Eighteen years after Interview with the Vampire, the great Irish storyteller Neil Jordan has raised the bloodsuckers from the dead again. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt have been replaced by Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan. “Byzantium is interesting because, for once, the women are not the prey, but the predators.”
The appearance of Neil Jordan (Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, Michael Collins) with a distinguished-looking walking cane at the Centre for Fine Arts, turned out to be down to a silly skiing accident. How prosaic. In our imagination he had borrowed it from a count friend of his in order to look more aristocratic. Or to strike back if the organisers of the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival went a bit too enthusiastically about dubbing him a Knight of the Order of the Raven. His latest film opened this year’s BIFFF in April and will be in the cinemas in late August. Byzantium is a cleverly directed film in which two pariah vampires fetch up in a run-down coastal town. Gemma Arterton from Quantum of Solace plays the mother; Saoirse Ronan from Atonement plays her daughter.
Eleanor, Saoirse Ronan’s character, writes a book that nobody reads...
Neil Jordan: That’s a problem we all know, right? [Laughs]
Sure. But I wanted to ask something else. You often use narrators. Are you fascinated by the art of story-telling?
Jordan: Yes, that does preoccupy me. My producer, Stephen Woolley, had asked Moira Buffini [Tamara Drewe’s screenwriter - NR] to recast her play Byzantium as a film screenplay. In that screenplay I kept coming across elements from my previous films: a young girl, someone who is trying to tell a story, the relationship between two sisters, a run-down holiday village, and vampires. To be honest, that last element was the one that least attracted me. When I had the scenario read by my colleagues, they thought I had written it myself. Maybe Buffini had been influenced by films of mine, such as Interview with the Vampire or The Company of Wolves.
Welcome back, count Jordan!
You find the vampires the least interesting aspect. Myself, I find female vampires who are not tolerated by the men a far from uninteresting line of inquiry.
Jordan: What makes Byzantium interesting is that the women are not the prey, but the predators. Predators who mainly hunt men. Clara uses her gifts as a vampire to wreak vengeance on the world because of what that world did to her as a prostitute. In that respect, Byzantium is a feminist parable, a feminist version of the vampire legend. In Interview with the Vampire, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt ate women for their breakfast, didn’t they? They locked them in coffins and drank their blood. They were clearly male, aristocratic predators. Clara and Eleanor are the opposite. They are the female version of Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Pointe du Lac. It is such a simple idea that you wonder why nobody came up with it before.
Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood: any idea why the bloodsucker has become so popular again?
Jordan: I don’t know. When Anne Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire, she took as her starting point a fairly cheap kind of horror and elevated it to something full of dread, with real emotions. She developed that over a series of books. If you ask me, modern vampire culture begins with Anne Rice. By the way, you forgot to mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I thought that series was good and clever. Every metaphor was turned upside down. Of the Twilight series, I’ve only seen the first film. I was on the point of filming The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Like Twilight, that book has a friendly vampire in it. But since when is the vampire friendly? That just won’t wash. They can’t be friendly.
Jordan: What makes Byzantium interesting is that the women are not the prey, but the predators. Predators who mainly hunt men. Clara uses her gifts as a vampire to wreak vengeance on the world because of what that world did to her as a prostitute. In that respect, Byzantium is a feminist parable, a feminist version of the vampire legend. In Interview with the Vampire, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt ate women for their breakfast, didn’t they? They locked them in coffins and drank their blood. They were clearly male, aristocratic predators. Clara and Eleanor are the opposite. They are the female version of Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Pointe du Lac. It is such a simple idea that you wonder why nobody came up with it before.
Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood: any idea why the bloodsucker has become so popular again?
Jordan: I don’t know. When Anne Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire, she took as her starting point a fairly cheap kind of horror and elevated it to something full of dread, with real emotions. She developed that over a series of books. If you ask me, modern vampire culture begins with Anne Rice. By the way, you forgot to mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I thought that series was good and clever. Every metaphor was turned upside down. Of the Twilight series, I’ve only seen the first film. I was on the point of filming The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Like Twilight, that book has a friendly vampire in it. But since when is the vampire friendly? That just won’t wash. They can’t be friendly.
But you deviate too. Aren’t vampires supposed to come from Transylvania?
Jordan: In Byzantium the people originally turned into vampires in Turkey. But I didn’t fancy that. So I went looking for Irish stories about vampires and the undead. I found hundreds. They crop up in a great many cultures. The Caribbean version isn’t bad. I actually found a number of versions at least as interesting as, if not more interesting than the Transylvanian Dracula business that is so popular.
Your charming fairy tale Ondine (2009) was about a mermaid or selkie. That’s another creature that comes up in a great many cultures. Do you have an explanation for that?
Jordan: No. But it doesn’t surprise me that fairy tales continue to be a source of inspiration for films and popular novels. They are so simple, but so universal. It is a difficult subject, as Hollywood has gone back to producing big fairy-tale films, but lots of them are dreadfully bad. I would really love to film Beauty and the Beast or The Princess and the Pea. I think the Walt Disney adaptations are really clever. His Snow White is terrifying. Although it’s true that many of the adaptations are a lot more respectable than the Grimm brothers’ tales. I made The Company of Wolves to reinstate the horror aspect of fairy tales.
You made a number of films about Irish politics, but your heart is with fantasy?
Jordan: I have made three films about Irish politics: Angel, The Crying Game, and Michael Collins. Each in its own way, they are about violence in Irish culture. I was born in 1950. When I was 20, things kicked off in Northern Ireland. Those films are my response to that situation. But apart from that, I have nothing to do with it. I think. I have also made romantic films that were offbeat: The End of the Affair, Mona Lisa... There was no need for any fantasy in them. But for one reason or another, I’m crazy about the crossover between reality and fantasy. I love films that show that there are darker elements present in the real world. Anyone who takes the trouble can see them.
Jordan: In Byzantium the people originally turned into vampires in Turkey. But I didn’t fancy that. So I went looking for Irish stories about vampires and the undead. I found hundreds. They crop up in a great many cultures. The Caribbean version isn’t bad. I actually found a number of versions at least as interesting as, if not more interesting than the Transylvanian Dracula business that is so popular.
Your charming fairy tale Ondine (2009) was about a mermaid or selkie. That’s another creature that comes up in a great many cultures. Do you have an explanation for that?
Jordan: No. But it doesn’t surprise me that fairy tales continue to be a source of inspiration for films and popular novels. They are so simple, but so universal. It is a difficult subject, as Hollywood has gone back to producing big fairy-tale films, but lots of them are dreadfully bad. I would really love to film Beauty and the Beast or The Princess and the Pea. I think the Walt Disney adaptations are really clever. His Snow White is terrifying. Although it’s true that many of the adaptations are a lot more respectable than the Grimm brothers’ tales. I made The Company of Wolves to reinstate the horror aspect of fairy tales.
You made a number of films about Irish politics, but your heart is with fantasy?
Jordan: I have made three films about Irish politics: Angel, The Crying Game, and Michael Collins. Each in its own way, they are about violence in Irish culture. I was born in 1950. When I was 20, things kicked off in Northern Ireland. Those films are my response to that situation. But apart from that, I have nothing to do with it. I think. I have also made romantic films that were offbeat: The End of the Affair, Mona Lisa... There was no need for any fantasy in them. But for one reason or another, I’m crazy about the crossover between reality and fantasy. I love films that show that there are darker elements present in the real world. Anyone who takes the trouble can see them.
The Borgias, your TV series about the notorious papal family, is a hit. There aren’t any fantasy elements in that. Although sometimes it looks like there are.
Jordan: Now and then the cardinals stride through the Vatican in their red clothes and then they look like the predecessors of the modern vampire. I was a choirboy when I was around nine or ten. That whole series is my response to that experience. The priestly vestments, the belief in God, the Pope, the Catholic hierarchy... The core of my story is simple: power cannot be exercised without religion being invoked as an excuse. Power uses religion. Religion gains power by feigning morality. George Bush didn’t say: “I want to attack Iraq.” He said: “God has told me to attack Iraq.” The invasion was the morally correct decision. Nobody says the truth: that they invade because they can.
UK, 2012, dir.: Neil Jordan, act.: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Sam Riley, 118 min.
Release: 28/8
Jordan: Now and then the cardinals stride through the Vatican in their red clothes and then they look like the predecessors of the modern vampire. I was a choirboy when I was around nine or ten. That whole series is my response to that experience. The priestly vestments, the belief in God, the Pope, the Catholic hierarchy... The core of my story is simple: power cannot be exercised without religion being invoked as an excuse. Power uses religion. Religion gains power by feigning morality. George Bush didn’t say: “I want to attack Iraq.” He said: “God has told me to attack Iraq.” The invasion was the morally correct decision. Nobody says the truth: that they invade because they can.
UK, 2012, dir.: Neil Jordan, act.: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Sam Riley, 118 min.
Release: 28/8
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