Answer Me These Questions Three #3 IAN POWER

“We’re not making scripts we’re making movies.” Ian Power (right) is the co-founder of Poderosa Pictures, an independent production company. In 1998 he won the Journeyman Prize For Scriptwriting for his short Buskers. Ian has also written and directed The Wonderful Story Of Kelvin Kind (which won the 2003 RTE/IFB Film Short Award) and has some numerous commercials (Lyric Fm, Radio 1, Independent Newspapers, Tayto and The National Lottery) in his canon. We caught Ian running between projects to ask him a few questions...

1. When did you first get the goo for film?

Believe it or not when I was 17 I wanted to be a dentist. Worried that it wasn’t for me, my folks sent me to a career guidance officer who suggested (thankfully) that I’d be better suited to something like film! I always loved film but it never dawned on me as a career choice – I didn’t even realize that you could study it in college. Delighted I made the swap but it still feels like I’m pulling teeth most of the time.

If you mean when I fell in love with film, I can't never remember not loving it. I do have a weird memory which I’ve kinda post-analyzed as the time I decided to be a director… Six years old (and I’m not one of these people who remembers a lot about being a child), Friday afternoon matinee, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ with my dad. The bit where Indy jumps on the white stallion and gallops into the horizon, the greatest score of all time swells… if I had hairs on my back they’d have been standing. Elated, I turn to my dad… and he’s fast asleep. I remember shaking the life out of him to wake him up. It was like - this moment was too big to just watch – it had to be shared. The waking up bit is the director in me I think – a desire to share the story experience. Sounds kinda bollox I know but there you go.

2. What's your favourite Irish film?

This is a hard one. I’d have to say ‘The Commitments’. English director I know but it’s probably the most Irish of Irish films (and I don’t mean o’Irish). That’s a lot about the writing – Roddy Doyle is a loud writer, loud enough to be the strongest voice, even after a director’s been in. Parker was a gift to the film too because he let the story shine, casted it brilliantly, and made it all feel real – something really poignant and funny about those clips of the kids playing with burning pallets in the alleyway… Anyway I’m bias because I love musicals but for me it’s the best of the Doyle translations – something magical about it.

Recently I loved ‘Adam and Paul’.

3.What's your least favourite?

Again, hard to choose… for a small nation have a high crap output, or had – I think things are really improving. Least favourite film is probably – well I’m going to say Ordinary Decent Criminal, not wanting to pick on the little guys (i.e. some low budget clangers).

4. What Irish film you think deserves more credit?

I’d have to say ‘In the Name of the Father’ – at least Best Actor. I think Tom Hanks won for Philadelphia instead, which is a crime – love Forrest Gump though.

5.What have you been doing the last year?

Wrote a feature at the start of the year, which got me a manager in L.A. I did meetings in Hollywood in June. Made some commercials in Belfast and Dublin in between. Got married in August. Signed with a producer in September for the feature.

6. What are you working on now?

I’m doing a final pass on the feature I wrote at the start of the year with a view to shooting it next summer.

7. Gun to your head – would you pick writing or directing? Why?

Directing. I suppose because it’s why I started to write. Like some writers direct because they don’t like the idea of someone else intruding on their vision. I started to write because it was the fastest way to get to direct. Somewhere along the way I fell in love with writing, but it’s very much a love-hate relationship – I hate the loneliness of it - and directing is a great way to get out of the house.

In truth I like directing because it’s more dynamic, and urgent. I think writing should be like that too but there seems to be a perception, in this country anyway, that if something is written too quickly, it’s less good than something which has been developed for a few years.

Wrongly, and I think it is changing with thanks to recent developments at the film board, we had a ‘development culture’ in Ireland which absolutely ruled the director out of the process. Development was a process for writers, producers, and script supervisors, and traditionally it took too long. Not having the director on board in development is like building a test track with no exit ramp – you just end up driving in circles. Not to say that the director is the most important part of the process but rather that he/she is a logical and essential step in the process of making movies. ‘Development’ should mean exactly that – a process moving forward – to make a film - not just a way to pay for paper and pencils.

Controversially perhaps, I believe we have a film industry because of two men - Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan. I know this is a facile way of looking at things, and I’m not taking away from the fact Irish producers have done incredible job bringing in foreign productions, keeping the industry alive etc. etc., but it wasn’t until we started to make world class films ourselves that our own industry was recognized. People looked at Irish films differently after ‘My Left Foot’ – it drew a line in the sand. Something changed. ‘The Crying Game’ changed the way people looked at independent film full stop. It’s no accident that these were director-driven films.

Recently, films like ‘Adam and Paul’ and ‘Once’ seem to be waking things up again. These are director driven projects, made with very little development because they cost very little money, allowing the directors the kind of autonomy they needed to make things interesting.

It’s funny the way the above question is phrased - Paul Schrader wrote Taxi Driver with a gun to his head, literally – dry firing it into his temple anytime he felt like stopping. The first draft is almost exactly what they shot. I think a director, if he’s good enough, responds to something guttural in the first draft, which can be polished out in the text. That’s not to say that scripts don’t need work, most do – but they can’t be approached in a finite way.

8. How many DVDS do you have and are they in alphabetical order?

Have about 150 DVDS – not stored in alphabetical order.

While we’re waiting for Ian’s script to come to fruition, check out Ian’s short The Prophet (narrated by one John Hurt no less)...