When facts threaten to outgun Hollywood fiction

I suppose if were writing up the Golden Globes in Hollywood, I’d headline the evening “a disappointing night for The King’s Speech”. Colin Firth’s Best Actor award is well merited but in my book, Geoffrey Rush’s role as the speech therapist that coaxed and coached King George VI through his stammer to deliver war time speeches deserves Best Supporting Actor.

But I can already see the next tranche of films queuing up to be made. Ace of Spades – an Irish epic starring the fifty two great Irishmen depicted by the Irish Daily Star in their Iraq-War-style set of playing cards as Ireland’s “Most Wanted” for bankrupting the country.The centrepiece of the film would be the duel between the Prime Minister Brian Cowen and Sean Fitzpatrick, ex-Chairman of the Anglo-Irish Bank, to assume the Saddam Hussein role as Ace of Spades. Mr Cowen, amazingly, has every chance of surviving tomorrow’s no confidence vote in his own party.

The other film I can foresee dominating the screens next time round is Assange of Arabia, in which an eccentric web-camel riding confidante of leakers, brings down a succession of Arab potentates with a cascade of leaked observations from former US ambassadors in the region. My crystal ball offers other alternatives – Mubarak – my role in his downfall or The Abdulla Syndrome – in which both Kings Abdulla, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, lose their thrones.

Tunisia certainly has gripped the imagination. The departure of President Ben Ali (how many of us in the past 23 years could have even named him?) reveals how much is secretly known by those in power elsewhere about such thugs. There hasn’t been a revolution in the Arab world since 1917. Now suddenly Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and many more are on the slate. No wonder hacks and film directors alike are now scouring WikiLeaks to see what we each may have missed about these splendid leaders.

A last minute bid for celuloid celebration – The Return of the Baby Doc. This Voodoo drama features today’s most improbable development thus far. The return of the reviled Haitian dictator Baby Doc Duvalier to help “save his people”. The bloody content would necessitate a certificate X.

These are times in which Hollywood fiction is in danger of being outgunned by the mere facts amongst which we are currently living.