It was very important to us that we did not film film it like a tourist would, we were extremely conscious of the framing and composition of each shot The director of photography, Reamonn Mac Donncha and I were very conscious of the fact that we were filming a documentary in the most photographed location on Earth. They represented the missing link between the famous image and the reality of life for the men it features. The Irish families claim to the men on the beam were key to this. The main challenge for me as director was to interweave these parallel stories to portray a time just as steeped in sweat and misery as it was in glory and grandeur. Was it a fake? Who took the photograph? And who might the men be? Secondly there’s the parallel story of the Irish and other European immigrants who arrived in New York during the roaring twenties and were living there during the Great Depression, which had just begun to bite when the two Irishmen Sonny Glynn and Mattie O’Shaughnessy landed jobs at the Rockefeller Centre.įinally the mystery surrounding the photograph also had to be investigated and told. Firstly, in order to set and maintain the theme, there’s the wider context – the glory of the skyscraper age and the building of the iconic Manhattan skyline. Very early in the process of making this documentary I became aware that this film called for storytelling on many levels. From there we built up a good relationship with the two families and both the Glynns and O’Shaughnessys are featured in the documentary. ![]() We spoke to Michael Whelan the owner of the pub who gave us Pat’s contact. We realised very quickly that there was a great untold story here. On the note he stated that the man on the far right holding the bottle was his father Sonny Glynn, and the man on the far left was Matty O’Shaughnessy his uncle-in-law. The note was from Pat Glynn from Boston, Massachusetts – the son of a Shanaglish emigrant. While there we noticed the famous Lunch Atop A Skyscraper image, but we took real interest in a note beside the picture. My brother and I were in South Galway a few years ago researching a documentary on the blind poet Raftery and we called into Michael Whelan’s pub in the village of Shanaglish. Part homage, part investigation, our new film Lón sa Spéir/Men at Lunch is the revealing tale of an American icon, an unprecedented race to the sky and the immigrant workers that built New York. ![]() The locals here are convinced that two of the elusive men photographed on the beam in 1932 hailed from their village. One of which surfaced in the south Galway village of Shanaglish outside Gort. And yet, in all that time, the identity of the eleven men has remained a mystery: their names – like that of the photographer that took the picture – lost in time, subsumed by the fame of the image itself.īut then, at the start of the 21st century, the photograph finally began to give up some of its secrets. ![]() In the 80 years since it was taken, this counterpoint of the epic and the mundane has become one of the world’s most famous images – a cultural icon and an indomitable symbol of the working man. For the record, watching a documentary try and describe New York City while watching it within the city limits is sort of odd but at least we get said descriptions in the dulcet tones of Fionnula Flanagan in the documentary "Men at Lunch." And as maddeningly vague as it is with the identities of the 11 men photographed having lunch on September 20, 1932(two definite and two more probables from Ireland) 800 feet above the ground at the construction site of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, that's not really the point here.(There is a valuable reminder here of the photographers who were also risking life and limb to get those photos, however staged they might have been.) What the documentary is really after and does so in fine form is to salute the work and lives of all of the anonymous ironworkers who still put their lives on the line everyday to build the city.(Of the two Irish workers identified, one died back in Ireland at a ripe old age, the other one not so much in New York City.) So, after the movie was over and I was walking south down Sixth Avenue, I tipped my hat towards the new One World Trade Center and all the workers there.AT THE HEIGHT of the Great Depression, eleven workers with their boots dangling sit side by side on a steel beam eating lunch – Central Park and the misty Manhattan skyline stretching out behind them.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |