The parents in Sheridan’s “In America,” Johnny and Sarah Sullivan, have come to New York to pursue Johnny’s dream of treading the boards on Broadway. In real life, Jim Sheridan, already well known in Dublin as the founder of the Project Arts Centre, came here to get involved in theater and film, studying screenwriting at NYU and distinguishing himself at the IAC, where he won an Obie.
Sheridan enjoyed better luck in New York than his screen counterpart Johnny, developing the early drafts of the two screenplays that would bring him world renown by the end of the decade: “Into The West” and “My Left Foot.” The screen family Sullivans leave behind them in Ireland a tragedy that still haunts their daily lives — the death of their youngest child from a brain tumor. This loss is pivotal to the family’s struggle to adapt to their new homeland and their difficulties in dealing with it push them to the brink of disintegration.
Sheridan and his wife never had to go though such an ordeal, but the director reached back into his youth for this strand of the story and conflated with his own New York experience a family bereavement of a generation earlier. Jim’s little brother Frankie died of a brain tumor at the age of 11, and the director felt that his parents had never come to terms with their loss. By writing it into his own story, the director strives to resolve a family trauma that had been silently endured for decades.
Michael Gray
mgray@irishecho.com