Conor McPherson is renowned for his theatrical work, in his native Ireland and on Broadway; he has garnered considerable critical attention on both sides of the Atlantic, including an Olivier Award and a Tony Award in 2008 (for Best Featured Actor in a play, for Jim Norton's performance in McPherson's The Seafarer).
While McPherson has both writing and directing screen credits to his name, he stayed away from film production for seven years. “I took some time away because I wanted to understand what I wanted to do with films,” he says now on the phone from Dublin. “When you write a play you can put it on in a way that you can pretty much control. When you write a film, it's very unlikely that it will get made and secondly, made in a way that you envision, for all sorts of reasons. The Eclipse took a long time to put it together. It was a labour of love and something I am really proud of.”
McPherson's film is an unlikely combination of the supernatural and romance. Set in Cobh, County Cork it is the story of Michael Farr (Ciarán Hinds) a widowed father of two, who volunteers at the local literary festival. Michael has been dogged by visions that he can neither explain nor share. When he is assigned Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), an author of books about ghosts and the supernatural to look after, he finds someone in whom he can confide. While Lena and Michael's relationship develops, her attention remains consumed by best-selling American novelist Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn) and the three become inadvertently entwined.
The Eclipse is based on Irish playwright Billy Roche's short story, 'Tales from Rainwater Pond', which Roche adapted with McPherson. The pair, who are close friends, worked collaboratively on the screenplay for four years but it wasn't until McPherson found himself stuck on Broadway in the middle of a stagehand strike that he realised how to proceed. “I decided that I wanted to take it in a supernatural direction,” he says. “We were going to do our play, The Seafarer, on Broadway but there was a strike by the stagehands and all of Broadway was shut down for a number of weeks. We weren't even allowed to rehearse so I went back to the screenplay and I began to work on it while I was there. Also during that time I went to Washington, D.C. to see another one of my plays that was on in a theatre there. I went to Georgetown where The Exorcist was made. I went to the steps where the priest falls down at the end of the film. It's a very evocative place. I knew then that I wanted to make a film that had a very strong horror element like The Exorcist.”
For McPherson, William Friedkin's classic film provided a catalyst for what became his immersion in film culture and the work of Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and John Huston. Says McPherson, “from looking at those films I realised that to have a very assured approach to how you are going to film adds a tremendous amount of value. I think by going back to film school, as it were, and trying to learn what made those films work I was able to piggyback on some of their achievements in away.”
The Eclipse has three Irish Film and Television Awards to its credit, including Best Film, Best Script and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Aidan Quinn, as well as official selection at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, where Ciarán Hinds also took home the Best Actor award. It appears that the young director is certainly on his way to emulating the greats. Yet McPherson concedes that it was the mixture of influences that was both a blessing and curse.
“The drawback was that we had a film that was a mixture of genres. A ghost story and a love story. For that reason it probably took me a long time to raise the money to do it. When we did raise the money it wasn't very much so we shot the film in twenty-five days. The advantage of having a lot of time when you're not making the film and you're trying to make it is that you are really preparing all the time so when you do get to do it you kow exactly what you want. I was also able to work with exactly the kind of cast that I wanted. So although we made it for not very much money it is exactly the film I wanted to make and that's very satisfying.”
