Artists Throw a Party for Oscar Wilde's 150th
 Leilani Gallardo - USA TODAY
| | Wilde features a score of artists, from Geoffrey Rush and Liam Neeson to U2's Bono. |
Oscar Wilde's literary legacy is so enduring that, more than a century after his death, artists from all over the world breathed life into his words in celebration of his 150th birthday.
Now, in a two-hour documentary available on DVD this summer, Happy Birthday, Oscar Wilde (Kultur, $19.99) delivers lines written by the Irish poet and playwright in the late 1800s and spoken by an all-star cast, including Bono, Annie Lennox, Frank McCourt, Geoffrey Rush, Fionnula Flanagan and Liam Neeson.
The documentary is the realized dream of Irish independent filmmaker Bill Hughes, who has the same birthday (Oct. 16) as Wilde. The project began last year when U2's Bono agreed to participate and Amnesty International became its beneficiary, part of its Art for Amnesty program.
Hughes then scoured London, New York and Los Angeles and received an overwhelming response from the celebrities he asked to take part. "Martin Sheen got so excited and asked if he could bring along some of the cast of West Wing," he says, including Lily Tomlin and Richard Schiff.
Among Wilde's best-known work: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), a play about a divorced woman driven to self-sacrifice by maternal love; The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), a play about the courtships of two young English men; and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), about a handsome young man who sells his soul to the devil.
Although married with two children, Wilde came under scrutiny because of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. He was put on trial for homosexuality, which was illegal in England then, and was sent to prison. After his release in 1897, he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He died in November 1900, at age 46, of cerebral meningitis.
For the film, Wilde scholars Frank McGuinness and Noreen Doody pored through the author's original text and lifted 150 lines for the celebrities to speak. A shorter version of Happy Birthday, Oscar Wilde was shown in Britain and Ireland this year. Hughes says PBS will run it in time for Wilde's 151st birthday. |
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Vallarta Living | Art Talk | August 2005 
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