They were mad and they were glorious and they were other worldly. The concept of the Wall of Death seems only to have ever existed within some past analogue era when personal thrill-seeking was small scale, catering for audiences of mere dozens, but no less adrenaline-fuelled for that. And always located somewhere in the margins.
Within a high-walled wooden bowl a biker would ride full throttle in horizontal alignment to the floor some 6 metres below. Only centrifugal force would enable continual (and deafening) circular motion. Deceleration or misjudgment would almost certainly plunge a rider towards his or her death.
Glasgow-based artist Stephen Skrynka had been obsessed with the Wall of Death since a childhood lived in funfairs and carnivals. For him, the contraption represented both deep romance and enormous danger.
In 2010 he was able to channel his inner Evil Knievel while working in a show staged by the National Theatre of Scotland. Skrynka trained and performed with world-renowned Wall of Death rider Ken Fox and his troupe of riders. But for Skrynka, the exercise ended in failure and public humiliation. He sustained injuries that were both physical and emotional…and psychological. But the desire to return to the Wall of Death never went away.
Some years later he discovered the story of two Irish farmers (Connie Kiernan and Michael Donohoe) who created a Wall of Death on their farm in County Longford in 1979. (Their audacious endeavour was recreated in the Irish cult film Meet The Peach.) Skrynka persuades Connie and Michael to revisit their dream, at first successfully as the enormous construction begins to take shape. But while the farmers just want to indulge their passion for thrills and spills, Skrynka’s vision for the project is altogether more artistic. He wants the Wall of Death also to be a space for display and performance. The trio part in acrimony. The Irish pair are left out of pocket, and Skrynka is accused by Michael of being a ‘con’ artist.
But all the time, an inner obsession gnaws away at Skrynka.
For most people, the pandemic was a time of pain, anxiety and uncertainty, and the word ‘salvation’ was far from applicable. Not so for the artist, who had as much time as was needed to resurrect his plan. Not only that, but he was offered space in Glasgow’s empty Clydebank shipyards to make manifest his vision. What’s more, he was able to engage the services of a troupe of furloughed workers, whose salaries may have been covered by employers (and the government) but whose minds were 100% concentrated on what was to eventually become The Revelator, a Wall of Death that would also serve as art gallery, exhibition space and cinema.
But for Skrynka, there was still unfinished business. So wearing the colours of the Ukrainian flag, the artist (whose father was Ukrainian) gets back on his motorbike to try once more to the conquer his demons and scale the sheer and vertiginous Wall of Death…
As entertaining as Skrynka comes across on screen, he is also driven and forthright and could be accused by some of being highly egotistical. What was it like for feature debutant Maurice O’Brien and producer Grant Keir to work with him on their film?
“A very interesting question. I mean, it’s an ongoing relationship, I would say. I think, overall, I was really inspired by working with Stephen,” O’Brien responds. “I really enjoyed it…When it comes to filmmaking, there’s a lot of obsession and devotion and sacrifice involved. But when you compare it to what he has had to do to get this project over the line, it puts it into perspective.”
O’Brien fully admits that had it been up to Skrynka, the major emphasis of the film is likely to have been the construction of The Revelator. “Which is hugely exciting and massively impressive,” the director acknowledges, “but for us that was always the third act, and without seeing the depth of pain and sacrifice and effort that he went to get to that point, you couldn’t really fully enjoy the redemption, the fact that he had finally managed to fulfill his dream, to fulfill his vision.”
Producer Keir, who worked alongside lead producer John Kelleher on the film, acknowledges that Skrynka could be both a “difficult” and “unique” character. “But, you know, the one thing I would definitely say is that at the end of the day, he did not coerce or pressure us into doing anything we didn’t want to do,” he stresses. “He expressed his opinion. ‘I don’t like this, I don’t want that. Don’t show this.’ But we said, ‘we have to tell this story.’ And in the end he said OK. In his mind it’s like, ‘there’s my Revelator, that’s what I’ve done, there’s my artwork over here, and there’s your film. And the two are distinctly different things.’”
Keir further points out how the project was one of the easiest he has worked on in terms of the financial package, gaining support from Creative Scotland, Screen Island, BBC Scotland and Irish broadcaster RTE.
“And then that was where the good luck ran out,” he laughs. “Everything seemed to go wrong, including a two-year pandemic which…actually was part of the salvation of the story. But it became very difficult. We had some of the key participants in Ireland drop out of the story. They didn’t want to be in the film anymore. There was all sorts of backroom manoeuvering and discussions going on around that to make sure that that was still okay… And we had to go through a whole process of validation, inside the BBC for example, to make sure that we weren’t coercing people into being in a film they didn’t want to be in.”
And of course there was the matter of insurance as Skrynka took to the Wall of Death. “It’s not just the person on the bike. Because the danger is that if the bike comes off the wall, the camera crew are inside, everybody’s in danger. So everyone has to be individually insured for that particular risk. But, you know, it’s like anything in life, if you pay enough money for it, someone will pop up and say, yeah, I’ll take that [deal].”
The film will be broadcast on BBC Scotland and RTE in May, Keir confirms. “So that means there’s a whole other audience that the film will find down the line…And it is being sold by Journeyman Pictures. So that means it’ll have a whole digital distribution, which is their specialty. It’ll find its way to all the platforms, such as Amazon and Apple.”
Skrynka speaks with an English accent, not something that Glaswegians always find so endearing. How is the local populace likely to take to him? As a brash Sassenach (a derogatory term for folk south of the border)? Or with sympathy as the son of a Ukrainian, and someone who has raised considerable funds for Ukraine in The Revelator.
“I think the Glasgow audience would see him as a fellow Glaswegian,” O’Brien offers an alternative assessment. “The Glasgow School of Art has been drawing characters like that to Glasgow for decades. I lived in Glasgow for nearly 10 years, and it’s a more cosmopolitan city than you might expect, [and] the School of Art is at the center of that. And Stephen is well known in those circles. He’s kind of like the cult artist, I would say. He’s never broken into the mainstream, but he would be well known amongst that kind of arty circle… And you can still make a living as an artist in Glasgow, and have quite a nice life there.”
Had Skrynka been successful in his first attempt to ride the Wall of Death in 2010, would he have continued on the mission that ended with the construction of The Revelator? In answering the question director O’Brien stresses the benefits of not getting stuff right first time. “He’s always been very interested in failure. He thinks that failure can reveal more than success. In fact, he’s always been a little bit wary of success. Because it’s like success can bring complacency, as he sees it, and a sense of comfort. As an artist, he’s always operating on that line of discomfort. It’s almost like if it feels too easy, you’re doing it wrong.”
“But it’s a very good question,” O’Brien reconsiders. “He might have possibly just put the whole thing to bed.”
