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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Kevin Costner Almost Starred in a Different Robin Hood Movie with John McTiernan

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It’s strange to consider 20 years later, but once upon a time studio executives were obsessed with Kevin Costner playing Robin Hood. This is ironic, of course, since Costner’s English “accent” in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves has become a meme unto itself over the decades. But nevertheless, we are still talking about his adventures in Sherwood Forest—and in what is still the last popular Robin Hood movie to make money and have an impact on pop culture. This might speak then to the logic of film producers circa 1990. And that extends beyond just those at Morgan Creek Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures, who greenlit Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Indeed, that film’s director Kevin Reynolds recently confirmed during an interview that one of the reasons he was signed on to the project was in order to lure Costner away from a different Robin Hood movie that the star was then circling over at 20th Century Fox, and which would’ve been directed by no less than Die Hard and Predator’s John McTiernan!

While doing a career deep dive with the podcast Indie Film Hustle, Reynolds got candid about the strange mercurial nature of Hollywood moviemaking, particularly in the rarified air of blockbusters in the late 20th century. Once an indie wunderkind who wowed the likes of Steven Spielberg with his debut film Fandango (1985), Reynolds would become a go-to helmer of major studio tentpoles in the early ‘90s, which often happened to star one of the era’s biggest movie stars: Kevin Costner.

In fact, as Reynolds tells it, it was his personal relationship with Costner—which began in Fandango, Costner’s first starring role—that brought Reynolds to the attention of an unnamed Morgan Creek producer who approached him about helming Prince of Thieves. At the time, Reynolds was dissatisfied with an unnamed studio giving him the runaround on another project’s budget for more than a year. So when asked if Robin Hood would really begin filming in 1990, and getting a confirmation, Reynolds jumped productions in a matter of days. But once on the Warner Bros. Robin Hood movie, he learned the studio was secretly hoping he could poach Costner away from McTiernan’s movie, which had been in development much longer and was named The Adventures of Robin Hood (like the Errol Flynn movie).

“The next day after I got onto [Robin Hood], I got this call from Kevin,” Reynolds recalled, “and he goes, ‘Can I talk to you?’ And I go, ‘Sure.’ So he comes over to my new office and he walks in and he goes, ‘Did you know I was on this other Robin Hood with McTiernan?’ I went, ‘No! Are you serious?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, we were talking about doing this other thing.’ And I said, ‘I had no idea.’ And he was like, ‘No, God, okay.’”

But as Reynolds continued, this was the producers’ plan all along.

Said Reynolds, “Long story short, the producer, who was very wily, realized Costner was doing this, so he asked me to do [his] Robin Hood so Kevin would bail on the other one and come onto [my] Robin Hood. And that’s how it came to be.’”

It’s an interesting confirmation since there have been stories about Costner meeting with Fox, but the public record around McTiernan’s unfulfilled vision of The Adventures of Robin Hood mostly revolves around negotiations with Mel Gibson, who was also a major star on the make at the time after doing the Lethal Weapon and Mad Max movies (plus, almost inexplicably, Hamlet).

While many can smirk now about a Robin of Locksley by way of Southern California, Costner was indisputably the biggest star in the world by the end of the 1980s. After getting his big break in Reynolds’ Fandango, he’d go on to lead Brian De Palma’s biggest success of that decade, The Untouchables (1987), in which he starred opposite Robert De Niro and Sean Connery in the latter’s Oscar winning role. Soon afterward, he also appeared in instant baseball movie classics and Baby Boomer touchstones, Bull Durham (1988) and Field of Dreams (1989). And while even Morgan and Warners would be unaware of this when he was cast as Robin Hood, Costner was about to reach the zenith of his popularity later that year when his directorial debut, Dances with Wolves (1990), would become one of the most successful Westerns of all-time and win Best Picture and Best Director, beating out Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.

So landing Costner as the scourge of Sherwood was undeniably a coup, which bore green fruit when Prince of Thieves went on to become the second biggest movie of 1991, only being outgrossed by Terminator 2.

Still, it’s interesting to imagine what Costner might’ve been like in McTiernan’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. McTiernan was himself fresh off a golden moment in those years with Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt for Red October all coming out back-to-back. And given Fox was developing their film for a longer period of time, the studio’s then-chairman Joe Roth very publicly badmouthed Morgan Creek and its allies in the 1990 press following Prince of Thieves’ signing of Costner.

“[They acted] unjustly, if not immorally,” Roth said at the time about Morgan Creek, according to The Los Angeles Times, as well as TriStar Pictures, which was developing its own Robin Hood movie that never got made. Fox’s then-production chief Roger Birnbaum also told the newspaper, “One of the other companies has announced the signing o a major star and that has given us pause… [but] I still have a magnificent screenplay.” He also said Gibson “looked at our project and liked it very much. But he was concerned about doing two period pieces in a row” after Hamlet.

Of course Fox’s Robin Hood didn’t get made with Costner or Gibson, or even McTiernan. However, the barebones of the treatment did make it to the screen in 1991’s glorified television movie which took the story treatment of what would’ve been McTiernan’s The Adventures of Robin Hood and produced it on a limited budget via Robin Hood, the forgotten version starring Patrick Bergin as Robin and Uma Thurman as Maid Marian.

It is somewhat unfair to judge what might have been McTiernan’s big budget Robin Hood movie based on a mediocre TV production, but honestly even if the same concept was better written and produced, it does feel like an inferior interpretation of the Robin Hood mythos than Prince of Thieves. Fixated on the legal rights of Sir Robert Hode, a young Saxon noble who in the reported early Fox drafts was a bit of a libertine who reluctantly becomes Robin Hood after being driven from his vanities by Norman authorities, the finished TV movie is missing many of the most popular staples associated with Robin Hood, including the Sheriff of Nottingham.

While Prince of Thieves was fairly revisionist in its own right—excising the villainous and historical figure Prince John and introducing a Saracen character with Morgan Freeman’s Azeem—the film took big steps away from the mythology, and more or less canonized the Azeem-like character in all future interpretations. But unlike the failed recent 21st century Robin Hood movies, or what many critics said at the time about Reynolds’ picture, Prince of Thieves still knew how to have swashbuckling fun, including with its supporting cast which was led by a BAFTA-winning performance from Alan Rickman as the greatest Sheriff of Nottingham to eer chew a scene.

Along with other sometimes overlooked attributes, including a rousing score by Michael Kamen which birthed one of the biggest love ballads of the ‘90s, Prince of Thieves has held up as a jolly good time and as a minor ‘90s classic—American accent and all.

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years

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The Weekend Warrior 9/11/20 – I AM WOMAN, BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY, RENT-A-PAL, UNPREGNANT AND MORE!

Thankfully, we’re getting a slower week this week after the past few weeks of absolute insanity with so many new releases. This week, we also get a nice string of movies about women that are mostly made by women directors, so hopefully these won’t get lost in the shuffle of theaters reopening.

To be perfectly honest, I went into Unjoo Moon’s I AM WOMAN (Quiver Distribution) – this week’s “Featured Flick” -- thinking it was a doc about ‘70s pop sensation Helen Reddy. Imagine my surprise to discover that it actually was a narrative film with Tilda Cobham-Hervey playing the Australian singer who moved to New York in 1966 after winning a contest, expecting a record deal but only winding up with disappointment. Once there, she’d meet journalist Lilian Roxon (Danielle Macdonald, being able to use her real Australian accent for once) and Jeff Weld (Evan Peters), the man who would become her manager and then husband. Once the couple move to L.A. with Helen’s daughter Traci (from her previous marriage), things began to pick up at the same time as Reddy starts dealing with issues in her marriage and friendship with Roxon.

Listen, I get it. To some (or maybe all) younger people, including film critics, Helen Reddy represents the cheesier side of ‘70s music. I only know her music, since I was a young kid who listened to AM Top 40 radio for much of the ‘70s, but by the end of the decade, I had already switched to metal, punk and noisier rock. As you can tell from watching I Am Woman, Reddy is a particularly interesting music personality, particularly once you realize how hard she struggled to get into the business with a husband who only feigned to support her after dragging her to L.A. for “her career.”

There were many takeaways from watching Moon’s film, but one of the bigger ones is how amazing Cobham-Hervey is at portraying a woman that few of us may have actually seen perform even on television. I’m not sure if Cobham-Hervey did any of her own singing or is lip-syncing the whole time, but it doesn’t matter because she instills so much joy into the performances, especially the two times she sings the highly-inspirational title song live.

Although there isn’t a ton of major drama in Reddy’s life, most that does exist revolves around her relationship with Wald, who is depicted by Peters as an out-of-control coke-sniffing monster. Those in Hollywood may have dealt with Wald as a movie producer or during his stint as Sylvester Stallone’s manager, and only they will know how exaggerated this performance is. Far more interesting is Helen’s friendship with Macdonald’s Roxon which would inspire her to perform the song “You and Me Against the World.” (Seriously, if you want a good cry, throw that song on after watching I Am Woman.)

Moon does a great job with the material, whether it’s recreating New York in the ‘60s – often using music to set the tone of the period -- or by framing Reddy’s story with Phyllis Schlaffly’s fight against the ERA, as depicted in FX’s mini-series Mrs. America. Still, it never loses track of Reddy’s journey and her role as a mother to Traci and slightly less to Wald’s son, Jordan. The movie ends with a wonderful and tearful epilogue, and I will not lie that I was tearing up more than once while watching this movie.

I Am Woman may be relatively uncomplicated, but it’s still a compelling relaying of Reddy's amazing story bolstered by an incredible knock-em-dead performance by Tilda Cobham-Hervey. It’s also one of the most female-empowering film I’ve seen since the Ruth Bader Ginsburg movie On the Basis of Sex, starring Felicity Jones.

This week’s primary theatrical release is Natalie Krinsky’s THE BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY (Stage 6/Sony), starring Geraldine Viswanathan as Lucy, a young woman who works at a gallery who is still obsessed with her ex-coworker/boyfriend Max. On the night of her disastrous break-up, Lucy meets-cute Nick (Dacre Montgomery from Stranger Things), who later inspires her to rid of her hoarding issues by creating the “Broken Hearts Gallery.” This is a place where people who have broken up can bring the remnants of said relationship by donating the mementos they’ve maintained from their partners as sentimental value.

I’m a big fan of Viswanathan from her appearance in Blockers and TBS’ “Miracle Workers” series, as she’s clearly very talented as a comic actress, but I couldn’t help but go into this with more than a little cynicism, because it does follow a very well-worn rom-com formula that can be traced right back to When Harry Met Sally. Yup, another one. Much of this movie comes across like a bigger budget version of a movie that might play Tribeca Film Festival, and I wish I could say that was a compliment because I’ve seen a lot of good movies at Tribeca. But also just as many bad ones.

The problem is that The Broken Hearts Gallery isn’t very original, and its roots are especially obvious when it starts interspersing the recently-heartbroken giving testimonials. It’s also a little pretentious, because rather than the real New York City that would be recognizable to anyone who lives there, it’s more of a Millennial woke fantasy where everyone is a 20-something LGBTQ+ of color. Even so, the main trio of Lucy, Nick and Nick’s business partner Marcos (Arturo Castro from Broad City) do keep things fun even when things are getting predictable.

To be honest, I’ll be perfectly happy to see Viswanathan become the next Meg Ryan, because part of the reason why I warmed up to the movie is because I thought she was quite great in it. (I hate to say it but she’ll definitely need a simple name to remember to make that happen. I’d like to suggest G-Vis… as in G-Vis, she’s awesome!) There’s no question she’s the best part of the movie, but it also thrives from some of the other women cast around her, including Molly Gordon, Phillipa Soo and (surprise, surprise!) Bernadette Peters. (At times, I was worried Lucy’s friends would get particularly annoying, but you’ll warm up to them as well.)

Krinsky’s movie is cute, and while it certainly gets a little overly sentimental at times, there are also moments that are quite heartfelt, so basically, it’s a tolerable addition to the rom-com genre. The fact that the characters are so likeable kept me from outright hating the movie, especially once it gets to its corny and somewhat predictable ending. Another thing I like about Broken Hearts Gallery is that at least it’s making an effort to have some sort of theatrical presence, including drive-in theaters.

Next up is Jon Stevenson’s RENT-A-PAL (IFC Midnight), a rather strange and very dark horror-comedy. It stars Brian Landis Folkins as David, a lonely 40-year-old living with his elderly mother suffering from dementia, who has been using the services of a dating service called Video Rendezvous. This is the ‘80s after all, so it involves getting VHS testimonials from various women. One day, David finds a tape labelled “Rent a Pal” and he decides to check it out. It turns out to be a video of a guy named Andy (Wil Wheaton aka Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation) who David begins having conversations with, but once David gets his chance to have a real relationship with a nice woman named Lisa (Amy Rutledge), he’s been dragged too far down the rabbit hole with Andy’s evil urgings.

This was recommended to me by my own personal rent-a-pal, Erick Weber of Awards Ace, who saw it weeks ago. I totally could understand why he would have liked it, because it’s pretty good in terms of coming up with an original idea using elements that at least us older guys can relate to (especially the living with your Mom part which I had to do a few years ago). I wasn’t sure but I generally thought I knew where it was going, because David’s trajectory always seemed to be heading towards My Friend Dahmer or Maniac territory. What I liked about Folkins’ performance is that you generally feel for him right up until he gets to that point. I also really liked his innocent relationship with Lisa and was hoping things that wouldn’t get as dark as where they eventually end up. I also have to draw attention to Wheaton’s performance, because as one might expect if you only know him from the “Star Trek” show he did as a kid, this is a very different role for him similar to Seann Michael Scott in last year’s Bloodline.

Either way, Stevenson is a decent writer and director who really pushes the boundaries with where Andy takes his new friend, and it’s especially great for its synth-heavy soundtrack that reminds me of some of John Carpenter’s best scores, as we watch David’s inevitable descent into madness. You’ll frequently wonder where it’s going, but for me, it just got too dark, so I only really could enjoy it up to a point.

A little cheerier is UNPREGNANT (HBO Max), the new film from Rachel Lee Goldberg, who directed the recent Valley Girl remake, although this time she’s adapting a book written by Jenni Hendricks. It stars Haley Lu Richardson (from Split and Support the Girls) as 17-year-old Veronica who discovers that her dopey boyfriend Kevin has gotten her pregnant. Since women under 18 can’t get an abortion in Missouri without a parents’ consent, she goes on a road trip with her estranged childhood friend Bailey (Barbie Ferreira) to New Mexico to get the job done.

It’s more than little weird seeing this movie come out in the same year as a much more serious version of the same movie in Elyza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometime Always. That aside, Goldberg and her cast do their best to make this something more in the vein of last year’s Book Smart, although that’s also a fairly high watermark for any movie.

Because this is a road trip comedy, it tends to follow a fairly similar path as other movies where they meet a lot of strange characters along the way, as they try to get a ride after being busted cause Bailey stole her mother’s boyfriend’s car for the trip. For instance, they meet a friendly couple who tend to be pro-lifers who want to change Veronica’s mind, and the best side character is Giancarlo Esposito as a conspiracy theorist named Bob.

I guess my biggest problem with the movie is that it just isn’t that funny and feels fairly standard, but at least it has a decent ending to make up for the predictability of the rest of the movie.

Now streaming on Netflix is Maimouna Doucouré’s French coming-of-age film Mignonnes aka CUTIES, a film that premiered at Sundance and then stirred up quite a bit of controversy last month due to its marketing campaign, but is actually not the pervy male gaze movie which it may have been sold as. It’s about an 11-year-old Sengalese girl named Amy Diop (Fathia Youssouf) who wants to join the school’s “cool girl” dance group, known as the “Cuties,” even though it goes against her family’s Muslim beliefs. Amy learns to dance so she can be part of the dance team and take part in a dance competition, but you know that this decision will led to trouble.s

Cuties got a lot of backlash from for the trailer and Netflix’s decision to release Doucouré’s movie, which is about a young girl discovering her sexuality, although it isn’t really something lurid or gross but actually a very strong coming-of-age film. I haven’t seen the trailer, but I can only imagine what scene it focused on that got people so riled up, since there are dance scenes that felt a little creepy to me. Other than that aspect of the film, Cuties is as innocent as a Judy Blume book. I mean, how else do you expect kids to learn about real life than movies like this? (Unfortunately, the movie is TV-MA so young teens won’t be able to watch it.)

The big problem with the Cuties is that they’re actually kind of bratty and bullies, almost like a younger “Mean Girls” girl gang, so it’s very hard to like any of them. They’re also trying to act way older than they really are, and you can only imagine what dark places that might led, as you worry about Amy getting dragged down with them, just because she wants to have friends and feel popular.

Despite my issues with Cuties, Maimouna Doucouré is a fantastic filmmaker, and this is a pretty amazing debut, especially notable for how she’s able to work with the young cast but also make a movie that looks amazing. That said, Cuties is a decent coming-of-age film, although I feel like I’ve seen better versions of this movie in films like Mustang and The Fits.

Also from France comes Justine Triet’s SYBIL (Music Box Films), starring Virgine Efira (who appeared in Triet’s earlier film, In Bed with Victoria) as the title character, a jaded psychotherapist who decides to return to her passion of writing, getting her inspiration from an actress patient named Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who she becomes obsessed with. I don’t have a lot to say about this movie other than it wasn’t really for me. As far as French films go, a movie really has to stand out from the usual talkie drama filled with exposition, and though I thought the performances by the two women were great, I didn’t really care for the script or the pacing on this one. After playing at last year’s Cannes, Toronto and the New York Film Festival, Sybil will be available via Virtual Cinema through Film at Lincoln Center and the Laemmle in L.A. as well as other cities. You can watch the trailer and find out how to watch it through your local arthouse at the official site.

Now seems like as good a time as any to get into some docs…

Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés’ doc ALL-IN: THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY (Amazon) follows Stacey Abrams through her run for Atlanta Governor in 2018, but it also deals with the laws that had been put in place to try to keep black voters from taking part in their right as Americans to be able to vote. I’m not sure what’s going on with me right now, but I generally just don’t have much interest in political docs right now, maybe because there’s so much politics on TV and in the news. I also have very little interest in Abrams or even having the racist history of the American South drilled into my head by another movie. I was born in 1965, my family didn’t even live in this country until 1960, and I’ve spent my life trying to treat everyone equally, so watching a movie like this and being preached to about how awful African-Americans have been treated in parts of the South for hundreds of years, I’m just not really sure what I’m supposed to do about it here in New York. I guess my biggest problem with All-In, which is a perfectly fine and well-made doc – as would be expected from Garbus – is that it lacks focus, and it seems to be all over the place in terms of what it’s trying to say… and I’m not even sure what it is trying to say, nor did I have the patience to find out. I thought Slay the Dragon handled the issues with gerrymandering far better, and I think I would have preferred a movie that ONLY focused on Abrams and her life and political career than trying to make a bigger statement. All-In will open at a few drive-ins (tonight!) and then will be on Amazon Prime on September 18.

I was similarly mixed on Jeff Orlwosky’s doc, THE SOCIAL DILEMMA, which debuted on Netflix this week. This one looks at the addiction people have for social media apps like Facebook and Twitter, and how the information of what people watch and click on is collected into a database that’s sold to the highest bidder. Basically, it’s your worst fears about social media come to life, but my issue with this one is that the filmmaker decided to hire actors to dramatize parts of the movie, showing one family dealing with social media and phone addiction, which seemed like an odd but probably necessary decision other than the fact that the topic is so nerdy and so over my head that maybe it was necessary to illustrate what’s being explained by programmers. Again, not a terrible doc, just not something I had very little interest in even if it is an important subject (and I’m probably spending too much on social media and essentially more of the problem than the solution).

I saw S. Leo Chiang and Yang Sun’s doc OUR TIME MACHINE at Tribeca last year, and I quite liked it. It follows influential Chinese artist Ma Liang (Maleonn) who collaborates with his Peking Opera director father Ma Ke, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, on an elaborate and ambitious project called “Papa’s Time Machine” using life-sized mechanical puppets. I don’t have a ton to say about the movie but it’s a nice look into the Chinese culture and traditions and how the country and art itself has changed between two generations.

One doc I missed last week but will be available digitally this week is Michael Paszt’s Nail in the Coffin: The Fall and Rise of Vampiro about semi-retired professional wrestler Ian Hodgkinson aka Vampiro, who is a Lucha Libre legend.

There’s a lot of other stuff on Netflix this week, including THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN, the sequel to the Samara Weaving-starring horror-thriller, again co-written and directed by McG (Charlies Angels: Full Throttle). This one stars Bella Thorne, Leslie Bibb and Ken Marino, as it follows Judah Lewis’ Cole after surviving the satanic blood cult from the first movie.

I don’t know nearly as much about the British comedy series The Duchess, other than it stars comedian Katherine Ryan as a single mother juggling a bunch of things. Julie and the Phantoms is Netflix’s latest attempt to be the Disney channel with a movie about a young girl named Julie (Madison Reyes) who decides to start a band with a group of ghosts (hence the title). It’s even from Kenny Laguna, who is best known for the Disney Channel’s biggest hits High School Musical and The Descendants.

Other stuff to look out for this week include Kevin Del Principe’s thriller Up on the Glass (Gravitas Ventures), which is now available On Demand, digital and Blu-Ray; the Russian dogs doc Space Dogs (Icarus Films) – available via Alamo on Demand; Phil Wall’s doc The Standard (Gravitas Ventures), and Andrei Bowden-Schwartz, Gina O’Brien’s tennis comedy All-In (on Amazon Prime and VOD/Digital) and Sam B. Jones’ Red White and Wasted (Dark Star Pictures).

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #TheBrokenHeartsGallery #IAMWoman #Unpregnant #AllIn #Cuties #rentapal #Netflix #VOD #streaming

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hiphopandtheirishquestion · 4 years

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The Birth of Def Road

It all started sometime around 1985. As a music journalist and chancer, my brother Johnny rarely paid for anything. I grew accustomed over the years to standing by the entrance while he negotiated free passage into whatever gig we were at.

- ‘I’m on the guest list

- You’re name’s not down

- I rang ahead. I spoke to the manager. I’m doing a write up for Hot Press.

- No one told me’

... and so the drama would unfold, me standing there like a lemon (the +1) thinking ‘can we not just pay the fiver in?’ But inevitably they crumbled and in we went, journalist +1.

The experience would stand him in good stead as he set about liberating the music companies of New York of their choicest cuts. Zip, Buck, Artie and the boys were no match and he returned with a veritable treasure chest of records, none of which he'd paid for. The vast majority belonged to a genre called hip hop, or sometimes rap. Wasn’t that just talking?

By 1985, the Irish Republic had been in existence for nearly 50 years. The Brits, may God’s curses, shit, piss and jizz rain down on them, had long since been kicked out. Ireland was now, finally, in the hands of the Gaels - who immediately palmed it off to the church.

And New York was in my hands. The city, it seemed, consisted mainly of black lads in tracksuits and gold chains. Their ‘music’ involved a DJ stealing the best parts from other people’s records while a rapper bragged in rhyming couplets about, amongst other things, how great he was. The other things could be anything from the size of his cock to how much weed he smoked and on to race, crime, politics, cars, shopping malls, guns, hookers, snot, STDs, cars, watches...the list is long.

Introspective it wasn’t. Feelings and inadequacies rarely entered the lexicon of that first wave of MCs. They spoke with absolute certainty and iron resolve. Self-doubt was an ailment the rapper didn’t appear to suffer from. It was all fierce confusing.

‘No one understands me’, went the lament of angsty teenagers like me. ‘I’m gonna lock myself in my room and listen to The Smiths. Girls are so pretty – if only I could talk to them. Who am I? What’s it all about?’

‘Yo! Everyone look at me, screamed his black NY counterpart. ‘I got the best clothes, I even got jewellery. Girls? Fuck, man. Dime a dozen. Life is so damn straightforward. I’m the coolest, smartest best looking bastard going’.

At first glance, Tramore, Co Waterford seems quite different to the ghettos of New York. People from our neighbouring estates did not spend their time ‘dissing’ each other. Sweetbriar residents did not wish to ‘take out’ motherfuckers from Moon Laun. And gunshots were almost never heard at the Friday night GAA Discos. This could not stand. The ‘boroughs’ of Waterford would have to be re-classified, starting with my hometown.

What is Tramore? Upwardly mobile Gardaí and Secondary School teachers were by now colonizing it's burgeoning estates. A beautiful beach, amusements for the kiddies, pubs, pissed up jackeens in the summer, and now lots and lots of new homes, from where people set off for the bright lights of Waterford City every day if they were fortunate enough to have jobs in 80s Ireland.

We were a bit wussy – just didn’t have that hard edge that came so naturally to people from the barrios of places like Lisduggan and Ballybeg. We weren’t the Bronx. Long Island was seen as being a bit ‘soft and country ’ by New Yorkers. Culchieville, or at least suburban. But it was also where Public Enemy came from, along with De La Soul, EPMD, and Eric B & Rakim to name a handful. They didn't like the name, so they changed it. Long Island became Strong Island.

Tramore, or Tra Mhor as Gaeilge, meaning 'big beach', would now be Strong Beach. Kinda shit, but still better than Tramore. My home address of Cliff Road was renamed Def Road – considerably better. The newly-drawn boroughs of Waterford began to take shape.

It was an era that came to be known as hip hop’s Golden Age. Ireland had once had a golden age of it's own. The Island of Saints and Scholars we had been called, as the Christian Brothers were quick to remind us. Alas that time had long since passed. When darkness prevailed in Medieval Europe, Ireland had been a beacon of light, home to the dopest lyricists and flyest artwork. And as recessionary 80s Ireland trundled on hopelessly, we could at least pat ourselves on the back in the knowledge of our glorious past.

Through the lyrics of the likes of Chuck D and Krs-One I discovered black America was prone to leaning on a similar crutch. The extremist Nation of Islam claimed that the great kingdoms of Africa had thrived when we Europeans, or cave dwellers as they called us, were still running around on all fours. Take that whitey!

Ireland’s time as the foremost creator and preserver of the written word ran from about the sixth to ninth centuries. Missionaries from Christian monastic schools went forth from the motherland into the wild lands of Western Europe; writing, learning and being generally noble as they went. The Roman Empire was falling and the barbarians were ransacking the once civilized and ordered cities of Europe. It was left to a previously unheralded wee island to preserve the written word. Which, miraculously, it did. But no one outside Ireland seemed to care.

It’s a state of affairs that many pan-African movements would empathise with. They often claim history is written by the white man, cynically removing their own people’s contributions from the record books. We break it down a step further. White Anglo-Saxons and Protestants decree what is history – the achievements of the paddy man and the black man just don’t make the cut. And so we glory in our past deeds, with a healthy balance of chips on either shoulder.

The pinnacle of Ireland’s Golden Age would come to be seen as The Book Of Kells, a kind of Three Feet High And Rising of its time. There for all to see in Trinity College - proof of our glorious past. Suck it up, ye bastards!

Hip hop travelled a fair old road to reach its Golden Age, if not quite as far back as the Vikings. But just like the Irish scholars of medieval Ireland, in that second Dark Age of the mid-eighties, hip hop was a beacon of light. As mediocrity thrived all around them, the ghettoes of New York became the ultimate seat of motherfucking learning.

The New York we saw on our 80s TV screens pre-Giuliani and zero tolerance seems barely believable now. Apolcalytic, Mad Max style urban wastelands. Anything went, or so the schoolyards of Tramore CBS would have it. There was never any graffiti on the Tramore-Waterford bus route, aside from the odd ‘Paul is gay’ or ‘Sharon Loves Browner’, but New York?

-‘Sure the whole feckin’ subway is full of it! Can’t even see out de windows. Me uncle works there and he says there do be gay lads stalling the heads off each other on the street. Full of black lads too but they love the Irish so you’re alright there’.

Mental, like. And it was into this environment that one Clive Campbell, soon to be better known as Kool Herc, rocked up on the streets of the Bronx in the early 70s with his quare Jamaican ways.

Quare Jamaican ways that included sound systems – very, very big sound systems – which he used to rock parties all over the neighbourhood. He occasionally employed a rapper, but more importantly began cutting up records. He played the funky, instrumental bit of the tune and then played it again, and again and again if the vibe was right. The break. The two turntables were now an instrument. This was the cue for the b (for break) - boys to do their thing on the dance floor. Or breakdance. The big eejit from the Caribbean had only gone and invented hip hop.

A boyo called Patricius had a gameplan of his own when he rocked up in Ireland with his big Welsh head on him around 432 AD. This was his second trip. First time round he had come as a slave, and spent his days working his hole off high in the mountains, tending sheep and the like. Fuck this for a lark, he thought. And like so many convicts down the years, he turned to God for help.

And he was rewarded with a vision, enabling his escape. Six years swotting up in a French monastery, a brief trip home to check in with the folks, and back to Ireland. ‘ Right. I’m gonna Christianize these chumps’, he vowed to the man above as he returned and set to work.

Patricius was a good egg, albeit one with a bit of ‘previous’. As a former slave, he empathised with their plight, a borderline pinko stance unheard of in those brutal days. The Black Panthers had MLK and Malcolm X, we had Saint Patrick. And he was a hard bastard. Slavery, the monastery and then 30-odd years trundling across the wild lands of Eireann spreading the word. No choirboy either. Some unexplained sin, committed at the age of 15 and later confessed to, racked him with guilt. At least one historian hints at murder. Ireland, denied the ‘civilizing’ influence of the Roman Empire, was no place for the faint-hearted.

The original Paddy may not have driven any snakes out, but if he’d wanted to those slimy fucks wouldn’t have stood a chance. And neither did the pagans. With the bold Patricius at its helm Christianity stomped all over them. Like Ray Houghton a couple of centuries later he had earned his spurs. He was now one of us – an Irishman, and a proud one

Kool Herc was good, but he was no Saint Patrick. He needed help. And two others would rise from the East (Coast) to create a glorious triumvirate. Hip hop now set about crushing the faggoty, silk-shirt and gold-medallioned world of disco.

Afrika Bambaata (or Kevin Donovan as he was then) hadn’t required enslavement to have his eyes opened. He won a motherfucking essay writing contest, motherfucker, first prize being a trip to Africa. Bam’s eyes were opened and he returned with a new vision. No more gang banging – it was peace, love, unity and having fun from here on in.

St. Patrick may have passed on the ‘having fun’ aspect of Bambaata’s message. There was already far too much of that in early 5th century pagan Ireland. But otherwise he surely would have concurred with the mission statement. Patrick had come to enlighten and Christianize, Bam enlighten and Africanize. Peas in a pod. Kind of. Patrick wanted less of that kind of thing, Bambaata probably a bit more. He formed The Universal Zulu Nation, a broad church of hip hop, spirituality and all things Africa.

Joseph Sadler was a wiry little bollocks. Like Herc, he was originally from Jamaica, and was good with his hands. Not only could he spin records, he was a qualified electrician. So it should come as no surprise that it was he who first succeeded in wiring two turntables to a mixer.

-‘Janey Mac’, he said to the waitress at his local cafe , ‘I’ve only gone and opened the door to sampling, changing the face of contemporary popular music, perhaps forever. Not bad for a wiry little bollox from de Bronx, wha’?’

-‘Fuck you on about? she replied.

And he was no mere DJ, either. Herc played his records, Bambaata enlightened, but Grandmaster Flash was a showman. He span the records with his feet, pirouetted, spliced, diced and generally acted like a prize chimp in the DJ’s booth.

- ‘Tell ye what, dat’s savage’, noted Walter ‘the bomb’ MacKenzie to his fellow Bronxian Rashid Washington Jr at one of Flash’s jams.

- ‘Ye not wrong there, so you’re not’, replied his pal. ‘Dem Jamaican lads are at it again. Must be something in the air out there – or maybe the grass, if ye know what I mean. Ay? Ay?

- ‘Ha ha. Ah will ye stop. Tell ye what, though. I predict this will change the face of music as we know it. It won’t be long before it’s threatening the higher echelons of the charts. DJs will now be limited only by their imaginations and the size of their record collections’.

- ‘It will and its bollocks’, replied the less-effusive Washington Jr.

But history shows Mr McKenzie's statement wasn’t a ‘will and its bollocks’ at all. Far from it. Flash, Bam and Herc – the holy trinity, as hip hop lore would have it. The disaffected youth of New York now had a voice, and its name was hip hop.

There would be others. Run DMC duetted with Aerosmith and got heavy rotation on MTV. They even played Live Aid, not that you were likely to see it.

- ‘Run DMC? You fuckin’ kiddin’ me’? We’re trying to raise money for staving Ethiopians. Last thing we need is people ringing in kicking up shit about two black lads in Adidas tops grabbing their balls’. They were the only Live Aid act not shown live on TV, the risk of bollock-grabbing too high.

But it couldn’t stop the juggernaut. And it would culminate in a spotty teenager in the arse end of Ireland being beholden to the sound of black men in sportswear and gold chains rhyming over pre-programmed beats.Watching The Sunday Game one summer’s evening in the late 80s, he realized why.

-Michael, I’ll tell ye now why hurling is the greatest sport in the world. Are ye listening now? I’ve watched some desperate games over the years. Brutal, only brutal. But I’ll tell ye this. No matter how bad it got, there’d always be something. Some lad would crack over a point from 65 metres, or cut one over the bar. Something to have you saying, ‘Holy God, that was savage good.

‘Compare that now to foreign rubbish like soccer. No goals at all in some games. Sure they all have long hair and they wear shinpads. Bunch of Nancy boys. I’ll tell ye know, if I got my hands on....

-‘Thanks Ger/Ogie/Denis/Micheal/Mossie (can't remember who), the point is well made though. Hurling is clearly the world’s greatest game because even the most boring game can be enlivened by a bit of trickery or magic. Ireland and the Irish are great!’

- ‘That’s exactly it Michael’.

This got me thinking. Krs One had a track called ‘Part-time Suckers’. It consisted mainly of a serious of dictionary definitions, intended presumably to illustrate the superiority of his vocabulary over that of his less educated contemporaries. It sounded a bit like the speak-and-spell gizmo that Elliot gave ET to help him phone home. It was pretty shit, in all fairness.

But the last minute or so made it all worthwhile – a DJ workout, scratching the bejaysus out of a line from an old Smokey Robinson song. The half-way line cut over the bar, the point from the impossibly tight angle – the otherwise ‘brutal, only brutal’ track enlivened by a bit of DJ tomfoolery. It all made sense!

Hip hop was the hurling of the ghetto – the black man and the paddy man once more inextricably linked. Def Road would bear witness.

#hip hop ireland slick rick tramore

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itsworn · 6 years

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High School Sweetheart Dart GT

In the months leading up to his 17th birthday, Don Schwenker had his sights set on a second-hand Mustang. To that end, he and his father went to visit a used car dealership, Colletti’s in Babylon, New York. He didn’t find the Mustang he envisioned, but a Dodge Dart GT caught his father’s eye. “He said to me, ‘Buy this, it has a V-8 and you can go fast with it’,” remembers Schwenker. “My father gave me $100 to put down, and Mr. Coletti, the owner of the dealership, allowed me to pay it off $50 at a time. By November 15, 1975 it was mine!”

Schwenker paid a grand total of $454.25 for the Dart, which had 71,317 miles on the clock. Though bone-stock when acquired, it didn’t stay that way for long. While it would be decades before substantial modifications were made, like just about every other teenager in that era, Schwenker did what he could afford, dressing his ride up with Cragar mag wheels, Hooker headers, and air shocks.

A few years later, the Dart was hit pretty hard from behind and though his friends thought he should just scrap the wreck since it would have been easy to find and buy another one, Schwenker had already developed an attachment to the car and was determined to have it repaired. After getting it back from the body shop, he had his 340-cid engine rebuilt with new W-2 Dodge heads. Before even driving the car with the new engine however, he wanted to make some radical changes.

“It was a Saturday afternoon in 1980 when I watched the movie Mad Max, and saw the blower on the car he was driving. As soon as I heard the blower whining, I was hooked. Then, right after the movie ended, my friend pulled up in front of my house with his blown ’32 Ford coupe and yelled, “let’s go cruising.” After 5 minutes in his car I went home and called my brother, who had a 1970 340 he was getting ready to rebuild for his 1970 Cuda. I had $3,500 into my newly built motor and told him to give me his motor and $1,500, and he could have my motor. He said OK, and I had the engine rebuilt for a blower, and the blower has been on my car ever since.”

In 1989, Schwenker got the itch to make more changes to his Dart, starting with new quarter-panels and back-halfing the chassis, so he brought it to SuperPro Performance Chassis. SuperPro is owned by Tommy V, a master fabricator and welder with decades of experience. Tommy V knew the whereabouts of NOS quarter-panels, put Schwenker in touch with the seller, and that got the ball rolling.

After the quarters were installed, Schwenker presented SuperPro Performance with a huge challenge. “Don wanted a true Pro Street look,” Tommy V explains, “but he insisted that I not touch the new quarter-panels, and making it even harder, he wanted to retain the car’s original back seat!” Tommy V thought long and hard about how to fit super-meaty tires without altering the quarters or eliminating the back seat, and came up with a viable plan. He modified his time-tested four-link suspension system by redesigning the front mount brackets and then fabricated completely new framerails using .120-inch wall 3×2-inch steel tubing in order to extend the wheel base by a full 3 inches. He also disassembled the Dart’s original back seat and modified the springs and frames so they’d fit perfectly between the 42×24-inch wheeltubs he made. He even managed to squeeze a six-point rollbar into the car without impacting the back seat.

Once the fabrication work was done, Schwenker turned his Dart over to Anthony DeDomenico for a complete repaint. After massaging the body to perfection DeDomenico applied two-stage urethane in the car’s original shade of green. Evidencing just how good DeDomenico’s work is, the body and paint look every bit as fantastic today as they did 28 years ago.

With the back half of the chassis, bodywork, and paint all done Schwenker drove and thoroughly enjoyed his high school hot rod for another 25 years before getting the urge to bring it to the next level. Once again, he turned to SuperPro Performance Chassis. Tommy V installed a complete Reilly MotorSports front end that included tubular control arms, Viking coilovers, and a Mustang II–style rack-and-pinion. Combined with the custom four-link rear, the car’s overall ride height is now lowered by a full 3 inches. Tommy V also fabricated a new, 10-point rollbar setup from 304 stainless. Kevin Storms at S&L Metal polished the bars to a chrome-like finish, and Tommy V completed the polishing after all welding was finished.

For stopping power that far surpasses this Dart’s factory braking system, Tommy V turned to Wilwood. Up front, six-piston Dynalite calipers forged from solid billets of aluminum squeeze 12-inch drilled and slotted rotors. At the rear, four-piston Dynalite calipers grip 11.5-inch slotted and drilled rotors.

While updating and upgrading so many other parts of the car, Schwenker decided to build a new, more powerful engine. Since he wanted to retain a blower, he entrusted the work to forced induction specialist Andy Jensen at Jensen’s Engine Technologies in Nescopeck, Pennsylvania. Though there’s no denying the magical allure of a big-block, Schwenker was focused on preserving the original feel of his Dart, so opted to stick with a 340-cid engine. Jensen started with the block that came out of Schwenker’s brother’s Barracuda back in 1980, but converted it to four-bolt mains for increased strength and durability. To complete the bottom end, he used a factory-forged crank supplemented by a host of high-quality aftermarket internals, including forged Crower rods and forged JE pistons. For increased breathing and reduced weight, Jensen went with Edelbrock Performer RPM aluminum cylinder heads in place of the factory’s cast-iron heads.

A Big & Ugly hat caps the BDS 6-71 blower and Indy manifold setup atop the engine. BDS pulleys spin the blower fast enough to generate 12.2 psi of boost and a Big Stuff 3 EFI combined with Hilborn injection deliver the needed fuel. The Hilborn setup uses a total of 16 injectors, with eight on top of the blower, where the fuel spray helps cool the rotors, and eight mounted into the Indy manifold. Tommy V took care of the engine’s electrical needs and fabricated throttle linkage using ¼-inch diameter, .065-inch wall stainless tubing drilled and tapped for 10-32 rod ends from FK Rod Ends.

Wiring-meister Larry Feynman extensively reworked the Dart’s factory harnesses to make sure all electrical components get the juice they need. A plethora of electrical items, including the MSD ignition coil and box, MAP sensor, and various relays mount on an aluminum panel that Tommy V made to install out of sight under the dash. The blown and injected engine sends its twist to the Moser 9-inch rear end via a beefed-up 727 TorqueFlite. The transmission was built by Tommy Derych, a Mopar fanatic as well as a master transmission technician.

Since completing the car about two years ago, Schwenker continues to do what he’s been doing throughout the 43 years he’s owned it, which is to say he enjoys driving it at every opportunity. “This was my first car,” he reflects, “and that is, of course, very special. It’s been a part of my whole family, something that I’ve shared with my parents, Marie and Don Sr., my wife and daughters, and my brothers Tommy and Fred. And beyond that, it’s also been a big part of my friendships with all of my car buddies, including Tony Palmieri, Anthony DeDomenico, Victor Leal, and Tommy V. All of these guys have been a huge help along the way, and I owe them all special thanks!”

Fast Facts

1968 Dodge Dart GT Don Schwenker, Long Island, NY

ENGINE Type: V-8 Bore x stroke: 4.07 (bore) x 3.31 (stroke) inches Block: stock cast iron Rotating assembly: stock 340 forged crank, Crower forged steel connecting rods, JE forged aluminum pistons Compression: 8.0:1 Cylinder heads: Edelbrock Performer RPM Camshaft: Hydraulic roller camshaft Machine work: Jensen’s Engine Technologies (Nescopeck, PA) Induction: Indy Cylinder Heads intake manifold, Enderle Big & Ugly injector hat, Hilborn fuel injection Oiling system: stock oil pump and oil pan Exhaust: SuperPro Performance Chassis custom exhaust, including long-tube headers and 3.5-inch oval pipes made from 304 stainless steel, SpinTech custom mufflers Ignition: MSD Pro-Billet distributor, MSD Blaster 2 coil, MSD 6AL-2 ignition box Cooling: Griffin aluminum radiator, SPAL electric fan Fuel: SuperPro Performance custom 23-gallon fuel cell, Aeromotive in-tank pump Engine built by: Jensen’s Engine Technologies (Nescopeck, PA)

DRIVETRAIN Transmission: 727 TorqueFlite three-speed automatic with manual valve body built by Tommy Derych (Long Island, NY) Converter: ProTorque 9-inch torque converter, 3,500-stall Shifter: B&M Pro Ratchet Driveshaft: 4-inch aluminum driveshaft Rear End: Moser Engineering chrome-moly sheetmetal housing narrowed by Tommy V at SuperPro Performance Chassis, 9-inch centersection with Wavetrac limited-slip differential and 4.30:1 ring-and-pinion, Moser 35-spline axles

CHASSIS Front suspension: Reilly Motorsports AlterKtion coilover system, Viking twin-tube, double-adjustable coilovers, 1.25-inch antiroll bar Rear suspension: SuperPro Performance Chassis four-link and custom framerails, QA1 adjustable coilovers Steering: custom valved Reilly MotorSports manual rack-and-pinion, Flaming River tilt column Front brakes: Wilwood six-piston 12-inch drilled and slotted disc Rear brakes: Wilwood four-piston 11.5-inch drilled and slotted disc

WHEELS & TIRES Wheels: 15×4 (front), 15×5 (rear) Team III E-T Fueler Front Tires: 165/80R15 Nankang CX-668 radials Rear Tires: 31×18.00R15LT Mickey Thompson Sportsman S/R

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