Controversial life of Haughey set for movies

A FILM about the life and times of Charles Haughey is a step closer after the film rights were bought to Limerick writer Kevin O’Connor’s book and screenplay on the controversial Taoiseach.

Film company 2000 AD has secured the rights to the book Sweetie: How Haughey Spent The Money which sat astride the bestsellers’ list for six weeks in the late 1990s.

It is to be produced by Adrian Devane, who is travelling to a Disney conference in Burbank, Los Angeles in June to discuss details with studio executives with regards to the funding of the film.

Devane is currently working on the script, Political Betrayal. He hopes to make contact with financiers at the conference in Burbank, which was attended by more than 1,000 studio executives and producers last year.

Sweetie was the nickname given by Haughey’s former lover, gossip columnist Terry Keane, who constantly referred to him by that moniker in print.

The film will examine Haughey’s high-flying lifestyle during the peak of his powers and has been in the pipeline for some time.

Mr O’Connor said he was delighted that his work was finally going to hit the big screen.

“It is proof that tenacity pays off,” he said.

“It is almost a lifetime’s work having worked in Leinster House for 30 years coinciding with his time in power. I witnessed the good, the bad and the not so good.”

Mr O’Connor revealed that the screenplay starts off in a “rat-infested warehouse” in Germany in the 1970s and concludes with two tribunals into the former Taoiseach.

The author and journalist has an idea which actors he would like to see taking on the main roles in the film.

He believes that in spite of the fact he is a bit older than would be ideal given that the film covers a 30-year timespan, Anthony Hopkins would play a great Haughey, especially given his previous experience of playing another controversial politician, Richard Nixon.