Lord of the Ratings
Adam Lacey talks to Film Censor John Kelleher about Ireland's new era of enlightenment.

I’m arrested by a sharp feeling of covetousness. The screening room I’m standing in is movie-watching perfection. When I arrived at the Harcourt Terrace offices (having waited patiently for 15 minutes on what turned out to be Earlsfort Terrace) to interview John Kelleher, Ireland’s Film Censor since 2003, the first thing he did after ushering me into the cosy old building, was ask if I’d like to see ‘the cinema’.

It’s not at all like the garish monstrosities one witnesses on MTV’s voyeuristic horror show, Cribs. This is a grand room, boasting walls laden with old movie posters, an impressive cinema screen, a small scattering of comfortable-looking cinema seats and a huge wooden desk with a luxurious office chair nudged up to it. This is where, I am informed, Mr Kelleher has perched for his many, many viewings.

It seems that the old scythe-wielding troglodyte censor, defending our endangered souls by hacking great lumps of rumpy pumpy out of every can of celluloid he can get his judgemental mitts on lest we fall into a tailspin of moral lunacy and wind up in the lake of fire, is gone. The monstrous ogre has been replaced by a more liberal, contemporary creature. This is something with which John wholeheartedly agrees. ‘Absolutely,’ he nods, ‘it’s changed completely. I mean, I think it’s moved away from the old image of the portcullis coming down, guard dogs at the ready. I did a paper at a conference in Sydney a while ago and the title was “From stop sign to signpost” and that’s, in a short metaphor, what I think we’re doing now. I mean, it’s a consumer agency now, whereas before it was “you can’t see this” and that applied across the board; it wasn’t just kids, you know? Films either got banned or released with cuts and those weren’t cuts for under 15s, those were cuts for over 50s and everyone else.’ Ah yes, the glory days of Monty Python’s Life of Brian and From Dusk Till Dawn being outlawed are truly over. But John points out that before he took the reins a few years ago things had moved on slightly.

‘I mean, in fairness it had changed. My immediate predecessor was a distinctly liberalising influence and to a lesser extent, a much lesser extent, the two before him: Frank Hall, who was my first boss when I joined RTÉ, doing Hall’s Pictorial Weekly and even before that, Newsbeat – and also Dermot Breen who had a background in the film industry, he was the director of the Cork International Film Festival, and the founder of it. The last four of the nine censors have had a background in the film or media industry, so you could say that the liberalisation began a bit with Dermot Breen. Dermot and Frank were still extremely serious when faced with anything dealing with the Church – the Catholic Church – and sexual morality was still the main bugbear there so that has changed a lot.'

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 120.