And so, I endeavoured to contact Nick and ask him if he would be interested in talking to me about Burt Reynolds. He did and we got on famously between my endless line of questioning and Nick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s love of weaving a good tale, and I thought to myself, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153this man needs a book to get all these stories out!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And then after a few more interviews, having realised just how closely and importantly Nick and Burt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lives and careers were entwined, I asked Nick if he would write the foreword to the book, and he did, terrifically. I enjoyed Nick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s company so much and was enthralled with his history and work within the last fifty years of film and television that I asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nick, how come you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t written a book?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to which he replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been asked to but it never felt right.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And then I made suggestion: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How about we work together on a book of your career, your memoir?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wayne, if someone is going to do it, I would only want it to be you!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he enthused. Deal done. I approached a publisher and within a week we had a contract. For the next year-and-a-half we were co-authors, and in April 2020 we released Nick McLean Behind The Camera: The life and Works of a Hollywood Cinematographer<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nick and I overcame the challenge of geographical distancing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he in Malibu, me in Kildare \u00e2\u20ac\u201c by Skyping for hours on end. We talked and talked, and the book just came to life, and after one particularly great conference I thought that Nick would be an amazing presence on stage, telling these tales in person. And so, I decided to develop a live speaking tour of Ireland: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153An Evening with Nick McLean\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. It would be me and Nick onstage for two hours, showing some of his classic scenes and discussing the making of these films and his Hollywood history. Several venues and promoters expressed interest in the shows and within a couple of weeks we had a nationwide tour of Ireland booked. Multiple events were planned across Dublin, Kildare, Galway, and Cork. The tour took us from giving masterclasses in the iconic Windmill Lane Studios and the National Film School, to speaking at theatres and cinemas for screenings of The Goonies<\/em>, Spaceballs<\/em>, Short Circuit<\/em>, and Cobra<\/em>. We had nine shows booked across seven days all around the country, it was a packed schedule and we barely had time to stop and think about it; when we weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t travelling or at a venue getting set up, we were on giving interviews on national radio at the RTE and Newstalk studios, or at recording a program for Film Ireland. It was a whirlwind, and it was one of the best weeks of my life. We were joined by Nick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s son, Nicholas S. McLean, himself an accomplished cameraman who has worked on some classic films and television shows, including the likes of Die Hard<\/em>, Rain Man<\/em>, Tango & Cash<\/em>, Frasier<\/em>, and presently, Grey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Anatomy<\/em>. Also along for our Irish adventure was Nick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grandson, Wyatt, who wholly embraced the cold waters of our island with surfboard and sandals in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while the heady excitement of the live shows, the media tapings, and the publicity was indeed intoxicating, some of my favourite moments were the quiet ones in-between. Going out to a restaurant to have dinner and a couple of pints with the McLean boys; or watching Being There<\/em> in my house with the very man who shot the masterpiece! We finished the tour with a terrific event in Naas Library. There were a couple hundred names on the list for the show, such was the demand for a seat. It was an emotional night for me; it was the end of this intense journey with my friend and hero; it was taking place in my library with my colleagues in attendance, and probably the first time my parents seen me doing anything like this. They probably weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t used to seeing me talk so much. After the show Nick and I had one more final pint and then he was off back to Malibu and I was off back to reality. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have experienced a better way of researching and getting to know my subject, and the tour ended up being documented by Nick and his son as the afterword to our book, functioning as a tour diary of their time travelling the country roads of Ireland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I began work on Burt Reynolds on Screen<\/em>, I had no idea that it would lead directly to my third book. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if Nick McLean would even be interested in speaking to me, let alone end up writing my foreword. Fast-forward a year later and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve toured Ireland, met hundreds of fantastic film fans on the road, been filmed on stage, broadcast on the radio, and have published a book. It all comes back to my approach of rolling with it on instinct rather than calculation, and to working with subjects that you will have no problem sacrificing sleep for. I have learned from experiences of when I did make more purposive and less passionate attempts at books that they will fail in their infancy. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do objectivity; I must love my subject or it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have always maintained that the best part of writing is the people you meet along the way, and case in point is my meeting Nick McLean; it has resulted in me getting some of the best book reviews of my career, and \u00c2\u00a0I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come out of it having made friends and memories that will live long in my heart and in print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The latest installment of author Wayne Byrne’s ‘Behind the Books’ series, where he discusses his book ‘Nick McLean Behind the Camera: The Life and Works of a Hollywood Cinematographer’. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182174489,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[524],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182174489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1290,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions\/1290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/image-2.png?w=419\")
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