Night Train (1998)

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Night Train (1998)

| Night Train on IMDB |

Night Train

Directing Night Train by John Lynch

It had to happen I suppose; eventually I would direct a feature film. As a kid I went to the pictures at least twice a week when I had the money. I'd act out the action scenes with my friends and was particularly good at playing the dying Indian, falling dramatically, shot through the heart, from the top of an apple tree. How I didn't break my neck dozens of times I'll never know. Taking risks is a large part of making movies, that kind of thing came early and easily to me, but it took me a long time to actually get to direct a real feature film.

How do you become a film director? What is the role of the director? What is the secret of being a movie director? What are your influences? I've been asked these questions many times and, try as I have, I don't think I've found satisfactory answers. For a start it's ridiculous to pretend not to be influenced by anyone. Every decision we make, conscious or unconscious, is formed by our experiences, including the experience of watching movies.

As to the role of the director, I can give a few comical answers; like the one John Ford gave when asked by a pompous interviewer for his comments on the 'role of the director in film.' After a long inscrutable pause Ford said something like; "well the whole trick of being a director is to stay one step ahead of the crew." There was another long pause and the interviewer asked Ford to elaborate. "Well," said Ford, " to be a good director you've gotta get up very early in the morning." The interviewer was now speechless and Ford decided to continue. "You gotta get out on the prairie an hour and a half before the crew arrive. You gotta walk the prairie until you find your first shot, think about a few moves and have a cup of coffee. When the crew arrive you give them the impression that they are late and then you show them the set up for the first shot. When they are busy setting this up you use the time to work out the next shot. And that's how you stay ahead of the crew and that's the trick, that's the secret, that's the role of the director in movies."

Why some people want to make films when there's no immediate family influence can be explained by the popularity of cinema from the early twentieth century onwards and by the new possibilities for storytelling that it offered. I think it was wanting to tell stories in an exciting way that got me going.

When I was ten I earned the admiration of my friends when I forged my father's signature on a hire purchase agreement for a Pathe Ace 9.5mm silent film projector and opened my own little cinema in a garden shed. (My beginnings in film were hardly as precocious as Steven Spielberg's, who was writing and directing by this age.) I started out as a young exhibitor, with an eye for merchandising; I sold soft drinks made from cheap powder from Woolworths and charged just enough to cover the hire of the reels and a small profit. But then I got serious and soon got stuck into reading Eisenstein on Montage, and Stanislavsky on how the actor prepares, and changed from being a crafty little entrepreneur to a, mainly broke, artistic personality looking for ways to express myself. As I follow Night Train around the world it has occurred to me that if you really want to make money out of movies you should seriously get into selling popcorn and soft drinks.

I spent many years training as an actor and working as a drama director in Radio. Later I began writing plays for stage and eventually landed a job as a producer/director in Television. I worked with wonderfully talented colleagues in television. We shot dramas on multi-camera and even when we were doing soaps we behaved as if we were making movies. All the directors in the drama department of RTE had the ability to direct a movie but the opportunities did not exist in this country at the time. A couple of directors like Peter Collinson, before my time, and Pat O' Connor, a contemporary, managed to make careers in movies but they didn't do it in Ireland. They had to go to England where at least there existed some possibility of getting into the mysterious circle of people who make films.

I didn't want to go away, I wanted to make a feature film here in Ireland, on my own terms. I worked on several projects which nearly got going but didn't, one of them falling at the final fence three times. It can be a heart breaking business, one in which you have to keep your self-belief on constant charge. It is a business where no experience is necessary, yet you have to know an awful lot. It is a business where nobody knows anything and in which projects are financed quite often by companies who have said 'no' more than once.

This was the case with Night Train, which I eventually got made, though it took nearly five years. When the project had been around the houses many times J & M Entertainment, the London based film sales company, who had already passed on it, came up with sales guarantees which made financing possible.

After years of producing television drama for the home and international co-production market, I wanted to concentrate on the creative side of directing and writing, and handed over production to my son Tristan, who took charge and performed many miracles on the way. This gave me time to work with Aodhan Madden on the script that was now metamorphosizing into its eighth draft because of the many inputs from interested people. Some suggestions were very good; others were half-baked commercial ideas. I reckon that most people mean well but you, the director, have to know where they are coming from, and with respect to sales and distribution people, you have to protect the central emotion of your work. Clear thinking about script and casting is the way you do this even though everyone throws in their tuppence halfpenny worth. That is part of the director's job and it can be a very stressful and lonely part.

The original story of Night Train was about a mysterious middle aged man (Mr. Poole) who takes a room in Mrs. Mooney's house, and becomes involved with her middle aged daughter (Alice). Mrs. Mooney feels threatened by this relationship, breaks up the trains they play with and throws them out. That was it. It was called Night Train To Subotica. One of Aodhan's favourite books is Graham Greene's Stambul Train, set on the Orient Express on its way to Istanbul passing through Subotica. There is a chapter in it called 'Subotica' in which all kinds of thrilling and romantic things happen. However, we dropped Subotica from the title because the Orient Express doesn't go there anymore and film people in America had difficulties with it. A reference to the book is made by Alice and it can be seen on the model train set in the film. It remained a spark that helped the writer and the actors towards the romantic centre of the relationship between Alice and Mr. Poole.

It was this relationship so finely and gently etched by Aodhan Madden that drew me to this story and made me stay with the script through its many variations. This was the centre of the original story, as it remains the centre of the finished film. However, though Alice and Poole are two brilliantly conceived character portraits, by themselves alone, they would not sustain the movie. Other elements were needed to make the drama work.

We explored various possibilities. We had Alice and Poole leaving together to live in Greystones. Then we had Mrs Mooney die while Alice fought with her as she took a hatchet to the model trains. Alice is tried for murder; Poole vanishes but turns up in court to deliver an impassioned plea on her behalf. She is found guilty but insane and it ended with Poole visiting her in the hospital. Somehow all this seemed to fragment their relationship rather than drive it along. It wasn't until we met John Sherlock, who had been in charge of story on Peyton Place on American television and for many years a script doctor on many movies, that we got a clear line on the story and its structure. At the stage we met with him we had Poole and Alice both as alcoholics. He advised contrast by having them come from different sides of the track and to forget the drinking. So we made Alice a quiet, bookish person and Poole a man on the run who had hardly read a book in his life. He could share his interest in model trains with her and she her knowledge of books with him. Poole's criminal past about to catch up with him supplied the energy to drive the story for most of the film. Then Tristan said he thought we should open the story out and have their romantic dream fulfilled; they should elope on the Orient Express and go to Venice.

There were understandable objections from one of our financial sources which suggested that if we wanted to open out the story in a filmic way that we could achieve the same result by having Poole and Alice run away to Clifden in the west of Ireland for less cost. I pointed out that the Orient Express didn't go to Clifden and when we looked at the figures it did not really cost much more to shoot in Venice. The additional cost was mainly in airfares; over-nights cost the same, if not less in Venice. So a decision was made to shoot in Venice with a reduced crew that we added to with the help of Mestiere Cinema, a Venetian based production company run by a very lovable Italian Guido Cerasuolo.

John Hurt was my first and only choice for the part of Poole. He has made his own of the role of the weak man on the edge and I was delighted when he agreed to meet me in Dublin having read draft three of the script. We met in the Shelbourne Hotel and talked for eight hours. After about an hour he said "I'm in" and that was that. During the next two painful years of deals on and off, John never varied in his support for the project. He has always chosen his roles for imaginative and creative reasons and is one of the great actors of the cinema.

I must confess to not really knowing Brenda Blethyn's work at that time. When I was told she was interested in the role of Alice, I looked at her performance in Secrets & Lies for which she was nominated for an Oscar. It was a great performance but totally different from what I was looking for in Alice. I looked at Outside Edge and despaired; here was another big performance, not at all what I was looking for. Yet when Brenda met me in The Ivy Restaurant in St. Martin's Lane in London I knew that she was the only one for the part. She is a delightful and warm person, so different from many of her screen roles, and she was eager to play the role of the quiet and introverted Alice Mooney. Aodhan and Tristan joined us for lunch and they too were captivated by Brenda's warmth. I had made up my mind and enjoyed the ambiance of The Ivy, which is the great 'luvvies' restaurant, until I noticed that everyone was curious to know who Brenda Blethyn was lunching with. Then it occurred to me that she might not want to work with me. I need not have worried. In an interview later she said that when she had met me in The Ivy it was as if she had known me for twenty years. Brenda has become a friend of ours and has since done another comedy with Tristan called On The Nose, which also stars Robbie Coltrane and Dan Ackroyd.

Working with Brenda and John was highly creative. They both came fully prepared and were delighted to have five days to read, rehearse and get to know each other. I always like to have some time with actors before shooting because, having been one, I know what actors need to be as good as they can possibly be in a role.

After the first day John came to me and said, "Brenda is going to be great in this," and I knew we were on to a winner. The chemistry between them on and off the screen made my job easy in a way. Here were two highly charged thoroughbreds with great respect for each other who just needed to be shown the way. It isn't a matter of letting actors do what they like in this kind of situation, the director must clear the way for the actor to create at the highest level. This is done by saying nothing sometimes, but most of the time it is in sifting out what is worrying the actor and getting them to talk it out. Aodhan has written of some of the literary lines we had difficulty with. Curiously the line John had most difficulty with, "vague memories of a mother once. Like the smell of perfume on a silk stole.' I asked John what worried him about the scene and he said he just didn't know what to do with that line. The worst thing a director could do in a situation like this is to give a line reading to the actor in trouble. I just said it was a literary/poetic line and could be easily left out. Aodhan agreed but as we had about a week to go before shooting that scene John said he'd work on it and let me know. Three days later he said, "I've got it. I can do it now." I asked him to hold it for the take, he did, and there it is, unrehearsed and fresh.

I like spontaneity, that is when people have done the basic work and we are all clear about our intentions. I had come from a tradition of rehearsal in theatre and in television studio drama. Television tends to shoot rehearsed performances, but in single shot film, if the basic creative work has been done, if the performance hasn't been rehearsed too much, it is possible to light up a scene with the feeling that it is really happening now and never again. The moment can be captured like nowhere else. But the director must know when it has happened, the actor does not always know. Something along these lines happened during the shooting of Night Train.

Great cinema is about looks and captured moments. My favourite scene in Night Train is the scene where Alice agrees to run away with Poole. We talked it through, improvised a line about Alice's passport and shot it once in two shot. No cover, no retake. It is a magical scene, brilliantly acted. Brenda wanted to do it again, John thought we should do another for safety, but I said no, "The take could not be better, let's go on." To the end of shooting John would say, "are you sure that scene didn't jam or get damaged in the processing? You took a terrible risk there." He was speaking from experience, of course, but I think he enjoyed the danger of it all too.

Music is an important element in Night Train and I love the sense of empathy it has with the emotion of the film. It was composed by my other son Adam who was recovering from major brain surgery a few weeks before we began shooting. There was pressure on me from London to use jazz records from well-known players on the Blue Note label; it might have worked but I wanted an original score and I knew Adam could do it brilliantly. He set up his equipment at home and lived with it for four months. I'm not saying it was easy, for him or for me, but the end result is exactly what I was looking for.

The Director of Photography, Seamus Deasy, and I talked a lot about the look and colour of the film. We wanted the colour to gradually intensify as the love story developed. We considered beginning in black and white and gradually merging into colour, but overall we wanted a warm feeling to glow from the film. We considered using the E and R process that Clint Eastwood had used in Unforgiven and Alan Parker in Evita. We did tests at the Technicolor laboratory in London but when we looked at Seamus's original lighting it was clear to me that he had captured the mood and feeling so well that we did not need any technical assistance apart from normal grading. Renowned director John Boorman calls Seamus 'The Maestro'. Enough said!

I was in an abattoir on a location recce, with cows being shot all around me, when I heard that the financing had fallen apart. Night Train would have to be scrapped, the office would close down and that would be the end of it after five years. At nine o'clock in the morning, two weeks before shooting, Tristan got a call to say that for reasons of internal rules United Television (ITV/UK) were pulling out. They had only been in a few weeks anyway as a substitute for our German distributors who didn't have enough money and this meant that the film would collapse and we would be liable for a debt of approximately 750,000 pounds as we had already committed to cast, crew, studios and set building. From the abattoir I rang everyone of influence I knew, without success. In our office in Ardmore Studios people began to pack up and leave until Tristan was alone making phone calls until he could no longer speak. To this day I don't know what inspired him but by six o'clock that evening he had pulled the whole thing around and we were going ahead.

In 1990 I had given Tristan a signed copy of a very appropriately titled book on the film business: My Indecision Is Final: The Goldcrest Story. I had bought it in a small bookshop in Cannes and little did I know that the co-author with Jake Eberts, Terry Illott, would have such an influence on our fortunes. Tristan rang Terry, who did not know him, with a desperate plea for help. Terry asked to see the budget and the financial structure and soon agreed that the only way to save the film was to get the ITV company back. They both undertook the task of convening a conference call meeting of the board, who were all over the world. Tristan managed to get the chairman out of a cricket match in Barbados to set this in motion. Press releases had been prepared in London by J & M Entertainment blaming ITV internal bureaucracy for scuttling a John Hurt, Brenda Blethyn film. This would potentially be front-page news in Variety, Screen International and the Hollywood Reporter. The risk of being exposed for a silly decision was too much for the board and they revised their decision in our case. At six o'clock that evening I arrived in the office in Ardmore to hear dear old Vernon Lawrence from United Television say, "we're back in business, yippeeee!" We opened a bottle of champagne but couldn't drink it.

My most enduring memory while shooting Night Train is thanks to Guido Cerasuolo in Venice. The Venetian crew and Guido were sophisticated and efficient, and it was the most caring association I have ever experienced. They even gave us money back and organised the most wonderful experience of our lives on the last day of shooting in Venice. I had chosen the Pisano Moretto Palace on the Grand Canal as a base for shooting Poole's hotel scenes. On the last night Guido laid on a candlelit party for two hundred people in the wonderful ballroom overlooking the Canal. I cannot describe the experience; if magic exists sometimes then this was magical. Everything was tastefully done; the acoustics, from an era before microphones, were so clear when John Hurt recited Lewis Carroll. The beautiful young actress Moya Farrelly sang a love song with such true feeling. We all tried to thank each other for an unrepeatable human experience. It was a joy to see the sense of wonder return to Tristan's face as he and his good lady, Orla, gazed out on the multicoloured moving carpet of the canal with the exotic and mysterious gondolas slowly passing in the early Spring darkness. It had been a torturous process for the young producer, for us all, but on this night it all seemed worthwhile.

To date Night Train has been screened at most of the major film festivals of the world. It has won The Silver Rose for John Hurt, Best Actor at Schermi d'Amore, Verona and a nomination for Best European Film at the Brussels International Film Festival. It is slowly being released around the world, finding its audience gradually and I believe it will be around for a long time for those who, like Adrian Wootton of the National Film Theatre London, consider it "a small but highly polished gem." John Lynch Dublin 16/11/2002

| Synopsis | Cast | Production Notes | John Lynch on Directing |
| Night Train on IMDB |