Dulcinea, one of the ladies from the Flying Below Radar list, was nice enough to let us post her review from her trip to the Irish Arts Center in NYC. 

Dulcinea's story:

Monday evening I was among the lucky audience members who got to see
Gabriel Byrne at the Irish Arts Center in NYC. He read selections from his
book PIMH and there was a Q&A session with the audience members. This
event was taped and will be available for purchase from The Irish Arts
Center later on.

First let me say how generous I thought it was of Mr. Byrne to give up his
one free evening to kick off this series of interviews/talks by various
Irish and Irish Americans that the Center will be sponsoring. He gave an
extra performance of Moon on Sunday evening as a benefit for the Actor's
Equity Fund and then last night did this charity event.

He was dressed like he was on the Charlie Rose Show - charcoal gray suit
and dark gray or blue shirt. No tie, and how the man managed to stay so
cool on such a hot night is beyond me!
Malachy McCourt introduced him. Gabe said that when Brendan Behan was told
that his brother was writing a book his comment was, "Jaysus, the cat will
be writing one next." Gabe made a joke that he felt like the McCourt's
cat.

He read several chapters from PIMH - the one about his first time at the
movies w/ his granny; his first TV experience where he had his (in)famous
line, "This way please." The article he wrote about the Christian Brother
that abused him in school, the article about his friend Sean a fellow
Irishman he met in a London pub; an excerpt from a journal he kept about a
hitchhiking trip about Ireland and ended by reading his prayer for his
daughter.

His reading style was great! He didn't just read from his book, he gave
little asides, and used body language, almost acting out some of the
scenes. He mentioned that two of the pieces were from a future book.

There was a short break and then there were questions from the audience.
Most of the questions were fairly serious and dealt with the difficulties
that Irish actors have and the condition of the Irish film industry. His
answers were very thoughtful and detailed.

He certainly is someone who does not take himself too seriously and has a
terrific sense of humour. He seemed very relaxed and was in no hurry to
end the Q&A session.

He touched on this new television series and he is taking his producer
status very seriously. He said he would like to have casting that really
reflects the diversity of NYC and have Korean actors being Koreans, black
actors being black and not playing the usually stereotypes. For example he
said that today if you see a Korean on an American t.v. show he's usually
a shop owner being held up by a black person and he'd like to break down
those stereotypes. He spoke a lot about how hard it is to work in the
Hollywood system where money is the bottom line. As an example he said
that originally "the Godfather" was supposed to star Danny Thomas and Ryan
O'Neal [ed. OMG!].

He spoke about the past and current status of filmmaking in Ireland. There
was some discussion about the movie The Quiet Man. Gabe v. diplomatically
did not diss anyone, but Malachy McCourt seemed to find nothing good to
say about the movie at all.

At the urging of Malachy he was asked to sing. He kind of blushed and said
he's never sung in public before. Then he said that wasn't exactly true.
He told a lengthy story about telling Richard Burton a joke. Burton said
it was the best joke he'd ever heard. Burton liked Gabe so much he invited
him for dinner in his suite. Once there he asked Gabe to tell the joke to
a group of "friends." Those friends were: Lawrence Olivier, John Gielgud,
Cyril Cusack, other RSC members and the cast of Wagner. As Gabe explained
you have to be in the mood to tell a funny story and he totally bombed in
front of all these Brits - he did a very funny mock stony face imitation.
Then his girlfriend, Aine O'Connor, urged him to sing. Having dug himself
into a hole by a miserable telling of this story she took the lead and
launched into song. I can't remember the song [it only had one line
repeated over and over], but Gabe did such a good job that he had the
entire audience singing along.

He was then whisked away -- no autographs, or photos, although he did
shake hands with the ladies in the front row. There was a champagne
reception that followed.