Legendary film director John Boorman has told RTÉ Entertainment that he has become a novelist at the age of 83 because he was bored with a non-fiction book he was trying to write about film-making.
The just-published Crime of Passion tells the story of Daniel Shaw, an acclaimed director who needs a hit to stay in the business. Together with his writer, Shaw comes up with a sexy and violent thriller - Crime of Passion - in a bid to hit pay dirt. As Shaw tries to secure financing, both he and his movie are changed in ways he didn't imagine.
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"I was asked to write a book about how you make a film - the techniques involved," longtime Wicklow resident Boorman explained. "I started working on it and I got bored with it because there are so many other elements other than the technology that come into the making of a film.
"So I decided to write the book about the making of a film that included the emotions of the characters involved. This process of how a film evolves and changes and becomes often something quite different from how you expected it to be is so fundamental to filmmaking that I thought I'd try to write a story about that."
In a bid to make Crime of Passion as realistic as possible, Boorman has included plenty of real-life people in the story. Among those who appear are Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, Quentin Tarantino and, ironically, Boorman himself.
"I didn't feel I was betraying confidences or anything," he said. "I put words in their mouth, which I was rather hesitant about, but I think there's nothing in there that [would mean] I can be accused of libel - I hope!"
As for his own cameo in Crime of Passion, the director of Point Blank, Deliverance and The General said it was for the most practical of reasons.
"I put myself in the story as president of the jury in Cannes in order to point out that Daniel Shaw is not like me at all," laughed the five-time Oscar nominee. "In fact, he's very unlike me. But he's a lot like two or three directors that I've known. Some of his methods are similar to mine but his approach to acting and his approach to making a film is quite different from mine - I exert a much stronger hold on the story."
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When asked if he'd be willing to release his hold on the story if a director approached him with a view to turning Crime of Passion into a film or TV series, Boorman's response was in keeping with his status as one of the industry's great survivors.
"It would depend on how much he would offer me!"
Crime of Passion is published by Liberties Press.
