Last Tango in Parish: Marlon Brando's Cork movie could finally be released 30 years on
Marlon Brando and John Hurt filming 'Divine Rapture' in Ballycotton, Co Cork in July 1995. Debra Winger and Johnny Depp are also among the cast of the film which is now set to be completed, 30 years on. Picture: Dan Linehan/Irish Examiner Archive
It's the most famous film never made: was the Hollywood blockbuster starring Marlon Brando, Debra Winger, and Johnny Depp that was supposed to put Ballycotton in Co Cork on the map.
However, financial troubles saw the ill-fated film canned just two weeks into filming in East Cork in July 1995.
Now, the producer and driving force behind the film, Barry Navidi, plans to return to Ireland next year to finally finish the job.
Currently in post-production on his latest film , starring Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain, Navidi is ready to return to , a film that left him bankrupt 30 years ago.
"These kind of movies, they don't age," said Navidi. "And it's time to make a comedy — a 'dramedy' rather.
"So I am looking at resurrecting it — similar to the story of what happened to the character in — and this time 'round, I know the story so well I don't need to get a director for this. I'll cast it with other actors and I will make it."
The tale of has gone down in film folklore.
Back in 1995, brought Marlon Brando to the East Cork fishing village of Ballycotton, along with Debra Winger, Johnny Depp, and John Hurt, with the film directed by Thom Eberhardt.
Brando died in 2004, and Hurt died 2017.
On the original production, Thom Eberhardt was chosen as director.
But, before Eberhardt ever had time to shout “action!”, the director was spooked about .
“Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp, they just couldn't keep a straight face,” he recalled this week.
“John had brought his fart noise maker. So every time somebody started to say a line, he would hit that thing and it would let go. It was just impossible.to control them.”
But it wasn’t the fartmaker antics that took the wind out of the film production. had the ingredients which should have brought it home.
The movie was an Irish fairytale wrapped up in a Tinseltown ribbon: A woman in rural Ireland dies and comes back to life at the funeral, leaving priest Fr Fennell, played by Hollywood legend Marlon Brando, to believe he has witnessed a miracle and redeem his own faith.
With Brando supported by Debra Winger, Depp, and the late John Hurt, it had feelgood box-office all over it.
All the ingredients, except one: Money.
On July 23, 1995 — two weeks after filming started in Ballycotton — was over.
With funds dried up, the film was in tatters, the crew unpaid, and the producer and showrunner Barry Navidi was bankrupt and had lost his home.
Only Brando, who had negotiated a $1m part-payment, escaped relatively unscathed.
Navidi was three decades on from his first feature film. But he said he was greatly affected by the financial collapse of :
Navidi is currently in post-production with , an all-star Hollywood version of Shakespeare’s with a cast led by Al Pacino.
left Navidi heartbroken, and seemingly on the scrapheap.
But ultimately it opened up new doors for Navidi in Hollywood. And, this week, he declared there may yet be a fitting Hollywood ending for .
Some 30 years on from the heartbreak that left a gloom over Ballycotton, Co Cork, Navidi is seeking to return to East Cork and finish the job.
"I always have a soft spot for , no matter what," Mr Navidi told the .
"I am going to come back to make it — and this time, I'm going to direct it myself. I am going to come back because it's a timeless movie."
Navidi first raised the possibility of remaking the film back in 2012. Now it is back on his radar.
"I want to see if I can do it next year, depending on my workload," he said.
I do want to go back to Ballycotton, shoot it it there for maybe a couple of weeks and the rest of it maybe around Dublin.
"Last time, I shot seven weeks in Ballycotton.
"You don't need that.
"You learn from experience.
"You don't need to move everybody to Ballycotton for seven weeks to shoot the whole entire picture because it's already complicated bringing the whole circus to a place.
"I did it, but this time around I have a different view of it."
Before hearing about possible resurrection of , let’s look back its death, and the cause of death.
was Navidi’s first feature film.
Ireland was the right country, and Ballycotton the perfect location.
Ireland was attractive financially too, with the Irish Film Board revitalised under then Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht minister Michael D Higgins and significant tax incentives.
The film was to have a budget of $13m — even then, not huge money, but easily enough for what Navidi planned in Ballycotton.
Thom Eberhardt had recently directed starring Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. It was a Sherlock Holmes movie with a twist, where sidekick Dr Watson was the real sleuth.
“ was going to be a low-budget movie, everybody knew that,” said Eberhardt.
"But they were looking around for a director who could handle a lower budget.
“I had already done quite a few things working on low and moderate budgets and so Barry [Navidi] got a hold of my agent Dan Otsoff and got Dan's permission.”
Eberhardt recalled that someone else had to be happy with him as director too.
"He didn't say who it was coming from, but it actually came from Marlon.
"And I don’t think it was because Marlon thought that I was going to be such a great director for it.
“Marlon had also talked Debra Winger to being in the movie, and Marlon got John [Johnny Depp] to come on board because they had worked together in Don Juan DeMarco.”
Eberhardt had his misgivings, but things appeared to have fallen into place for Navidi, who had taken a leap of faith with the project, having been captivated by writer Glenda Ganis’s story.
felt like a community affair.
Ballycotton was abuzz, with locals enthralled, and local businesses and contractors, seemingly about to benefit.
"The locals, all they wanted to do was watch,” said Eberhardt.
“I didn't mind but told them as soon as the assistant director yelled 'quiet', that meant quiet, and we were rolling, and they all agreed.
"They were just very, very curious.”
All seemed to be in place.
The only thing that had any cloud was cash — the fuel that drives everything. A film financing company called CineFin had backed the project to find the funds to make it a reality.
But it all went awry.
“When you're working with an independent production company, you want to make sure the money for production is secure,” said Dan Ostroff, Eberhardt’s agent and friend who at the time was running the Daniel Ostroff Agency.
The film was being sold on a territory-by-territory basis — nothing unusual there — as Ostroff points out, the two main contenders for Best Picture Oscar in 2025, winner , and , were financed in the same way.
But, with , it seems the financiers had gambled on money coming through.
An escrow account is an account where funds are held in trust whilst parties complete a transaction, and was commonplace in the industry.
Ostroff said: “At a certain point, I asked to see the paperwork and that the money was secure. They sent bank paperwork showing funds were in escrow.”
But the escrow company which was used took creative methods of showing funding was safe.
Unbeknown to Navidi, and all his cast and crew, the funding wasn’t there.
“When I shake hands with someone, to me that's the most important value in my career, even now. I had a pile of contracts for ," he said.
"If they want to fuck you, they'll fuck you, regardless.
"It's just who you're dealing with, and as a producer, it's very hard to be a victim of it.
"And I was a victim of this.
"The budget was €13m. I only had €4m that came in.
"A lot of movies collapse before you shoot — It's nothing unusual.
"But when you start, when you're in it, you're pregnant.
"It's just why it became such a big story, especially with the cast I had — even then.”
was being made on a wing and a prayer.
And when it unravelled, it unravelled quickly.
Two weeks into filming, Debra Winger’s agent said her escrow funding was missing.
Winger called Navidi and Eberhardt. There was no funding.
“I call it my Titanic, I hit the iceberg,” said Navidi, who had mortgaged his London home to keep production going. That would go under too.
“Nobody wanted to stop production in Ireland,” said Navidi.
"The whole crew were happy to go on, even if they were not paid for a couple of weeks. I went bankrupt.
"I'd lost, yeah, my home in London, which I didn't care as much as I the movie. That was my whole life."
Panicked efforts were made to keep the film going but, within days, the circus had left town, leaving unpaid contractors and broken dreams.
Navidi could say it was his nadir, but he views it differently.
The story was front page news in Hollywood.
The supplement carried a long read by Frank Rose, on its front page for two weeks running. It didn't go unnoticed.
Navidi faced cancer two years after . But he rebuilt his life and his career.
He remained in contact with Brando, who introduced him to Al Pacino.
Now, 30 years later, he is completing his fifth project with the acting legend.
“I'm a fatalist person," he says.
"The whole story of is my story, in a sense.
"It's about resurrection. It really is.
"The collapse of the picture in essence put me on the map. In America, especially in Hollywood, they know it's so difficult to put a picture together, especially that kind of a cast."
"Without , I wouldn't be working with Pacino.
"How many brilliant, talented producers are out there but they don't have a chance like I have?
"So, I have to say, I was lucky.
"Brando was untouchable. So is Al Pacino. I met Al through Marlon. So I went from one godfather to another."
Eberhardt and Ostroff are still in the film business. Eberhardt picked up an Emmy along the way, while his 1984 cult classic horror is about to be remade, with Eberhardt and Ostroff in executive production roles.
They also have a movie coming out next year, , which Ostroff produced and Eberhardt wrote, directed by Canadian Randall Okita.
Eberhardt spent the shoot 8,000km from his wife Christy and their two daughters.
All grown up now, one daughter Dana has followed her father to Hollywood, and is vice-president of animation at Marvel Studios.
Ballycotton itself has moved on since sprinkled a little stardust.
St Colman’s Church, which was due to be a key location for the film, is now Sea Church, having undergone a multimillion-euro restoration by local businessman Pearse Flynn in 2018 to make it into an uber-cool music venue and restaurant.
Instead of Fr Fennell, next Saturday, DJ Stevie G will be performing at the service for the Halloween fancy dress party on October 31, with a bus bringing revellers from Cork for the night.
As for Navidi, he directed Depp's second directorial feature in 2024.
He is currently in post-production on his latest film , a working of Shakespeare's , with Al Pacino in the lead role, and an all-star cast including Jessica Chastain.
The film is directed by writer and director Bernard Rose and is slated for release next year.
King Lear is like the original .
"The performances are beyond belief. I mean, of course Al, we have Jessica Chastain as Goneril. We have Rachel Brosnahan as Regan.
"Then we have Cordelia is going to be played by Ariana DeBose, who won an Oscar for .
"We have Peter Dinklage (best known from ), who plays the Fool, which is brilliant.
"We have Lakeith Stanfield playing Edmund, Ted Levine, Chris Messina, Stephen Dorf, Danny Houston... We have a lot of wonderful actors."
And as for the resurrected Divine Rapture?
"I was offered to make the film in Czech Republic. I was offered to make the film in Hungary.
"You could set the movie anywhere you want. I can even set it up and shoot it in Alabama, rewriting it.
"But no, I want to go back to where I started that.
"Al and I have become real close and of course he's always on my list on any pictures that I want to do.
"But it's all about availability.
"I'm blessed to have choices, including Ian McShane, who is a dear friend.
"It's all about timing. It's all about everyone's availability. Johnny is always interested. He had fond memories of making the film.
"I'm not going to give up on it.
"I decided in the last year or two that I want to direct it. This is mine."
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