A few days after interviewing director Dan Ireland (see Part One here), I attend the SIFF Twelve-Hour Marathon on March 21. The director's in attendance to introduce the screening of his beloved debut, The Whole Wide World. I introduce myself, and sure enough, in person he's as gregarious, focused, and cheerful as he was on the phone. He thanks me profusely for the interview, and enthuses about introducing the night's final film, Trouble in Mind.
Then he buzzes into the auditorium to usher in this screening of his baby. Ireland's hearty and infectious laugh resonates through the auditorium as he speaks passionately about the rigors of making The Whole Wide World, and about his pride in the director's cut he's brought.
The movie screens to a sizable and engrossed audience. It holds up incredibly well as an unforced evocation of its period setting, as an incredibly astute mirror to the creative process, and as an affecting love story.
At one point I turn away from its ambling beauty to glance to my left. The director's sitting in the center of the theater watching his work, and the expression on his face reflects not so much the scrutinizing perfectionist or the gloating egotist so much as the enchanted movie fan. It's taken him years to be able to watch The Whole Wide World with the non-critical eye of an audience member, and he--like the rest of the crowd--is allowing himself to be captivated.
That expression revisits his face again during the screening of Trouble in Mind, and it's not too much of a stretch envisioning this grown man as a kid in Vancouver, drinking in the magic of cinema on the proceeds scraped from the inside of his mom's purse.
In Part Two of his interview with the SunBreak, Ireland speaks in detail about the rest of his body of work, about the pleasures and pains of being a truly independent moviemaker, and about the role his mother played in forming his passion for cinema.
I wanted to ask you about the development of The Velocity of Gary...was that another situation where D'Onofrio had a lot of input?
Dan Ireland
Well, Gary was the script that I read that I thought, "This is probably going to end my career [laughs], but I have to do it!" And it was one of those scripts that you can't say no to. And I literally fought, every single breath of the way to get that movie made. And it was probably the wrong movie to make at the time, in retrospect...originally Viggo Mortensen was supposed to play that character...
Valentino [the bisexual porn star played by D'Onofrio in the film]...
Yeah, it would've been an interesting choice, because it would've given [Valentino's character] the beauty, the youth. He was more right for the role than Vincent was, in a lot of ways. But Vincent is such an amazing actor, that when Viggo dropped out, I told Vincent about it, and Vincent said, "Let me read the script," so he did. And he phoned me up and said, "I want to do this." And what do you say to someone who's your mentor? I was like, "Okay, absolutely." The rest of it was an amazing struggle all the way.
Well, it's not the most easily palatable subject matter to the masses.
That's true; but to this day, you know what? It's probably the most fun I've had on a set. It was also stressful beyond belief. But we had such a kinship with everyone. I probably knew more about what I was doing when I did Whole Wide World.... At the end of the day, Gary's a movie I wish I could remake.
On a broad level, what would you do now that you didn't do then?
I'd shoot it in 16mm or Hi-Def, and really give it a grit. You know? It's much too slick. I'd also probably cast all of the leads differently, although I think they're great. I think Tom [Jane] is great in it. Salma is great near the end of the film. It was a very ambitious film for her, and she was the reason the film got made, because of her box office viability.
It's a tough movie, in the sense that you're taking a one-man show and you're basically creating these characters from it; so finding the amount of fable and fantasy and reality, and mixing it; making it come off real was difficult. It needed to be grittier. That's what I would've done. I would've made it a lot tougher, a lot more down-and-dirty.
Every director has input on the screenplays they film, and...what appealed to me on this one was that these characters broke my heart. They also made me laugh, too. It's funny, the older you get, the more you start to look at your stuff in depth, and Gary was a film that, as much as I was proud of it, I felt that I hadn't really done the material as well as I could've done and I have to be honest about that. It's not that I don't like the film--I do. I think Altman once said the films that you love the best are your most damaged children. Well, that puts Gary at the top of my list [laughs]!
One movie of yours that doesn't suffer from that is Passionada.
That movie dropped into my lap about a year-and-a-half after I did Gary. When I went out to New Bedford, and I started to look around at the world of Fado music and the people involved. I became more intimate with the producers, the writers. And in taking it over, I got to redesign the film. I got to invent the characters. I had a lot of input on that film, which was great. Unfortunately, after the first two weeks of shooting, we were all in the rush of the potential Writer's Strike, and of getting shut down...we hired the wrong actor, so I had to shut down the set and start from scratch. Fortunately, my line producer Paul Bernard, whose brother Tom distributed The Whole Wide World, knew Jason Isaacs and brought Jason to the set. So Jason sort of came in and saved the day, which was wonderful. The girls--both Sophia [Milos] and Emmy [Rossum]--were glorious. They're perfect. Sophia was last of the 75 women [we auditioned]. Wild.
What was Emmy Rossum like?
I love Emmy Rossum. She's like my kid. If I ever had a precocious daughter, I'd want her to be Emmy. All I tried to do was bring out the mischievousness of her in her performance, because she is that in real life! Wonderfully so. She's just always working it. She knew the character, and she was a pro. She was such a professional. She was fourteen when she did the film. Isn't that wild? My producer so freaked out when we hired her; we all thought she was 17. Then we found out she was 14-and-a-half. Fortunately my producer was a friend of Ted Kennedy's and he called Kennedy up, so we got a waiver. Otherwise I would've only been able to shoot three-and-a-half hours a day with her. It was really freaky.
You've had a connection with Theresa Russell for a long time...
Well, I knew her from the Seattle International Film Festival when we did a retrospective on Nick Roeg, her husband.
What is she like?
She's the best! Theresa's so cool. She is the rock of Gibraltar for every set. If she sniffs that there's trouble, she'll go and make it her job to make sure that trouble goes away. She's an absolute joy to work with. I haven't got enough good things to say about her. She is my dear friend, and I am lucky she's in my life. I understand why Nick Roeg was married to her for umpteen years. I think she met him when he was in his mid-fifties, and she was eighteen--when they did Bad Timing together. They were together for a long time.
How was it working with Joan Plowright on Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont?
How about, like, a gift from God? Maybe, perhaps, one of the greatest experiences of my entire life? How about, can I do it again, please? Now [laughs]?
What was your first meeting with her like?
I was so frickin' nervous, it was unbelievable. She puts you in a seat, and opposite you is a huge portrait of Sir Lawrence Olivier. And his eyes are trained on you.
So you met her at home?
Yeah, I went over to her flat...I had to convince her to do [the movie]. She wanted to do it, but there wasn't enough money or time, and so she told me that if I could get another week of filming, she'd do it. I literally got on the phone right after I left, and called my producers. Within three seconds we had the money. The film would never have been what it was without her. I cannot imagine doing that film without Joan. It was such joy, and so exhausting for her.
And Rupert [Friend] was 75 actors later. I interviewed 75 young men before I found the right guy for the gig. He was probably the last one in, and I stopped after him. The only other guy that got close was Dominic Cooper. I really love Dominic; unfortunately, he was committed at The National with History Boys, and he couldn't get out of his contract with them. Dom was terrific, but then Rupert came in. Rupert just rewrote the character with Joan. And the one thing I've learned from my first film was when the actor shows you something about the character that you didn't know, that's the person to go with. He did; Renee did; Emmy Rossum did; and Jessica Chastain, my lead in Jolene, did.
Another great British actress, Anna Massey, has a supporting role. How was she to work with?
A joy. A total joy. She's such a great actress. To work with all these amazing British stage actors, like Bob Lang, Marcia Warren, Timothy Bateson, and Georgina Hale from all of Ken Russell's films. What a pleasure to go into work each day. It was always about the work. It was all about taking it, and making it as good as we could do it. And they were incredible.
Was it an all-English crew?
No. Claudio Rocha, who shot all my films, was there; he shot it. He came over with me. We were all working on our tourist visas [laughs]! We didn't even have permits. I made that film for $750,000. Not pounds, U.S. dollars. And that was when the pound-to-dollar ratio was almost two-to-one. So it was a drill.
I'm amazed you got Joan Plowright--and that look--for that kind of money.
Well, she loved the film, she loved the script. And we had such pleasure working with each other. She's someone I call all the time. I've stayed in contact with her.
That seems like a recurring theme with you--maintaining sustained connections with actors, frequently on an artistic basis...
Let's see...how many films have I done with actors that I've used twice? Theresa Russell, I've used twice. Vincent, I've used twice. Joan, I'm about to use a second time. Sometimes, they get big and out of your price range [laughs]. You know, I'm certain I'll work with Renee again.
I think Renee's done some great work over the years, but her performance in The Whole Wide World has always stood out to me.
Thank you. She does hear that a lot, and I get that a lot, I love it. I don't know if she loves it that much [laughs]...
I suppose it's not that great to hear that your first movie's your best one...
Hell, I keep hearing that The Whole Wide World's my best film [laughs]! It sort of goes between that and Mrs. Palfrey.
It's funny, because every film is its own creature, and it has its own audience. Who's to say? I'm just so thrilled that I've got the opportunity to [make movies], and that I'm able to live this dream. It's tough right now in this industry being an independant filmmaker, but all you have to do is just stick with it, and keep believing in what you're doing. And you can make it happen. Yeah, I need to make The Hangover 2 [laughs]! It'll make my life a fuck of a lot easier.
But it sounds like you've managed that sort of miraculous feat where you've been able to keep your head above water and yet still do exactly what you want to do.
Well, it's getting more difficult, trust me. The climate is so much more difficult right now, because there's so much competition. And it's really hard to get your films seen. You know, the lack of distribution of motion pictures in America is just insane...I just keep doing what I'm doing and hopefully it will work. I've actually finished a screenplay with Martin Donovan, who wrote Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont with me. Joan Plowright's attached to play a role in it. But we're just about to go out with it. I literally just finished it today. Literally. We had to do a whole bunch of changes.
Can you reveal any details at this point?
Let's just say it's about the discovery of a man who's lived a very long time, undetected, until one day...it's called Forever. We'll just leave it at that.
How do you think this new project will fit in the current climate?
You know, it depends on the cast. It's a bit of a fable, so it's got a light touch to it, but it's also pretty intense, and emotional.
I'm also working on another project called GRAS, which means "Generally Recognized As Safe." It's written by a young writer named Matthew Bell. It's being produced by my pal Dan Lupovitz, who produced The Velocity of Gary. It's about the discovery of a company that purports that they're serving organic products, but unfortunately it's discovered that it's not quite what it seems. It's pretty powerful. If and when that happens, it'll be shot up in Seattle.
These are two directorial projects going simultaneously?
Yes.
Do you find yourself with multiple creative balls in the air a lot, or is this an unusually high number of things at once?
Well, I think that if you just work on one, you're dead. So you've got to have a couple going at once. Let the chips fall where they may. Because they're not going to go away: They're yours. With GRAS, that was brought to me by Dan Lupovitz, and he fought for me to be the director on it. It's such a great project.
Is there a cast lined up for GRAS yet?
Nope. Not yet. There are ideas in the back of my head, but they're still just ideas. We're still doing a little pass on the script, and the moment we finish it, we'll take it to the next level.
You said that making independent films in today's climate has become more difficult overall. Are there any aspects of filmmaking that you feel come more easily now, like the financing or--
Let's not talk about the financing [laughs]! Let's talk about being a filmmaker; when you're behind the camera, it's like a glove. I know what I'm doing, and I love it. It fires me. It inspires me. It gives me the reason to get up in the morning, and it allows me to sleep comfortably at night, because I love what I'm doing. And if you have that in your life, it's really a blessing. However difficult it gets, you find a way to get through it. You have to find a way. It happens very quickly sometimes, or it can take forever. The Whole Wide World took five years...
Was that the longest gestation period for one of your films?
Yeah. Absolutely.
Which one came quickest for you?
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. Blessedly. Passionada came pretty damn quick, but I was in post on it for a year-and-a-half because I re-shot the ending. Which I wanted to do, desperately, from the first time I walked onto the set and shot the first ending. I knew it was wrong and kept pleading with my producer to let me change it; and he wouldn't let me do it. Finally he did after we tested it, and it didn't work.
What changed about the ending?
Oh, my God. I'm not gonna even go into it. Do us both a favor. I'll just start throwing up if I even talk about it [laughs]. I mean, I'll get physically ill. If you rent the DVD, you can see the original ending. And you'll wonder, "Oh, my God, what were they thinking?"
Was the original ending foisted on you by another party?
The screenplay evolved, all the way through the shoot. And it was turning out glorious, except for this ending. And I tried to do the best I could with it, but there was no way. If that ending was on the film, it would've never seen the light of day. I doubt whether anyone would've put it out on video. It would've gone straight to the shelf. It was dreadful. Killed everything before it. Thank God I had a great producer on that. He was spectacular. Even though we made that mistake, he understood it and he gave me the wherewithal to fix it. He was the first person to admit it. He phoned me one night and said, "The ending sucks. You were right. How much is it gonna cost to fix?" He also made decisions very quickly.
I wanted to ask you about your most recent feature, Jolene.
It's really powerful. It's based on an E. L. Doctorow story about a girl..it's her life from 15 to 25 years old, and it's about how she survives this landscape of men. It's sort of about a girl who's in search of love. She was born into abuse, so that's all she's ever known, but she's always had a beating heart. It's a little like Nights of Cabiria in that sense, except the girl's a white-trash girl. She's fifteen, she starts off in a marriage, and it just goes to hell. And then we follow her through five different episodes of her life. It's a tough little film, but it has a sense of humor and spirit that keeps driving it. Although it doesn't pull any punches. It's just incredibly tough, when it is tough. There were even a couple of scenes that needed to be toned down. And the producer wouldn't let me do it. Jessica [Chastain] got the lead in Terrence Malick's film Tree of Life, based on her work in Jolene. She also got the lead in John Madden's film The Debt with Helen Mirren and Sam Worthington because of her performance in this film. She won Best Actress at SIFF, and deservedly so...
Jolene's got a great cast.
The performances are all beautiful, every single one of them. Michael Vartan has never been so fucking terrifying. He wanted to do it because he really wanted to change his career. He'd sort of been typecast as your go-to guy for the romantic comedies. He's playing probably one of the most evil characters, under the auspices of being this really cool guy. His performance is astonishing. Rupert [Friend] plays a New Orleans tattoo artist. It's shocking how funny, how good he is. Chazz Palminteri is probably the heart of the film, he's so great.
Palminteri gets typecast a lot. It sounds like you took steps to liberate him from that.
He's only in the movie for, like, fifteen minutes. But he breaks your heart. Chazz was the perfect person. He was phenomenal. Frances Fisher, you won't even recognize. She's my lesbian prison guard from hell [laughs]! Everybody always recognizes her as the mother from Titanic.
What about Living Proof, the well-received Lifetime Movie you directed? Your style, for want of a better term, seems to lend itself to character-driven dramas, so it's like, if Lifetime Movies were only directed by really good directors they might approach your sensibilities. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I completely agree with you. When Russell Mulcahy did Prayers for Bobby for example, that was above and beyond. Lifetime Movies can be good, too. It's all about the approach. Even if you're going to go for a high-camp trash approach, just have fun with it. Turn it up! Make it fun. I was blessed to have that one.
Living Proof was a big revelation in my life. It sort of knocked me on my ass. It was about the gentleman who discovered the drug herceptin, which really is one of the things that keeps a lot of women alive. It's probably the only effective drug on the market that retards cancer. It's about his ten-year odyssey of trying to get the drug approved, and getting it on the market. And how he's forced to make sacrifices. It's a movie about sacrifice, and a movie about hope. The cast was miraculous. We literally got them the day before we began shooting. Lifetime really set the bar high, and I didn't have a lot of prep time on it. We had about three-and-a-half weeks...I shot it in Louisiana, and it was set in L.A.
Harry Connick Jr. plays the lead...he's so passionate, so committed, so there. He so wants to be good. He's tougher on himself than on anyone, and if he thinks you're not pulling it out of him, he'll beat you up to beat him up. Harry's right up there with Vincent.
After all this went down, I found out my mother had lung cancer, and I lost her that year: I went through what I called "The Cancer Year." It was unbelievable. I'd come home at night and break down, because I was directing all of these women to die, basically. To give the set a lot of reality, we cast a lot of the extras with cancer survivors. Half of them were on herceptin. So when you look at the women in the groups, aside from the actors that you see in the speaking parts; all of those women are breast cancer survivors. Every single one of them. They'd come up to you, lift up their shirts, show you their scars, and they were so proud to be alive.
It must've been a sad time for you, but it sounds like you drew profound inspiration from it.
I did. But I'd go home every night and bawl my eyes out. I could not shake it. When you watch it, it's so there. The screenplay was by a woman who fought for seven years to get it made. God bless her that she did. Lily Tartikoff [wife of cancer victim/network exec Brandon Tartikoff] was a big part of it. When Lily saw it, she was astonished. That made me really happy. I wish that movie would play a lot more than it does.
Speaking of your mom, I read that she was a profound influence on your passion for film.
You bet your life she was. Without Betty there was no Danny. Seriously. She let me be who I wanted to be. She gave me the wherewithal. She knew when I'd steal two dollars out of her purse. She'd let me get away with it. And we were on welfare, and she'd still let me do it.
What kind of movies did she like?
She took me to see Breakfast at Tiffany's, Suddenly Last Summer.... She'd seen them years ago but we lived by a revival house in Vancouver. I'd be the movie freak and go, "Hey mom, can we go see this?" And she'd say, "Yeah! I'd love to see that again!" And we saw everything. I got into every R-rated movie from the age of ten on thanks to her. She'd take me, and she saw how much I loved it. She was so great. I made Mrs. Palfrey for her. She was my inspiration for that, one-thousand percent. I dedicated it to her.
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