In the last couple of weeks, I got a very encouraging reaction to my work on William Desmond Taylor. The Irishman, who became a major film director and whose murder shook Hollywood, has been a recurring subject of my writing for several years now. The centenary of his death on February first prompted Newstalk FM to re-air, Who Killed Bill?, the PPI award-nominated docu-drama that I wrote and directed.
The channel gave the show a decent push as they broadcast it the two weekends bookending the centenary and posted it as a podcast here: https://www.newstalk.com/docudrama
It’s satisfying to have older work given a new lease of life but better still to have a new commission. So I was chuffed when RTE Culture reached out with a request to write an article on the Carlow man who came a cropper in California. I’ve written several times for the Irish national broadcaster, and their site has a substantial readership. For this piece, I visited Taylor’s resting place in Hollywood Forever cemetery and the site of his murder, the currently uninspiring location of a Ross – Dress for Less parking lot.
You can read it here:
There is yet another exciting Taylor-inspired project in the offing, the details of which I shall post here shortly but in the meantime you can find tons of great WDT info here:
Marc-Ivan O'Gorman 