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E-mailThe King of Sex
Michael Patrick King is the Irish American writer and director of Sex and the City: The Movie, the sure to be blockbuster that finally arrives in theaters on Friday. He talks to CAHIR O'DOHERTY about his Irish background, bringing the iconic series to the big screen, and the enduring importance of love and friendship.
MICHAEL Patrick King didn't start at the top. In fact, arriving in New York City at the tender age of 20, he started somewhere very close to the bottom - working as a luggage attendant at Penn Station. After months spent hauling other people's suitcases he spent years working, he says, "in every restaurant in Manhattan" as a waiter.
Flash forward to 2008. King, 51, is the writer and director of Sex and the City: The Movie, which is sure to be one of the biggest films of the year. From a penniless busboy to a celebrated multimillionaire, it turns out his own fairytale ending could give Carrie Bradshaw a run for her money.
"I had no connections to show business or even to the city," King told the Irish Voice during an interview last week. "I didn't even know anyone. And I went from unloading luggage at the Port Authority to being a waiter in every restaurant in New York for years. I cleaned houses. Yet in my heart I was very connected to writing and doing what I was doing."
Growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania the only son in a family of three sisters - Eileen, Mary Ellen and Patty - King comes from a classic working class Irish American family. His mother Eleanor ran a donut shop and his father Michael was a custodian at the post office who also drove a beer truck. It was about as far from the New York world of high fashion and glamour as you could get.
"One of the first questions people always ask me is how does a man write for women, and I say that I grew up surrounded by strong women. My first awareness of women were as my friends and my equals who were smart and complicated and funny as well," he says.
As a boy Michael Patrick ("I love my name. I'm very proud of the fact that I have two saints watching out for me") went through all the typical Irish American rites of passage. He was an alter boy, he went to Catholic school, and his worldview was in part shaped by the rituals and traditions of his Irish American background. So it's no surprise to learn his more conservative mother was shocked by some of the antics he wrote for the girls of Sex and the City during the show's phenomenally successful six year run on HBO.
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