Dundalk-born film director John Moore could be teaming up with a local author for a new project.
The Hollywood director, who has overseen projects including ‘Behind Enemy Lines’ and ‘The Omen’, intends to read the latest work of Dominic McKevitt from the Armagh Road, who writes under the pen name John Lennon Cohen.
Dominic has written a full movie screenplay for ‘Laurentic’, which he has penned to coincide with the 100-year anniversary of the ship being sank in 1917 during World War One.
Moore has given Dominic a commitment to read the script, much to his delight.
He told Talk of the Town: “This is very exciting to me as you may well understand as I cut my teeth in script writing having obtained a degree in Movie Production at our local DKIT.”
Dominic explained how the inspiration for writing the Laurentic screenplay came about.
He said: “Laurentic is an amazing story about another local man John Boyle, my mother’s brother, who went to sea at a very young age, worked as fireman on transatlantic liners for The White Star Co and was killed aged 22 years in 1917.
“Now what is intriguing about the entire episode is that my mother and her entire family went to their rest thinking that he was drown and lay in a watery grave. However when doing the family tree about 7 years ago I discovered that he has a land grave in Buncrana, Co Donegal.
“He was working on a ship The Haverford and she was torpedoed off the Donegal coast killing all in the engine room but the ship survived; thus his body and that of his comrades were taken ashore to be interred.
“It was a very emotional moment visiting this grave for the first time and this got my creative juices stirred. I had literally a blank canvass to create a life for my uncle John Boyle and I came up with the title Laurentic, which is another ship who met the same fate but this time succumbed and lies at the bottom of the Atlantic.
“I had a very emotional and poignant weekend in Buncrana for the 100 year anniversary of the attacks of both Laurentic and The Haverford ships at the mouth of Lough Swilly during WW1.
“The families of those lost in these tragedies were both honoured and privileged to place wreaths at the graves and also at the wreck site in Lough Swilly. The LE Samuel Becket under the command of Lieutenant Commander Ronan McLaughlin sailed to the site with the families to lay wreaths upon the waters of the icy Atlantic in a very solemn ceremony.
“I presented Captain McLaughlin with a copy of my screenplay Laurentic and he stated he was honoured to receive such a gift.”
It now remains to be seen whether the script comes to fruition with a particularly local theme to it.
