Movie 13: Adam and Paul

Adam and Paul is a 2004 Irish film which follows a day in the life of two Dublin drug addicts, Adam and Paul, as they wander around Dublin trying to score heroin. Adam is the taller and slightly smarter of the two while Paul is his sidekick.

St. Stephen's green Park

In this scene, after just coming from Ballymun Flats, Adam and Paul rung into their old gang who are drinking cans and make them feel unwelcome as they “have a little picnic for the kiddies”.

Located in the city centre of Dublin, St Stephen’s Green was created in 1664 but the current landscape of the park was designed by William Sheppard and opened Tuesday 27 July 1880.

During the Easter Rising of 1916, a group of insurgents made up mainly of members of the Irish Citizen Army, under the command of Commandant Michael Mallin and his second-in-command Constance Markievicz, established a position in St Stephen's Green. They numbered between 200 and 250. They confiscated motor vehicles to establish road blocks on the streets that surround the park, and dug defensive positions in the park itself. This approach differed from that of taking up positions in buildings, adopted elsewhere in the city. It proved to have been unwise when elements of the British Army took up positions in the Shelbourne Hotel, at the northeastern corner of St Stephen's Green, overlooking the park, from which they could shoot down into the entrenchments. Finding themselves in a weak position, the Volunteers withdrew to the Royal College of Surgeons on the west side of the Green. During the Rising, fire was temporarily halted to allow the park's groundsman to feed the local ducks.

Smithfield

After their encounter in Stephen’s Green, the pair find themselves in Smithfield, where Paul botches an attempt to rob some food out of a local Spar. Also filmed here is the scene where Adam attempts to rob a woman’s purse in a cafe, which only results in them getting kicked out.

Smithfield is probably most famous for it’s square, formerly a large open market. It also has an interesting film association having been used in 1964 as a stand-in for Checkpoint Charlie in The Spy who Came in from the Cold, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Smithfield was laid out in the mid 17th century as a marketplace, and until its renovation in the early 21st Century, the square was lined with inner city 'farm yards' housing livestock. The market is now a public square, officially called Smithfield Plaza, but known locally as Smithfield Square.