Director Neil Jordan's film "Breakfast on Pluto" will be released on DVD tomorrow.
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Filmmaker Neil Jordan gives us a glimpse behind the camera to see what inspires this deeply imaginative 56-year-old Irishman. He directed the critically acclaimed "The Crying Game," "Interview With the Vampire" and "Mona Lisa." His most recent work, "Breakfast on Pluto," about a transvestite looking for the mother who abandoned him, is coming to DVD tomorrow. He is the father of five children from three women.
Q. Would you be able to keep the secret of a movie like "The Crying Game" in this age of blogs and spoilers?
A. I don't know really, I don't know. I mean, at the time I didn't think I would have been able to either, you know? When it was released, first I wrote a letter around to all the reviewers and asked them if there was a way they could find to talk about the movie without reviewing the plot. To my amazement they kind of complied and it became this big thing of a secret.
Q. You deal with so many soul-bursting, burdened characters in your movies. What do you do to lighten up ?
A. Oh, I play music. I play Bach. I play it myself. And I run. I do all that sort of stuff. And I have fun with my kids. That lightens me up.
Q. Are you more of an optimist or a realist?
A. Oh God, I'm just a bit of a dreamer really, you know? It's like I close my eyes and dream up things. I think movie making is very much like daydreaming, really -- and writing novels, which I do as well. It's very much like daydreaming a world that is slightly different than the one you live in into existence. I don't know if it's optimism, but it's definitely not realism.
Q. Your movies incorporate subtle and not-so-subtle layering. Is that deliberate, or does it evolve as part of the process?
A. Well, what I'm always trying to do in films, I'm always trying to do something you've never seen before, whether they're my own films or somebody else's. Often I choose a movie to do because it's a whole landscape that I haven't dealt with before. Like, for example, "Interview With the Vampire." I found the mental world of Anne Rice's book totally fascinating. And to build an image of this world on the screen, this world that's only seen at night, the world seen by somebody who has kind of put themselves beyond good and evil -- that was the image I got from Anne's book. It all came from my response to the book.
Q. From what I've read, you give credit to the gloomy weather and the Catholic Church for firing up your imagination.
A. Yeah, well I grew up in an Irish Catholic background and it's a very specific thing. I don't know, it's a bit like being an Orthodox Jew or something. The Ireland I grew up in was very, very uniform -- the way they behaved, the clothes they wore, the kind of texture. ... I don't know, I'm formed by Ireland, really. The great escape in the place I grew up in was the imagination -- everything I read, the movies I saw.
Q. Do you think having educated, creative parents enhanced the nurturing you got or limited it?
A. Well, my mother was a painter and my father was [a teacher]. We grew up in a house with books and art. You know, it just gave me signals that's the way I should be, the direction I should take myself.
Q. Did they want you to be a doctor or a lawyer?
A. They wanted me to be a teacher, actually, because my father was a teacher. When I began writing, it was a bit of a struggle. But you know every kid's a bit of trouble. We are talking the '50s here. They didn't even make movies in Ireland. All they did was write books, and every writer seemed to be bad. I mean, society was quite restrained.
Q. Would you say Ireland has changed a lot since then?
A. It's changed entirely. But you know the way places change and somehow stay the same? It's very strange. It's a very modern place, Ireland. It's kind of a much happier place in a way but maybe slightly less distinctive. It's kind of a bit like everyplace else.
Q. What is it about fringe society that captivates you?
A. Yeah, I'm drawn toward characters who are beyond the norms of everyday, ordinary society. I'm kind of fascinated by characters who seem to be outside the kind of moral parameters of that world. I'm not that interested in good and evil as I am in gray. I'm more interested in moral confusion than in characters who know absolutely, clearly. ... I'm interested in dilemmas, really.
Q. Do romance, commitment, lust, everything attended on love play best against a dark background?
A. It's easy for me to do. I wouldn't be very good at doing a romantic comedy. I mean, I can find humor in things as long it's very black. The films I make reflect the way I see life, really. I like to look at people who are faced with exploring the different parts of themselves, something most of us don't get to do.
Q. Did this start occurring to you when you were young?
A. Oh, no. When I was young, I was just a total daydreamer. People used to call me a total space cadet. I was a very happy kid, actually. The strange thing is people who ... well, if you went to a laboratory, yeah? And you met somebody whose job it was to cut up cadavers? You know they would probably be a very happy person, because there's a tremendous release in dealing with the grotesque side of life. It kind of seems to remove a burden from you. Whereas if you talk to a professional comedian, you often find a suicidal depressive there. I think it's true, really. Those are the subjects I deal with in my movies, but I'm not like that myself. I'm generally a happy guy.
First Published: April 17, 2006, 4:00 a.m.