British musician and video director Kevin Godley (10cc, Godley & Creme) is set to write and direct a feature film about Orson Welles’ stage debut at Dublin’s Gate Theatre in 1931.
The Gate begins shortly before Welles death in 1985 as the 70-year-old filmmaker is haunted by the memories of the start of his professional career at the age of 16.
“For me Ireland was Welles’ personal Rosebud,” Godley told Screen Daily. “His own lost innocence was buried under a contradictory lifetime of achievement and diminishing returns so I want the audience to feel that loss from the beginning.”
The Gate will be shot in Dublin and the west coast of Ireland.
The project is being produced by Laura De Casto (former managing director of Tartan Films) and by Andrew Bentley, former CFO Virgin Music Group and EMI International. It received development funding from the Irish Film Board.
De Casto and Bentey are raising finance for the project at the Cannes Film Festival.
Godley has been described as a Welles aficionado by producers. He has directed more than 80 music videos working with the likes of Band Aid (Do They Know It’s Christmas) Frank Sinatra and Bono (I’ve Got You Under My Skin) and The Beatles (Real Love).
Shortly after leaving the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, Welles traveled to Ireland aboard the SS Baltic in August 1931.
He disembarked in Galway after four days at sea, and set off on a painting tour of the western coast. Traveling by cart with a donkey named Sheeog, he painted the Connemara landscapes by day and slept under the stars at night.
By early October, he abandoned his western travels and headed to Dublin.
He attended a performance of the Earl of Longford’s play The Melians at the Gate Theatre. Among the cast he spotted a young actor he had met in the west, and this was pretext enough for Welles to present himself backstage after the performance.
Welles caught the eye of the Gate’s legendary co-founder, Hilton Edwards,who had been looking for an actor to play the key role of Duke Karl Alexander in a forthcoming production of Jew Suss.
Welles claimed he was 18 and already an established player in New York, though Edwards would later say he didn’t believe him, but nevertheless hired him and launched his professional career.
Orson Welles Sketch Book: Recalling his start at The Gate Theatre
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