It’s Not Exactly the Story of His Life, but It’s Close

So what did Frank McCourt, the author of “Angela’s Ashes,” think about Joe Breen, Ciaran Owens and Michael Legge, who play him at various ages in Alan Parker’s film adaptation of his award-winning memoir.

McCourt recently discussed his feelings about his screen alter egos, the movie in general and memories of his poverty-stricken childhood in Limerick, Ireland.

Question: Was it an odd experience watching three actors play you at various ages?

McCourt: Yeah, it was [odd] to see three different people do me. As I said to them when I met them a couple of weeks ago in New York: I was very flattered by the casting because they are all much better-looking than I ever was.

Q: What were you like when you were the ages of the boys in the film?

McCourt: I don’t think I was as charming as any of those kids. I was an angry kid. But I had a sense of humor, too.

We would laugh so hard we would fall on the ground when I was a kid. My brothers and friends, we were always up to something. We had nothing else. There was no radio or television or anything like that. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. We created our own days. We made our own amusement. We didn’t talk about what we saw on TV last night; we talked about what we did last night.

Q: When you saw the movie, could you separate your real life from your reel life? Or were you flooded with memories?

McCourt: I am going to give you an Irish answer: yes and no. I could and I couldn’t. There were moments when I was watching the movie when I was in it, and there were moments I was sitting back watching how they took it from the book and put it on the film. There are no hard answers because I was in and out of it.

I couldn’t be objective because it was my life. I could say it wasn’t exactly like that. Of course, I didn’t expect it to be exactly like that. It is not the way the house was exactly. But I was also saying to myself, “You can’t expect it to be exactly like that.” At the end of it I said to myself, “I couldn’t have done any better.”

Q: Did you purposely have almost no contact with the three actors during the production?

McCourt: I met little Joe for a few minutes in the classroom [on the set]. As a matter of fact, they took a picture of me with him, but there wasn’t any conversation between Joe and me. I think he was in character. He wasn’t talking much. And then I met the middle kid, Ciaran, but I never met the older one, Michael before [doing publicity for the film in New York].

I wasn’t in Dublin [during most of the filming]. I was in New York. Also, I didn’t want to intrude.

Q: As a kid with no TV or radio, what did you do for your own amusement?

McCourt: Well, did you ever see bands of kids roaming the streets? We roamed the streets, and sometimes we would decide to go out and rob an orchard of apples and have adventures like that. Or we would go far out in the country and just chase cows around the fields and sheep and pigs until the farmers came out. The game was to be chased by farmers. We were city boys, and we loved being chased by farmers. We could always escape from them because they always wore heavy boots. We were gone and over the wall. That was our diversion.

We were always climbing walls. That was another thing. I never saw a wall I didn’t want to climb. Every wall was a challenge.

Q: There is that one harrowing scene in the movie where the only food you have for Christmas is a sheep’s head. Were most of your holidays as bleak as that?

McCourt: Yeah. I think somewhere along the line there was a goose and maybe mashed potatoes and peas. There was no such thing as a Christmas tree. There was no such thing as getting up in the morning and coming down and unwrapping your present.

It just never happened. I remember one time we went to Mass and this priest was preaching about St. Nicholas. The priest was saying if you pray hard enough to St. Nicholas, you get what you want. We all went home that night and prayed to St. Nicholas and thought we would get what we wanted. All I wanted was a bottle of red ink.

Q: Why red ink?

McCourt: I had a composition book, and I wanted to write it in red ink because I loved the color. But it wasn’t there [in the morning]. That is about as much as I expected, but I didn’t get it.

Q: Did the young actors have a hard time realizing these conditions were in Limerick not all that long ago?

McCourt: The boys acted it, but they didn’t think it was true. They couldn’t reach back like that. . . . Adults can’t understand it. They deny it. Especially in Ireland. Especially in Limerick. They deny these conditions ever existed. It is easier for people to understand wealth. Who is going to have a TV show called “The Lives of the Poor” and show what poverty is like? We have never had a series on poverty. So there is an idea for you. Go write it.