When Pigs Fly (1993)

Director: Sara Driver
Writers: Ray Dobbins (screenplay), Ray Dobbins (story)
Stars: Alfred Molina, Marianne Faithfull, Rachael Bella

When Pigs Fly is a film about a pair of ghosts, a jazz musician, a go-go dancer and a guy who gets what s coming to him. Set in a grim industrial town in a fading Irish American community, the film is in the tradition of Topper and the Canterville Ghost.

Two Ghosts, Lilly (Marianne Faithfull) and Ruthie (Rachel Bella), have been imprisoned for many years in rickety shed behind a seedy bar, the Rose of Erin. They are supernaturally connected to an old rocking chair stored there in which both had met their untimely deaths. Lilly was the wife of Frank (Seymour Cassel), the foul-tempered owner of the Rose of Erin. Ruthie is the ghost of a little girl from long ago.

Sheila (Maggie O Neill), a go-go dancer in the Rose of Erin, acquires the rocking chair. She takes it home and leaves it a present for her landlord, Marty (Alfred Molina), a jazz musician in his early forties who lives with his dog, Dolphy, downstairs from her. Marty keeps to himself, he is out of place and out of time in the small community. The only contact he has with people are the few piano students he teaches to earn a living and a bewildered grey haired lady, Mrs. Cleary, from next door. Needless to say, he is perpetually out to lunch and hung-over until Lilly and Ruthie show up with the rocker and raise hell in his basement.

Marty and Sheila befriend the ghosts and ultimately, they become instruments of revenge for Lilly in the unfolding plot to get back at her jealous murdering husband, Frank. In the end Lilly gets her revenge. She and Ruthie are happily reunited with Lilly s only daughter. Marty wakes up to the world and to Sheila.


Taken from the boxset Driver X 4: The Lost and Found Films of Sara Driver.

Extras:
- "Stummer", a vivid document of Joe Strummer composing and recording the musical soundtrack of "When Pigs Fly" in a studio in Rockfield, Wales with Sara Drive and Jim Jarmusch in attendance. Shot by Jim Jarmusch.
- Interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum and Sarah Driver, discussing "When Pigs Fly"