You have to hand it to Mike Houlihan, one of the city’s most inexhaustible and creative characters, as he is set to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the only Irish American film festival in the world. He started it, creating a decade ago what he called the Irish American Movie Hooley, “hooley” meaning an Irish party usually with music, and “Houli” being, not at all coincidentally, the nickname by which Houlihan has long been known. The seventh child raised in a large family on the city’s South Side, Houlihan has been an actor for more than five decades, as well as a producer, director and playwright, with credits that include his own hit show, the autobiographical “Goin’ East on Ashland.
” He’s been a columnist, beginning as a contributor to the Chicago Tribune Magazine in 1990 and later providing essays broadcast on WBEZ-FM 91.5, and for a couple of years he wrote the engaging, Chicago-centric “Houli in ‘da Hood” column for the Sun-Times. He remains a columnist for the Irish American News.
His movie life includes writing the screenplay for a film named “Ballhawk”; co-writing “Tapioca,” a movie with Ben Vereen and Tim Kazurinsky; writing, producing and directing “Her Majesty, ‘da Queen,” a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the process and politics involved in selecting Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day Queen and “Our Irish Cousins,” a charming film that follows Houlihan to his roots in Ireland. It was his frustration in finding a.