The inside story of Veronica Guerin, directed by Joel Schumacer and starring Gerard McSorley, Ciaran Hinds and Cate Blanchett. Rolling tape Tara Brady and Craig Fitzsimons
The inside story of Veronica Guerin starring Joel Schumacher, Gerard McSorley, Ciaran Hinds and Cate Blanchett. Rolling tape Tara Brady and Craig Fitzsimons
It’s a pleasure to report that Guerin’s hair-raising story has finally been committed to celluloid in a manner that does the tale justice, and the result is a gripping and supremely-acted piece of work.
THERE are times when you wonder if this is the right line of work to be in. Maybe it's the fact that it's a small country and we all think that we know each other well. Whatever the reason, there are few things more unseemly than the spectacle of journalists squabbling, and there's been a hell of a lot of it going on in recent years. The mud-slinging which has surrounded the impending publication of Emily O'Reilly's book about Veronica Guerin is just the latest and most intense example of a malaise which is rapidly coming to characterise the Irish journalistic milieu.
The publication of EMILY O'REILLY's Veronica Guerin: The Life And Death Of A Crime Reporter, has stirred up a hornet's nest in Irish media circles, with journalistic heavyweights such as Paddy Prendeville, Vincent Browne and Gene Kerrigan queueing up to take pot-shots at the author. Here, she takes the opportunity to answer her critics.
Interview: OLAF TYARANSEN. Pics: COLM HENRY
While the end of the eponymous film might give the impression that organised crime and hard drugs disappeared from Ireland after the reporter’s death, latest garda figures offer a very different picture. And the harsh reality, many insist, is even worse.
In his first major interview, Aengus Fanning, editor of the Sunday Independent, discusses how he manages the most successful paper in Ireland and the death of Veronica Guerin.
Dutchy Holland, currently serving an eight-year sentence in Wandsworth Prison, gives a remarkably revealing interview where he discusses all aspects of his life as a career criminal.
An ex-con, a foe of The Krays and a man capable of such acts of violence that he once sliced off a prison guard s ear, Mad Frankie Fraser now makes quite a nice living for himself spinning yarns about his gangster years. Stuart Clark interrogates him about prison, drugs, the IRA, Arsenal and a novel theory on Veronica Guerin s murder which, Fraser insists, the Irish media haven t had the bottle to print. Mugshots: Cathal Dawson
The front page of the Observer carried a very interesting lead story last Sunday. Apparently Britain's intelligence services are seeking powers to seize all records of telephone calls, emails and internet connections made by every person living in the UK. Already a confidential document has been sent to the Home Office, in which the argument in favour of wide-ranging new powers of data control is made, on behalf of MI5, MI6 and the British police.
2 weeks ago in Dublin, the Court of Criminal Appeal overturned the conviction of Paul Ward [pic left courtesty of The Star] for the murder of Veronica Guerin. It is no disrespect to the murdered journalist to say that this was a good day for justice in Ireland
Get ready for new Dublin rom-com Goldfish Memory - not to mention its soundtrack, featuring Hedrock Valley Beats, Damien Rice, Lisa Hannigan and Glen Hansard among others
IT is every journalist’s worst nightmare. It doesn’t often happen that a story is either important or sinister enough to lead a writer into direct conflict with dangerous forces.
Craig Fitzsimons talks to David Gleeson, director of Cowboys & Angels, another exciting addition to the growning canon of unapologetically youthful and exuberent contemporary Irish movies
The Irish star opens up on sex, drugs, racism, crime, acting, actors and actresses, as well as slamming the Irish film industry and RTE.
Text: JOE JACKSON. Portraits: CATHAL DAWSON
With the release of their hugely impressive Turbulence album, LA/Irish outfit Saucy Monky have emerged as genuine contenders. As the critical plaudits continue to mount up, twin lead vocalists and songwriters Cynthia Catania and Annmarie Cullen step up to the mic.
In the final months of his battle with cancer, Tony Gregory sat down with Hot Press to discuss his life and career. Knowing it would be his final interview he was in a reflective frame of mind...
Having just bagged the coveted Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, John Boorman's eagerly awaited biopic of Dublin's most notorious fun lovin' criminal, Martin Cahill, has been hailed as a silver screen masterpiece. Craig Fitzsimons hears about the physical, moral and financial perils of making The General.
"To tell you the truth, I don’t see myself as being all that interesting or attractive." that being so, Colin Farrell must be one of a very few who doesn’t. Dublin’s latest superstar, famous for cussing, bedding women and (lest we forget) acting, has been inescapable in the gossip columns in recent months. But how much is truth and how much fiction? In this candid interview with Tara Brady, he talks about drink, drugs, football, fame, hype, luck, romance and – in his latest box office winner The Recruit – working with Al Pacino
WE need to be very careful. During the 1970s, under the Fine Gael-Labour coalition, a violent and nasty culture developed within sections of the Gardaí Síochana.
In the final months of his battle with cancer, TONY GREGORY sat down with Hot Press to discuss his life and career. Knowing it would be his final interview he was in a reflective frame of mind.
Though Pavee Lackeen’s thorough depiction of the disenfranchised included Ireland’s new ethnic minorities around the fringes, David Gleeson’s follow-up to Cowboys And Angels is the first indigenous feature to take the immigrant experience as its central theme.
They’re men behaving wonderfully and they’ve taken Irish television by storm. Now into its second series, Bachelors Walk has made household names of Barry, Ray and Michael, themselves inhabitants of a particularly memorable household. Fiona Reid meets the actors behind the true wise guys. Photos Roger Woolman
In a special Hot Press investigative report, Jonathan O'Brien looks into the activities of Father Sean Fortune [pictured left with the Pope - courtesy The Star] and his Institute of Journalism and Theatre, while Craig Fitzsimons goes undercover to discover exactly what is - and isn't - on offer in one of the priest's diploma courses.
John Noonan, who played a pivotal role in the IRA’s military campaign against the British occupation of Northern Ireland, gives a revealing interview to Jason O'Toole.
As escape acts go, it ranked up there with the very best of Harry Houdini. Bishop Brendan Comiskey, in theory at least, was back to face the music and undergo a gruelling, exhaustive interrogation at the hands of the assembled press corps. Instead, his press conference turned into a stage-managed anti-climax, and the media watched helplessly as he slipped from their grasp.
For close to twenty years, MARTIN CAHILL led the forces of law and order a merry dance. Known as the General, he was suspected of masterminding virtually every major crime committed in Ireland – but for as long as matters, the Gardai had been unable to pin anything on him. And when he was brought to court on petty charges, he posed outside for press photographers, dropping his trousers to reveal a pair of Mickey Mouse boxer shorts. Last week, however, the game was cut brutally short when Cahill was blown away within 100 yards of his South Dublin home by an IRA hit squad. Report: NEIL McCORMICK.
And that’s just the politicians we spoke to... The publication of a major new anthology of Hot Press interviews by Jason O’Toole, focused primarily on the Irish criminal underworld, gives cause for reflection on what it takes to ‘get good interview’.
THREE men are murdered in horrific circumstances in the seaside town of Scheveningen in Holland. The descriptions of the torture inflicted on them, and of the final brutal manner of their murder, are harrowing in the extreme. Putty or plaster of some kind, it is reported, had been rammed into the orifices of at least one of them. All three were dowsed in inflammable material and set alight. The bodies are so badly disfigured that they are unidentifiable. To contemplate it, even in the abstract, is enough to stop you in your tracks, to render you speechless at people s unbelievable capacity for evil.
For the average expat Irish criminal living in Spain, life is a blur of booze, prostitutes and drug deals with the threat of violence, and even death, never far away.
Career criminal Dutchy Holland died yesterday in prison. Long one of Ireland's most infamous criminals it was regularly reported and assumed that he was one of the men who killed Veronica Guerin.
