its fingers burned in 1995 when Johnny Depp and a cast of thousands rocked into Ballycotton to shoot the eagerly anticipated Divine Rapture.

Yet, back then, Depp was almost just a bit player, because his fame and his frame were dwarfed by none other than the Godfather himself, Marlon Brando.

The American actors and An Officer and a Gentleman actress Debra Winger caused a sensation as the Hollywood bandwagon rolled into Ballycotton with all the paraphernalia that accompanies a high-roller of a production from the other side of the Atlantic, an ocean that's only a glance away from any part of Ballycotton.

But while the cameras had started rolling and the megastars, including Elephant Man actor John Hurt, had begun filming, it soon became as clear as the crystal waters around Ballycotton that something was missing.

And that was the mega-millions that had been promised to pay the astronomical bills.

Local people were among the losers and any doubts that they'd forgotten their disaster movie were dispelled a few years ago on a holiday I took to Ballycotton.

I'd never heard the name Divine Rapture before arriving in the village and the film never came up during any discussions in the pubs and cafes where people were, on the other hand, quite happy to chat about bumping into Angela Lansbury in shops and particularly in her favourite bakery in Cuddingtons in the nearby town of Cloyne. But in the heart of Ballycotton, a strange headstone caught the eye, as it would with any memorial that wasn't in a cemetery. It read: "Divine Rapture born 10th July 1995, died 23rd July 1995."

And the bizarre monument, made by sculptor Stephen Pearce, who coincidentally had worked on Lansbury's house, started me off on a personal quest of curiosity for more information.

After a while, villagers started to open up about their hopes that Divine Rapture would have done for Ballycotton what the Quiet Man did for Cong in Co Mayo, or what The Field did for Leenane, 20 miles away in Co Galway.

Pictures on the internet showed Brando with a singularly poor hair dye job, or wig, and an ill-fitting priest's garb filming on the main street of Ballycotton and a clip of audio confirmed that his Irish accent wasn't much better.

A youthful and chubby faced Depp was seen in photos talking to Brando, who he was later to describe as a friend and an inspiration.

Depp was playing the part of a journalist in the movie, which was supposed to tell the story of a set of miracles in a tiny Irish community in the 1950s.

One of them was the rising from the dead of a local woman, who, it transpired, hadn't passed away at all, but had had a rare disorder that slowed her heart-rate.

However, the ill-fated movie could have used a few miracles of its own to keep it alive. For just two weeks after the production kicked off, the film crews were kicked out of Ballycotton because of the money drying up.

After the shooting stopped, it was established that one major account for one company never actually existed.

And all that's left to show for the unlikely collaboration between Ballycotton and Hollywood is a 24-minute clip of footage, some of which makes an intriguing watch on YouTube.

The Belfast-based Hot Shot Films made a documentary 11 years ago about Divine Rapture, branded by some Brando aficionados as Divine Rupture.

The 30-minute documentary, called Ballybrando, was produced by Brendan J Byrne and narrated by acclaimed actor John Kavanagh with music from local composer Neil Martin.

Divine Rapture's Iranian producer, Barry Navidi, spoke to a Canadian newspaper, the Montreal Gazette, a few years back about the sorry tale of the film which he had been trying to get off the ground for seven years.
He thought he had raised £12m, but to his horror he discovered in Ballycotton that the pledged finances weren't actually in the bank and he had to pull the plug. And that was that.

In the aftermath, as the anger in Ballycotton subsided just a little bit, Divine Rapture became the stuff of legend.

Stories abounded about how Johnny Depp and his girlfriend of the time, Kate Moss, had been seen drinking in pubs in Midleton, home of Jameson's whiskey and in Castlemartyr, now the home of a swanky five-star hotel and resort.

The reality was that Depp spent most of his downtime revelling in the hotter spots of Cork city, not far from Ballycotton.

[continued in links below]

Added to timeline:

Date:

Images: