{"id":347388,"date":"2026-03-15T11:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T11:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/347388\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T11:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T11:24:11","slug":"i-go-to-my-local-cinema-normally-sitting-in-a-totally-empty-hall-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/347388\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I go to my local cinema … normally sitting in a totally empty hall\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neil Jordan<\/a> looks well. He leans in to catch the odd missed word, but, , now 76, he is still light on his feet and thoughtful in his conversation. Nobody talks quite like him. Apparently random ideas still pop out of nowhere. Questions are answered by sometimes puzzling counter-questions. Digressions progress to the bottom of the garden and back up hidden paths.<\/p>\n

We meet at the Royal Marine Hotel in D\u00fan Laoghaire<\/a> on another foul day. Even the statue of Roger Casement appears to be glowering furiously at the latest swell of rain sweeping across the Irish Sea. Admirably, our most garlanded film director still likes to spend such days at his local cinema.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I go to the cinema. I go to my local cinema, which is the IMC in D\u00fan Laoghaire,\u201d Jordan, long resident in Dalkey, tells me. \u201cI am normally sitting in a totally empty hall. On a rainy day like this, what are you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

What did he last go and see?<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to see a movie called … Umm … Criminal Number One?\u201d<\/p>\n

I think he means Crime 101 with Barry Keoghan and Chris Hemsworth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe movie I want to see, there was nobody in it. But the cinema was packed with younger people going to see Wuthering Heights. I mean, jammed! So, I think it\u2019s silly to make predictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

He means it is silly to make predictions about the death of movies. Jordan, like the rest of us, despairs about much in the world, but he is stubbornly optimistic about the Seventh Art. <\/p>\n

Why would he not be? The history of cinema is awash with great directors who have struggled to get projects made, but, since emerging with the extraordinary Angel in 1982 \u2013 when Irish features were as rare as Irish space probes \u2013 Jordan has rarely gone longer than three years without releasing a film. <\/p>\n

\"NeilNeil Jordan is stubbornly optimistic about the Seventh Art, cinema. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

Classics such as The Company of Wolves and Mona Lisa in the 1980s. Hits such as The Crying Game and Michael Collins in the 1990s. Right up to recently, intriguing oddities such as Byzantium with Saoirse Ronan and Greta with Isabelle Huppert. All that while creating TV shows such as The Borgias and Riviera. <\/p>\n

How has he managed it?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, initially, when I started, it\u2019s almost like we were a band of brothers,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was like: what are we going to do next? You make one movie, and everyone\u2019s hanging around saying: \u2018Okay, what do we do now?\u2019 And you write another one. You make another one. There\u2019s that feeling to it. But it has become more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there is the fiction. Jordan started out as a novelist and short story writer. As long ago as 1976, Night in Tunisia, his debut collection, won rakes on its way to the Guardian Fiction Prize. He has never given up on prose. Novels such as Sunrise with Sea Monster from 1994, Mistaken from 2011 and The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small from 2021 have punctuated his progress through the film jungle.<\/p>\n

We are ostensibly meeting up to discuss an extraordinary speculative novel entitled The Library of Traumatic Memory. I recommend it to those who enjoy the philosophical science fiction of European authors such as Stanis\u0142aw Lem and the Strugatsky brothers.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Neil Jordan: We lived in an Ireland that emanated from the brain of one paranoid individualOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cI was toying with an idea that I was doing with Amazon in the early days of the streaming stuff,\u201d he says. \u201cI had a notion of a medical corporation \u2013 it was based in America \u2013 that was getting designs from the future. So the basic idea is there. I messed around with it. I wrote some things. But it became a bit too complicated. So, I forgot about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oddly, southwestern Irish landscapes eventually reignited the notion.<\/p>\n

\"Jordan'sJordan’s The Library of Traumatic Memory \u2013 like all the best speculative fiction \u2013 touches on concerns of the present. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

\u201cI have a house down in Beara,\u201d he says of the peninsula that borders west Cork and Kerry. \u201cAnd there\u2019s a huge, gaunt, very haunting mansion called the Puxley Mansion. It was built on the fortune of the copper mines. It is like a Gothic blot on the Irish landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

Explaining how these two notions came together would require … well, a book the length of The Library of Traumatic Memory. For its first half, the novel alternates between the Beara Peninsula in 2084, where a \u201clibrarian\u201d named Christian Cartwright maintains a collection of painful memories extracted from traumatised patients, and the adventures of an architect ancestor in 18th century Europe. The book abounds with conspiracies and mysterious deaths. The future bleeds into the past (and vice versa). Along the way, the text \u2013 like all the best speculative fiction \u2013 touches on concerns of the present: artificial intelligence, technological lunges for eternity and the continuing appeal of Billie Eilish.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the whole AI thing. Isn\u2019t it? That Elon Musk urge for endless survival. It\u2019s all there. Isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

What are his feelings about AI? Few in the entertainment industry have come close to digesting all the dangers and all the possibilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s that interesting, really,\u201d he says. \u201cThe siphoning of plots through focus groups? These Large Language Models that the studios use? That\u2019s just another version \u2013 a more efficient version \u2013 of what they\u2019ve been doing over the last 30 years. Have you seen that little video with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt?\u201d<\/p>\n

If you let your imagination wander into the future then anything can happen<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Neil Jordan<\/p>\n

I have indeed seen the AI clip \u2013 by Oscar-nominated Irish film-maker Ruair\u00ed Robinson \u2013 of Cruise and Pitt (stars of Jordan\u2019s Interview with the Vampire) duking it out on a rooftop. Much of the online world went bonkers on its release. Are filmmakers obsolete?<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it important that the programme can execute that in 20 minutes rather than six weeks? The point is they\u2019re both unreal. And cinema has been unreal for quite a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Neil Jordan: \u2018We all need disguises. Part of being alive is pretending to be something you\u2019re not\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The book allows Jordan some wider speculation about alternative futures. I was fascinated by one line noting \u201cthe deferral of all hopes for a United Ireland in the revived North Sea Empire\u201d. A map, published in the front of the book, suggests that empire includes all Scandinavia, a swathe of mainland Europe beneath \u2013 partitioning France from west to east \u2013 and both Britain and Ireland. You what now?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about the absurdity of national boundaries \u2013 like the EU, which is seen to be changing by the minute,\u201d he says, amused. \u201cIf you let your imagination wander into the future then anything can happen. I wanted to write a science fiction thing that was not about space travel and spaceships.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jordan was born in Ross\u2019s Point, Co Sligo to a painter mother and an academic father. They later moved to Clontarf and, in Ireland\u2019s less swinging late 1960s, he found himself at University College Dublin. There is a temptation now to treat that period as one of unremitting gloom and oppression, but Jordan looks back on it with qualified nostalgia. Shortly after leaving college, he and Jim Sheridan were breaking rules on the stage of the Project Arts Centre. They were filling creative vacuums.<\/p>\n

\"JordanJordan admits that it is now harder than ever to get films made. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like the kind of country where there was no alternative but to write \u2013 to imagine things,\u201d he says. \u201cThere were no jobs. I thought it was rather wonderful, actually. It was great. This was the late 70s and 80s in Dublin. Everybody was on board. Everybody was scribbling. My closest creative associate would have been Jim Sheridan. Jim was setting up the Project. Brian Friel produced the first of the Field Day plays. We saw Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson. What new stuff would happen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, not films, surely. It was one thing to stage a play at the Project. It was altogether another to produce a feature film that could plausibly screen in big festivals or in mainstream cinemas. Indeed, Jordan suggests that some of his contemporaries felt the very idea a bit vulgar.<\/p>\n

It felt like the kind of country where there was no alternative but to write \u2013 to imagine things<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Neil Jordan<\/p>\n

\u201cThe literary community here was outraged by the fact that I was doing this,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember speaking to Brian Friel and Se\u00e1n \u00d3 Faol\u00e1in and people. They thought it\u2019s something you should never do. I suppose they thought of it as selling your books to Hollywood or something. But it was slightly different to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The route to Angel was a windy one. It began with Jordan securing work as a \u201ccreative associate\u201d on John Boorman\u2019s Excalibur. He shot a documentary on the making of that Arthurian epic and, later, showed Boorman the script for Angel, the story of a showband saxophonist who gets caught up in villainy during the Troubles. Boorman signed on as producer, and the film, supported by a fledgling Channel Four Films, ended up as a critical smash.<\/p>\n

It is hardly worth relitigating the controversies that surrounded the funding of Angel. Not everyone was happy a relatively inexperienced director received cash from the recently constituted Irish Film Board. Letters were written. Bar counters were bashed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was that kind of time in Ireland,\u201d he says. \u201cAny interesting project became a source of argument. They\u2019d repeat the Sean O\u2019Casey experience at The Abbey.\u201d<\/p>\n

At any rate, Jordan was off. Next came The Company of Wolves, his delicious adaptation of Angela Carter\u2019s fairy stories, and, in 1986, the hugely affecting gangster flick Mona Lisa. I was amused to find mention of that film in The Library of Traumatic Memory. Christian, hearing a Jaguar motorcar, finds himself remembering \u201cthat ancient motion picture known as Mona Lisa\u201d. Is this Jordan\u2019s way of saying that film is the most likely of his to last?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. I was originally it was going to put in The Italian Job,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then I realised The Italian Job didn\u2019t have a Jaguar. Bob Hoskins in Mona Lisa drives a Jaguar. It was a bit indulgent, but I decided that was justifiable.\u201d<\/p>\n

As noted earlier, it has been a singular career. There have been disappointments \u2013 he particularly regrets the failure of his 1989 comedy We\u2019re No Angels \u2013 but he invariably hit back with an unlikely success. The Crying Game, from 1992, secured him an Academy Award for best original screenplay. A kind of domestic apotheosis came when, a few years later, Dublin ground to a respectful halt for the making of Michael Collins.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Film director Neil Jordan and the \u00c9amon de Valera connectionOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see a Dublin that no longer exists,\u201d he says. \u201cThey allowed us, on a Sunday, to stop the entire traffic of the entire city, so I could place a camera facing across the river towards the Four Courts with Liam Neeson wondering whether or not he\u2019s going to tell them to start bombarding at this place.\u201d<\/p>\n

He admits that it is now harder than ever to get films made. As we speak, he is hoping to get a properly big project off the ground. <\/p>\n

\u201cRather than struggle to get a $10-12 million project off the ground, why not struggle to make a $200 million movie?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Can he tell me about it? <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s called Dirt Bike Ride. It\u2019s about a bunch of circus dirt bike riders and they end up in cavalry units. Ha, ha, ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

He is properly cackling at his own audacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry. It\u2019s a big sell. But I\u2019d love to make it. I think I will make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t bet against him.<\/p>\n

The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan is published by Head of Zeus. He will be reading at the C\u00fairt International Festival of Literature<\/a>, Galway on April 24th. He\u2019ll also be at Listowel Writers Week<\/a> in June. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neil Jordan looks well. He leans in to catch the odd missed word, but, , now 76, he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[218,46,615,16089,93,61,60,7727,42229,14169,976],"class_list":["post-347388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cork","tag-dublin","tag-dun-laoghaire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kerry","tag-neil-jordan","tag-sligo","tag-weekendreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}