TV drama Looking after Jo Jo (1998).
The Irish-born writer kept a relatively low profile, but he had been in the news over the last week, speaking candidly about his condition and appealing for more people to register as organ donors and for a system of “presumed consent”, opting out of organ donation, rather than opting in.
Last Sunday he wrote in the Observer: “I have a tumour growing in my liver that will kill me unless I receive a liver transplant in the very near future. I am only one of thousands of patients on organ transplant lists in Britain,
living on our own, invisible, death row.”
After an appearance on Irish radio on Monday, it was reported that more than 7500 people had applied to become organ donors. But Deasy died in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary early on Thursday during a transplant operation.
Deasy won an Emmy two years ago for the final instalment of Prime Suspect and adapted the Gospel story for the high-profile BBC/HBO mini-series The Passion last year.
Born in Dublin in 1959,
he worked in child care in Ireland before developing his career as a writer, working on shorts and making his mark with the film The Courier (1988), a thriller starring Gabriel Byrne, Ian Bannen and Patrick Bergin, which he wrote and co-directed.
Deasy worked with Scots director Gillies MacKinnon on the TV film The Grass Arena (1991), the story of an Irish boxer who struggles with drink problems. It brought Deasy a Bafta nomination for best single TV drama. He wrote Captives (1994), with Tim Roth as a violent prisoner and Julia Ormond as the prison dentist with whom he begins an illicit relationship.
Deasy came to Glasgow to research the BBC drama Looking after Jo Jo, which starred Robert Carlyle as a petty criminal and drug dealer, and wound up staying.
After Jo Jo, Hollywood beckoned and he worked on a film adaptation of Prozac Nation (2001), Elizabeth Wurtzel’s account of her battle with depression and her dependence on drugs. The film starred Christina Ricci, the former child actress in a distinctly adult role. The cast also included Jessica Lange, Michelle Williams and Jason Biggs.
It was a prestigious drama with clear awards potential. Miramax, the Oscar specialists, bought it, test-screened it and re-edited it, and then basically stuck it on a shelf for years. It eventually turned up on TV, though it never came out in Britain.
Deasy said: “I think the reason Miramax has struggled is the fact that it doesn’t have a traditional dramatic structure, in terms of a clear, unqualified ending... Elizabeth is very clear that Prozac has helped her, but you’re left with a dilemma, because perhaps she no longer knows who she is.
“People who’ve experienced depression like that aspect of the film, but a lot of people don’t like it. Miramax certainly didn’t seem to ike it.”
He made a brief foray into theatre in 2002 when his short play Swimming was performed at Glasgow venue The Arches as part of the Festival of New Scottish Theatre.
Returning to television, Deasy scripted The Rats (2002); Real Men (2003); England Expects (2004), a BBC drama about racism starring Steven Mackintosh; and Prime Suspect: The Final Act, aka Prime Suspect 7, in which Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) faces up to alcoholism, impending retirement and the imminent death of her father.
Deasy attempted to put Christ’s final days into some sort of political context in The Passion, expanding the roles of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas and presenting a sympathetic portrait of Judas Iscariot.
“I’ve always had a problem with Judas in Passion stories in that he suddenly and inexplicably betrays Jesus,” said Deasy. “I was keen to develop a psychological reality to Judas’s portrayal.” Traditionalists accused the BBC of rewriting the Gospels, but the mini-series got generally favourable reviews.
His most recent production was Father and Son, an RTE/ITV four-part drama, that broadcast this summer in Ireland, with Dougray Scott as the criminal returning from Ireland to Manchester with the intention of steering his teenage son away from a life of crime.
Deasy had also been developing Gaza, a film in which Helen Mirren is to play a Jewish woman living in the Gaza Strip. “Will I get to see the finished film? Who knows?” he wrote last weekend.
He is survived by his wife Marie and three young children.
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