Here are a couple tapes of the interview with Mr. Donleavy at the recent Dublin Writers Festival. The entire interview is worth the listen and he mentions Johnny a couple times. In Part One at about 20 minutes he talks about Johnny's reaction to his story about the dog jumping out the window from the 17th floor. In Part Two at 15:52 he says he doubts the film of The Ginger Man will ever get made but thinks Shane MacGowan would be great as the Behan-inspired character. He does some quite wonderful readings from TGM as well. This is a wonderful interview, a real treasure!
http://www.rte.ie/arts/2008/0611/theartsshow.html Thanks for those links FAN--very interesting indeed! I do hope he's wrong and that TGMan will make it into film one day........
-Donna
I personally am not quite ready to throw in the towel on this just yet.
It's a lovely interview, thanks so much for posting it for us. He's a very interesting man and is a real joy to be around and talk to. ;)