Turner song features in US box office hit
SINGER RUBS SHOULDERS WITH MOVIE STARS
Movie stars Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell in a scene from US box office number one hit, 'The Other Guys', which features a song from Wexford's Pierce Turner (bottom, left).
IT'S NOT every day that a surprise phone-call leads to a sing song with a Hollywood superstar. But, not every day is normal for Wexford songster, Pierce Turner who not only ended up sharing jokes with Will Ferrell, but also ended up in the comic actors latest blockbuster 'The Other Guys'.
'The Other Guys' is the summer smash hit blockbuster, currently Number 1 in the US box office, and features Mark Whalberg, Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton in the cast.
Pierce was just about to return to Ireland for his Christmas tour last November when he got a call in New York asking if he could 'read music and sing in an Irish accent'.
Unphased, although suspicious that the request might be for 'a bit of leprechaunish rubbish', he answered in the affirmative.
Suddenly he was booked for a full day shoot, and a day of recording for the Will Ferrell movie.
'Three days later I was in a very expensive recording studio uptown with five other singers of very varied backgrounds.... They were all studying the music and lyrics of a song called 'Ugly Sunday' which was an hilarious send up of the cliché Irish tragedy song about British occupation and cruel treatment,' he said. It was at this point that Will Ferrell showed up in a 'tan coloured ski jacket' . Being the only Irish person in the room, Pierce was asked by Ferrell to sing the song like it would be sung at an Irish session.
During rehearsal, Ferrell spoke of his love for Ireland and said the last time he was in a pub in Longford, where his ancestors come from, he wasn't allowed buy a drink in a pub all night long. ' I suggested jokingly that the next day in Longford they probably said, 'That cheap fecker, didn't buy one drink all night',' laughed Pierce.
Two days after the recording session, Pierce found himself in McManus's, the Chelsea bar on the corner of 19th Street and 7th Avenue.
The singers were arranged around a couple of wooden tables littered with pints of Guinness. Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell (both playing Irish American cops) sat at the bar having a conversation about a Ponzi scheme that some accountant was attempting in New Jersey.
Malachy McCourt, brother of Frank McCourt, was supposedly guiding the sing song, which Will Ferrell joins.'It was quite hard to keep a straight face, while Will Ferrell sang the ridiculous lyrics with his back to Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg was trying to distract them by silently doing his Marky Mark rap act up on a bar stool behind Ferrell's head, gyrating his hips and grabbing his crotch,' laughed Pierce.
On August 19 the movie 'The Other Guys' was released in the US, and is already a number one box office smash hit.
'One never knows what can come your way when the phone rings in Manhattan,' said Pierce.
