David Walsh, whose pursuit of Lance Armstrong has been faithfully recreated in Stephen Frears’ new movie, ‘The Program’.
It’s got to be a tad surreal. Sitting in front of a giant movie screen, watching the most compelling, dramatic, at times unnerving and, ultimately, career-satisfying moments of one’s life recreated in celluloid.
On top of that, there’s Chris O’Dowd, Mr ‘Moone Boy’, filling your Sunday Times shoes for movie audiences the world over in ‘The Program’, the new release based on David Walsh’s book, ‘Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong’.
By the way, the Slieverue native’s magnum opus has sold 200,000-plus copies – not to be sniffed at – considering the man himself thought it might sell around a tenth of that total, as he told a Waterford Omniplex audience on Thursday last.
The source material that director Stephen Frears (‘Dangerous Liaisons’, ‘The Queen’, and the superb ‘High Fidelity’) had to work with is well-known to sports journalists and cycling fans alike.
It deals with how, over the course of 13 years, Walsh doggedly maintained his investigation of the Texan who defeated cancer but, in superhuman and, ultimately, unbelievable terms, conquered the Alps and the world’s greatest bike race seven times over.
It’s a story I know well, but not nearly as intimately as the man who stayed the course, held his nerve, trusted his sources (and they in turn him) and backed his own journalistic integrity.
A bad rugby player for Waterpark he may well have been (his words, not mine), but David’s abilities as a writer and doggedness as an investigator have won him a legion of admirers, of which I am unashamedly one.
“It was a fantastic turnout,” said David following last Thursday’s screening. “We were very kindly given the use of a second screen by the Omniplex such was the interest in seeing the movie, and this was, incidentally, the first time it was screened anywhere in Ireland, and I was very pleased about that.”
He added: “I think it’s a pretty decent film and I was hugely honoured to be involved in it. We always knew there was going to be a Lance Armstrong movie; we never knew it was going to be this particular movie. I think a great deal of us thought we’d see a movie in which Armstrong would be the hero and if I had any role in such a film, that I would be the villain.
“But to come back to Waterford, to my home city, and have this film screened here, is a source of great satisfaction and pride to me. I went to school here, I played soccer for Ferrybank and Bohemians, I went to Waterpark and I played rugby for them and it’s a place that’s always been hugely important to me over the course of my life. In fact, this very cinema was the first such picture house I ever brought a girl too – now the film wasn’t great but I do remember having a great time!”
‘Seven Deadly Sins’, which I cannot recommend more highly, was also very much a Waterford production, as David reminded the Omniplex audience on Thursday last.
“I wrote the book in Dunmore East, in my brother Brendan’s house, and while we were there, my sister-in-law, Brendan’s wife Mary, looked after me incredibly well and brought me meals on wheels for four weeks: that’s how quickly I had to get the book written.”
David had no less than three film offers to mull over “by the time we decided to go with Working Title, and it’s been an incredible ride”.
He continued: “I love the whole Armstrong story. I loved being involved in it. I always thought it would end badly for me and that I would be perceived as the bad guy, but as my brothers will tell you, I never minded being the bad guy!
“But things turned out very differently than I had suspected for so long, and it’s now being reproduced as a very fine movie, and one that I’m very proud to have had an association with.”
That ‘The Program’ is based on the factual-based work of a well-heeled, streetwise journalist rings loudly throughout this solid production.
One doesn’t sense too great a level of creative licence at work throughout the piece, and the script wisely opts not to portray Armstrong as a one-dimensional, 24/7 villain. “If Lance were here tonight, I think everyone in this room would talk to him,” said Walsh.
“Any time there was anything which portrayed Armstrong in compassionate terms, I must admit I liked that…the only real hands-on impact I had on the movie was a scene in which a woman approaches Armstrong at a book signing and says that he, Armstrong, was the reason she was there.
“That was initially taken out of the movie but I spoke to Stephen Frears, and it was the only time I intervened as such during the shoot and I told him I was really disappointed that that scene had been taken out, because it showed that Armstrong was having some misgivings about what he was doing – but they put that scene back in.
“I felt the movie needed to show Lance in a more balanced way, that he wasn’t a total bad guy. His bad qualities have not been sugar coated and in that sense I feel it’s a fair assessment of the person he is.”
Nor does the movie elevate David Walsh to saint-like status. O’Dowd’s performance reflects Walsh’s professionalism, his passion for the trade and his stoicism in the face of what were, at times, decidedly long odds in the face of a most powerful and well-connected antagonist.
David Walsh is one of the best in my trade. That he’s one of our own makes his success all the more satisfying.
Many thanks to Waterford Omniplex for the invite to last Thursday’s screening
