The Irish Word Connection

Friends Find Film World Fascinating
By Martin Hintz

When several Irish get together on a collaborative artistic project, you just know it has to be good. Witness The Straight Story, a poignant 1999 movie about an Iowa farmer who travels to Wisconsin on his lawn tractor to visit a dying brother. That critically acclaimed film was directed by David Lynch and written by Mary Sweeney and John Roach, two long-time friends who grew up together in Madison, Wis.

Lynch and Sweeney have worked together since she first came to California in 1986, when she edited his movie,Blue Velvet. Sweeney has also just completed editing and producing another Lynch project, Mulholland Drive, which will be released this year.

Roach owns John Roach Projects in Madison, Wis., which produces corporate films and television commercials.The Straight Story was his first collaboration with Sweeney but more may be more in the works.
"Mary and I have known each other from grade school on through her work today in Hollywood," Roach indicated. "One day, she faxed me an article about Straight and wrote a note on it asking what I thought about the story idea," he said. "We had talked about working together about five years ago and this was the first opportunity we had to do something together on a really great project," he indicated.

"There certainly wasn't any arm twisting to get John to agree," Sweeney responded. But it took her about another three and a half years to get the project really going, finally securing the movie rights in 1998.

"The story of Alvin's trip was already optioned to another producer so after that expired, I negotiated with Alvin's kids after his death to get my own option to the story," she indicated. 

In a week, the two friends wrote what Sweeney laughed was a "very bad first draft," spending long hours together in her California office. They then had a regular writing routine via long distance. "We split assignments by each working on scenes. Since John was in the Midwest and a morning person, I'd have his material when I came to the office and he'd have mine when he went to work," Sweeney explained.

After two months of hard writing, the script was ready for review by Lynch. He thought it was great and wanted to work on the film, according to Roach.

But it was a long route from Madison to Hollywood before the success of The Straight Story. As youngsters, Sweeney and Roach moved around the very tight-knit Catholic -- mostly Irish -- community focused around Blessed Sacrament Grade School and Edgewood High School. Their families were close friends, as well. 

Sweeney was graduated with a history degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976 and went to New York after school. "It was the call of the city lights, you know," she recalled, describing how she became an editorial assistant at Cambridge University Press. In 1978, Sweeney ventured to Paris where she studied film at the Sorbonne and film theory at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. She returned Stateside in 1979 to enroll at New York University where she received a masters degree in cinema studies. 

Sweeney also lived for a time in Washington, D.C., where her ex-husband was a clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. While there, she studied fine arts and painting. And from 1983 to 1986, Sweeney lived in Berkeley where she started editing with director Lynch. She moved to Los Angeles in 1989.

"I'm Number 6 out of seven in our family and was close enough to the bottom to be spoiled," she said. Her mother, Ruth, was a homemaker and her father, Vince, founded a wholesale plumbing and heating company in Madison. "We have a large Irish family, with 40 of us together this past Christmas. In a crowd like that, everyone learns to speak up," she added. 
"I love words. I love how they sound. I'm always looking up words to know what they mean and how to pronounce them. I think there is something to that Irish heritage that keeps you in tune with storytelling,." Sweeney said.
Roach was graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a history and a education degree in 1977 and immediately emigrated to Chicago where he worked in radio and television promotions for Great America theme park. "I was liaison there with ABC when it shot a television special so I kept in touch with the people I had met on that job," Roach said.
"Through them, I landed a spot at the ABC affiliate in Chicago," he added. Roach then wrote, directed and produced entertainment and documentary pieces, winning seven Emmys. One of his most memorable pieces in the Windy City was his "Sports Writers on TV," a round-table discussion by four curmudgeon journalists giving their insights on sports. That program ran from 1984 to 1998. 

He and his wife, Diane, decided to return to live in Madison with their three youngsters. Daughter Kate is now 17, Maggie is 14 and J.T (Johnny) is 13. In the Wisconsin capital, Roach established his own production firm where his youngest brother Jim also works. In addition, Roach produces a regular column for Madison Magazine, with the freedom to tackle any subject he wants.

"I am my mother's son, the oldest of six kids in an Irish family. My mom, Mary Heller, grew up in Chicago's Back of the Yards and went to Visitation parish. She was orphaned when she was 11 and came to Madison to live with the Dominican nuns at Edgewood. My dad and mom were king and queen of their Edgewood High School prom. She used to iron with one hand and read a book with the other. Mom honored writing, the word and authors," he recalled. "I guess I'm my mother's son.

Roach's dad, John James Roach, played collegiate baseball at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and pro ball in the minor leagues. From 1951 to 1952, he was in the Boston Braves farm club system with the Appleton Foxes. After he retired from baseball in 1953, he landed a job sweeping sweeping floors at Badger Sporting Goods. 

By the early 1980s, however, he owned the company and had built it into the state's largest athletic supply wholesaler. Roach's grandfather, John Wiley Roach, was a halfback for the University of Notre Dame between 1923 and 1925. While there, he was on the team with the famed Four Horsemen of Notre Dame and eventually played pro ball for the old Chicago Cardinals football team.

Seven of Roach's eight great-great grandparents came from Ireland. "One German slipped in there somehow. But we're still filthy with Irish in the family," he laughed. The entire Roach clan -- which includes Roach's five brothers and sisters and their offspring -- plan on visiting Ireland this spring to celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary of Mary and John Sr.