Writer, Director Journal Excerpt 1

What follows is a short excerpt from my journal of the early days of writing the feature length script, 'Tree Keeper'. It is now May 2010 and the film is shooting this summer. 4 years ago I completed the first draft. Here are a few of my thoughts from that time (more journal writings will follow and will include my thoughts on the shooting process to come!).

Patrick O'Shea - writer, director, 'Tree Keeper'

‘Tree Keeper’ - A Journal, Feb. 5^th 2006

"Today is my last day in ‘The Koppie’, the home of Keith and Rosemary Dixon. I have just this moment finished the first complete, formatted draft of my new script ‘Tree Keeper’. The idea had been in my head for over a year. I started writing it at the start of January 2005 when I was house and dog-sitting for Snoo Sinclair (I have adapted Snoo’s novel, ‘Nott’ to a screenplay and we are currently trying to sell it - not easy - it’s a period drama, words that seem to whiff of the plague - or maybe bird flu would be a more modern analogy - when it comes to selling scripts).

Back to the Dixons. I have spent the last four weeks living in their beautiful house, which is just outside of the picturesque and unique village of Sneem in Co. Kerry (This area is actually where the ‘Nott’ script is set, but over two hundred years in the difference). My reason for being here is that Keith and Rosemary were visiting their former home of South Africa and I was asked to mind their numerous animals. There are three dogs, Reilly, Sam and Rosie, two cats, Minty and Tibby, two donkeys, Flossie and Mabel and a parrot, Pinocchio. I was certainly not short on company. So, in between feeding and petting dogs, cats and donkeys (no petting the parrot on fear of losing a finger) I have managed to write a script.

The idea for the script stemmed from walking in the forestry near my brother’s house in Leamlara, a small hamlet in North East Cork. It disgusted me the amount of rubbish dumped on a regular basis. I started photographing various piles and pieces of rubbish with the intention of putting together an anti-dumping exhibition. This led onto the creation of the character ‘Doire’ and the script itself.

Lately I have been reading a lot of Hemingway and his writing has influenced me a lot. The sense of impending doom and inescapable fate in Hemingway’s writing have brushed off on me and have shaped the ending of the script. I read D.H Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ during last week and I was amazed to find so many themes in common with my own little story. It gives me hope to find my own thoughts reflected in a book by such a writer as Lawrence. I really like ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and look forward to reading more of Lawrence’s material. It is a shame that this book was lent notoriety for the wrong reasons. Obviously sexuality and passion and their exploration are central themes in the book but it has so much more to offer. Still, its notoriety may at least lead to people picking it up for the sex and finding within its pages so much more to captivate them."