Neil Jordan Bites the Big One

Francis Coppola's 1992 Brain Stoker's Dracula, clearly influenced by Rice's vampiric writings, was a hit whose success had at least something to do with Geffen's own big-budget vampire movie finally getting launched. Interview will no doubt be compared with Dracula, but Jordan says he's not worried. "The attraction and I think the beauty of Anne's book is that it comes at the genre from a totally different point of view--the perspective of the vampires themselves."

Capturing that perspective on film turned out to be quite a challenge. "The film was on a huge scale. One of the principal problems was that the whole thing happened at night. We were down in New Orleans, building these massive sets and working at night for 16 to 20 weeks. To convey any of the largeness of the landscape at night was a nightmare in more senses than one." Special effects maestro Stan Winston created the vampire transformations and handled some of the other technical wizardry, but Jordan, with Hollywood cash to spend, was able to indulge himself with the kind of computer effects that didn't exist when he made his low-budget horror fantasy The Company of Wolves. "What would have once been old-fashioned blue screen and matting techniques are now all sorts of digital computer-generated images," he says. "We were designing shots a lot of which had never really been done before. Major portions of the screen are still waiting to be filled in. So we'll see ... My ambition was to take advantage of all the techniques that are available now. I found it quite fun."

If it's strange to hear Jordan talk like a graduate of the James Cameron School of Techno-filmmaking, perhaps that's only because he hasn't had the chance before to try his hand at this type of film. "I've always said that European filmmakers are constantly working in miniature. But you don't always want to be like that. You want to have big resources. One wants to be able to re-create Paris in the 1800s." He doesn't quite rub his hands gleefully as he says this, but I swear his eyes are shining. It looks like he has seen the light--and all this from a man who once said there was an inherent dignity in being a novelist that he didn't find in filmmaking. "I said that when I was making a few movies when there was an inherent lack of dignity about the whole process," he notes.

Speaking of lack of dignity, Jordan was only a "director-for-hire" on the two earlier Hollywood efforts he's doubtless referring to, High Spirits and We're No Angels. Both comedies were similar in that, in areas like casting, editing and writing, Jordan claims he didn't have final say on them. Just after the release of High Spirits, he noted that the studio never let him edit his own version of the film; now he's more interested in pleading mea culpa and letting the past stay where it is. "I tried to make comedy at one time," he muses, almost sentimentally. "Which was a moment of madness of mine. I shouldn't do comedy. I suppose I shouldn't have made that film."

The most important thing Jordan says he learned from those two films was that he couldn't-- make that won't--work that way again on someone else's movie. "If I'm not allowed to tell the story I want to tell, I want to kill myself, really. Or work on a building site or something. At least I'd be able to finish the building, you know?" On Interview, he insists, he has made the film he wanted to make. But surely he must have had initial fears that this massive project might somehow end up in someone else's hands? "A little bit, yeah. But I discussed this with David [Geffen] and he said, 'Just make the best possible film you can make. I'll protect you and you won't have to suffer interference from anybody.' And he was extraordinarily true to his word. The studio was great as well. When Hollywood works at its best, and you can make a film on a huge, muscular scale--I suppose it's the Holy Grail."

The Holy Grail? Does Jordan see Hollywood filmmaking as a deeply religious experience, despite the fact that he once had to direct De Niro, Demi Moore and Sean Penn in a David Mamet script? No, he's only kidding, having a bit of fun. In fact, Jordan's journey to Hollywood began as more of a fluke than any kind of passionate Holy Grail quest. He was a young novelist with some theater experience when he got a job as a creative consultant on John Boorman's 1981 epic Excalibur--about, yes, King Arthur's search for the Grail. "I was in Ireland. I hadn't gone to film school and hadn't much acquaintance with the medium. John had read my books. I'd written a script for him. He took me on as his assistant, which basically for me was like film school. Otherwise I would not have made films. It's as simple as that." I ask Jordan if he ever contemplates the fact that his career, at this point, has fairly eclipsed Boorman's. "I don't know if I have a career, even," he says, sidestepping my opinion. "I write books and I make films."

Jordan outgrew the Irish filmmaking scene almost immediately when, in 1982, he encountered opposition to his goal of directing his script Angel. Jordan prevailed--he did direct the piece--but he then moved on to England and made The Company of Wolves and Mona Lisa. As Jordan says now, "Ireland can be a very bitchy little place."

At the time of Mona Lisa's release in 1986, Jordan was optimistic about the European filmmaking scene. And why not? At the time, there actually was a European filmmaking scene. He had a close working relationship with Palace Pictures, co-founded by his producer Stephen Woolley, and he saw Hollywood as a land of cynical sequels aimed at teenage boys. But in the eight years since, the European film community has become a wasteland, and the talent is struggling to get out. "The gig is up, basically," Jordan says. "It's a terrible crisis. All the multiplex theaters were only being renovated by American companies. That was the only country that seemed to be investing in cinema-going. You travel in Europe and talk to filmmakers now--it's tragic. I don't think Fellini could get any projects going the last five years of his life."

Palace Pictures went bankrupt during the filming of The Crying Game, and Woolley ended up funding much of the film with his Visa card. So Jordan's current sojourn to Hollywood is as much a practical necessity as anything else. "I suppose I am making stronger relationships over here. In the past I always thought, okay, I'll make Mona Lisa with an English company, get the right distribution deal, make the movie I want to make. If it works in the United States, fine. If it doesn't, no big deal. But [Hollywood] has become the center of the world in terms of financing and all that. There's no escape from Hollywood now no matter where you are in the world."

Jordan is not about to relocate from Ireland permanently, but it seems clear he will be back. "The kind of films that once in a while come out of Hollywood cannot be made anywhere else. If I could work this way in Hollywood again, of course I'd do it. If I can have a relationship with a studio and do my own things, that'd be wonderful."

The ultimate success or failure of Interview will have a lot to do with how easily Jordan slips back and forth between Hollywood and Europe in the future. But the commute, he says, is beginning to make sense for more than just financial reasons. "Four years ago, the thought that a film like The Crying Game, about politics, the politics of sexuality and terrorism, would reach a large audience would have been unthinkable. Things change all the time. You're always surprised, aren't you?"

"I think things are getting a little better [in Hollywood]," he adds. "But I don't live there, so I'm no expert." Maybe not--and maybe he isn't entirely sure he wants to be one--but one day Jordan might be surprised to wake up with no jet lag and no kinks in his neck and find that he is.

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Joshua Mooney interviewed Quentin Tarantino for the August Movieline.

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