$25 Million Slum

In true Hollywood style, when filmmakers decided to hack a movie out of 'Angela's Ashes', Frank McCourt's best-selling memoir of his poverty-stricken boyhood, and failed to find a suitably foul and realistic Irish slum, they dug deep and knocked one up. Unable to find scum of the correct pedigree across the length and breadth of Ireland, the film coughed up an almighty $25 million to create the filth-ridden behemoth on vacant lot in Dublin, detailing everything down to the tiny family kitchen. McCourt took time out from his current project - a sequel to the film about his adult life in America - to visit the set for a few days, but found the accuracy of the building a little too close to home saying, "It's an abundance of emotions tumbling in. There's sadness and nostalgia and wonder and a feeling of removal," adding in classic Yank-style, "I wish I could have just one emotion, but I can't!"