The Automatik

“We’ll journey to Mars, and visit the stars, finding our Breakfast on Pluto.”
So many things in my life have come along at the precise moment at which I needed them most. Neil Jordan’s unforgettable film, Breakfast on Pluto, based on the Patrick McCabe novel, is one of those things.

In the fall of 2005, Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of Mississippi and the subsequent levee failures in Louisiana were weighing heavily on my mind, as they had devastated not only my hometown of New Orleans, but also my family who lived in the area. It sickened me to see the wreckage on TV and to know that nothing I could do would help. I had recently moved to Canada and although I was grateful that I was no longer living in New Orleans (because I would have lost all of my possessions), I felt powerless. I couldn’t go back to the U.S. because I couldn’t leave my new home in Canada, my husband, my dog, my recently-acquired permanent residency.

I had been reading about Breakfast on Pluto, starring Cillian Murphy, an impossibly beautiful, ethereal, and talented Irish actor whom I’d seen in Batman Begins that summer. As I found out more about the film, I became intrigued: a transvestite in 1970s Ireland who may or may not be involved with the IRA? I read the novel twice and was amazed at its visceral impact.

When the film was finally released, I went to see it right away. And after its 135 minute running time had ended, I knew I would never be the same. I saw the movie as many times as I could and each time I felt besotted, inspired, ecstatic. Music played a huge role in Kitten’s life and in mine, so the soundtrack to the film quickly became the soundtrack to my happiness. Kitten was an outsider, even in her own skin, and I related to that feeling of being ostracized and misunderstood. I realized that being an outsider could actually be a good thing: it meant I could see things about the world that no one else could, and that those points of view should be cherished, not banished.

Breakfast on Pluto, and particularly Murphy as Patrick “St. Kitten” Braden, had shown me that material things are not the most important things in the world. I now recognize that the most important possessions one can have are the ability to transport out of an unhappy world by focusing on the good things; the capacity for experiencing joy; and the gift of escaping from grief through hope for the future.