Dave Fanning
Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg, they’re kind of one of a kind aren’t they?
Gerry Johnston
They are. They work together a lot, they know exactly. Tom Hanks is a great guy to work with. He wanted to use the flamethrower, if anyone’s seen the film, he wanted to use the flamethrower in burning the Germans out of the pillbox at the time. And I just said ‘No you can’t do that. It’s got to be another guy’ you know. ‘Ah’, he said ‘I want to do it’ and I said ‘No, you can’t’. Because actors will always want to do these things but nowadays because you get some actors who’s producing, directing and that; they can do things, but a lot of actors are not allowed do things nowadays because of the health and safety and that so we have to have stunt people in doing things.
Dave Fanning
Okay, just sticking with actors then. Charlotte Rampling and Peter Ustinov were in a movie and so was Fred Astaire: The Purple Taxi.
Gerry Johnston
The Purple Taxi, yeah.
Dave Fanning
So you had to talk to Fred about Ginger. ‘So how’s Ginger getting on? I love those movies with Ginger.’ What was the reaction to that?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, we were shooting; I was just cut off like that. We were shooting down in a place called Renvyle, down in the west of Ireland over in Connemara. And I was after having a big meal with a colleague of mine and we had the biggest lobsters you ever seen. They were that size. I never seen anything like it. So we were stuffed and there was a big fire and there was two chairs; the backs of the chairs. So I walked in and I seen an arm moving and I said ‘Ah Fred, how are you?’ Fred Astaire. So he was very grumpy, a grumpy guy at the time and that and he said ‘Yeah, it’s very cold outside.’ So I got talking to him and after about a minute I said, ‘What was it like working with Ginger Rogers?’ and he just put his hand on his head and said ‘I don’t want to talk about her’ he said ‘and don’t ever mention her name to me again.’ So I said ‘I’m sorry about that Fred.’
Dave Fanning
‘Sorry about that Fred, pass the salt.’ Really? You can’t read anything into it, no?
Gerry Johnston
No, well obviously he didn’t like it.
Dave Fanning
She kept standing on his toes.
Gerry Johnston
Maybe she stood on his toes.
Dave Fanning
No, maybe she was sick or dying or something. I mean maybe another perfect example of that kind of thing. I remember Robert Shaw, the great Robert Shaw; From Russia with Love and Jaws and all the rest of it and The Sting. He died in County Mayo, didn’t he?
Gerry Johnston
He did, he died in –
Dave Fanning
You were filming in Ireland with –
Gerry Johnston
We were doing a film The Big Red One with Lee Marvin.
Dave Fanning
Lee Marvin, okay. The toughest guy who ever hit the screen.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, the toughest guy.
Dave Fanning
Sitting at the bar, having a drink. You’re going to get pissed for the night.
Gerry Johnston
We’re sitting at the bar. There’s four or five of us at the bar. This was the director, can’t think of his name, he was a small little guy, anyway American.
Dave Fanning
He’s not here tonight.
Gerry Johnston
And there was Lee Marvin, my, at times my effects supervisor and there was another colleague of mine which we worked together and that over the years. And anyway it came up in the news –
Dave Fanning
You were sitting there drinking for the night.
Gerry Johnston
Oh, sitting there drinking.
Dave Fanning
And the RTE news comes on the screen.
Gerry Johnston
And the news came up and Robert Shaw died today over in Mayo and Lee Marvin broke down immediately. And he turned around and he says, put his glass down and he said ‘I gotta go.’ And everyone, the four of us were thinking like, who was he, who is he, where is he going? So anyway they’d to change the schedule because he was gone next day and he went to the funeral. But I never seen him, a man crying. Especially Lee Marvin which is like the toughie of those films and that. You know, so he broke down and he was missing for about two or three days and then he came back on the scene. He wasn’t right, even a few days when he came back you know. He was still talking about his best mate, you know at the time, you know. So that was these actors, sort of hard actors, you know they all have a heart and we all sort of break down.
Dave Fanning
Other people went missing at times. Kubrick went missing once as well and he went off because feeling there was a threat on his life or something. You were dealing with an awful lot of stuff during the Troubles in Ireland and that stuff that you were dealing with is stuff that people could have found very handy. Explosive sort of stuff like.
Gerry Johnston
Ah, yeah.
Dave Fanning
So was that a difficult thing often? Like, you know, getting into trouble. Not just the other big things you mention there with Angel.
Gerry Johnston
Well there was one time I was going, I mean I was going back in the sixties, the late sixties and that. Is that what you want to know about?
Dave Fanning
Yeah.
Gerry Johnston
Back in the sixties I was doing business with a couple of company called ICI, used to supply a certain amount of explosive materials and that. And I rang them up and I said ‘Look, I need a certain amount of materials.’ And this Colonel O’Kelly said like we can get stuff out of the army and what we call HE, high explosive. But I needed a lot of other stuff, powders and primer chords and things like that. So I ended up in a place somewhere in Meath, in a field and a little house, a little sort of, it was like a little wooden outhouse basically. But you put your sort of lawnmower in and things like that only a bit bigger. And when I got there I was to meet a guy and he never turned up, the door was open and I went in rooting around this place and I could have walked away with anything. And that was the time of the Troubles. And a guy arrived anyway, about 10 minutes later. He said ‘Are you Gerry Johnston?’ and I said ‘Yeah’ and he said my name is whatever his name was. So I got a certain amount of materials out of him and then I got the rest out of the army and that. But that’s it. After that then it was very difficult then because everything tightened up because of the Troubles in the North.
But, getting back to Stanley Kubrick. We were doing that film and he was after doing a film called Clockwork Orange and I think that’s why his life was threatened and he came to Ireland. Now, Stanley Kubrick would never travel with his family; his family always travelled separate. His kids travelled separately, his wife travelled separately and he travelled. He was just paranoid about sort of being bumped off. And on that particular shoot when we were shooting Barry Lyndon, he disappeared overnight. The producers were asking ‘Have you seen him?’ and I said ‘No, I haven’t seen him at all.’ So, he got a threat, he was threatened apparently and he left overnight and then they finished up, packed up and went back to England.
Dave Fanning
Do you know, it’s a funny thing when you look through the book and all these kind of stories; good, bad and indifferent, it sounds like you’ve had a very exciting life and there’s still plenty more to go. But is there an element of like, you know, a lot of times you didn’t get paid. A lot of times you had to chase people and nearly threaten people to get paid. And even that’s like 20 and 30 years after working with some of the biggest. Did you ever feel like, you know, clocking in a nine to five mightn’t have been a bad idea?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, I do, yeah. It takes its toll; especially on family life. You know because once you go on a movie life is just locked into that.
Dave Fanning
And when I say, by the way, you never went abroad; you went abroad to make loads of movies.
Gerry Johnston
I did.
Dave Fanning
Bizarre stories in Harare and Africa and every other damn place. And really weird stories: either being attacked by locals or being attacked by elephants.
a. Zimbabwe
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, I was in, I was doing a film in Africa in Zimbabwe at the time and I was working for a company called Canon; I won’t say the word but anyway they’re finished up now. And after about six weeks I hadn’t been paid so I went on strike. I just told them I wasn’t going, but everyone, a lot of the other heads of departments as well wasn’t paid and that. So we kind of said we weren’t going to work and that and then we had to threaten them in Los Angeles. And Los Angeles was – they were moving money around the globe. By the time it’d got to us they’d made a fortune on our wages at the time. So that was the first time.
And then the second time – I’ll come back to the near misses as well – then the second time I was working in Israel and I was working for the same company and the same thing happened again.
Dave Fanning
Right.
b. Israel
Gerry Johnston
You know? And I refused and I stayed back after about five weeks in my hotel, chilling out at the swimming pool in a beautiful hotel, reading a book and I said ‘I’m not going in till I’m paid.’ So the producer, I worked with him before, Gene Corman who was a brother of Roger Corman at the time and he said ‘I’ll give you a personal cheque if you go back.’ I said ‘No, that’s not the point about it, the principle is these people are doing the same all around the world.’ So eventually, after a while he guaranteed, he said to me, ‘Come on come back on the set and I’ll promise you I’ll pay you your money this week out of my own personal account.’ So we got paid eventually and carried on the movie.
Dave Fanning
What about a little known movie called, is it Flaming Borders?
Gerry Johnston
Flaming Borders, yeah.
Dave Fanning
Did Saddam Hussein star in that for you?
Gerry Johnston
Well, yeah I mean a colleague of mine, he rang me up and he said ‘I’ve got a picture in Iraq.’ And I said ‘We can’t go there’ I said, ‘there’s a war.’ ‘Nah,’ he said ‘don’t worry about that,’ he says, ‘there’s nothing happening.’ So anyway I went to London and we sorted out our work permits and our passports and everything like that. And we arrived in late at night time. And when we arrived in Baghdad we were whisked away. We didn’t realise we were whisked away by the army at the time. And everyone else was looking for cases and there was hassle going on and you know and that. So we went anyway, we went back to our hotel. And a few days later and we were establishing in the television centre, underground. And we didn’t realise this until the third day that we were surrounded by tanks and we seen a lot of guns on the roofs and everything. And we were wondering what’s this all about and that?
So it wasn’t a good place to be. And of course after, when they went in to bomb Iraq, later on in years that was the first thing they knocked out. But we didn’t know at the time, I didn’t know who the President was. And my contact was a guy who invited us there, was a guy called Tariq Aziz who became later a spokesman for the United Nations. But we were taken around one day to this palace to meet somebody and we were taken around anyway. And all I remember was going in and seeing all gold on the ceiling and mosaic and all like that. Beautiful place but there was always military around. And we were taken into this big hall with a huge door about 15, 20 feet high and we were all told to line up. We were going to meet someone famous and that. So anyway this guy came in and we were told it was the President. So I met the President, you know, Saddam. And it was like a handshake and only just looked like, steel eyes. He’d just go along like that. And we didn’t realise after that until weeks later, we were making a propaganda movie for him at the time.
Dave Fanning
Yeah, exactly.
Gerry Johnston
So when I heard that we were there for now maybe about a couple of months, I wasn’t too happy about that. And I decided to tell the production about it; I’m not going back after Christmas. So it was then like ‘You’re staying, your our guest, you’ve got to stay.’ So we felt a bit intimidated and we were told then if we hadn’t cleared all our bills and we owed one cent in Iraq, we’d never get out of it. So I made sure of all the crew, you know, was paid up, any outstanding bills, make sure because if you owed money we were going to suffer, we were going to be held there. But we got out there and we never got back. Some of the guys went back but at the time –
Dave Fanning
Scary stuff.
Gerry Johnston
And I’ve never seen the film. It’s called The Flaming Borders. It was a lot of; we were using a lot of military stuff.
Dave Fanning
I’ve never seen it either. By the way, we’re going to do a Questions and Answer thing in a few minutes time. I just want to ask for another five or 10 more minutes and then you can ask. Just as a matter of interest, you mentioned there that you met the President, right, of Iraq and didn’t know or whatever. I once got out of a lift in the Dorchester in London and introduced Pierce Brosnan - James Bond - to the most powerful woman in America, Oprah Winfrey which I felt really good about. But you met the President of Ireland in the west of Ireland once, Patrick Hillery, who then introduced you to Grace Kelly. That’s pretty cool. I’d rather that.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, it was a picture called The Great Train Robbery. In actual fact it was in the Phoenix –
Dave Fanning
Great Train Robbery. Can I just say I was an extra in that movie?
I got into Trinity College at the age of whatever and the most bizarre thing was that you were wearing your St Bernard pullover and you’re brought down to some place in Annamoe or somewhere down Glencree or somewhere. And there’s a woman being hanged and there’s a whole scene with a woman being hanged and thrown off a balcony or something and somebody else is escaping from jail at the same time because the whole thing was a ruse. And we were to go ‘Hang her! Hang her!’ And we were all there in our St Bernard tshirts and wearing watches and it’s the 18th Century. I don’t know how you got out of that. Sean Connery standing there beside us. It was so cool. Anyway, that was the nearest I ever got.
Gerry Johnston
Well the time I met the President was we were shooting it up in the Phoenix Park.
Dave Fanning
He was - Patrick Hillery was President at the time?
Gerry Johnston
He was, yeah Patrick Hillery was the President at the time and he was in the Áras an Uachtaráin up there in the park. And I was - again it just happens these things – I was sitting in the tent and this guy just came in and he sat down beside me and he said;
‘What’s the movie? What’s the movie you’re making?’ and I said ‘It’s called The First Great Train Robbery with Sean Connery.’ ‘Oh,’ he said ‘I heard about Sean Connery. I’m looking forward to meeting him’ and that. And I said ‘Ah yeah, he’s around’ and that, you know. And he said to me ‘What do you do?’ And I said ‘I do Special Effects.’ ‘What are you doing on this?’ ‘I do rain, smoke, mist, fireworks, pyrotechnics and things like that.’ And he said ‘Oh yeah’ – and he was with a polystyrene cup and he said ‘Really’ he said ‘it’s very interesting’ he said. ‘And do you do much of this?’ And I said ‘Yeah I’m doing it for years’ and that. And he said ‘My name is Paddy Hillery.’ And I said ‘Oh right. Okay.’ So then it dawned on me – oh it’s the President. So you know. And he said ‘President’ he said, like. I said ‘Oh right, great.’
And so anyway I said I had to go back. So he said ‘I’ll go back with you.’ So I was walking out of the tent and who’s walking in? It was Grace Kelly with Michael Crichton who was the director who died there
Dave Fanning
Who died last week.
Gerry Johnston
last week. And I met the Prince as well and that and just shook hands and ‘Nice to meet you’ and all. And that was it.
Dave Fanning
Well there’s so many other movies and so many things we haven’t mentioned yet. I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis, just what did he do to you in terms of just looking at this guy who was never once, for one second out of character? Either as Christy in the first movie or as whatever his thing was, Conlon, Gerry Conlon; is he always like just on?
Gerry Johnston
Always. Daniel always goes away, especially playing the part of Christy Brown at the time in the wheelchair. He went away and he went into a home with these people to get the feeling of what it was like. And then I had a problem because when I met him first it was about two weeks before the shoot and he was in character. And I said to him ‘Daniel, I need to talk to you about’ – he’s in the wheelchair and he’s slurched like this, anyone who’s seen the movie – I said ‘Daniel I need to talk to you because I’m going to have to put you in a wheelchair and send you down around Dublin on cables and in your wheelchair and that. So I need to talk to you how it’s going to be.’ So he kept going ‘[Inaudible]. And I said ‘No Daniel I need to talk to you’ and he kept going on and I said ‘Right I’ll talk to you when you finish shooting.’ So that particular evening then, I’d say to him ‘Daniel I need to talk to you’; ‘[Inaudible]’. So I never got talking to him.
Dave Fanning
24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Gerry Johnston
24 hours a day. That’s the – he’s the character, he’s fantastic. That’s why he’s won a few awards. He’s just a fantastic character. Great guy to work with and very, he’s a very private guy altogether. But his own mother – sorry Dave – his own mother on that, there was a colleague of mine used to drive him around and when he was playing Christy, his own mother couldn’t understand because he was in character. So, she used to ring Louis the driver and ask ‘How’s Daniel? And I can’t understand him, is he alright?’ and he said ‘Yeah he’s okay, he’s playing the character’ and everything. ‘Well I don’t know, is he, you know is he fine or is he?’ You know, a typical mother. And Louis said ‘Don’t worry he’s okay.’ ‘And Louis, you just let me know if anything goes wrong.’ And so Louis had to ring her and tell her how Daniel was.
So when it came along – In The Name of the Father, the same thing happened again, he’d get into the character of this strong Belfast accent and she didn’t know. So she used to ring Louis again and say ‘I don’t understand.’ So he was like the interpreter all the time for the mother, you know?
Dave Fanning
Yeah. Okay, there’s one thing in the book and it’s very important. It’s, you worked on Neil Jordan’s movie Michael Collins. When you realised that Neil Jordan was making the movie first of all, you don’t say it in the book but I’m going to say it to you right now. Did you say ‘Bastard, he’s stolen my movie’?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah.
Dave Fanning
That was your movie, was it?
Gerry Johnston
Well at the time I – there was a clearout years ago in the studios and they were throwing scripts out: burning them. And I seen Michael Collins and I took it.
Dave Fanning
What do you mean? What, Michael Collins?
Gerry Johnston
They were burning the scripts, you know the people that used to send in scripts.
Dave Fanning
The Neil Jordan Michael Collins?
Gerry Johnston
No, no. Somebody sent in the script and it was written by a lady called Rosemary Anne Sissons who did Upstairs, Downstairs. Maybe you wouldn’t remember it but it was a TV series. Very successful black and white TV series called Upstairs, Downstairs.
Dave Fanning
So she had sent in some kind of treatment for a movie hoping that somebody might pick it up.
Gerry Johnston
Hoping someone would pick it up and I found it. So anyway, I looked at it and it was very outdated and that. So I contacted her, got her tracked down and I contacted and I said, ‘Look can I have a talk with you?’ So in the meantime as I went to see her in London, I said ‘Look I’m interested in taking the rights of the story.’ So she said well I think it was British Screen at the time or British Finance at the time had the rights. So it was a guy who took the rights on this and he paid British Screen a certain amount. But we tracked him down anyway and he became a monk in Tibet. So we had to track this guy down and I had to make the offer to take the option on the script. So I said to British Screen, ‘You’re going to have to chase this guy, I don’t know where to contact him.’
So we got that back to Rosemary Anne and then I used to visit her and we sort of brought it updated and then I decided that this is not going to work. So a colleague of mine, we decided to write a script and I went to Toronto and I asked, rang up Liam Neeson and asked him would he play the part of Michael Collins, explained to him about what it was more or less the same script as Neil Jordan had. And there was loads of scripts going around then as well. But when I went to work on Neil Jordan’s film –
Dave Fanning
But hold on a sec, when you went to Liam Neeson, had Liam Neeson heard from Neil Jordan?
Gerry Johnston
No, no.
Dave Fanning
So Liam Neeson was asked by you to play Michael Collins in a movie called probably Michael Collins. You’d a different title to it?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah I’d a different title to it. And he said, ‘This sounds interesting. Yeah, I’d be interested in that.’ Because I was after doing a film, I think, before that with him called Lamb, yeah, I think he plays a Christian Brother and there was a child.
Dave Fanning
Yeah, boy out in the [inaudible].
Gerry Johnston
Yeah. And I explained to him who I was and everything and he was ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll have a chat about it and everything when we get back to Ireland.’ But in the meantime, there was a couple of scripts going around, there was Kevin Costner was playing Michael Collins – Michael Cimino.
Dave Fanning
And was it based on that Gerry Johnston doesn’t mean anything compared to Neil Jordan or Kevin Costner, was that it?
Gerry Johnston
That was it.
Dave Fanning
You were a nobody in that field.
Gerry Johnston
I was a nobody at the time, you know. But I think you know, as now, it’s like I want to sort of try and make my own movies now and I’ve had a lot of experience over the years and I’ve done a second unit directing on films so I’m going to go. I love the special effects. I love it and I’ll always do it you know, till the day I die maybe.
Dave Fanning
Okay so that’s what’s coming around the corner. A lot of the movies you might have made it first, you didn’t get your name in the credits at the end and is it vital?
Gerry Johnston
It is, it’s vital because all the people you know. And the first thing is, especially on a film, it’s either at home it’s time to put on the kettle when the credits start rolling or if it’s in the cinema.
Dave Fanning
But if somebody abroad wants to sort of do something they might get the movie out on video in Hollywood or something like that and take a look at it and say ‘Okay that’s the guy who did that is it?’
Gerry Johnston
Exactly.
Dave Fanning
You need your name there.
Gerry Johnston
Well it’s very much important because first of all it’s important that our credits come up but and people say ‘Oh right, okay.’ It could be Hollywood, it could be anywhere in the world. Hollywood is a place as everyone thinks in America but, you know, there’s two Hollywoods in Ireland anyway.
Dave Fanning
That’s right, down in Wicklow.
Gerry Johnston
They haven’t got money, the same money. But I mean it’s, Hollywood is known to everyone, it’s Los Angeles, you know?
Dave Fanning
Tom Cruise. What was he like?
Gerry Johnston
Tom Cruise, I never worked with Tom Cruise.
Dave Fanning
I thought you did Far and Away?
Gerry Johnston
No I didn’t do Far and Away. I was doing a film called The Playboys. It shot -
Dave Fanning
Oh, you were up in Mayo while they were down in Dingle.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah I was up in Cavan.
Dave Fanning
Did you not do the, some of the snow for Far and Away in Dublin?
Gerry Johnston
No. Yes I was to go and work on the film.
Dave Fanning
Because you had done it for Educating Rita and here’s the snowman, get him.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah. Well, -
Dave Fanning
Here in Trinity.
Gerry Johnston
Well, Far and Away, first of all I was to go and work on it. A guy; supervisor-director, a special effects guy called John Richardson asked me would I do the movie for them. Because, he said, ‘I don’t know what it’s like in Europe now and what to do.’ So anyway, we never worked together and I went off and I did another movie and that. But when I was working on a movie here which is back in 1973, it was called Educating Rita with Michael Caine and Julie Walters, that was the first time Julie Walters was coming off the stage and playing in her first film. And we were creating here at the time, I was to create a big snow scene and it was during the August and it was one of the hottest summers ever. And I think the Dean got a bit annoyed about it because we had all these wedding parties coming in to –
Dave Fanning
Getting their photograph taken in the snow?
Gerry Johnston
get the photograph in the snow. And it was really like 100 degrees.
Dave Fanning
And was there any newspaper the next morning that didn’t have a picture on the front page?
Gerry Johnston
Newspaper headlines the next morning – ‘Snow Overnight in Trinity College’ and all these wedding parties.
Dave Fanning
In the August of 2008 it would have been appropriate
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, yeah.
Dave Fanning
Alright, well look, I’ll tell you, just there are many other things, okay, so I’m going to ask one last thing and then it’s up to you guys. We’re going to hand around the microphones. Wait till you get a microphone if possible. And that’s this; just Braveheart, I mean is Braveheart one of the biggest things you’ve ever done in terms of just everything was in it except like the kind of pyrotechnics we saw there? Everything else was in it. Massive.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah it was massive.
Dave Fanning
Because I was on the set a few days and I’ve often given out about Mel Gibson in interviews but he was brilliant on the set. He was so funny and just a big laugh. This guy is spending 200 million and he’s just having a laugh.
Gerry Johnston
Well he was under a lot of pressure. First of all he was involved in the acting, directing and producing. And it was, as I say it was very funny because all the Irish army used to get behind this bank of monitors. And Mel would say, sort of like, ‘God that’s’ and of course the Irish guys used to say ‘Oh we can do better than that Mel, come on let’s get back and do another one.’ You know. But in that particular we had fire, a huge amount of fire in it. We were using massive boat tanks of fire, liquid gas. We had arrow launchers, we had chopped off arms, heads, spears going through, mechanical horses, burning oil.
Dave Fanning
See the point about all this is you’re just expected to come up with this. They say, ‘This is the special effects guy, come up with this.’
Gerry Johnston
Yeah. Well, you have to – again, you read the script right?
Dave Fanning
We just saw the place there, the cow shed as you call it which has been renovated now or at least it’s better than it was, is it? Or the weeds are gone from the front, are they?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, I mean when I went there – when I opened it up in 19 – I was in the studio and they kept moving me around and I needed a big area like something and they gave me this particular place one day. And we opened up the door and as I opened the door it was like –crreeaak – and there was all these massive cobwebs. This door hadn’t been opened for about 30 years, 20, 30 years. And it was all just farm machinery in the yard, farmyard. And all the place was basically pens for cattle with Lord Meath and there was Jersey cows I think was the only one. But the whole place was falling down. All there was was a light bulb and a tap. And I got rid of all the machinery, farm machinery; I got rid of all the straw and the hay.
Dave Fanning
And that’s what we’ve been seeing on the screen there?
Gerry Johnston
And that’s what you’re seeing on the screen now. Whereas at the time it was just every felt was falling down and there was trees going up through the roof.
Dave Fanning
How cool, do you see the way I brought it right back to the beginning? That was pretty good wasn’t it?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, Americans often ask me ‘Where’s your base?’ And I say, ‘The cow shed.’
Dave Fanning
So the cow shed is what it’s called. There’s a picture of the book from 2007.
« Back to Lecture