Director Neil Jordan and actor Cillian Murphy were interviewed about their film Breakfast on Pluto at the National Film Theatre on 9 January 2006 by Leslie Felperin.

Leslie Felperin: Thank you everyone for coming down.. There was supposed to be a terrible tube strike and we were worried it might affect everybody, but I can see it's had no effect whatsoever. I'm delighted you all made it. My name's Leslie Felperin. I'll be doing the Q&A after the show with Cillian Murphy and Neil Jordan, but first of all I just wanted to say thank you once again for coming, thank you very much to Pathé films who have kindly given us the print of the film to watch tonight and I want to welcome on stage an extra guest, Alan Moloney, the producer of the film who also wants to say a few words.[applause]

Alan Moloney: Thank you very much. Obviously Neil and Cillian, who are much more interesting than me, will be here later. So please stay because Pathé had to pay for the plane tickets. We shot this film the end of the autumn before last. So it's nearly eighteen months. And it was one of those fast and furious productions that just happen because of windows of availabilities and the like and it was like a whirlwind. And I think the film is like a whirlwind. It's one of Mr Jordan's ... I think, you know, it's up there. I think it's an extraordinary piece of work. I think it breaks new ground and takes us to a new place, certainly for Irish cinema. So enjoy the evening and please stay on later. Thank you very much. [applause]

LF: Thanks very much. You'll enjoy this.
[screening]

LF: So thank you all for staying. I can tell by that enthusiasm that you enjoyed the film. We're going to have to—just because of timing—to keep this fairly lean. I will be opening up to questions at the end but I'm going to start off and monopolise it for the first fifteen minutes or so. This is such a classic question to ask but I think it's always a relevant one. This is the second film you've made, Neil, based on a Patrick McCabe novel. Did it seem like an obvious lock or were there elements in this particular novel that you were really drawn to that you felt needed to be translated to the screen. And how close is it to the book?

Neil Jordan: Okay. It's... you're talking about The Butcher Boy [1997] and this.

LF: Yes.

NJ: The Butcher Boy was such a tight and complete book that I kind of tried to make the film fit the book like a glove, in a way, but this was much more—I suppose the word is—picaresque, isn't it? It was open-ended. And the novel that Pat wrote was ... it had this beautifully fractured feeling to it, you know. I had the feeling and I said to him—when I asked him to ... when I bought the rights to the novel—I had the feeling that he'd kind of not finished certain themes in the novel. For example, in the novel the whole thing ... the search for the mother is never concluded, he never meets his mother in London. There's no ongoing relationship with his father, there's ... I mean there's an enormous amount of things that are different. So I just said to Pat when we agreed to try and make a movie out of it, I said, "Look, let's try and finish a lot of the themes that you've kind of developed in your book really and let's just see where they lead, lets go on a journey with your novel and see, even if the film goes on a different path to the novel, let's see where it leads us." And he was a happy collaborator in that enterprise, put it that way.

LF: And as I understand, you first optioned the rights to the book sometime ago, about three or four years ago and the project came about then. That's when Cillian originally read for it but there was a little bit of a delay ...

NJ: When the book came out I bought the rights to it and I was ... I wasn't even sure I was going to direct it myself at the start, you know. I was kind of worried about returning to issues of political violence again because I've dealt with them before and it can be slightly ... it can put you in a very uncomfortable place if you're dealing with—in films—issues that are about deep discomfort to people in general, you know. So it took me a long time to get my head into the place to eventually say "let's make the film." But one of the first things I did was ... when Pat had finished a draft and I rewrote a draft and we were happy with it, I said, "Okay, let's see, can anyone play this character" because the character was kind of alive, you know, the character was driving the narrative or whatever the movie was intending to do with the book, kind of thing.
So we tested several young Irish actors, none of whom I'll mention except Cillian—because that would be unfair—and built a tiny little set in Dublin and Cillian gave this amazing performance. And I suddenly thought "okay, there is a real beating heart to this character, you know, there's not just a lot of gestures, there's an emotional centre to it that is extraordinary" and it went on from there. Then I produced a movie that Cillian was in with Alan Moloney, the producer of this, called Intermission [2003] and Cillian kept saying to me "when are you going to make this film? When are you going to make this film? When are you going to make this film?" and eventually I said "okay, let's go and do it."

LF: And Cillian, what was it about the character that gripped you so much that you kept nagging him about it and wanting to keep doing it?

Cillian Murphy: Well, I was a fan of Pat McCabe's novels. I remember reading the book when it came out The Butcher Boy, the film adaptation, is still one of my top five movies of all time ... I'll not tell you what number, you know, but it was one my top five. And so when I heard they were going to make an adaptation of it, obviously I wanted to be in it. I wanted to get a shot ... well, at least audition for it. What was the question again?

LF: What did you like about the character?

CM: Just from reading the book it was just extraordinary and I fell in love with the character. I think most people who've read the book kind of fall in love with the character because Pat McCabe does such a wonderful job in creating this... you want to give her a big hug when you read the book and hopefully that transposes to the screen. And the idea of working with Neil—for anyone in Ireland involved in the arts—that's a massive ... just the chance to work with Neil would be amazing for any actor and it's all those things combined made me interested in it, you know.

LF: I mean, I think the typical question people usually ask when someone's playing a transvestite character is—you know, a man—is what's it like working in high heels? But let's not dwell on that. What I think is really extraordinary about the film is that there's so much voice-over in it and you talk a lot ... the voice is amazing in it. Did you do a lot of work on that together? Did you have to find the voice for the character to make Kitten come alive?

CM: I don't know, we kind of ... I think we—from when I did the screen test for Neil—I think we kind of realised that we could do the physical side of it if you get a sympathetic cameraman and you get a good make-up artist that you can kind of pull off the kind of physical side of it but if you don't hang that on a character that's believable and that's something that the audience can invest in then there's not much to it, you know. So the main thing was to make a character that was believable and it had to be organic, it wasn't like ... there's a long history of men dressing as women in film, you know, and so we just worked at it, I think. And I very much wanted the character not to have an "on" and an "off." That Kitten was just Kitten, all the time. And I suppose the voice just came organically, you know. I worked on it for a while on my own, then I brought it to Neil and then we worked on it some more and it sort of arrived, really.

LF: Doing period is always expensive, Neil, and we were just talking before those credits were rolling ... great soundtrack—that must have cost a bit—but were there particular things you wanted to get right about the period it's set in?

NJ: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you'll all have noticed, I'm sure, that some of the tube stations are not correct. Buttons, you know, don't ... it was a very difficult film to do it that way because it was quite large and it was quite ... as you see it's not "cutty," I don't know how to describe it but there's a kind of a finished sense to the shots and the camerawork and to this ... because I suppose it needed a sense of almost circus or carnival-esque thing that needed to be quite large. And I was very anxious to recreate the experience of a young man coming to London, really, you know. And we only shot in London for—what was it, ten days or six days or something? I think we just got a bit lucky, you know, with ... a lot—sorry, I'm not being very articulate, am I?
For me there was something about this character that ... it brought together a lot of things that I'd dealt with in other movies and it kind of added a sweetness to them and a sense of forgiveness somehow, you know. Because a lot of the times I've dealt with say, things like political violence and I suppose they've been harsh, tragic kind of movies but I really love the sweetness that this character brought to a lot of issues that ... I'm now 56 or something like that and I was the age of that character when he was going through these events and stuff like that. And so I could put a lot of specific memories I had myself, into the elaboration of the scenes and the images and things like that but, it was difficult because there were some things we couldn't afford, like we just couldn't afford to recreate a tube for the period and stuff like that so we had to mess around with the colours at points and I suppose, I don't know, there's a present/past thing came into it in a way.
But it was ... I mean, a film like this is a film that's driven by a sense of character. It's not driven by plot, you know. It's driven by a series of events that happen to the central character and everything is seen through the central character's eyes, you know. So it was a matter of trying to make that character as real as possible and trying to make the environments around feel as if they were kind of remembered ones.

LF: Did you have a lot of time to rehearse, to sort of live with the character, Cillian?

CM: I spent ... well, I was just actually getting married before I went to play the role, which was slightly confusing, I suppose, in some ways. So I spent some time away on my own and listened to a lot of the music of the era. I remember asking Neil "what should I do to prepare?" and he was like "go and just treat yourself like a lady, go and get some facials and manicures, whatever, pedicures, all that sort of stuff and I did. I listened to a lot of the music and I listened to Pat McCabe who had done a taped version of the book. So I listened to that a lot to get the accent. I used the book a lot as a template because there's a lot of stuff from the book that doesn't appear in the film, obviously because you're making it for cinema, but I wanted to have all the experiences that Kitten had from the book in my head. And then after I came back from getting married we rehearsed stuff and did camera tests and there were certain things that didn't work and certain things that did, like Neil very quickly realised that maybe the character shouldn't smoke because, even though everyone smoked then ... but if you bring your hand up to your face all the time it accentuates the masculine, you know, male hands."

LF: And smudges the lipstick as well.

CM: I guess so, yes, so we didn't do that. Like Neil, he could see all that stuff very quickly so you eliminate stuff and see that stuff works like curly hair is more flattering or framing to a face than straight hair, stuff like that.

LF: Softening.

CM: Yeah, all that and it's Marc Bolan-esque and all those sorts of things. There's elimination and seeing ... certain costumes worked and certain ... we worked with Declan Quinn ... certain lighting worked and certain lighting set-ups didn't work.

LF: There's a lot of familiar faces from some of your films here: Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson, and Brendan Gleeson and others. Does that create a kind of comfort zone for you, or is it just that they're the best actors for the jobs?

NJ: Well, it's not so ... they are all Irish for one thing, yes, so ... it's not so much comfort as ... it's just the structure of the script made it possible for actors like Stephen and Brendan and Liam and even Bryan Ferry to actually visit us for about ... in some cases it was only three or four days, in Bryan's case it was only 24 hours, you know, in Liam's case it was, what, ten days, was it? And because it had this episodic structure—Brendan did his scenes, I think, in about three days—it was possible to get actors like that really. And I'd worked with them all before, of course, and because I'd worked with them before it was possible for us to you know, arrive at a sense of what the characters were about very, very quickly. Did we sit down and have rehearsals with everybody? I don't think so, did we?

CM: We read it through, yes.

NJ: But with Brendan and everybody?

CM: I think we did.

NJ: Yeah, we did, probably, okay, I'm not a great rehearser, you know, I'm not great at rehearsing things because I think it only becomes alive ... the whole texture of the film and even the character, really, Cillian's character, comes alive when you're choosing the kind of costumes that they ... you know, when you put on a ... one of those clingy tops, you know, that could be male or female of the period, that's when you begin to feel the fabric of the person and that's the way I try to work.

LF: You talked a little bit just before about how you've dealt with issues of political violence in the past. Do you think now is the time, that it's possible to make almost, a romantic film which touches on those issues? Do you think things have moved on enough now that the reaction will be quite different to it?

NJ: You mean in terms of Irish politics and British politics and stuff like that?

LF: Yes.

NJ: I mean to me there's a central point in the movie where he's arrested ... where that bomb blows up in the discotheque, yeah? And where he's arrested ... he's beaten up by Ian Hart and he goes through kind of an extraordinary transformation. And it kind of goes from savagery to farce ... to humour in the end, I suppose, really. But to me that was ... I wanted that to embody all the absurdities of the Irish/British relationship and all its kind of mutual attractions and mutual misunderstandings and kind of ... that's where I was coming from, anyway and it's ... sorry I've forgotten the question again, what was it?

LF: My questions are very memorable tonight. It's alright, just keep ...

NJ: Just remind me.

LF: No, did you feel the time had changed, you know, now that there's been ceasefire for long enough and ...

NJ: No, that's why I wanted to make the film, that's what decided me to make the film in the end because the character was so redemptive and so simple, you know. It was so... it had ... the character had the naïveté of a child and refused to let that go, you know, refused to let that sense of innocent response go. And I suppose it's ... there's ... to me there was something heroic about that, you know what I mean? And there was something in the end very triumphant and redemptive about it. I suppose I could only have made a film like that when, you know, when Gerry Adams has stood down his awful army, you know, and when all that stuff has stopped.
I mean, there was one sequence ... we were shooting the sequence where Cillian, you know, obliterates that terrorist cell with his perfume spray. And we did shoot that in Kremlin Road jail, you know, and the jail is now the Northern Irish Heritage Office, God help them, are trying to turn it into a heritage site—and it's run by a nice woman called Deborah and a lot of the people who were the extras were kind of ex-Republicans. And I just thought something has definitely changed because we're doing this absurd thing in the middle of this ... you know, people who used to be so mutually antagonistic and they're all now trying to get this little piece of absurdity on screen. [laughter] So that made me think something had changed, yes.

LF: And the ground has sort of shifted and stuff, yes. Cillian, for you, someone who grew up in Cork, did you do a lot of research to get the accent right for a border town as well? Did that have a lot of significance for you too?

CM: Well, I suppose, like you said, I listened to Pat's recording of the—what do you call those things where artists read their novels?

LF: Audio books.

CM: Audio books, there you go, I listened to that a lot. But, you know, we also talked about this—myself and Neil—like the character would not have had a very strong Northern accent or border town accent because she had aspirations to greater things, you know, and was listening to a lot of music from America and London and stuff. But it was important to place it, yeah, but ...

LF: Okay, I think at this point I'm going to throw it up to the audience. Don't be shy ... lots of shuffling ... the lady there?
Audience member: I haven't seen all your films but the few I have, you always seem to feel the transgender in one way or another in ... starting from Mona Lisa [1986], yes? So I would like to invite you to talk about that.

NJ: Well, yeah, in Mona Lisa, yeah, yeah, okay ... it's to do, to me it's to do with the nature of desire, you know, and identity, I think, in a way. I mean Mona Lisa was about a man who wanted ... who thought a woman was one thing and she turned out ... who thought he desired this person and he finds out actually that what she desires is something totally different from what he desires. Not too difficult a story, really, but it was difficult for Bob Hoskins at the time, wasn't it? Because he didn't get it until the end, you know. But I'm attracted to the ... because I never ... I always think that what we desire sexually or emotionally or erotically is never what the desired object is really about, you know? So that's why. Remember that Woody Allen movie where Gene Wilder fell in love with the sheep? The psychiatrist was in the hotel room and he was ordering grass and stuff like that, but it's ... I know it sounds kind of stupid but that kind of ... okay, let me start again ...
Specifically in terms of this movie and I suppose The Crying Game [1992], if you're dealing with a country like Ireland, you know, where everything is about identity, yeah? And it even goes down to the minutiae of where, I suppose like, perhaps like England too but in particular in terms of Irish arguments, they have been about identity—is your identity a Nationalist? Is it a Catholic? Is it a Unionist? Is it a Revisionist?—there's so many ways in which you are defined. So if you choose a character like Patrick, the character Cillian plays, who says that identity is a matter of choice, that's a... kind of an act of freedom, isn't it, really? That's why The Crying Game also was about ... somebody who was so heavily defined as Stephen Rea's character who was a Republican Nationalist White Catholic activist figure falling in love with this person who turns out to be ... their actual identity is actually a constructed thing, you know, it's ... for me it's a way, I suppose, of questioning the wars of identity I grew up in, really, in a way.
Audience member: Kitten is very sure of her sexual identity ... when most people were unsure ... especially in a small town in Ireland. Would that actually reflect reality in a way?

NJ: Well, I think it would, yeah, especially in terms of this character. That's what I loved about the character actually, you know, there was absolutely no question about his erotic nature, you know? And I've known people like that, you know? I've known kids at the age of six who are resolutely gay, you know? The movie was not about the quest for one's own sexuality, you know, the movie actually was about a character preserving themself and it was about a character actually preserving their sense of themselves and, in a strange way, about preserving their innocence, you know? I found that refreshing and I know it is unusual but it was ... everything was androgynous then, you know, in the 70s, and it was kind of ... before the definition of "gayness" became a definition that people would identify with, in a way, I think. You know, Marc Bolan, you didn't know whether he was a man or a woman, did you? David Bowie, you know. It was before Freddie Mercury, let me put it that way, okay? [laughter]

LF: Another question? Just up there.
Audience member: What made you decide to cast Bryan Ferry?

NJ: It was very simple. I mean it was a tiny little role. His actual name in the novel was Mr. Silky String. That was the name Kitten gave the character and I was chatting with Susie Figgis, the casting director, and—okay, it's a tiny role that could be played by an elegant, rather silken-voiced, sinister British actor, of whom I can think of many, actually, I'm sure you all could think of many—and, I suppose it was just because of the music of the period, I just said to Susie one day "well what about Bryan Ferry, you know, wouldn't he be interesting?" Because remembering those videos where he wore the white dinner jacket and all that sort of stuff ... Susie ... we got in contact with Bryan. He liked the idea, we did a little test with him and he turned out to be really good. I think it was interesting casting Brian, because, actually, when you see him at the start you don't quite know who he is, do you? Whereas if it had been Charles Dance or Jeremy Irons or someone like that, you know, you would have kind of known exactly what was coming, in a way, wouldn't you, I think? [laughter] Sorry, I don't mean to be ... but with Bryan you say "who is this guy, I kind of half recognise him." It's kind of creepy.

LF: Was it similar, not creepy necessarily, but was it similar with Gavin Friday, the ...?

NJ: Ah, no Gavin Friday, he's kind of an Irish musical icon, really. You probably don't ... I don't know if you all know his musical work but that was quite simple. We needed somebody who could front a glam rock band, you know, so I had to cast a singer there. It was either Gavin or Bono. [laughter] I did a test with Gavin, he was amazing, so I forgot about Bono then.

LF: How was Bono's test?

NJ: No, I just needed to test Gavin.

LF: Okay?
Audience member: Could you tell us a bit more about the choice of music and when you started. I think it's an incredible soundtrack ... a very provocative thing to say but it just basically came alive ... maybe it's nostalgia on my part, but could you just tell us something about that process?

NJ: Okay, the thing is that I was a musical snob, you know, because I used to play jazz and I used to play classical music, and the first time I heard Elton John sing I stopped listening to popular music. It's a terrible thing to ... maybe I shouldn't say this now [laughter]—I'm getting myself into deep trouble here. But when ... so that from 1972, around '72, I kind of was listening to Stockhausen and stuff like that but when I went back to listen to all that stuff it was so emotionally powerful, and half of it I hadn't ... I just kind of half remembered, you know? It just amazed me at how emotional even the dumb chart music was at the time. And I just got obsessed with that fact because there's a lack of ... there's so much lack of emotion in popular music at the moment. And I just began to wallow in it, I suppose, and choose ... obviously we couldn't choose ... there was a Beatles song I would have loved to have used—a John Lennon song "Across the Universe," I would really liked to have used that because it seemed to express what the character, particularly the London suburban aspect of the character, you know ...
So on the one hand we couldn't afford any of the iconic tunes and on the other hand I had to try and get into Kitten's brain, you know, because she really wanted to live in the lyrics of a popular song and a particularly emotionally fulfilling one or schmaltzy one, you know? I just began to listen to all the kind of non-iconic stuff and it was ... it became like a search for innocence, in a way, through a lot of the music that one would have forgotten. And it was also a matter of finding a voice that actually, in a strange way, matched the pitch of Cillian's voice. So when I began to listen to the Harry Nilsson songs ... he has this almost this lovely boy soprano thing and it absolutely kind of expressed ... just somehow the emotional colours of the film. So it was a matter of just finding and finding and finding and listening and playing things against the film and stuff like that, you know.

LF: The Bobby Goldsboro track is particularly effective.

NJ: That was part of the novel, the Bobby Goldsboro track, yeah.

LF: Were the rights expensive to it?

NJ: Not for that, no, not too bad. The most expensive track there is the Buffalo Springfield track, you know, which is probably because it's been used in other movies, for what it's worth ... that's your ...

LF: Did it help you get in the mood, Cillian, to have the songs being played on playback on set?

CM: Yeah, well we listened ... a lot of my favourite music is from that era, not necessarily the more saccharine, cheesy stuff which was in the movie, but a lot of the music that I like. But Kitten attaches a lot of importance to all that stuff for the reasons that Neil has just outlined. So we had it playing in the make-up bus, we had it playing the whole time, we were very much immersed in it, you know?

LF: Okay, just up there?
Audience member: Hi, I was just wondering what you both thought about the fact that mainstream cinema seems to be dealing more and more with gay issues like Capote [2005] and Brokeback Mountain [2005], and even in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang [2005], Val Kilmer plays a gay man. Do you think it's a liberalising of Hollywood or do you think it's just a bad ... blip?

NJ: Is that to me or to Cillian?
Audience member: Both.

NJ: Both.

CM: I don't know, really. I think it's probably just coincidental really, just because they're good stories. And if you think about it ... like they all come from novels, which I thought was quite interesting, like Brokeback Mountain is an amazing novella that I read years ago, just really strong ... and sexuality was kind of peripheral really, as is when I read Breakfast on Pluto again, the character is gay but it's not the most important aspect of the novel. And in Capote, I suppose, it's about In Cold Blood isn't it? I haven't seen the movie but it's about how he wrote In Cold Blood. So I think it's probably just coincidental. It's a very healthy thing, I think, that Hollywood embracing all that, you know, that people's sexual orientation is probably the least interesting thing.

NJ: There is a thing going on ... sorry for me interrupting you there.

CM: That's alright, you're the director. [laughter]

NJ: No, there is a thing going on there. In America at the moment there's this ... it's almost like living here under Thatcher, so any movie that you make that has any kind of alternative spin to it becomes a statement about Bush's America, you know, that kind of thing. I remember during the Thatcher years, any movie you made, even me as an Irish guy, any movie I made became a searing indictment of Thatcherite Britain, you know? [laughter] No, there is this culture war thing going on so that's why these movies, I think, have been shoved together.

LF: Go ahead.
Audience member: Until today my favourite film was Michael Collins [1996], before that my favourite film was The Crying Game. Two of the main issues of my life have been Ireland and transsexualism. All I can say is this film now kind of has coalesced lots and lots of things that really mean a lot to me and I just thought ... what can I say ... thank you.

NJ: Okay, thank you very much, thank you.

CM: That's nice.

NJ: Thank you. [applause]

LF: At the back there, yeah, you?
Audience member: inaudible]

CM: Yeah, it is, it is ... [laughter] But I've said this before, that like if you don't ... they're the kind of parts you have to fight for, really. I feel like I'm kind of repeating myself with these questions, but if you don't feel scared about what you're about to do then it's not worth it. If you feel you can do it, then it's not really worth it. I was terrified all the way through this ... I still am about it, you know, but I'm very, very proud of it and fell in love with the character so much. But yeah it's scary, but that's the thing that makes it so appealing, I guess.
Audience member: Can I ask this question to Cillian: when you finished filming did you really miss the character?

CM: Yes, big time. I fell deeply in love with the character, you know, and all the way through filming ... I guess you don't realise how much you're involved in the character until you leave it, and I loved all the girly parts of it like [laughter] I really did, and it was such a beautiful character. When you read the book and then all the way through filming it, because she's so fundamentally good, really, I mean all she wants to do is to be loved and look pretty and then that ... there really does ... the demands aren't that, so I do think about Kitten a lot, yeah.

LF: Do you still keep up the facials?

CM: No, I do scrubs. [laughter]

LF: Scrubs. Good choice. The lady there?
Audience member: Did you stay in the character all the time you were doing the ... film or did you find you were jumping out of character all the time?

CM: No, I think because of the ... I don't know ... there was ... you're "on" all the time, so you're in the character all the time, so there's very little time. You go from set to home to set so, you're pretty much in the character all the time, so you don't have much time "off." And like I said you were listening to music all the time and I was reading books about it and reading magazines about it so ... but it's not a conscious effort to remain in character, I think, but it helps when you're "on" all the time... I don't know what I'm talking about really, but it just helped.

LF: How long was the shoot? Just sheer numbers of weeks or days to make it?

NJ: I think it was about seven weeks, was it? More? Eight weeks maybe? There wasn't an enormous amount of money so it was quite hectic, which was a help really because, as a director, you just had to say "this is what "we're doing" and "it will have to work in this shot," "we'll have to make it work in this..." So it kind of, for me, it enabled me to make it graphically exact.

LF: Well, it's testament to Alan that it looks ... on screen it looks really great.

NJ: Yes, I think so.

LF: I'll take just two more questions, I feel like being nice to people at the back because they never get ... just up there?
Audience member: I just wanted to ask the director whether there was much left out? Did you shoot much that got left out? And ask Cillian whether this has encouraged you to play unusual parts?

NJ: Okay, we didn't ... there was some stuff left out. It was mainly to do with the children, you know, and Seamus, the Down's syndrome boy who played the character Lawrence, you know, because when you're shooting with kids it becomes very fractured and very on the spot, in a way. But of the stuff that involved Cillian, there was very, very little that was left out, I think.

CM: I mean, this for me, this role was the cliché of the role of a lifetime sort of thing. And to work with Neil, and I mean all of this sincerely, was one of the most creative times of my life, working on this role. And I'll quite happily blow things up in other films if there's ... what am I talking about? I'm not quite sure. [laughter] But no, I mean, to transform roles like this, it's obviously wonderful and to work with Neil Jordan is a big thing for any actor so I was thrilled, yeah.

LF: Okay, another person at the back there, yeah you.
Audience member: Could you tell us a bit about the storyline of the priest and how it differs from the book?

NJ: Okay, that was one of the first ... when Pat began to depart from his novel, that was one of the first departures he made, where Patrick came back to Ireland and his father had invited Charlie into the Presbytery. And I just thought that's really interesting, you know? I thought suddenly this is coming into interesting territory. The situation for me of a priest who, to become a good person, or almost to become a Christian, you know, had to renounce his public position of being a priest, do you understand what I mean? It was very interesting to me. It was about a priest finding a way to be good, in a way, which sounds like a paradox but it's ... And the fact that when he does act like a charitable human being and actually embraces his son and his son's friend who is pregnant, and the village burn him out, I think it's probably as true a statement on Catholic Ireland at the time as anything else could be because the monotheistic culture was created by the people as well as everything else. That was my perspective on it, you know.

LF: Just one more? Someone enthusiastic here.
Audience member: There's so much of the film that looks like it's kind of black and white ... the Irish view ... the relations ... in the 70s ... Kitten's sexuality ... do you think this film could have been set in any other time or place other than London and Ireland?

NJ: No, I don't think it could have been. No, no. I mean, actually that's a reflection of what it was like going from an Irish environment to London at the time, you know? Actually this city was the great escape for people like me, you know, and it was ... you know, the culture, particularly the musical culture at the time here was extraordinary. It was dominating the entire world. It was like coming to a wonderland of freedom, and freedom of choice. And actually, if you look at the options facing Charlie , you know—the central character—she gets pregnant, if she wants to have an abortion she has to come to England, yeah? She decides not to for whatever reason. If she wants to have her child, she still has to come to England. You know what I mean, so both options were perhaps ... if she wants to have a child and keep her child, let's put it that way, she has to come to Britain, you know. So the, I suppose, I don't mean to be too harsh on my own country, but it was a movement from kind of greyness—I wouldn't say black and white, I'd say green and black more—to kind of yellows and purples and pinks, to day-glow kind of colours.

LF: Okay, I think that's about it really. I'm going to say thank you. I think it's a wonderful movie, please go and tell your friends how much you enjoyed it because it is great, and it's just delicious and wonderful, you've both done a magnificent job, and thank you so much for coming out tonight, it's been great.

NJ: Thank you very much.

CM: Thank you.