Bailey movie plan ‘grotesque’, say Sophie’s friends

A MEMBER of the Association for the Truth about the Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier has described Jim Sheridan’s plans to make a film ‘to clear Bailey’s name’ as grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, and unprecedented.

Schull resident Bill Hogan invoked Charles Haughey’s Gubu remark, after learning that Jim Sheridan has already selected the famed Irish actor Colm Meaney to take the role of the late Ian Bailey.

Bill Hogan said friends of the murdered French film producer remain steadfast that the position of the family – which holds the late Ian Bailey responsible for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier – is correct.

‘We are opposed to Jim Sheridan’s film. We think it is a false narrative,’ Bill Hogan told The Southern Star, after the Dublin-born filmmaker spoke to reporters and told them: ‘I got fed up with having to lie that I had to be balanced and make balanced documentaries.’

Sophie’s family withdrew their input from Jim Sheridan’s last documentary – Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie – on the basis that it was not, in their opinion, balanced.

‘My idea was that I did the wrongly-accused Irishman in England,’ Jim Sheridan said in reference to his 1993 film, In the Name of the Father in which Daniel Day-Lewis played Gerry Condon, ‘so now I am going to do the wrongly-accused Englishman in Ireland.’

The filmmaker told reporters he was astonished that no one from the English establishment stood up for Ian Bailey.  That, he said, was ‘a mind-blowing thing to me. Maybe it was because he was a difficult personality, you know. But it is still not right,’ he added.

In addition to securing Colm Meaney for the title role, the film will feature another leading Irish actor, Aidan Gillen, who was in Schull at the weekend for the Fastnet Film Festival.

It is understood that the new film will use a fictional jury to deliberate over the facts of the case that has haunted the people of West Cork, and Sophie’s family, for the last 27 years.

The film about the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, at the age of 39, in the laneway leading to her home at Toormore in Schull on December 23rd 1996 is expected to be filmed almost entirely in Wicklow and Kildare. However, some West Cork scenery and landmarks were filmed as ‘B-roll’ supplemental footage last week.

Previous documentaries and podcasts, led to a ghoulish tourist trend which saw tourists visit the location of her holiday home in Toormore, and the stone cross – the mark where she was bludgeoned to death with a brick.