DANIEL IRON
ABOVE IMAGE FROM “THE BANG BANG CLUB”
JPR—[laughs] Well that’s definitely one bonus of shooting there. What about the film you just finished, The Bang Bang Club? That was a co-production between South Africa and Canada, right? And was that was all shot in Africa?
D—Yeah, the whole movie is set in South Africa.
JPR—When is that expected to come out? Who was in it?
D—Well, I’m going to see the final print in three days. It stars Ryan Phillippe, Taylor Kitsch and Malin Akerman.
JPR—What was it like shooting in South Africa? Was it pretty crazy there?
D—You know, I actually loved it. The company we worked with did Generation Kill, the HBO series. A lot of people shoot there all the time because it’s cheap, the crews are great, and geographically it can look like anything.
JPR—Was Out Of Africa the company that you worked with?
D—Yeah. They were quite experienced.
JPR—Were there any other crazy stories from filming in Africa?
D—Well, the film is about these four photojournalists in their twenties who are like rock stars. Imagine if there were street battles going on in Burnaby (a suburb of Vancouver) with thousands of people dying everyday and no one in Vancouver knew it was happening. These photographers were in there capturing it everyday for four years.
JPR—For four years?
D—Until it ended with the elections, when Mandela got elected. One of them got shot, and then another one killed himself right after, and the other two guys that are still alive wrote a book, called The Bang Bang Club.
JPR—Oh, cool. So the actual photographers wrote the book and you bought the rights to the book.
D—Yeah, we developed the script from the book and we shot in the actual locations where the events happened. So, it was really emotional… people in the neighborhood were coming out and saying, “My brother was shot right there.”
JPR—How was it for the actual photographers that were on set? Did they get pretty worked up about having to relive all those moments?
D—Yeah, at certain points they did. I mean, these are tough photographers, you know? One of them is still in Afghanistan, I guess once a year, but, yeah, they got quite shaken up at certain points.
JPR—Wow, that sounds like an amazing film. I can’t wait to see it! Now I’m just going to ask you a couple lighter questions… What type of music do you listen to?
D—I’m still really stuck on The Clash, but also Wilco, Radiohead and Glenn Gould.
JPR—What about films? What are some of your most recent favorite films that really stuck in your mind?
D—There Will Be Blood… I’ve watched, like, ten times in the last six months… also Crouching Tiger, In The Mood For Love, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly.
JPR—You’ve definitely had a pretty balanced film career between documentary, TV and film. Are there any secrets to staying alive and making money in the film industry that you could share?
D—Well… I was talking to a screen writer yesterday and people are always saying, like, “Oh, I want to write a script,” or, “I have a script,” and our joke was, like, “Yeah, okay, well, I want to be a heart surgeon, so could we go in the bathroom and I’ll conduct surgery on you?”
JPR—Yeah. [laughs]
D—It’s a skill, like anything else… you have to learn things and become better at them and you have to look at the business, dealing with artists, dealing with directors, dealing with scripts, and learn it. And any opportunity you have to learn, you should take it because it’s sort of an accumulation of knowledge and learning that makes you good at what you do. It’s all about learning how to collaborate with people. The most important thing is knowing how to get the most out of people, how to create environments that are conducive to creativity and allow people to be work at their best… Watch people do well, watch people do poorly. Try to accumulate the knowledge into one bigger skill.
JPR—Definitely. Very good advice. Thanks so much for chatting with me today.
I look forward to seeing The Bang Bang Club. Talk soon.
D—Thank you, Let me know if you need anything else.
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