General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

An Everlasting Piece

An Everlasting Piece is a 2000 American comedy directed by Barry Levinson, written by and starring Barry McEvoy, about two barbers, one Catholic and one Protestant, who go into the toupee business in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1980s.¹ It was shot on location in Ireland and released by DreamWorks Pictures on Christmas Day, December 25, 2000.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Barry Levinson directed; Barry McEvoy wrote the screenplay and stars as Colm²
Setting	Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the 1980s, during the Troubles³
Premise	Colm (Catholic) and George (Protestant) buy the sales leads of a former toupee monopolist, the Scalper, and compete against the rival firm Toupee or Not Toupee to sell 30 units first⁴
Release	December 25, 2000, by DreamWorks Pictures; Los Angeles and New York openings that week¹^•²
Budget and box office	Made in Ireland for $10 million; an 11-theater holiday run in New York and Los Angeles took in about $75,000⁵
Reception	48% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 46 reviews; 77% audience score⁶
Music	Score by Hans Zimmer; cinematography by Seamus Deasy²

Spoilers

Plot

Colm (Barry McEvoy), a Catholic, and George (Brían F. O'Byrne), a poetry-loving Protestant, work as barbers in a psychiatric hospital in Belfast, where Colm's girlfriend Bronagh (Anna Friel) also works.⁴ There they meet a patient nicknamed the Scalper (Billy Connolly), a Scot who had run a toupee monopoly in Northern Ireland before losing it after attacking his customers.³ Colm and George persuade him to hand over his sales leads and set up their own company, the Piece People, with George selling to Protestants and Colm to Catholics, each willing to be less than frank about his religion when it helps close a sale.⁷

A rival firm, Toupee or Not Toupee, enters the market, and the two companies race to be the first to sell 30 units.⁴ The sales calls take the partners into neighborhoods that are dangerous for one or the other of them, and the business draws them into trouble with the IRA: after one of their hairpieces is found at the scene of an IRA crime, the police come calling.¹^•⁷ Roger Ebert, longtime film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, highlighted as the film's key scene a conversation in which Colm explains that he, as a Catholic, can make a "gesture" of selling hairpieces to British soldiers who have lost their hair to stress, while George cannot, "because we're right and you're wrong."⁷

Production

McEvoy, an Irish-born actor for whom the film was the first starring feature role, based his character loosely on his real-life father.⁴^•⁸ Levinson, who had won an Academy Award for Rain Man, picked up McEvoy's unsolicited screenplay and decided to make it, seeking in Belfast the kind of local color he had drawn on in his Baltimore films.⁷ The film was made in Ireland for $10 million with a cast of then-unknown actors.⁵ The producers included Mark Johnson, Louis DiGiaimo, Jerome O'Connor, Levinson, and Paula Weinstein, and the production companies were Bayahibe Films and Baltimore/Spring Creek Pictures.²

Release and reception

DreamWorks gave the film a limited holiday release in 11 theaters in New York and Los Angeles, grossing about $75,000, and then pulled it from those theaters.⁵ Levinson publicly criticized the studio, saying it had tested the film before a suburban audience in Woodland Hills, California, that was ill suited to its humor.⁵ Producer Jerome O'Connor later sued DreamWorks and Steven Spielberg's company for $10 million, alleging that a slashed promotional budget had prevented an American national release; Columbia TriStar handled distribution outside the United States.⁹ The Guardian reported unsubstantiated rumors that the studio had asked Levinson to withdraw scenes unflattering to the British regarding Northern Ireland.¹⁰

Critical response was mixed. The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus called the comedy too slight to leave an impression, and the film scored 48% on the Tomatometer against a 77% audience score.⁶ Ebert described it as "wicked and cheeky," light on plot and heavy on incident, with scenes that felt like tales rehearsed in pubs.⁷

Context in Northern Irish cinema

The film belongs to a wave of comedies about Northern Ireland that appeared around the turn of the millennium, alongside Divorcing Jack (1998), Wild About Harry (2000), and The Most Fertile Man in Ireland (2000), as the peace process of the late 1990s changed how the region was portrayed on screen.¹¹^•¹² Scholars have read it as engaging with the Troubles indirectly, through comedy: the title's pun implies that the sold hairpiece might outlast the peace process itself.¹³ In 2025 the Queen's Film Theatre in Belfast screened it as part of the Walled Cities season on political conflict in divided communities.³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2000 to 2002 › Comedies of 2000

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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