An Everlasting Piece

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An Everlasting Piece
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Barry Levinson
Produced by Patrick McCormick
Barry Levinson
Mark Johnson
Jerome O'Connor (producer)
Paula Weinstein
Written by Barry McEvoy
Starring Barry McEvoy
Brían F. O'Byrne
Anna Friel
Billy Connolly
Music by Hans Zimmer
Edited by Stu Linder
Distributed by DreamWorks Pictures (USA)
Columbia Pictures (International)
Release date(s)
  • December 25, 2000 (2000-12-25)
Running time 108 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $14,000,000
Box office $75,228

An Everlasting Piece is a 2000 American comedy film. The movie was directed by Barry Levinson. It was written by and starred Barry McEvoy. The plot involves two wig salesmen, one Catholic and one Protestant, who live in war-torn Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the mid-1980s. The supporting cast includes comedian Billy Connolly as an patient in a psychiatric hospital.

McEvoy based the screenplay on the adventures of his father as a toupée peddler to both sides in the midst of the conflict. The movie was shot on location in Belfast and in Dublin, Ireland.


Colm (Barry McEvoy) takes a job as a barber in a Belfast psychiatric hospital. He meets the staff and is warned against talking about poetry with George, his fellow barber. when he brings it up, George subjects him to his own poor work. The pair begin to chat anyway.

Later they meet an orderly escorting a new patient whom he refers to as "The Scalper." The man is described as the only seller of hair pieces in all of Northern Ireland until he had a breakdown and scalped some of his customers. Colm and George decide to meet with the Scalper to gain his list of customers; they intend to take over his former hairpiece monopoly. The Scalper agrees to give them the list.

Colm and George, calling themselves "The Piece People", embark on their plan to get rich; Colm's girlfriend Bronagh helps them out. She sets up their first appointment with a Mr Black. He eventually agrees to buy a hairpiece, although he denies being a customer of The Scalper. Bronagh had seen his picture in the newspaper (featured after he shot a Catholic) and, as he was bald, thought he'd be a good prospect. Having little success in sales, Colm and George discover they have competition from "Toupée or not Toupée", rivals who also acquired the client list. The supplier, Wigs Of Wimbledon, decides to hold a meeting with two companies to inform them that the one who sells the most in a period of time will win an exclusive rights for all of Northern Ireland.

The partners visit a farmer Mr Duggan, but lose the sale, learning that their competitors are underselling them. On a remote road, they are stopped by members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), demanding to know what they are up to. This confrontation results in the partners selling a wig to the lead IRA man, who fails to notice how it was chewed by dogs.

The competition is raging, but the IRA man accidentally leaves the unique wig at a bombing scene. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) trace it to The Piece People. After being interrogated, George gets angry with Colm and they have a falling out. Meanwhile the IRA man tracks down Colm and demands he sell the IRA all the wigs they want. He says that every bald Catholic in the country is a suspect because of the wig found at the bombing scene, and he fears his forces getting caught. Colm refuses as his business partner is a Protestant and thinks it would be unethical to protect the IRA. He knows their sales would likely help him gain the exclusive deal with Wigs of Wimbledon.

Colm goes to a poetry reading by George (where his work seems to have improved) and makes up with him. With Bronagh's help, they discover that many soldiers in the British Army in Northern Ireland are suffering from hair loss due to the stressful conditions of guerrilla warfare, and secure a government contract to supply wigs to all soldiers who want them. With this, they win the competition and gain the rights to Northern Ireland.


Lawsuit against Dreamworks[edit]

In 2001 Jerome O'Connor, producer of An Everlasting Piece (2000), filed a $10 million lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan against Steven Spielberg's studio DreamWorks, the film's distributor. He complained that, although his film had received favorable reviews, the studio had reduced distribution from a projected 800 to eight theaters in the United States, and then pulled it from distribution.[1]

O'Connor said his film was "sabotaged" because director Barry Levinson would not change scenes to please British officials in its Foreign Office, which objected to its "sympathetic portrayal" of the IRA; the film is set in the 1980s in Northern Ireland during its Troubles. O'Connor claimed that DreamWorks officials feared that his film might interfere with Steven Spielberg's attaining a British knighthood, which occurred in January 2001.[1]

In the suit, O'Connor said that Prime Minister Tony Blair had arranged for a loan of military equipment and 2,000 troops to Spielberg's production of Band of Brothers (TV miniseries), which aired in 2001 on HBO, and that Spielberg gave Blair's son Euan a job in the production.[1] A Dreamworks spokesman said the studio had not requested cuts.[1]


  1. ^ a b c d Rush, George and Molloy, Joanna with Oggunnaike, Lola and Anderson, Kasia (2001-02-09). "Gossip: No 'piece', no justice, says suit". Daily News (New York). Retrieved 2014-01-13. 

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