A LEAP YEAR CHALLENGE

How do you feel about the leap year? Do you look on it as an extra day’s work for which you don’t get paid, and another unwelcome add-on to this month’s fuel and electricity bills? Are you in agreement with the late great Irish writer Samuel Beckett’s view of leap years when he said, “Every once in four, the February debacle.”

Or do you jump on February 29^th as an extra day of life gifted to you for no other reason than 2012 is exactly divisible by four. Though that’s not precisely how leap years work, because full centuries are not leap years, unless they are evenly divisible by 400 – so for instance 2000 was a leap year but 1900 was a common year. The main point is that leap years are a necessary anomaly needed to keep the astronomical year – the time it takes the earth to go around the sun – in step with the calendar year, to ensure for example that the Spring Equinox always falls on or near the 21^st March.

Exceptional events have always prompted exceptional behaviour, and tradition holds the 29^th of February to be ‘Ladies’ Privilege’ or ‘Bachelor’s Day’ – a day when the woman can propose to the man. A decree by Queen Margaret of Scotland in 1288 is supposed to have ordered men to be fined £100 if they declined a proposition of marriage on the 29^th. But this anecdote is about as true as the folktale version which has our own St. Bridget complaining to St. Patrick about women not being allowed to propose to the men they fancy. He suggested they have an opportunity once every seven years, and she bargained him down to four.

Personally, I’m taking the 29^th as an opportunity to do something really out of the ordinary. I have to get my hair chopped and my lines off and then costume up as a film extra for a shot that sees me playing a Reverend officiating at a funeral mass in Drumlease Church of Ireland in Dromahair.

The film is called Black Ice and I’ve written the screenplay along with its director Johnny Gogan. We’ve based it in the world of modified cars in a border community, and the story follows the events surrounding a fatal crash. Set just as the property bubble bursts, the whole country is in a helpless slide as our young hero Alice returns to her home town to investigate the circumstances of the crash in which she was involved and her ‘petrol-head’ brother Tom died. Her bad egg boyfriend Jimmy Devlin provides the key, but he is difficult to chase to ground.

Jimmy is played by the rapidly rising star Killian Scott from RTE’s Love Hate. And Alice and Tom are played by the amazingly gifted newcomers, Jane McGrath (Little Women) and Dermot Murphy. Early on, people pointed out to Johnny and me that the writers of the film Mamma Mia set their story on an idyllic Greek holiday island with gorgeous weather. We have set our story in the Northwest of Ireland in the depth of winter mostly at night.

It’s a big ask. But so far everything is going to plan. Thanks mainly to the enthusiasm, stamina, graciousness and dedication of the young cast; and the ferocious work-rate of the close-knit, hand-picked crew. The budget is comparatively tiny, and local support is vital, such as Andrew Trotter rolling out his rally car for a key scene, or the good people of Strandhill giving over a car-park to high powered displays of ‘drifting’ and ‘burning’ tyres down to the wire, or the Beepark Centre in Manorhamilton accommodating a kick-boxing scene. The production has been blessed with extraordinary individual and community co-operation.

And even under the most extreme pressure, and perishing wet conditions, the actors and crew continue to take the time to make the location mechanics and shot set-ups comprehensible to me. But my concern is to be as scrupulously professional as everyone else, and deliver the goods when the director shouts ‘Action’. Originally I had in mind a fleeting appearance in a crowd scene, the way Hitchcock pops up in his films, or his creator Colin Dexter shows up in Morse if you keep your eyes peeled.

The scene might finally get digitally deleted, but for now all I want is to avoid messing up. I’m apprehensive, which is a nice word for panic-stricken, but it’s a leap year so here goes. And I’m taking courage from what James Cagney said. He didn’t hold with ‘method’ actors’ deep preparation. His advice was, “Step up to your mark and say your lines.” And given the amount of action with cars on Black Ice he might have added, “And try not to get run down.”