Mick (screenplay)

Mick was a screenplay written by author, political activist, historian and producer Eoghan Harris in the early 1990s. It was intended to tell the story of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins. Harris verbally clashed with Neil Jordan, who was planning to produce his own film on the Irish leader, over the emphasis each placed on aspects of Collins's life. One area where they diverged was over longstanding rumours that Collins had been bisexual. Whereas Harris's script planned to state the rumour as fact, Jordan attributed Collins's constant physical touching of the men around him as macho heterosexual horseplay. Harris accused Jordan of sanitising Collins's sexual orientation so as not to offend Catholic Irish America, which had already been scandalised by claims that Padraig Pearse was gay.

Ultimately it was Jordan's film, using Jordan's script and Jordan's version of Collins's life, that was made, as Michael Collins, using Liam Neeson as Collins and, in what was subsequently criticised as a casting mistake, Julia Roberts as Collins's real life fianceé, Kitty Kiernan. Harris openly criticised the film, its contents, its casting and its divergences from the truth (which Jordan admitted, but said they were necessary for narrative purposes) in reviews and on television chat shows like the Late Late Show.

Mick as of 2005^[update] remains unmade.