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By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 - Comments Off on The Long Good Friday is 25: John Mackenzie recollects
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The Long Good Friday is 25: John Mackenzie recollects

lg.jpgNoting its 25th anniversary, the gangster great The Long Good Friday gets a chat-up in Time Out London with director John Mackenzie and Chris Tilly. Why does it hold up? “The plans [for the redevelopment of Canary Wharf] had been around for several years before we started work on the film,” Mackenzie says. “There was a lot of building going on around the dock before 1981 with various big firms involved, so we knew quite a lot about what was proposed. London had essentially been a port and we regretted that all that had gone and it felt like a total area of neglect. The writer Barry Keefe, Bob and myself were very aware that there was going to be huge exploitation and that everyone was going to try to get rich quick… I think [gang boss] Harold [Shand, played by Bob Hoskins] would have liked how it’s turned out. I think he would have been delighted, because it has flourished – it’s a whole new extension of London. The high-rise buildings and skyscrapers make the whole place come alive and Harry would have been at the heart of that. Of course, he also would have been the biggest exploiter of them all.// When they got the final product, the producers were very uncertain about it. I’d built up the IRA a lot from what was originally in the script, because I wanted this theme of terrorism versus the state. But the Grade organisation didn’t really want to put it out as a feature film. They wanted to take out all the ‘offensive’ bits that they thought were there, all the – in their opinion – unpatriotic stuff about the IRA, and put it out as a simple television film. That argument went on for two years… I certainly didn’t think it was going to become a legend or a cult film like it has. I think the reason is a combination of things. The idea of the classic gangster was important… so I wanted Harry Shand to be like that. People are never totally one-sided; even the worst villains in the world have certain qualities that are liked, and Bob had the personality and humour to pull it off… I also think it’s to do with the diversity of themes that are in the film. There’s terrorism, religion, corruption… The one that instantly emerged and stood out was the terrorist theme: how can you ever fight a war against terror? We’re still asking that question and I still think you can’t. But I think all those themes will keep the film interesting and fresh for other generations.” [Among the DVD editions, there’s a bare-bones Criterion and shortly, a 25th anniversary UK release.]

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon