“With stellar turns by some of Ireland’s finest Liam Nelson, Stephen Rea and fittingly enough, the oh-so-watchable Virgin Prunes frontman, Gavin Friday and more ups and downs than The Giant Dipper, “Breakfast on Pluto” is engaging at every misstep along the way.”
Santa Cruz Ssentinel
Category Archives: Film
‘Stellar turn by oh-so-watchable Friday’
‘Shag Tobacco influenced Breakfast on Pluto’
Pat McCabe and Neil Jordan talk to Ireland.com/The Irish Times about Breakfast on Pluto. Author McCabe says:
“[...] I think more than anything else it was influenced by listening to the album Shag Tobacco by Gavin Friday. It has that louche thing all the way through it. The influence is not obvious, perhaps. It is subliminal. I wrote the sleeve notes for the LP. So it is almost perfect that he ended up in the film.” The erstwhile Virgin Prune turns out as the lead singer of the terrifying showband, Billy Hatchet and the Mohawks, who take on Kitten Braden, the films hero(ine), as a kind of Pocahontas.
Gavin talks Pluto on RTE Radio 1
It’s promo time for Breakfast on Pluto, on the eve of its European premiere. Gavin will talk about his work on the film on RTE radio one’s Rattlebag on Thursday, January 12 at 2.45 GMT+1. RTE 1 is available live on line.
The show will be available on demand the following day in the Rattlebag audio archive.
Wake up to ‘Breakfast on Pluto’
“Gavin Friday stands out as Billy Hatchet, simultaneously the lead singer in a glam rock band (Billy Hatchet and the Mohawks) and a gun pusher for the IRA. His performance is gruff and outrageous, but he is easily swayed by Kitten’s eyes and sweet nothings.”
Wake up to “Breakfast on Pluto” – Silver Chips Online.
Gavin’s acting debut reviewed
The Windy City Times single out Gavin in their Breakfast on Pluto review:
Based on the Pat McCabe novel, Kitten’s delusions ( they serve as instinctive survival tactics for the character ) are so intense that nothing else seems to filter through–not her grim circumstances, not the grittiness around her, and certainly not the constant “interruptions” by those pesky IRA terrorists with their machine guns and bombs. No one has a more fabulous fantasy life than lonely misfit gay boys, it seems, and Jordan holds true to Kitten’s steel-under-velvet determination to let nothing knock off her rose-colored glasses. Murphy is helped by a richly talented supporting cast that includes Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson ( as always ), and especially Gavin Friday as a love-struck Elvis wannabe.
Movie critic Roger Ebert writes:
Kitten depends on the kindness of strangers. Cillian Murphy with a bemused and hopeful voice, he meets such characters as Billy (Gavin Friday), leader of the scruffy rock band Billy Hatchet and the Mohawks, and soon Kitten is onstage as a squaw, helping out during the performance of “Running Bear.” Billy falls in love with him, but eventually “the band thinks the squaw is not working out.”
Heraldnet.com writes:
‘Kitten has a Yoko-like fling with a beery rock singer (wonderfully played by the debauched Gavin Friday), which is interrupted by a subplot involving Irish Republican Army gun-running. He also has a stint as a costumed animal at a Disney-esque theme park, and as an assistant to a melancholy magician (Stephen Rea, from “The Crying Game”).’
Breakfast on Pluto opens nationwide (USA) on Friday, December 23rd.
Breakfast on Pluto soundtrack details
Neil Jordan on the music used in Breakfast on Pluto – the movie based on Pat McCabe’s book:
‘In a way, Patrick saw the whole world through songs, didn’t he?’ says Neil Jordan, who chose the soundtrack selections. ‘He kind of believed in the naïve sugary hopefulness of the lyrics of pop songs. So I decided that the whole burden of the soundtrack would be carried by songs from the era.’
The title phrase, Breakfast on Pluto, comes from a ’70s song by Don Partridge, a one-man-band folkie who still goes by the name of ‘King of the London Buskers.’ The flamboyant music scene of the day is reflected not only in song selections: for example, smooth rock crooner Bryan Ferry is cast as a sinister Mercedes-driving assailant; the bar band “Billy Rock and the Mohawks” synthesizes various strains of entertainingly wretched pop, and Billy is played by onetime punk hero Gavin Friday. Even the mascara and elephant-bell flares that Patrick sports as a young teen conjure up Marc Bolan and early Bowie.
The film has no conventional score. Jordan says: ‘Sometimes it seems that scores drown out the emotion in films these days.’
Songs used in the film include:
Sugar Baby Love – The Rubettes
You’re Such a Good Looking Woman – Joe Dolan
Breakfast on Pluto – Don Partridge
Me & My Arrow – Harry Nilsson
You’re Breaking My Heart – Harry Nilsson
Running Bear – Gavin Friday (production)
Wig Wam Bam – Gavin Friday (production)
Honey – Bobby Goldsboro
Sand – Gavin Friday (production)
Me & Mrs Jones – Billy Paul
Fuck the British Army – Paddy’s Irish Clan
Everyday – Slade
The Moonbeam Song – Harry Nilsson
Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep – Middle of the Road
The Wombling Song – The Wombles
Freelance Fiend – Leafhound
Tell Me What you Want – Jimmy Ruffin
Feelings – Morris Albert
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes – Billy Livesey
Windmills of your Mind – Dusty Springfield
Caravan – Santo and Johnny
Children of the Revolution – T-Rex
No More White Horses – T2
For The Good Times – Kris Kristofferson
Dream World – Don Downing
For What It’s Worth – Buffalo Springfield
Love is a Many-Splendored Thing – Jerry Vale
Makes You Blind – The Glitter Band
Rock Your Baby – George McCrae
In the Rain – The Dramatics
Madame George – Van Morrison
Cypress Avenue – Van Morrison
Fly Robin Fly – Silver Convention
How Much is That Doggy – Patti Page
Breakfast on Pluto, official site
Sony Classics have put up a site for Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto. The film opened at the Toronto Film Festival this week. Gavin was unable to attend as he is working on the ‘Get rich or die tryin” score.
Prestigious 50 ct contract
The Sunday Independent reports (reg. req.) on Gavin and Maurice’s collaboration with Quincy Jones:
‘Irish Renaissance man Gavin Friday and his musical partner Maurice Seezer, [who] have landed the prestigious contract to work with living legend Quincy Jones on the soundtrack for the new 50 Cent movie, Get Rich or Die Tryin”m (directed by Jim Sheridan). The pair will skip the country for LA to start work on the new project which will “be along the lines of Eminem’s huge smash-hit movie”, an insider tells me. The film, which goes on release in December, will also coincide with silver-tongued Gavin Friday’s silver-screen debut with Irish actor Cillian Murphy in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto (starring Liam Neeson). Gavin first met 50 Cent in May in Toronto. In June, Gavin had a meeting with Quincy Jones in New York. It obviously went well because last weekend Quincy came to Dublin to “seal the deal”.’
Friday/Seezer team up with Quincy Jones
From Variety.com – Jones knows the score:
“Quincy Jones has signed on to compose the original score for Paramount’s ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’,’ his first film score in the two decades since ‘The Color Purple.’ Jones, who has been nommed for seven Oscars, will be working with composers Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer, director Jim Sheridan and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who’s toplining and writing songs for the film. Story, penned by Terence Winter, centers on an orphaned street kid who makes his mark in the drug trade, then leaves the violence behind to pursue a career in rap. Jones has penned 33 film scores, including “In the Heat of the Night,” “In Cold Blood,” “The Italian Job,” “Cactus Flower,” “The Wiz” and “The Color Purple,” which he also co-produced. He also wrote “Soul Bossa Nova,” the “Austin Powers” theme.”
Classics for Pluto
Gavin, in his role as a showband singer in the film ‘Breakfast on Pluto’, will be in the studio sometime next week to record some cover versions of 70s classics especially for the film.
