Editor's Note

By Jim O'Quinn

When I interviewed John Patrick Shanley in 1988 for London's Tatler magazine, on the occasion of his Oscar nomination for the screenplay of Moonstruck, he had just blown $700 of what he called "my astronomical fee" for that Hollywood writing job on a slick black leather jacket that he wore with a laid-back, James Dean air—and that, if I'm not mistaken, he's still wearing 16 years later in the new photo accompanying Robert Coe's cover story. Shanley's hair was darker, and he hadn't yet traded his gold-rimmed glasses for contacts, but the "explosive, raucous laugh and the classic Irish twinkle in his eye" that Coe describes were as evident then as now.

Shanley and I talked a lot about his eccentric, streetwise script for the film Five Corners (made before Moonstruck but released later in Britain), a quintessential Shanley tale set in the writer's native East Bronx in 1964, featuring indelible performances by Jodie Foster and John Turturro as well as such embellishments as a high-school algebra teacher murdered with a bow and arrow and penguins let loose in the neighborhood fountain. (If you've never seen Five Corners, this is the moment to contact your local video store.) Shanley's penguin story, dating from his teens and illustrating the dark tensions that simmer beneath the surface of all his writing, bears repeating here:

"Guys were always stealing penguins from the Bronx zoo. One night I witnessed it. The fountain was all lit up, and as I passed by there were all these penguins in it, splashing around. It was the most magical moment. The guys who'd brought them there were having a beer bust. They got drunker and drunker, and eventually got sticks and beat the penguins to death.

"I was able eventually to enjoy the good things about that time, and also to experience the violence and the horror—back-to-back but separate, so that one doesn't poison the other."

As Coe notes, Shanley would go on to write another half-dozen screenplays, and continues to vascillate between stage and screen. But he had an answer ready when I asked if writing movies might one day cure him of the stage. "Abandon the theatre?" he said, making a wry face. "No, it takes a lot to fill up your day." —Jim O'Quinn

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