'It's hard to have heroes'

Jim Sheridan talks about 50 Cent, Sheriff Street, getting rich, paying tax and politics.

Jim Sheridan opens the door to his red-brick Victorian house in Ballsbridge. He's a little delayed initially, because a fella has dropped in to try and persuade him to make a film about a nine-year-old girl who was killed by a paedophile in America. Then he's ready to talk, starts by asking more questions than he answers, seems used to such occasions. He looks relaxed, is smartly dressed, kicks on and off his shoes as he talks, has his feet on acoffee table covered in books and magazines. He talks slowly, sometimes like a soliloquy, other times like a rapid fire Q&A session. He's used to dialogue.

Sheridan is from Sheriff St. He now has a house in Ballsbridge and is about to move into one just built overhanging the sea – literally – in Dalkey. He tells a story about a classmate who killed himself accidentally making up a bomb for Hallowe'en. His new film is called Get Rich or Die Tryin', about American rapper 50 Cent and his route out of the ghetto – via music and money. Sheridan made theatre, then films, and they've made him money. So what does he make of his journey from Sheriff Street to Dalkey?

"I don't think about it in that way."

"You got rich though, didn't you?"

"Yeah, that's a hard one, getting rich. But I didn't get rich in terms of the money in Ireland... I have a house and if I sold it I could probably pay off the mortgage I have in Dalkey but that's not a huge amount of money. It is more than 90 per cent of the population have but it's not like the mega money, like the builders have."

"Do you qualify for artists' (tax) exemption?"

"Yeah."

"So you don't pay any tax?"

"I do pay tax."

"What do you pay tax on?"

"On anything that's not creative."

He doesn't seem too keen to talk about getting rich.

So how did he end up making a movie about a "gangsta" rapper?

"I felt like I wanted to make an American movie but I could never find a way in that I felt I knew anything about it... I don't really know how to (do a) growing-up, middle-class story. I've never been in that world but if you look around this house you wouldn't know it. I only knew about growing up in a certain kind of area. Queens isn't exactly like Sheriff Street but they are probably closer together than Park Avenue and Sheriff Street."

Sheridan was at a party in New York city given by the owner of 50 Cent's record label, Jimmy Iovine, whom he knew through Bono.

"I knew a good bit about rap and he (Iovine) found it quite funny that I did. So he sent me the script and immediately I said yes... There was just something about it. It reminded me a lot of the Mannix Flynn story.

"I thought I was making a movie about a famous guy, the black Elvis kind of thing, a black rapper and that it was irrelevant that he was black. But when the movie was released it was like opening the doors of an inferno for me. Just to get the reaction of the Americans, they didn't actually like him. I think they were unfair to his performance, I thought he was quite good in the movie."

Could he relate to 50 Cent?

"I loved him, he was sweet as hell... He's quiet. Except, when he gets on set, he's like Muhammad Ali. He is funny and he tells a lot of stories. He's very comic, he has big, big charisma – at the same time, it's hard to get to know him past a certain point. When he was eight he lost his mother and he never knew his father so I think he's guarded in a certain way and then, within the black culture – it's not like over here – there are less openly confrontational people, they don't confront you openly.

"Because, in their culture, confrontation is shooting. If you argue you could get shot. Somebody will argue with you and then they will leave and go and get a gun. So they don't tend to argue like us."

In November, 50 Cent came to Ireland for three gigs and some reshoots of the film, mostly shot in New York and Canada. He brought with him a large black entourage, who are constantly around him and full of bling.

"His entourage were very interesting, they are fellas who would die for him, totally protective of him... They are all quiet guys, very quiet.

"He [50 Cent] came around Sheriff Street... It was very interesting because you could see him treated differently in Sheriff Street, because in the Bronx the kids see him as a big hero. Whereas in Sheriff Street the kids were all like, 'hey, Fifty, can we have a picture with ya?'. And then they'd start talking about going fishing or something, ignoring him. It was very strange but it was kind of similar people.

"He has a big sense of humour. I think that one of the reasons the kids like his songs is that he has a kind of a sense of humour about the gangsta thing which very few of the others have. So they kind of feel that's more real. It's not the violence that makes it real, it's the sense of humour, it's the dis, you know."

Sheridan talks with surprising passion about the culture of rap.

"There is a kind of rap world, there is all this fucking misogyny and violence and weird stuff that people don't understand. If it's not expressed – I always think of it as those kind of geysers, where you see the steam coming out, and what you are seeing with the rap is the hot steam of what's actually the rage in a culture and it's finding expression through the rap.

"And if it didn't get expressed I think it would be worse.

"The misogyny to the women obviously isn't limited to the black culture, but that's part of what sells the songs. Within the black culture, you can understand it a bit, a lot of them grew up in one-parent families... So the only person they have to rebel against is the mother, which is very hard to do, so it's their bitches they rebel against. There is no normal societal way, so they are in this gangster, violent, rebellion anger, and sometimes it's sad that that is the only expression of it, but it seems to be a worldwide thing."

What got him into rap?

"All the things that you would never expect from a guy who was 50 (Sheridan is 56, he started listening to rap six years ago). I listen to it in the car... It probably does make me drive faster. I like Snoop Dogg and I like NWA. It must be something to do with the anger in it that attracts you, it can't be anything else...

"Sometimes I feel when I'm listening to them, even when it's raw and straight out, that I am hearing the truth. I think people are now so used to spin in the media that they know they are being lied to...

"Spin has caused so much lies as opposed to this rap culture which is supposed to have caused so much violence. You know there was this whole thing about him [50 Cent] having a gun on the poster, which you can understand, all these black leaders don't want guns in their neighbourhood. You feel for them because they are actually trying to do their best. But they live in a country that allows guns and so you kind of feel 'get real and stop the real guns and forget the cardboard ones'".

Get Rich or Die Tryin' is the 14th film that Sheridan has worked on over a 17 year period as writer, producer or directer.

"To make an Irish movie and get it released in America is a big difficulty. To make 20 million dollars is very difficult.

"I've done it a few times now. In America was a success, In the Name of the Father was very successful, My Left Foot was very successful. My Left Foot made Miramax 20, 30 million (dollars). Maybe more worldwide, maybe 50. But they buy it for a million – that's very successful. In the Name of the Father was very successful because it cost 15 million to make and probably took in 70 or 80 million worldwide.

"The Boxer wasn't a hit. That lost money even though everyone thinks it was a success. The Field and My Left Foot didn't lose money because they were made by TV stations so both of them were paid for by the commercials that were shown. Anything that was made in the cinema was a bonus, they never expected it.

"Even with American movies, one out of five is successful. People here have the wrong idea, they don't understand what a competitive market it is and that people are writing off four out of five films from the start. Basically, studios set out that out of five films one will be a disaster, three will break even and one will be a hit, and you hope that the hit pays for everything else."

Is there a secret to success?

"If you are starting out with, 'how do I make a successful movie commercially?', you probably won't make it, because it has to be about a passion.

"Here is the most difficult thing I learnt from making the 50 Cent and the Irish movies... When I started making it, I met Michael Smurfit in America and he said to me 'oh I see you are doing a black movie, you move from having a whole audience to an audience to 10 per cent of America because 10-12 per cent of America is black'.

"The difficulty is that, if you take an Irish film and you try to sell it to the Irish-American market, they smell something wrong. Like, why isn't it good enough to be just released as a movie? And if you take a black movie and try to sell it only to the black audience they are the same. So there is only movies, movies, movies – there is no such thing as an "Irish movie" or a "black movie", there is only movies. In America, they call 'black movies' 'urban movies'".

His next film is about his mother.

"I can't get her to talk at all. I wrote a movie about growing up in Sheriff Street which hasn't come out yet. In that, the character of my mum, I can't make her talk. She talked very, very little... And if I would ask her a very complex question or heavy emotional question which I did as she got older and she would give me a one word answer. Maybe she talked to my father, but not when we were around."

He talks about the difficulty of finding and expressing the stories within, how being an emigrant helped.

"There is a great line at the end of James Joyce at the end of A Portrait of an Artist. He says, 'you find far from home what the heart knows and what it is'. There is something about being out of the home...

"The first thing that happens is you lose lots of friends, because you lose contact with them and then all that stuff that surrounds you like a warm bath is gone and you are dealing more with the realities of life because you are on your own. You make new friends, and the friends you have abroad you tend to have a rapport with them. Certainly, if you were an illegal, you would feel we were all illegal aliens. That's a very powerful feeling."

Sheridan and his wife Fran lived in America from 1980 to 1989. They came home when Sheridan was making In the Name of the Father.

"We were only temporarily illegal, we were legal when we went, and then we were illegal and but not like people who were really illegal and trying to work illegally and that's fucking very hard."

Is he political?

"I don't know... I do pay attention to it but not as much as I used to. I think since 11 September and the whole Islamic fundamentalist thing, and all that, it (his politics) shifted into a world perspective instead of just an Irish one. I'm more interested in what's happening in the Islamic world now, or what's happening there, than I am in the Irish one. It seems like a much smaller argument now.

"I don't think the use of Shannon for American planes is good. I think we should either be fucking in the war or out of the war. We should not be on the fence. I mean, we have a choice.

"When you are outside of it (America), you feel you should protest, or whatever, but when you are there... You know, it's like England – nobody ever voted for Margaret Thatcher that I ever met. In America I have never met somebody who voted for Bush in New York or LA so I have no interaction where I can get angry, because everybody is going, 'how do we get rid of this guy?'"

He talks about a politics of identity, of culture, of theatre.

"Yeats was quite crazy with the stuff he wrote about. The level of madness he was on in relation to the birth of a nation, or the idea of something coming into being... I don't know what type of drugs they were on but they were very interesting, and there has not been that type of discussion since, and there has been a traumatic history in which there is stuff that could work on stage that couldn't work in movies, for instance.

"The stage is much more able to take tragedy than a movie because it's more intellectual, it's more in the head... The theatre is a place more for ideas whereas the movies is more a place for emotions."

Sheridan talks fondly about some of the actors he has worked with, notably Daniel Day Lewis and Richard Harris.

"I'd love to work with Daniel again. I think he is probably the best actor in the world. Daniel has such integrity that it's hard for him to do anything. And you don't ever want someone to have less integrity – you don't want to say, 'ah, just do whatever comes through the fucking door, keep yourself busy'. I don't think he is that kind of person, I think he is the most private person in the most public world and it's a big pain for him but I would always work with Daniel. If there was something that deserved his talent that I could do – if I could find the part that would stretch him I would do it tomorrow."

Richard Harris, though, was "wild and crazy, mad as a fuckin' brush".

"I was mad too though. One day he said to me, 'any row that you are having with me you are having with your father'. Probably right there. But it [The Field] was a conflicted film, probably not from his perspective. From his perspective, he was just doing what he does.

"But for me it was a lot of arguments because, when you are the director, the easiest thing to do is to start acting being the director - in other words, you just nod at people. I think a lot of directors, when they have big stars, are just letting the stars do what they want and pretending that that is what they want... That's an easier life because, if you get into conflict with somebody you are making a movie with, you have 300 you have to convince and they have only got one, themselves, so you have to pull the army along and you come to the crossroads and the actor says, 'I'm going left' and you know you have to go right; what do you do?"

Harris's performance as The Bull McCabe in The Field was iconic, but was also over-the-top.

"He would do the part different to what I imagined. So from the beginning it was like, 'don't act so much' and him maybe wanting to be bigger than I wanted him to be, you know.

"Maybe he wanted it to be more sentimental than I did, and I'm not saying he was wrong or, indeed, that he did want it to be sentimental, but that's maybe the way it seemed to me. But I was mad. We did one scene and I didn't like it, so I built the set in Ardmore – then we were in the west of Ireland – so that he redo the part when we got to Ardmore. That's mad and it's especially mad to do it to Richard Harris, who had knocked out Marlon Brando and fought John Huston, and probably the only reason I survived was because I was probably too small for him to pick on, I don't know."

Is there anything Jim Sheridan hasn't done yet?

"In movies?"

Or in life?

"You almost feel like you want to tell the truth more, you know, whatever that is. Sometimes I'd like to do something completely different than making movies or theatre."

Like what?

"I don't know what the fuck I'd do, you know."

So what hasn't he done yet?

"I don't know. Jesus. Fish – I'd like to fish."

Does he have a hero?

"I don't know. Sam Beckett in arts. In life, I wouldn't say he is my hero because he is younger than me but I really do have great admiration for Bono and I do think he is special, you know. Brando, I thought was special. Daniel (Day Lewis) I think is special. But heroes, it's hard to have heroes..."p

Get Rich or Die Tryin' is out in America and will be released in Ireland in January