By Leonard Klady Klady@moviecitynews.com
Leonard Klady Remembers Dan Ireland
The news of Dan Ireland’s death is about as tough as it gets.
My friendship with him goes back a long time, to the days when he ran the Seattle Film Festival with Darryl Macdonald. He was the dynamo of the duo. Dan would bounce off the wall with ideas, and that was part of the reason the event was so much fun. He had a keen appreciation that he was putting on a show, as well as introducing audiences to new ideas in cinema.
His and Darryl’s ferocity at finding new talent was legendary. It was a time when film festivals played a significant role in getting unknown filmmakers in the door.
It was a surprise when I learned that he was leaving Seattle back in the mid-1980s to become a production executive at Vestron, home of Dirty Dancing and a lot of cheesy movies that have faded.
We had lunch in Los Angeles shortly after he arrived. We talked shop and I gave him cautionary notes on what this evil town might have in store for him. He probably didn’t have a keen sense of what he was getting into, but that didn’t matter because whatever roadblocks lay ahead were no match for his unbridled enthusiasm.
As a movie exec he would go on to champion new talents as well as such old lions as Ken Russell and John Huston. My wife got to know him as a suit when she worked for Huston on The Dead. I wasn’t surprised when she told me that Dan was attentive, supportive, accommodating and all those things you want from head office and rarely receive. And on top of those things he was smart and funny.
A decade later he decided he wanted to be a film director. The first film was The Whole Wide World (1996), a view askew of writer Robert Howard and his relationship with a young schoolteacher in a dustbowl Texas town in the 1930s. If you knew Dan, you had to wonder what in the whole wide world does he know about Depression era Texas … even if his characters were eccentrics.
I saw the film at Sundance and couldn’t have been more delighted. It was a stunning debut and we got together the following day. He brought along Vince D’Onofrio but his female find Renee Zellweger couldn’t attend because of a work conflict. Regardless it was a charged meal, as my enthusiasm for what he’d achieved came close to his passion for this new act in his life. There was no doubt that he’d meticulously thought out every aspect of production and sought out all the talent he’d nurtured over the years to give him advice, assistance and adrenalin.
In addition to Ms. Zellweger there were other significant young actors that owe him a big debt for advancing their careers, not limited to Jessica Chastain and Emmy Rossum. The handful of features he made were always first class, although commercially they fell in the category of success d’estime. It’s disappointing that someone with some clout didn’t have Dan Ireland’s sense of talent and offer him the sort of film that would have pushed him to the next level.
There were a couple of projects he had in the works that sounded promising in the past year that evaporated. I was excited and I’m sure he was pushing ahead with his usual vigor. I’d wanted him to do my radio show on the BBC, but never heard back from him.
It goes without saying he was far too young to leave this mortal coil. The obituaries didn’t give a cause of death but he had to be gravely ill. There’s no other explanation that makes sense; his boundless energy and upbeat attitude ought to have been sufficient to overcome whatever trivial bumps he encountered along the path of life.
Dan Ireland’s death leaves a gaping hole in my life that won’t be filled. He touched a lot of people in the course of his life and work and tears simply do not suffice for his absence.
