Colm Quinn, the director of the new documentary Ransom '79, has paid tribute to the late Charlie Bird for his indefatigable spirit and determination to tell his last story on the big screen.
Colm Quinn, the director of the new documentary Ransom '79, has paid tribute to the late Charlie Bird for his indefatigable spirit and determination to tell his last story on the big screen.In the documentary, the former RTÉ Chief News Correspondent and his friend and fellow journalist Colin Murphy explore an outlandish but true chapter from Irish history. As Bird puts it at the start,"a ransom demand on the Government that's been kept secret for more than 40 years".
"In a way, the challenge with a project like this is you've got two very different stories, the present-tense condition that Charlie was facing and this kind of ripping yarn from sort of forty-odd years ago and you're trying to find that tonal balance between the two," Quinn told RTÉ Entertainment on the bittersweet day that Ransom '79 was released in cinemas.
"'Wide-eyed wonder' puts it so well," said Quinn."Those moments are all over the film, just those reactions that he has to people when he's engaging in the interviews. I think he was amazed that he hadn't heard anything about this. His reactions are so great throughout the film as people are telling him the details of this story. It's lovely to have been able to capture that.
"Even as the illness got very difficult for him, Charlie had this great sense of humour and he retained that sense of just being able to engage in a situation in a sort of a fun way," said Quinn.
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