HOLLYWOOD, HOMELESSNESS, AND ME
An interview with a Galway legend
In April 2015, Galway-based journalist Ciaran Tierney visited Mark Kennedy in his Renmore home to talk about his experience of homelessness in his native city.
Mark chronicled life on the streets in a feature-length documentary 23 years earlier and was homeless himself at the time.
Mark had an amazing life. A native of Bohermore in Galway, who left school at 13, he had earned a good living as a Hollywood writer in the 1960s.
And then, after the failure of his second marriage, he lost it all and ended up sleeping rough or living in hostels for five years.
The result was a remarkable one hour interview, condensed here to just over 14 minutes, in which Mark spoke openly about deprivation, dark nights of the soul, injustice, and how he put his life back on track for the sake of his children and grandchildren.
“The little kindnesses you get from people more than make up for sleeping in a doorway and shivering your nuts off and ending up in the hospital,” he says.
“Killing yourself with drink is not actually an adequate response to a hypocritical society.”
He recalls going back “on the drink” at 56 years of age and the abuse he and others used to receive when they slept rough in Galway.
“I had five winters on the streets of Galway. I knew that if I had another winter I was dead. There was no question about it, but I came to see that, in a way, I had to be in a place where I had nothing left to lose,” he says.
Mark recalls putting down his final bottle of Buckfast in 1992 and the slow process of putting his life back together and finding a home.
“I never made the mistake of isolating myself. I knew I had to get up and go out and walk and meet people. Be around people. It’s the kindness and goodness of people who, even if you have lost faith in yourself, they haven’t lost faith in you,” he says.
At the end of the video, we see Mark watching ‘Clear The Streets’ - a film about homelessness in Galway which he made with the late Niall Rivers in 1992. He recalls that most of the main characters in the film died within a couple of years of it being made.
Thanks to Mark’s family for giving us permission to put this short film on-line.
Reporter: Ciaran Tierney, Ciaran Tierney Digital Storyteller
Camera / Editor: William Geraghty, Galway Video News.
Mark Kennedy, RIP.
“Grá agus Solas”
6 ноя 2016
