Answers given in great little book: Praises given where deserved
An arts roundup from September 1995: an Irish trivia reference, The Brothers McMullen fresh from Sundance, a proverb book, and The Run of the Country.
As printed in the Celtic Mirror, September 1995
Quickly: What is like a trivia game, but can also be used as a reference tool by those seeking to learn about Ireland?
Give up?
It's “Ireland The Great Little Answer Book,” a 152-page soft cover book ($16.95) that will be released next month by Dufour Editions, a publisher in Chester Springs, Pa. and written by Jim O'Donnell and Sean de Freine.
De Freine wrote “The Great Silence,” a seminal study of the decline of the Irish language. O'Donnell is the editor-in-chief of Administration Yearbook and Diary - a volume dubbed the “most used reference book in Ireland apart from the telephone directory.”
Written in question and answer format so a reader can use it as a trivia-type tool or as an encyclopedia, thanks to the great index in the back, “Ireland The Great Little Answer Book” also has value to the student or enthusiast of Irish literary history.
One can find out how words such as “boycott” made it into the English language. Or one can delve deeper into the history and current situations in Ireland to find answers to questions such as what countries are the biggest investors in the Irish economy.
It's a fun book.
Dufour Editions is located at P.O. Box 7, Chester Springs, Pa., 19425; (610) 458-5005 or fax (610) 458-7103.
Praise be. It is about time that the mini-budget art film gets the recognition it deserves in the entertainment community. We were beginning to think a movie maker had to have big bucks and big names to make a film that critics, and the public, would recognize.
“The Brothers McMullen,” a film by Edward Burns, won the top award at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie is a comical look at the romantic life of three brothers struggling with Irish Catholic traditionalism.
The standard Hollywood movie costs about $35 million to produce. The budget for “The Brothers McMullen” meanwhile, was less than $500,000.
Fox Searchlight Pictures, a division of 20th Century Fox created last year to create low-budget, specialized films, made “The Brothers McMullen” available to the public last month.
Anyone who has the opportunity to see it should go. If not for the story line, which is a bit trite, but apparently works, then for the respect it deserves as an art form.
Burns wrote, directed and starred in the film. That alone is an undertaking that commands respect.
So, who says one has to have money to make great art?
Not us. We know some of the best artists are those who create not to make a fortune, but because through their veins courses a desire to share their feelings and observations through their gift of creativity. Too bad the rest of the world knows so little of these heroes and heroines.
Liam Mac Con Iomaire, director of the Irish Language Laboratory in the Department of Modern Irish at University College Dublin, and Bill Doyle, a free-lance photographer and winner of many press awards for his work, deserve major applause for their “Ireland of the Proverb.”
(Yes, we are in a good mood this month. And, besides, the market is replete with great Irish and American-Irish talent, so good mood or not, the credit is due.)
“Ireland of the Proverb” ($19.95) was released in August by Roberts Rinehart Publishers in Boulder, Colo. It marries good photography and more than 130 Irish proverbs on death, drinking, types of people, youth and age and other subjects.
Each proverb in the book is written in Irish with its English translation and authorial commentary on what the saying meant to Irish people.
Doyle's black and white photographs are symbolic of the commentaries.
Add screenwriting to Shane Connaughton's list of artistic talents.
The author, an Oscar nominee for “My Left Foot,” adapted his novel “Run of the Country” into a movie given the same name.
We know what they say about books made into movies and vice versa, but before we stereotype this movie, let's see it. The novel - a love story of a young boy and girl, love between father and son and love for Ireland - was superb.
Besides Connaughton having a hand in it, the movie reunites Director/Producer Peter Yates and actor Albert Finney in their first film since “The Dresser,” for which both received Academy Award and BAFTA nominations.
We were going to write about the story line, here, but decided to wait until we see the movie, which will be released mid-month by Castle Rock Entertainment.
Meanwhile, read the book.
Notes on the column, 2026
This was the magazine's arts desk in a cheerful mood, and most of its bets paid off.
The Brothers McMullen did better than anyone here guessed. Edward Burns, a production assistant at Entertainment Tonight, wrote it in the spring of 1993, shot it on 16mm with actors recruited through an advertisement in Backstage, and spent about $25,000 to get it to Sundance. The column's figure of under $500,000 was generous; the cost of the full release was put at about $238,000. After winning the Grand Jury Prize in January 1995 it opened in the United States on 11 August, took $10.4 million in North America and $19.3 million worldwide, and was counted the most profitable film of the year on a cost-to-return basis. Burns went on to direct She's the One (1996) and Sidewalks of New York (2001), and to act in Saving Private Ryan (1998). Thirty years on, a sequel, The Family McMullen, was released on 15 October 2025.
Fox Searchlight, founded on 29 April 1994 and barely a year old when it picked up the film, dropped the Fox from its name in 2020 and is now Searchlight Pictures, based at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.
The Run of the Country opened on 22 September 1995, with Albert Finney and Matt Keeslar in the leads and Victoria Smurfit in the cast. It took only about $470,000 at the box office, so readers who took the advice to read the book first were on safe ground. Shane Connaughton, born in Kingscourt, County Cavan, in 1941, published A Border Diary about the filming that same year and a later book, Big Parts, in 2009.
Liam Mac Con Iomaire, the Connemara-born scholar behind Ireland of the Proverb, became known to many as an RTÉ newsreader and the biographer of Breandán Ó hEithir and the singer Seosamh Ó hÉanaí. With Tim Robinson he translated Máirtín Ó Cadhain's Cré na Cille as Graveyard Clay, and the pair won the Lois Roth Award for it in 2016. He died on 5 May 2019.
Questions readers ask
How much did The Brothers McMullen cost to make?
Edward Burns made The Brothers McMullen for about $25,000, mostly the cost of 16mm film stock and processing, using actors who worked for free. After it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1995, the cost of the full release was put at about $238,000, and the film grossed $19.3 million worldwide.
Is there a sequel to The Brothers McMullen?
Edward Burns returned to the Irish Catholic McMullen family of Long Island thirty years after the original. The sequel, The Family McMullen, was released on 15 October 2025. The first film, released in the United States on 11 August 1995, followed three brothers over three months as they dealt with love, marriage and faith.
Who wrote The Run of the Country?
Shane Connaughton, born in Kingscourt, County Cavan, in 1941, wrote the 1991 novel and adapted it for the 1995 film directed by Peter Yates and starring Albert Finney and Matt Keeslar. Connaughton is best known as co-writer of the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for My Left Foot, and he also published A Border Diary about the filming.
Who was Liam Mac Con Iomaire?
Liam Mac Con Iomaire, born in Casla, County Galway, in 1937, was an Irish-language writer, journalist and RTÉ newsreader. He co-wrote Ireland of the Proverb with photographer Bill Doyle in 1995 and, with Tim Robinson, translated Máirtín Ó Cadhain's Cré na Cille. He died on 5 May 2019.
