John Boorman

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety three and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a film director. Although brought up not far from one of Britain's most famous studios, Shepperton, he learned his craft not in the cinema, but at the B B C. He began by directing documentaries, eventually becoming head of the B B C's documentary department.

Presenter0:44

Then having transferred his talent to the big screen, he achieved great success with only his second feature film, Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin. That was in nineteen sixty seven. Since then he's added to his reputation with a string of distinguished films, among them Leo the Last, Deliverance, and of course the much loved recreation of his own wartime childhood, Hope and Glory. He is John Borman.

Presenter1:08

John, had you nursed the idea of making Hope and Glory for years? Was it one of those very personal projects that you couldn't do until you were established?

John Boorman1:16

Yes, I always wanted to do it and finally I thought that the time had come, you know, to

Presenter1:21

But you had terrible trouble raising money for it, didn't you? The people thought it was too domestic, too cosy, too British, perhaps.

John Boorman1:27

Yes, it seemed like a small film, and the budget was quite high because I wanted to build.

John Boorman1:32

this street and recreate the the Blitz, which was quite a big operation really, for an intimate story. This caused uh the financiers to look at it, you know, and think, well, this is you know, this is a very small film, this is a big budget and they didn't want to do it.

Presenter1:46

Why did you need to create it was Rosehill Avenue, Carr Sholton, where where you were born. Why did you need to to rebuild the whole street?

John Boorman1:48

Haven't you?

John Boorman1:53

Well, I went back to Rosehill Avenue.

John Boorman1:55

and it didn't look anything like I remembered it to be.

John Boorman1:58

So I had to build it the way I remembered it, because this was the nature of the film. It was about a child's view of war.

John Boorman2:08

Remembered by a mature adult, really. So I reproduced the sitting room of our house in Rosehill Avenue.

John Boorman2:15

And when I was we were working on the designs, my art director found this book of wallpapers of the period, and I looked through it, and there was the very wall paper we had on the wall of our living room. So

John Boorman2:29

I was, you know, very self-indulgent.

John Boorman2:32

I had it made up and put it on the wall. And when the set was finished, this was in the studio, of course, my mother and her three sisters came down to look at it, and they walked in and they were astonished by this room, because it was an exact replica of of it. And and one of my husbands said, Oh, no, no, that vase was over there and surely wasn't the clock over there you know, there was little things, but it was

John Boorman2:51

And then one of the aunts said,

John Boorman2:53

What a pity the air it's so perfect, except the wallpaper's wrong.

John Boorman2:59

And I don't know whether that was me remembering wrongly or her, because you never know, really.

Presenter3:05

But it was really very true to reality as a whole, was it? I mean, you obviously you did.

Presenter3:10

loot bomb sites, you know, pick up treasures in the remains of old houses, you were evacuated to the river. I mean, it it it was entirely real.

John Boorman3:16

Yeah.

John Boorman3:17

Was entirely real. Yes, it was, yeah. Elam Klimov, the Russian director, told me that when he saw the film, he said that was exactly what happened, my experience in

John Boorman3:25

and Stalingrad.

John Boorman3:28

We were always going to school and jealous of the the other boys because they had more bums in their street than we did and

Presenter3:34

So Stalingrad and Carl Short are not about a difference in nineteen forties.

John Boorman3:36

Yeah.

Presenter3:38

Let's have uh your first desert island disc there. What is it?

John Boorman3:41

Well, I decline anaka music because this is my mother and her three sisters when I was little, and they were always playing.

John Boorman3:49

instruments and and my grandfather, you know, it's a scene in the film where he says, uh, what can you do with four daughters? A string quartet was the best I could come up with and that's what they used to do. And uh it somehow expresses their sort of verve and joy and the kind of giddy gracefulness of those wonderful ladies who are my mother and my aunts.

Presenter5:06

The new Philharmonial Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer, playing part of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and memories for my castaway John Bormann of his mother and his aunts and their string quartet. Your mother was in her late eighties when Hope and Glory came out. What did she think when she finally saw it?

John Boorman5:25

Well, she'd read the script and therefore that was where she got the big shock. So when she saw the film she rather enjoyed it. But at the premiere at the Ode in Leicester Square afterwards we came out and all the press and the television were there and they interviewed her. They wanted to know what she thought of it.

John Boorman5:41

And she said, Well, it's it's quite good as far as it goes she said, But I

John Boorman5:44

Personally I prefer a good thriller.

Presenter5:47

You really were fairly surrounded by women as a little boy. Did you enjoy that, or did you feel oppressed by all that femaleness?

John Boorman5:56

I always felt very comfortable in the presence of women. In fact, I suppose perhaps what happened when I grew older was that I became uncomfortable with men I mean, with men alone. You know, when I was in the army and at school

John Boorman6:09

in the absence of women always felt I felt disturbing.

Presenter6:12

So the female influence obviously was very strong. The other strong influence in your childhood w was a school teacher, Father John Maguire.

Presenter6:21

Tell me about him.

John Boorman6:22

Well, my mother had the idea because during the war all the teachers had been called up. We weren't Catholic, but she sent me to a Catholic school, a Silesian school.

John Boorman6:30

She felt that um

John Boorman6:32

The priests didn't get called up, and so you might get better teaching. One of those teachers was this man, John McGuire, father of John McGuire, and he.

John Boorman6:41

Was a great influence on me. He was a very powerful personality, really. He he encouraged me to write.

John Boorman6:47

And I kept a journal at that time when I was fifteen, sixteen, and have done so on and off.

John Boorman6:55

I ever since.

John Boorman6:56

And I find that a very important part of my life, really, which is writing.

John Boorman7:01

composing my thoughts and putting things down.

Presenter7:05

Should we have record number two?

John Boorman7:06

Well

John Boorman7:07

I wanted to have something from the Salisbury Cathedral choir because I've

John Boorman7:11

Enjoyed so much going and listening to Eden Song at at Salisbury. And I made a film when I was at the BBC about the Salisbury Close and the life of the cathedral.

Speaker 17:15

Uh

John Boorman7:19

And it fascinates me that every day, for hundreds of years, the choir sings these songs of praise, and this music bounces against those stone walls, and somehow expresses for me

John Boorman7:33

the spiritual and the material, the stone.

John Boorman7:37

and the music colliding, the mystery of life is inherent in that somehow.

Speaker 47:54

Believe that we judge in your voice in God.

Speaker 48:12

O let for generations of God be blessed.

Presenter8:42

Salisbury Cathedral Choir singing Herbert Brewer's Magnificat in D major.

Presenter8:47

Despite the fact that you were evacuated to grandparents' in Shepperton, you didn't go to work in the film studios there when you left school. W why not? Wouldn't they have you?

John Boorman8:58

Well, I wanted to and my best friend and I, we both wanted to be Clapper Boys, you know, because going to the movies was what we most liked doing and and there were people around there who were working at the studios. So that's what we thought we'd try and do. So we both applied

John Boorman9:13

And he got a job as a cup of boy and they turned me down.

Presenter9:16

What did you lack, I wonder?

John Boorman9:16

What did you

John Boorman9:17

What?

John Boorman9:19

I don't know, probably like my clap wasn't as good as his.

John Boorman9:22

But uh I mean for me

John Boorman9:25

I mean, I never dreamed of being a director. I thought, you know, to be a clapper was the highest thing I thought uh you could aspire to.

Presenter9:30

And you didn't achieve that? You set up a laundry business instead. But but laundering was in the family, wasn't it? Didn't your f grandfather invent the washing machine, did I read?

John Boorman9:39

He did. My grandfather inherited a laundry in Wimbledon.

John Boorman9:43

So he

John Boorman9:45

uh invented a washing machine

John Boorman9:47

For the laundry, and it was a large sort of wooden structure with a man turning a handle, and it was ribbed on the inside, and it was.

John Boorman9:53

very effective, and he actually manufactured them and sold them to other laundries.

John Boorman9:58

And so when I'd left school and I wanted to make m money, I wanted to make movies and at sixteen it was difficult to know quite how to go about it. Since I'd failed to be a Clapper boy, I couldn't start at the bottom, I had to somehow start at the top.

John Boorman10:11

So I went to my grandfather.

John Boorman10:14

And he said the big thing is, you know, dry cleaning.

John Boorman10:17

And he showed

John Boorman10:19

David and I, who became the tap boy, he and I

John Boorman10:22

Started this up.

John Boorman10:23

And uh we made uh a bit of money at it, enough to um

John Boorman10:28

for me to be able to sort of retire at the age of seventeen.

Presenter10:31

To do what? To to write stories for women's magazines.

John Boorman10:31

To do what?

John Boorman10:32

That's right.

Presenter10:36

Yeah.

John Boorman10:36

Hold that.

John Boorman10:38

And then as a result of these, there was a BBC producer called Richard Keen.

John Boorman10:44

Who wrote to me and asked me to come and take part in some of these youth programmes we're doing on radio?

John Boorman10:50

I did. I became sort of chairman of this junior critics programme called Under Twenty Review.

Presenter10:56

So it was obviously quite natural then that you did turn to the BBC, as I said at the beginning, to to learn your craft.

Presenter11:02

Who was your major influence when when you came to the BBC and started to make film?

John Boorman11:08

Well, I actually started at at ITN. I started as a

John Boorman11:11

Sort of trainee assistant film editor. And I learned editing under Brian Lewis, who was a brilliant editor, and he taught me.

John Boorman11:20

editing, and he'd learnt it.

John Boorman11:23

From Great Editor. And of course, this is the fascinating thing about film, if you take cameramen.

John Boorman11:28

All cameramen learn from other cameramen.

John Boorman11:31

They all can trace their

John Boorman11:33

as it were, ancestry back to Billy Bitzer and and and D. W. Griffith.

Presenter11:36

And do you think the best directors have started off as editors?

John Boorman11:40

There's no real rule, I don't think, about that. I mean, there's so many ways to skin the cinematic cat, as it were.

John Boorman11:46

David Lean started as an editor, and you could say Osama started in radio. You know, there's not not a particular rule, but it's a very difficult craft if you want to master it. And probably

John Boorman11:57

You don't ever quite learn everything you should.

John Boorman12:01

I mean, David Lean said to me when he was dying, he said, I I hope I'll get over this.

John Boorman12:06

Cancer and I want to make thi I wanna make this film'cause I I feel I'm

John Boorman12:11

and he was now over eighty. He said, I feel I'm just beginning to get the hang of it.

Presenter12:17

More music.

John Boorman12:19

Well, next thing is um Beethoven's Seventh uh and uh the particularly the second movement, the Allegretto.

John Boorman12:25

It represents for me

John Boorman12:27

the sadness that all things pass and uh

John Boorman12:30

Whether it's an intimation of the beauty that is to come in the next life, or whether it is the sadness of what we of the beauty we leave behind, I don't know.

John Boorman12:40

That's what it is for me.

Presenter13:42

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. Seven in A major, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwengler.

John Boorman13:50

Yes, I used it in

John Boorman13:52

My film Zardoz, which is was about death and immortality, I thought it was very appropriate.

Presenter13:57

That was your fourth or fifth film, that one. Your first one in nineteen sixty five was was Catch Us If You Can with the Dave Clark Five. I mean, that was very much like the Beatles films. I mean, I I remember young men with kind of Beatles haircuts running around a lot. I'm sure there was more to it than that. But it was very successful, wasn't it?

John Boorman14:07

I'm in a

John Boorman14:16

Pauline Kahl the took to it and read a Ray Review about it in The New Yorker, and that sort of gave me some kind of.

John Boorman14:24

you know, reputation in in America, which really I suppose led on to my next film, point blank.

Presenter14:30

Because that starred Lee Marvin and he what he read about the Dave Clark Five and sent for you, did he?

John Boorman14:30

It was that startledly mar

John Boorman14:35

Not at all, no. I don't think he ever saw it, but a producer gave me this script and

Presenter14:36

Yeah.

John Boorman14:41

Also gave it to Lee Marvin, he was in London at the time shooting a dirty dozen.

John Boorman14:46

And we met.

John Boorman14:47

And he said to me, What do you think of this script? And I said, It's absolutely terrible. And he said, Well, I agree. He said, What are we talking about? So I said, Well, I like the character, I think it's promising.

Presenter14:56

This was in point blank.

John Boorman14:57

Yeah.

Presenter14:58

Huh.

John Boorman14:59

This is the original script.

John Boorman15:01

So we had a number of conversations.

Presenter15:04

And a lot of drinks, yeah.

John Boorman15:05

And a lot of drinks, yes.

John Boorman15:06

And then one night, about three in the morning, in his flat that he rented in London, we were talking about it, and he finally said, Okay, I'll I'll do the picture.

John Boorman15:17

On one condition and it was a hot summer's evening the windows open

John Boorman15:21

And I said, What's that? and he threw the script out of the window.

John Boorman15:24

And so we started from scratch and

Presenter15:27

Did you write it?

John Boorman15:28

I wrote it with uh

John Boorman15:31

Alex Jacobs, who was a great friend of mine had

Presenter15:34

That was a a gangster thriller. I mean, pretty black stuff. It's a b it was about a killer, wasn't it, who didn't kill directly himself, but he acted as a kind of catalyst on others. I mean, it was.

John Boorman15:41

Yeah.

Presenter15:42

Pretty violent stuff. I mean, but in the twenty-five years since then, films have become. even more violent, you know. I mean, obviously we know the Morambo lethal weapon and our reservoir dogs, which is apparently very strong stuff. Where do you stand in in the current debate? I mean, do you think this kind of fictional violence is corrupting?

John Boorman16:04

I don't know.

John Boorman16:05

I think violence is one of the sort of primary colours of the cinema. Violence is part of life, not reflected in the cinema.

John Boorman16:13

would be quite wrong. However, I suppose it's the way it's done. The immorality lies in the kind of films where people are getting blasted and killed in in their dozens without any repercussions. Death and

John Boorman16:28

destruction as a kind of entertainment, like a video game.

John Boorman16:33

When I was making deliverance,

John Boorman16:35

There's a scene where the characters shoot a man with an arrow.

John Boorman16:39

and the censored America

John Boorman16:42

tried to get me to cut the shot of him dying.

John Boorman16:45

And I argued that that trivialised it because the whole point of the scene was these men quite like the idea of perhaps killing somebody. You know, when they were actually confronted with it, they had to watch this man die, you know, and the the horror that that that uh induced in them was such an important part of what it was about.

Presenter16:55

And the h

Presenter17:00

Let's have some more music.

John Boorman17:03

Well

John Boorman17:04

A friend of mine who a forester who works with me planting trees in Ireland, he said to me the other day, I saw your film, Deliverance, he said when it came out, and um he said I didn't it was very violent, I couldn't take it, I walked out.

John Boorman17:17

And he said, What's more, I haven't been back to the cinema since.

Presenter17:20

How many years ago is that?

John Boorman17:21

Twenty years.

John Boorman17:23

So my next

John Boorman17:25

Choice then is the music from Deliverance, which is

John Boorman17:28

Dueling banyos, it's a traditional piece from the South.

John Boorman17:32

And it's an integral part of the of the film. And it actually is the entire

John Boorman17:36

A musical soundtrack.

Presenter18:06

Duelling banjo is the theme from John Borman's film Deliverance, and that went to number one in the charts both sides of the Atlantic, didn't it? 1970?

John Boorman18:14

It did, and Warner Brothers made so much money from the record it it paid for the cost of the picture.

Presenter18:21

You've been quoted as saying that that film making is the process of inventing impossible challenges for oneself and failing to solve them. It sounds like a very personal definition. What exactly do you mean by

John Boorman18:32

Well

John Boorman18:33

When we write a script and devise a film, we are just setting ourselves these problems. I mean, they are.

John Boorman18:39

enormous uh if you're making a a big picture in difficult circumstances with

John Boorman18:44

Whatever it may be.

John Boorman18:45

We're always at our wits' end.

John Boorman18:47

Yeah

John Boorman18:48

struggling with uh not quite enough money and uh always trying to stretch it and get more out of it and

John Boorman18:54

We complain.

John Boorman18:55

But of course these are problems are s uh are self-induced wounds, if you like, because uh we invent these very problems and and and we make them so difficult for ourselves that we can't solve them. I mean I suppose if you were sensible you would make problems that were a little m easier to solve, but

Presenter19:09

But where's the joy? Where's the joy then in doing it if if it's really impossible? It's an impossible task you've set yourself and you haven't got enough money to do it anyway?

John Boorman19:17

I remember having a discussion with Nick Rogue about this once. We both

John Boorman19:21

Complaining miserably about the problems of making movies. And I said, Really, you know, I don't really enjoy making movies, do you? He said, No, I don't.

John Boorman19:28

He said um

John Boorman19:30

The trouble is, I'm even more unhappy not making movies than I am making them.

Presenter19:34

But I mean, do you ever, have you ever gone in to see a potential financial backer and said, you know, this is what I want to do and this is the film and it may seem a bit big or it may seem impossible, but I reckon I can do it. And they have replied to you, terrific, wonderful, here's all the money you've asked for, off you go and do it.

John Boorman19:52

Never, no, never, never, no.

Presenter19:53

Never.

John Boorman19:54

No. The best uh you can get they say, Well, it's interesting, you know, let's see how much it's going to cost and it's always a war of attrition. You have to get them to spend a little bit more money until they spent uh enough to the point where they think, well,

John Boorman20:07

Uh it's cheaper to go on than to stop.

Presenter20:10

So there's not a lot of joy in experiencing all of that. There can be some joy out shooting the film, but nevertheless you go to bed every night with these huge headaches that you've created for yourself. What about when you get into post production, when you get into the editing? I mean, i is that fun or is it again

Presenter20:26

Agonizing.

John Boorman20:28

Well, by the time I get I finished shooting I kind of hate the film. My first cut and the editing was I kind of tear it apart.

John Boorman20:35

There's a sort of act of vengeance on the film for the pain it's inflicted on me.

John Boorman20:40

And then I recover from that and I start to put it back together. And actually that's the part I most enjoy about it, because it's contemplative. You're on your own, you know, with just with a editor, a friend usually, and you're sitting there quietly doing it and you don't have the pressures, and you bring it together, and it also takes me back to the beginnings of my craft.

Presenter21:00

Um

Presenter21:01

as an editor.

John Boorman21:02

Yeah. Mind you.

John Boorman21:04

I always curse the director who happens to be me, you know, when I'm editing this idiot.

John Boorman21:09

What why what do you do that for?

John Boorman21:11

And the same thing when I'm directing from my own script, I always have a very critical view of the writer.

Presenter21:18

Let's have another record there.

John Boorman21:21

When I was um a youth, I used to go along to a hundred Oxford Street to listen to the jazz, Humphrey Littleton and all those.

John Boorman21:28

fellows, because it somehow represented America, freedom, improvisation, all the things that seemed to be lacking in my life in rigid post war England. So I grew to love jazz, and I've chosen

John Boorman21:44

Miles Davis bitches brew because he was.

John Boorman21:48

The best.

Presenter22:50

The Miles Davis Quintette and Walkin from Bitch's Brew. You took John Bourman, your young family out to live in the States in California in the sixties, and then suddenly you uprooted and uh went to Ireland, County Wicklow, where you've had a house ever since.

Presenter23:05

What we were running from was there were a kind of panic in that move?

John Boorman23:09

A lot of panic in it, yes.

John Boorman23:11

Well, going to America was a very liberating experience for me.

John Boorman23:15

So we stayed there, we lived there for a couple of years.

John Boorman23:18

And then I just had the horrors. My two daughters were sort of six, uh, seven, eight.

John Boorman23:25

And, um, I just had the horrors about bringing them up in Los Angeles, saying there was a school there. So

Presenter23:32

But they're becoming all-American kids.

John Boorman23:33

Yeah, I just somehow couldn't deal with that.

John Boorman23:36

So we fled.

Presenter23:37

But did you find it unreal? I mean, why couldn't you deal with it? What didn't you like?

John Boorman23:41

Well, just the idea of having American children, I think.

John Boorman23:46

I don't know whether that sounds uh chauvinistic.

Presenter23:48

Sounds deeply racist, right?

Presenter23:51

But you didn't like that.

John Boorman23:51

But America is not a race, it's a condition.

John Boorman23:55

But I think America is a kind of neurosis.

John Boorman23:58

of the human race.

John Boorman24:00

It's a kind of neurotic version of the human race. That's the perception I had at the time.

John Boorman24:05

Not perhaps now.

John Boorman24:07

So we've fled. Having escaped England, I didn't want to go back.

John Boorman24:10

So Ireland we fell upon by accident because I was making a film there. I saw this house on one Sunday.

John Boorman24:18

evening and it it was being auctioned the next day in Dublin. I went to the auction, I bought it in the auction. It was such a reckless act that I was in bed for three days in a state of nervous exhaustion.

Presenter24:29

And that became our home.

John Boorman24:30

And that became our home, really.

Presenter24:32

But your work has been very much a a family affair over the years.

Presenter24:36

But now that you, after after thirty five years of marriage to one woman, ha have begun a new domestic existence with a new partner and a and a brand new baby daughter, um these are huge changes as you enter your seventh decade.

John Boorman24:50

Are they?

John Boorman24:53

But um

John Boorman24:55

I'm facing them with fortitude.

John Boorman24:58

courage and conviction.

Presenter25:00

And now you're finding happiness.

John Boorman25:03

Yes, I mean, as far as we we can, you know.

John Boorman25:07

If that's what we're looking for.

Presenter25:09

Most of us are.

Presenter25:11

You are too, I think.

John Boorman25:13

I've never looked for it, but um I I am finding some.

John Boorman25:16

It's a byproduct of other things.

Presenter25:20

Record number six.

John Boorman25:21

Well, going to Ireland ha meant a great deal to me in all kinds of ways.

John Boorman25:25

I feel particular.

John Boorman25:27

affinity with the landscape and with, you know, Celtic things.

John Boorman25:30

My neighbour

John Boorman25:32

Paddy Maloney is the leader.

John Boorman25:34

The chieftain's the chief chieftain.

John Boorman25:36

And uh we spend a lot of time in his house listening to his music and his friends.

John Boorman25:42

So I'd have something from the chieftains.

John Boorman25:44

And I think uh Bonaparte's retreat.

Presenter26:15

Chieftains and Bonaparte's Retreat. Uh so you live in Ireland most of the time. How often do you go to the cinema, John?

John Boorman26:22

Oh, a lot. I need a diet of cinema. I mean, I'm I'm kind of saturated in it and I walk out on a lot of pictures, you know,'cause I you know, I've come to recognize that um it doesn't take me more than fifteen minutes to realize if a film is worth watching or not.

Presenter26:37

So which of the big ones have you walked out on recently?

John Boorman26:40

I walked out on Pretty Woman, for instance.

John Boorman26:44

And someone said to me

John Boorman26:45

It was a real Marika, it was a real that was a real feel-good movie, wasn't it? A feel-good movie. Didn't you feel good when you came out of it? I said, I felt great when I came out of it, you know. I I felt terrible while I was in there watching it.

Presenter26:55

What was so awful about it?

John Boorman26:57

Wow, it was so crass, wasn't it?

Presenter26:59

Predictable.

John Boorman27:00

predictable and uh sort of stupid.

Presenter27:03

What else have you walked out on, early on?

John Boorman27:07

Oh or Gone with the Wind. I hate Gone with the Wind.

John Boorman27:10

I've tried to see that several times actually. I never got through it.

John Boorman27:14

And it's partly because it to me it represents the kind of false values that came with the studio system in Hollywood and destroyed, you know, the much richer thing that went before the silent cinema. I mean, Birth of a Nation, which was really the same story as Gone with the Wind. It was such a brilliant, brilliant film. Gone with the Wind, the story is about the love of the land, and it's all shot on the back lot. You never see the land. You never see anything.

Presenter27:39

Uh

John Boorman27:40

You just see these sort of phony sunsets and things.

Presenter27:40

Okay.

Presenter27:44

What about that other genre, the the fatal attraction, the final analysis, the basic instinct, all that sort of

John Boorman27:50

That's what

Presenter27:51

Two word genre. Do you like those? Psychological thrillers.

John Boorman27:56

My s record of turning down hit pictures is s sort of second to none.

John Boorman28:03

Uh

Speaker 128:03

What if you turn it into the middle of the middle?

John Boorman28:04

Well, I mean failed attraction was one.

John Boorman28:06

Rocky was another, you know. I mean, the first Rocky my friend Bob Shadows asked me to to make it the producer, and I wrote him a letter which he pinned up on his wall, and I said this sentimental rubbish and and not only I'm I I'm not going to make it, but I I'm strongly advise you not to make it you know, and then he won the Oscar for the Best Picture that year.

John Boorman28:25

And uh I

Presenter28:26

The final analysis you turned down as well, didn't you? Or it turned you down.

John Boorman28:30

Yes, I was going to make that, but they didn't like the way I wanted to do it.

Presenter28:34

You are gonna make it cleverer.

John Boorman28:36

No, not cleverer much harder much surer.

John Boorman28:39

Darker.

Presenter28:40

Hmm.

Presenter28:41

You you wrote a couple of years ago, and perhaps you had your film Excalibur in mind at the time. You wrote

Presenter28:47

They don't want my bag of tricks. I feel like Merlin, an old wizard who finds himself in a materialistic world where there's no place for magic.

John Boorman28:56

Yes, I must have been quite depressed when I wrote that.

John Boorman28:59

Perhaps that's that's what happens to us, you know, we do uh use up our little tricks and then

John Boorman29:03

Others come along who've got better tricks.

Presenter29:05

Do you worry that no financier will ever give you backing again?

John Boorman29:09

Oh, they will.

John Boorman29:11

They will, because

John Boorman29:13

I can be quite persuasive.

John Boorman29:14

Also, the old saying that you're only as good as your last picture, you know, Hollywood.

John Boorman29:19

But there's also a sense in which you're as good as your most successful picture, because there's always the niggling feeling that they have that he did it a couple of times, maybe he'll he can do it again.

Presenter29:32

Record number seven.

John Boorman29:34

As I said, going to America wi was North America very liberating for me, but going to South America was even more liberating. And when I was in Brazil making animal forests,

John Boorman29:42

You know, this was the real melting pot, you know, and the kind of warmth and affection, the sense of a continuous party going on.

John Boorman29:50

And I loved Amer South American music and I

John Boorman29:54

particularly discovered Aster Piazzola.

John Boorman29:58

And the style of music which is known as new tango.

John Boorman30:03

So I want to have one of his pieces, a tango, and I want to dance alone on the beach.

John Boorman30:11

Proving that

John Boorman30:13

It doesn't necessarily take two to tango.

Presenter30:45

Asta Piazzola and the new tango quintet playing Mumuki.

Presenter30:50

You have one pet project, don't you, John Borman, which you rewrite every now and then, but which so far you haven't found a backer for. It's called Broken Dream. Tell me about it. What is it?

John Boorman31:01

It's um

John Boorman31:02

A fantasy piece really is set in some indeterminate future in his

John Boorman31:06

It's about a

John Boorman31:08

Magician who discovers how to make objects disappear. They try to discover where these objects are going, and they appear to be going to some parallel world. It's a wonderful sort of love story.

John Boorman31:18

My co-writer on it was uh is Neil Jordan. We did it uh over more than ten years ago.

John Boorman31:24

And every now and again I e every time I finish a picture I try to get it going and

Presenter31:27

Can you rewrite it here?

John Boorman31:28

Rewrite it here. I rewrite it, yes. Yeah, yeah.

Presenter31:30

How many times you read it?

John Boorman31:31

Oh

John Boorman31:32

About twelve drafts I think I've done.

Presenter31:34

How important is it to you that it should be made?

John Boorman31:37

It's a matter of minor importance to the world at large. It does mean quite a lot to me.

Presenter31:42

And you said before now, but maybe this was in your depressive phase again, that it it it should be your last movie.

John Boorman31:48

Yes, I always feel that about every film I make, when I've finished, I never want to make another film again.

John Boorman31:55

The phases are when you finish a picture you think

John Boorman31:57

I'll never make another film again. The the pain is too much.

John Boorman32:00

And then the next thing you think, because the film's going to come out, it may be a flop, and you think, oh God, maybe they won't let me ever make another film again. And so you keep trying.

Presenter32:09

Meanwhile we cast you away on a desert island. Are you going to be all right while you're there?

John Boorman32:13

Well, I have lived on a desert island. When I was making another film called Hell in the Pacific with Lee Marvin and Toshira Mifuni,

John Boorman32:20

When I finished Herm Pacific, I did go off to an even remoter island to to sort of recover from this experience for a few days.

John Boorman32:28

I mean there were a few people living on it, but it was very remote.

John Boorman32:32

and there was something deeply attractive to me about it.

John Boorman32:36

Being cut off from the world.

John Boorman32:37

And, you know, fishing in the reef is a great pleasure.

John Boorman32:41

I think I'd probably enjoy quite a lot of it.

Presenter32:44

Last record.

John Boorman32:47

One of the great experiences of my life, I think, was going to Barrow and seeing the Ring Cycle.

John Boorman32:52

Went with one of my daughters, Telsha.

John Boorman32:55

And we had a just a a a marvellously inspiring week.

John Boorman32:59

And uh

John Boorman33:01

I used a lot of Wagner in um my film Excalibur.

John Boorman33:05

And if I had to choose one piece, it would have probably have to be the overture from Parseval, because it is, I think, one of the most spiritual pieces of music.

John Boorman33:14

Have it written.

Presenter34:13

Part of the overture to Wagner's Parsifal, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karian. So if you could only take one of those eight records with you.

Presenter34:22

Which would it be?

John Boorman34:23

I think late heaven seventh.

Presenter34:25

Hmm.

Presenter34:26

Your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare.

John Boorman34:30

I've chosen um Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which is the

John Boorman34:34

Autobiography of uh Cao Jung.

John Boorman34:38

Because I'm

John Boorman34:39

It deals with a great deal with his theory of the unconscious and about dreaming. And it seemed to me that if you're going to live on a desert island,

John Boorman34:48

You should develop your dream life because you can have a vivid dream life full of richness and masses of people, and you can meet up with all sorts of situations.

John Boorman35:00

And

John Boorman35:01

We tend to, I think, underrate and undervalue dreaming, and I'd become very interested in the notion of recovering one's dreams and re recalling them, so I would that's what I'd do, and he would help me.

Presenter35:14

And your luxury.

John Boorman35:16

Well

John Boorman35:17

I'll take a telescope.

John Boorman35:18

Because always well I I've neglected the stars, you know. There doesn't seem to be any time, you know, every time the night comes and um you're too tired to go and look at the stars and I feel that um that's something I'd like to do. And what's more, living in Ireland, you say they're not often very visible.

John Boorman35:31

Because it's usually cloudy and raining.

Presenter35:34

But on your desert island it would be clear as a bell the night sky.

Presenter35:37

John Borman, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

John Boorman35:40

Thank you.

Speaker 135:49

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.