Raising The Dunbar

Mickybo And Me is a very amiable flick about a cross-community boyhood friendship set in Belfast, 1970. Based on Owen McCaffety’s play Mojo Mickybo, director Terry Loane’s surprisingly delightful film is both child-centric yet very adult in theme, as two boys – one a ginger moppet from an expansive Catholic household (Niall Wright), the other a neat Protestant only child (John Joe McNeill) – bond over Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and run away to Australia, or at least over the border. 
Armed with the clout of Working Title productions and Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot) as executive-producer, the filmmakers and adult cast have high hopes. “It’s just a lovely little film,” exclaimed Adrian Dunbar at the Dublin International Film Festival recently. “I mean, as an actor you never really know how a script is going to turn out, but Mickybo is a really good film.”
You can tell he means it, and rightly so. Mickybo And Me is certainly more accomplished and less twee than the subject matter might give cause to believe. Besides, Mr. Dunbar ought to be a decent judge. A theatrically trained actor and the veteran of such movies as The Crying Game, How Harry Became A Tree and The General, he’s also a screenwriter of some note, having co-written the award winning screenplay of Hear My Song.
Currently, the Enniskillen born thespian is putting together a long cherished project – a biopic of James Connolly set to star Peter Mullan – an inspired piece of casting if ever there was one. “It’s something that really troubles me,” explains Adrian. “And it troubles Peter as well. That this entire pivotal period in our history is just being bulldozed. Literally, when you look at some of the sites that are being developed around Dublin. And I think Connolly is so relevant for today. He was an incredible thinker with an incredible life. He was hailed in Paris and all over Europe as a brilliant socialist and feminist thinker.”
So I take it he’s not in agreement with the current reductive historical trends about 1916 being merely a trickle in the watershed?
“I know,” he sighs. “To think about 1916 in those terms is ridiculous. It was a people’s revolt. They took to the streets and it provided a catalyst for events throughout Europe. That gets overlooked because Republicanism is like a dirty word. It’s just amazing that there’s so little record of that period in Irish cinema. That’s why bringing James Connolly to the screen is so important to me.”
 Around this parish, we can hardly wait for the finished results.