Neil Jordan on Kubrick, Brando, and the brilliance of Tom Cruise
Neil Jordan will discuss his latest novel at West Cork Literary Festival. Picture: Chris Pizzello
Neil Jordan’s father worked as a cigire. One of the teachers under his charge as a school inspector was the novelist John McGahern, who, as it happened, also briefly taught Jordan in school in Clontarf. Jordan’s only memory of him from those days was of McGahern, who used to wear a brown tweed suit, leaning out the window of the classroom picking his nose.
McGahern’s teaching career came to a shuddering halt at that school. One day he disappeared. He was removed from his post, without a goodbye or an explanation. McGahern had already published a novel, by the time he was teaching at Jordan’s school. It had been banned, but it wasn’t the book that led to his downfall. It was his falling in love with a Swedish divorcee.
Years later, Jordan’s father told his son what transpired. At the time, in the 1960s, it would have taken practically an act of parliament to get a teacher removed from his post. The principal – who kept a cane hidden in his sleeve – didn’t want any hassle, neither did the teachers’ union, but the middle class, god-fearing parents of the children at Jordan’s school were so enraged by McGahern’s domestic situation that they marched on their parish priest’s house in Clontarf, demanding McGahern’s removal.
“That's the kind of country it was,” says Jordan, 75. “It was very conformist. It was strange. The principal said to him, ‘John, why did you have to marry a divorced Swedish woman when there’s women all over Ireland with their tongues hanging out looking for men?’ John said, ‘Well, they weren't hanging out for me.’”
Jordan followed McGahern’s path and became a novelist. McGahern sardonically told Jordan’s father that his son was the living contradiction of his educational theories. Jordan’s first novel, won him literary prizes, but it’s as a filmmaker, including which earned Jordan a screen-writing Oscar, and Michael Collins, that has made his reputation.
In the mid-1980s, Jordan was living in Bray, Co Wicklow. His eldest daughter told him someone called “Stanley Cooper” had phoned. He left a number, but Jordan forgot to call him back. The next night, Jordan’s daughter told him “Stanley Cooper” had phoned again. Jordan phoned the number and found himself talking, not to a publicist or a journalist, but to Stanley Kubrick.
The next time he was in London, Jordan arranged to meet Kubrick for dinner. Kubrick gave him precious directions for the restaurant’s location in Chelsea, and where they would sit in the restaurant. When Kubrick arrived, he wore a green combat jacket stuffed with notepads, and he seemed to remember everything they had said over several phone conversations. It struck Jordan that Kubrick had a singular intelligence and that he probably recorded his telephone conversations.
“After we had that dinner, we began a series of conversations,” says Jordan. “Stanley was like that with a lot of directors like Brian De Palma, David Mamet, John Boorman, Steven Spielberg. When I met Steven, he told me he phoned him too. He was interested in everything. He would call you up and discuss things. He lived in St Albans [England], in this lovely country pile with his wife, Christiane, and his kids. Somebody who didn't leave the house, would live on the phone.”
Kubrick told Jordan the only reason for living in Los Angeles was the money and the pretty girls, and he had no need for either. As Jordan’s star began to rise, he spent more time in Hollywood, shooting, for example, which came out in 1994, starring Tom Cruise. Kubrick asked Jordan about his opinion of Cruise, who he was thinking of casting in Jordan said he was a very good actor. “He had better be,” said Kubrick, “because he’s not a star for his personality.”
When it came to casting the lead role in the part was offered to Daniel Day-Lewis, but he declined, which didn’t greatly surprise Jordan – given his method style of acting, Day-Lewis would have had to sleep in a coffin for the production’s duration, suggests Jordan. Instead, Jordan turned to Cruise. Sean Penn told Jordan that from his generation, Cruise was the toughest, he’d never back down.
“If you give Tom Cruise a challenge, he will rise to it,” says Jordan. “Now he's the biggest star in the world, the only star in the world, perhaps, but he’s a very good actor. That's why I cast him in why I thought he could make that Lestat role work. A lot of people said he couldn't, but he did. He's doing this series because it’s a challenge and it reveals his skills as just a plain and simple actor, but he’s a great one.”
- Neil Jordan will discuss his memoir, with Cristín Leech at Bantry’s West Cork Literary Festival, 8.30pm, Monday, July 14. See: www.westcorkmusic.ie
Neil Jordan got back to his hotel in Los Angeles one day in the early 1990s and noticed somebody had left a message on the phone beside his bed. He lifted the phone, but couldn’t make any sense of the message. The next morning there was another message from the same mumbling voice. This time the caller left a number he could decipher and a name, Marlon.
Jordan’s interest was piqued. Might it be Marlon Brando? He remembered his agent asked if he had any film ideas and Jordan suggested Brando seemed Lear-like lately, like a king who’d lost his kingdom; his children were at war – his son had recently been charged with murdering his half-sister. Jordan phoned the number and found Brando on the other line. Brando wanted to meet. He was free anytime, even that morning. Jordan thought this extraordinary. He must be lonely, he concluded.
So Jordan pointed his car towards Mulholland Drive, taking the turn Brando mentioned and entered a set of gates. He had hardly pressed the doorbell when the door was opened by Brando, dressed in a gigantic kaftan. He followed Brando through the house, where Brando got them some drinks. They repaired to a patio outside, which had some orange trees. Brando began peeling an orange and sucking on its juice.
“You’re Irish,” Brando said, adding he had been in Ireland a few years earlier. He said he came off the plane in Dublin and while driving into the city he passed under a bridge – the trainline bridge on the Drumcondra Road – and it was the first time he ever felt at home.
“Brando described the bridge so emotionally and accurately,” says Jordan. “I said, ‘Of course, I know that bridge. If you come in from the airport, that's when you feel you're entering Dublin – when you go under that bridge.’
"But when Marlon Brando says, ‘I felt at home,’ it threw me. I thought he was Italian with some Native American. There was something sad about the way he said it. Something sad all around. ‘So, you’re Irish?’ I said.” “Must be,” he mumbled.
