That evening, there was a gala screening of Sweety Barrett in one of the few remaining intimate cinemas in Dublin, the Screen on D'Olier Street. Sweety Barrett is Stephen Bradley's first feature film, which he has written and directed. Over 250 people, many of them stopping off to pick up the traditional boxes of popcorn at the foyer kiosk, attended the screening.
Irish Times Film Correspondent, Michael Dwyer, introduced the film. Halfway through his speech, the strains of Ravel's Bolero surged from some rogue amplifier, causing Michael to break off briefly and peer around the auditorium as if expecting to see Torvill and Dean skate onstage in some PR stunt.
Filmed in Balbriggan over a six-week period, Sweety Barrett is the powerfully surreal story of a man who is sacked from his swallowing act at a circus and of what happens when he hitches a ride to a seaside town with a poitin racketeer. "Nobody else could have played the part of Sweety except Brendan Gleeson," Stephen said, paying tribute to Gleeson's complex and moving performance, as the actors lined up at the end to receive long rounds of applause.
Among the actors in the film who were there (some of whom had nipped across to the pub to watch Manchester United play) were: Liam Cunningham, Frankie McCafferty, Cillian Murphy and Andrew Scott. The youngest member of the cast, little Dylan Murphy, who plays the child who's Sweety's closest friend, wasn't too keen to go up and accept his applause. He ducked down in his seat and decided to give all this hand-clapping stuff a miss.
Stephen paid special tribute to the late Agnes Bernelle, who played a vital cameo in the film, and welcomed the seven members of her family who were present to celebrate her memory.
Afterwards, the party decamped to Renards, where torches were needed to recognise who was who in the dark belly of the ground floor. Stephen Bradley and the film's producer, Ed Guiney, decamped temporarily to the stairway, where they sat down on the landing - such is the erratic glamour of the film industry - to relate how relieved they were that the film had finally been released.
"We're working on two new projects now," Stephen reported. "Oyster and Voyeur." Ed's mind was on absent friends. "I'm just sorry my partner, Dawn Bradfield, can't be here," Ed confessed. "She's in New York with Martin McDonagh's Lonesome West cast on Broadway."
The six-million punt question of the night (enough to buy a semi-detached in Dalkey) was: what was in the pint glasses that Brendan Gleeson consumed in the film, a substance that looked like very convincing pints of raw eggs and used cooking oil? "Well, eggs is eggs," Gleeson said, with a wry grin. "Nothing else really looks like raw eggs except eggs. So we did that bit in one take."
And the cooking oil, which had the audience groaning in sympathy? "Cooking oil would have tasted better. It was some concoction of fruit juices and bits of old biscuit."
Liam Cunningham, who plays the part of a violent criminal in the film, will be attending another premiere next month, Love Divided, in which he also has a starring role. "It's great having back-to-back parties where someone else picks up the tab," he said, "and then it's all over and I go back to being the man who puts out the black bags for the binmen."
Also among those who came along for the night were Deirdre O'Kane, who has been co-casting the film version of Conor McPherson's This Lime Tree Bower, which will be called Salt Water; actor Brian Cox; film censor Sheamus Smith; and deputy censor Audrey Conlon.