Latest news with #NeilJordan
Irish Examiner
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Neil Jordan in Bantry on the Catholic Church, and the talents of Daniel Day-Lewis
Neil Jordan, West Cork Literary Festival, Maritime Hotel, Bantry It seems fair to observe that Neil Jordan is not the most voluble of interviewees. He has always seemed more comfortable with the written word, unless it is to put his words in other characters' mouths, as he has done in 20 feature films over the past four decades. Jordan's fame as a film director has often eclipsed his literary achievements, but Amnesia, his recent memoir, focuses more on his background and his books than on his days in Hollywood. Born in Sligo in 1950, he grew up in Dublin and published Night in Tunisia, his first collection of short stories, at 26. He has since produced nine novels. Art critic and broadcaster Cristín Leach has the task of interviewing Jordan at West Cork Literary Festival. She does so with great skill, teasing out the recollections he has put to paper in Amnesia, and rounding out our understanding of the man. Jordan's mother Angela was a painter, and he admits this was an early influence on his creativity. He recalls sitting at a gate on Rosses Point in Co Sligo, looking out on Coney Island, as a child, but admits that this might not be a real memory, but one based on a series of paintings his mother made of that particular scene. Neil Jordan in Bantry for West Cork Literary Festival. Jordan recalls of the Ireland of his childhood that 'logic didn't seem to apply, and it probably came from the Catholic Church." If you said three prayers in a particular church, you released a soul from purgatory. "People really believed in these irrational, impossible things,' Jordan stated. With the legendary director John Boorman's support, he made his first film, Angel, in 1982. It gave him a springboard to the film industry in the UK, where he got to make experimental films such as Mona Lisa and The Crying Game. These in turn saw him welcomed in Hollywood. Jordan speaks admiringly of both Stephen Rea, who has starred in several of his films, and Tom Cruise, who starred in his greatest success, Interview with the Vampire. He recalls how Daniel Day-Lewis, who takes method acting to the extreme, was suggested for Cruise's role in the latter. 'But he would have spent six months in a coffin,' he laughs. He laments how Hollywood no longer supports small, independent films, preferring instead to put all its weight behind blockbuster movies, and doubts that anyone today could follow a career path as varied and idiosyncratic as his has been. At 75, Jordan is still full of plans. There's a sci-fi novel in the works, and a raft of film projects he still hopes to bring to fruition. He is also considering a second memoir, one that might focus more on his time in Hollywood. He admits that his entire career as a writer and filmmaker has been an act of self-exploration. 'I think life is deeper and more variegated than we can ever imagine,' he says, 'it's more profound than we've ever given credit for, and I think there are parts to ourselves that we never fully understand, you know?'
Irish Independent
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
‘Fergus realises he still loves her; he loves the person, not the sex or the gender' – Neil Jordan on The Crying Game
Some people have described Neil Jordan's The Crying Game as a parable about human desire. Others (Jim Sheridan, Bob Geldof, Micheál Martin) have said it is the greatest Irish film ever made.
Irish Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Film director Neil Jordan and the Éamon de Valera connection
'I'll never be forgiven for that. I don't really care', film director Neil Jordan told the Guardian newspaper last summer, referring to his depiction of former president and taoiseach Éamon de Valera in his 1996 film 'Michael Collins'. Jordan's insouciance about his portrayal of Ireland's third president echoes his verdict in his memoir, Amnesiac, also published last year. 'Did de Valera have a hand in Collins's death?', he asks. 'Probably not, but he could have prevented it. Did he have a nervous breakdown in the aftermath? I believe so, absolutely. And we all had to live inside it', he added. Disparaging de Valera had been a feature of Jordan's work, predating the Michael Collins film by 20 years and going back half-a-century to his first book, published a few months after de Valera's death in summer 1975. Night in Tunisia, Jordan's debut short story collection, ends with a story set mostly in a cafe on Dublin's O'Connell Street on the day of de Valera's State funeral 50 years ago this year. The street has been cleared of all vehicular traffic to make way for the procession of the funeral cortege to Glasnevin Cemetery. Inside the cafe a man in his mid-twenties is talking to a former lover, an older woman. She says that she and everyone of her generation was 'taught to idolise' de Valera, but the young man, named Neil, views the passing cortege as that of 'an animal dying' – 'an animal that was huge, murderous, contradictory'. READ MORE Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, Night in Tunisia was followed by Jordan's first novel, The Past, which was critically acclaimed in Ireland, Britain and the United States. It is also peppered with unflattering references to de Valera. 'That man who would stamp his unlikely profile on the history of this place as surely as South American dictators stick theirs on coins and postage stamps', a central character recalls. The novel is set in the years after the War of Independence and its first mention of de Valera, on the fourth page, is about his destruction of Dublin's Custom House and its ancient records in a fire that burned for three days. Éamon de Valera, who died, aged 92, on August 29th, 1975, was the dominant Irish politician of Jordan's childhood, teens and student days. He was elected successively to every Dáil from the first (1919-1921) to the 16th (1957-1959), serving as taoiseach six times and as President of the Executive Council (Prime Minister) three times. He then served two consecutive terms as president of Ireland from 1959 to 1973. He was president of Ireland when Jordan graduated from UCD with a history degree in 1972. 'This strange figure, from Bruree in Co Limerick by way of Spain and New York, with his predilection for mathematics, Gaelic games and Catholicism', was Jordan's description of de Valera in his memoir. The schoolboy Jordan attended a de Valera rally at the GPO and he walked along O'Connell Street in Dublin on the day of de Valera's State funeral, September 2, 1975. It was in de Valera's national daily newspaper, the Irish Press, that Jordan's first published short story, On Coming Home, appeared in September 1974, a few months before de Valera's death. Jordan had four further stories published on the newspaper's New Irish Writing Page over the next two years. He won an award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1998 for his adaptation of Patrick McCabe's novel The Butcher Boy, in which the Irish Press is mentioned. Jordan was shooting the Michael Collins film on the streets of Dublin when the Irish Press and its Sunday and evening sister papers ceased publication in May 1995, 30 years ago this summer. He supported the journalists following the closure and he said that the Irish Press had been an important outlet for him and writers of his generation. The Collins film ends with a screenshot of de Valera's reported 1966 acknowledgment that 'history will record the greatness of Collins and it will be recorded at my expense'. But the two main political parties that grew out of the Collins/de Valera split over the Anglo Irish Treaty, and the ensuing Civil War in which Collins was shot dead, now share power in the Dáil. And Jordan has hailed how 21st century Ireland differs from the previous century. Praising Sally Rooney's novels in The Irish Times last year, he said: 'There's not a hint of de Valera's nonsense to be seen there'.
Irish Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Movie Quiz: Ronan, Farrell, Gleeson, Keoghan – who has yet to be directed by Neil Jordan?
Who has never played a Hobbit? Martin Freeman Ian Holm Aidan Turner Andy Serkis Who is not a Bond villain? Hugo Drax Francisco Scaramanga Max Zorin Ernő Goldfinger Which symbol appears in the title of a blockbuster currently in cinemas? + % * @ Who has yet to be directed by Neil Jordan? Saoirse Ronan Colin Farrell Brendan Gleeson Barry Keoghan Which film earned Meryl Streep the most recent of her 21 Oscar nominations? Whose work has not been adapted as an animated feature from Walt Disney? Rudyard Kipling Victor Hugo Edgar Rice Burroughs Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Which is the odd title out? Little Big Marathon Better Rain Who has not directed a film named for a city? Kenneth Branagh Kathryn Bigelow Jane Campion Jonathan Demme Which does not feature the Police man? Quadrophenia (1979) The Hunger (1983) Dune (1984) The Bride (1985) Which film features an amalgam of the female protagonists from All About Eve? Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) The Go-Between (1971) The Devils (1971) Sleuth (1972)
