:00:00. > :00:21.Neil Jordan is a storyteller, equally at home on the cinema screen
:00:22. > :00:25.His thriller, The Dran Detective, has all the ingredients of a movie.
:00:26. > :00:28.A fast-moving plot, a cast of dark and intriguing characters,
:00:29. > :00:30.a setting that disturbs you from the very first page.
:00:31. > :00:32.All of that and a strong whiff of the surreal,
:00:33. > :00:35.and you realise in this story that you are in the hands
:00:36. > :00:53.Neal, it's inescapable that you're a writer who straddles two worlds.
:00:54. > :00:56.When you're writing fiction, putting a story on the page,
:00:57. > :01:00.do you imagine yourself being behind a camera?
:01:01. > :01:08.In a strange way, it's a very lonely pursuit,
:01:09. > :01:13.In a strange way, you can be as alone on a set with 300
:01:14. > :01:17.To directe a movie correctly or to see it correctly,
:01:18. > :01:20.you kind of have to place yourself in a very isolated position.
:01:21. > :01:24.Otherwise, you are influenced by everybody and the media
:01:25. > :01:35.So, the loneliness of the writer is, in your view, essential, really?
:01:36. > :01:38.It's also accentuated by the position of the director.
:01:39. > :01:40.There is nothing as strange as being asked 25 different
:01:41. > :01:45.You are far better off to keep yourself in an isolated place
:01:46. > :01:48.and keep your brain clear and to see things as clear as possible.
:01:49. > :01:51.In a sense, you have that magic eye which is on this unit.
:01:52. > :01:54.You can move around the room, you see the room, you see
:01:55. > :01:57.the street, you see the bridge where at one point in the story
:01:58. > :02:00.a girl is apparently going to jump into the river.
:02:01. > :02:09.That's where I started making movies in the end because I was writing
:02:10. > :02:16.I started with a book of stories and over at a novel called The Past,
:02:17. > :02:17.which was entirely based around a photographer.
:02:18. > :02:30.I realised everything I was writing was basically to do with visual
:02:31. > :02:32.Sometimes when people describe novels is very imagistic,
:02:33. > :02:34.it seems to me to be a slight criticism.
:02:35. > :02:39.That is the kind of being I am and there is no point in resisting.
:02:40. > :02:42.We talk about images, but we can also talk about language.
:02:43. > :02:44.Crispness of the dialogue and the speed of the dialogue
:02:45. > :02:47.in this book is one of the things that will strike anybody.
:02:48. > :02:50.Writing novels is about having an ear for speech, in the end.
:02:51. > :02:53.It's a weird thing, it's kind of a knack.
:02:54. > :02:56.It's the one thing I most love to you, is to write dialogue,
:02:57. > :02:59.and I most love to write dialogue that doesn't say
:03:00. > :03:10.People very rarely say what they think.
:03:11. > :03:16.Even when I'm going through screenplay, sometimes,
:03:17. > :03:19.and people say, "Why don't they say, I want to get back to my wife?"
:03:20. > :03:22.That's the last thing you say in those circumstances.
:03:23. > :03:33.The fun or the beauty of dialogue is that it is elusive and bleak.
:03:34. > :03:48.The world in which Jonathan, your hero, the detective,
:03:49. > :03:50.former special forces man, the world in which she moves
:03:51. > :03:54.One world fell apart in Eastern Europe in 1989, 19 90.
:03:55. > :03:56.The world that we see here is one that hasn't yet been
:03:57. > :04:01.In Europe at the moment, you do feel whatever structures
:04:02. > :04:03.are holding the societal agreements to gather our collapsing
:04:04. > :04:07.This is not about Baghdad, Syria, anything like that.
:04:08. > :04:09.But it is about a place where certainties are collapsing
:04:10. > :04:21.and ancient legions rise to the surface.
:04:22. > :04:23.Your central character Jonathan, and absorbing character,
:04:24. > :04:25.is somebody who can't put it own life together, either.
:04:26. > :04:28.Didn't you want to give a somebody who had hoped?
:04:29. > :04:45.It's a portrait of a marriage, as well as everything else,
:04:46. > :04:48.and a portrait of two people who have been together for 20 years
:04:49. > :04:51.This mysterious thing has vanished from their lives, which
:04:52. > :04:54.It's an experience that happens in every person around
:04:55. > :04:57.It happens in every marriage, every relationship and every human
:04:58. > :05:01.being wear whatever is that sap of urgency seems to have gone
:05:02. > :05:03.to somebody else or something like that.
:05:04. > :05:06.Eventually they leave the environment and they go
:05:07. > :05:08.back to the certainties of somewhere like Wimbledon.
:05:09. > :05:13.There is a wonderful undercurrent in here which bus through from time
:05:14. > :05:30.A psychic character with imaginary people coming to tea.
:05:31. > :05:33.Do you have the feeling that we've all got that sense of the mysterious
:05:34. > :05:51.I suppose that's why religions are there.
:05:52. > :05:54.I've always wanted to construct a mystery that ended up in the zone
:05:55. > :05:58.of irrationality where the central character, the Demons
:05:59. > :06:01.the protagonists are looking for beyond the grave in some way.
:06:02. > :06:09.It's also something to do with desire.
:06:10. > :06:11.I always feel eroticism and death are sometimes combined.
:06:12. > :06:16.I do want to get too complicated here.
:06:17. > :06:26.Essentially what the book is about, anyway.
:06:27. > :06:28.There's one wonderful character in here, well,
:06:29. > :06:32.But one particular character, Gertrude, his own incarnation
:06:33. > :06:33.of Marlene Deitrich with a Pomeranian.
:06:34. > :06:35.This, clearly, was a somebody you enjoyed creating,
:06:36. > :06:37.writing about, talking about, and bringing into the room.
:06:38. > :06:41.There is no basis in fact for this person.
:06:42. > :06:45.I began to enjoy her and I had this image of her sitting
:06:46. > :06:50.in her apartment dressed in a yellow morning rope sipping something that
:06:51. > :06:57.Are you the kind of writer who finds that a character wanders
:06:58. > :07:03.onto the stage almost unwritten, not fully formed, and you think
:07:04. > :07:16.Is that what she did? Yes, she came.
:07:17. > :07:19.That's the beauty of writing a book, as opposed to making a movie.
:07:20. > :07:22.If you came up with a concept like Gertrude in a film,
:07:23. > :07:28.or halfway through movie, or even as you're writing it,
:07:29. > :07:30.the producers or financiers are looking at it and they would
:07:31. > :07:33.question every aspect of that character.
:07:34. > :07:36.Whereas when I'm writing a book, I can say, I will see
:07:37. > :07:38.where she wants to go and what she wants to do.
:07:39. > :07:41.This strikes me as a story that could work on the screen.
:07:42. > :07:44.I always love that movie, Don't Look Now.
:07:45. > :07:54.It ends up in a similar terrain of the rational.
:07:55. > :08:01.I would like to make a movie of this book and Amazon have a film studio
:08:02. > :08:03.now and they have bought it and I am talking to them.
:08:04. > :08:07.I have never made a movie of the book I have written to date,
:08:08. > :08:11.Neil Jordan, thank you very much indeed.