Posted on 1/15/06 at 06:56 AM

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I know y'all will want to see this article especially since we are blessed to have Mr. Donleavy gracing us with a Q&A!

Source:
sbpost.ie

Depp to star as The Ginger Man

15 January 2006 By Ros Drinkwater
Johnny Depp is reputedly to play the hero in the first ever film version of JP Donleavy's iconic novel The Ginger Man.

Rated one of the 100 best books of the 20th century and never out of print since its publication in 1955, it recounts the ribald adventures of Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield, an Irish American law student at Trinity College. Due to its content Donleavy had great difficulty finding a publisher.

When it was finally published by Olympia Press in Paris, it caused outrage and delight in equal amounts and was critically hailed as a masterpiece.

A stage version starring Richard Harris and Wendy Craig ran to some acclaim in London's Fortune Theatre, but when the play (with Harris, Godfrey Quigley and Genevieve Lyons) opened in the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on October 26, 1959, it was stopped after three performances, apparently following complaints from the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

For half a century Donleavy has repeatedly spurned Hollywood overtures to film his books.

His decision to relent is due in no small part to the casting of Depp, whom he met recently in New York.

“Mr Depp is something else,” he said with characteristic understatement. “He is very bright, extremely intelligent, and very knowledgeable.”

The film will be directed by Laurence Dunmore, who directed Depp in The Libertine, and produced by Philip Donleavy and Robert Mitchell.

Shane McGowan will appear as Brendan Behan, a close friend of Donleavy's and the first person to read the original manuscript.

To date The Ginger Man has sold over 50 million copies in 20 languages.