The reclusive Dutch director, Bo Gusse, has decided to end his self-imposed retirement and will make his comeback with an as-yet-untitled new film, to be made in Ireland this summer. Now 79, Gusse received great acclaim for his stunning blending of zany experimental styles and jagged neo-realism in the powerfully austere Floor Pail, which ran for over five hours and won the coveted Golden Walrus award at the Luxembourg Film Festival in 1962.
Gusse caused a furore four years later when his sexually explicit drama, On a Day Like Today, was dismissed as pornographic fantasy by many critics and was considered too graphic to be acquired for distribution in many countries, including the US, Britain and Ireland. With the advent of video, pirated copies of the film became eagerly sought and established his cult reputation.
In Dublin this week, he explained that the ideas for his new film were prompted by seeing his grandson's video of Riverdance at a recent family gathering. As he downed a pint and a ball of malt chaser in a city-centre bar, he pounded the table with his fist when I ventured to ask him what the film is about.
"My films are not about things," he thundered. "They explore meanings, myths, superstitions and realities." The film will feature extensive nudity, a trademark of his work, he said, and auditions for the all-Irish cast begin in Dublin next week.
Kevin Spacey, whose performance in American Beauty earned him his second Oscar, has been offered the leading role in the next film by Lasse Hallstrom, the Swedish director whose film of The Cider House Rules was eclipsed by American Beauty in the Oscars for best picture and best director on Sunday.
Hallstrom is seeking Spacey to star as the troubled journalist at the centre of his film, The Shipping News, based on the Annie Proulx novel which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994.
Two of this year's best supporting actor nominees, Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment - who both lost out to Michael Caine on Sunday night - have been lined up to star in the next Steven Spielberg film, AI (artificial intelligence). A futuristic drama set at a time when polar icecaps have melted, it was a long-cherished project of the late Stanley Kubrick.
"Stanley had a vision for this project that was evolving over 18 years," says Spielberg. "I am intent on bringing to the screen as much of that vision as possible, along with elements of my own."
The film, which starts shooting on July 10th, will be billed as a "Stanley Kubrick Production". It will be Spielberg's first film as a director since Saving Private Ryan and he will follow it next April with another futuristic thriller, Minority Report, which is based on a Philip K. Dick story and will star Tom Cruise.
Meanwhile, The Sixth Sense, for which Haley Joel Osment was an Oscar nominee on Sunday, has now taken over $290 million at the US box-office, supplanting The Empire Strikes Back as the 10th biggest hit in US cinema history.
A GALA benefit screening of The Last September will be held in Cork, at Cinema World in Douglas, followed by a Summer's Eve Ball at the Maryborough House Hotel, on Sunday, April 30th. Adapted by John Banville from the novel by Elizabeth Bowen, the film is set in Co Cork in 1920, during the dying days of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, known as the Ascendancy.
The film's director, Deborah Warner, will attend the event, along with cast members Fiona Shaw, who is from Cork, and Keeley Hawes; producer Yvonne Thunder and executive producer Neil Jordan. The proceeds will go to the Edith Wilkins Hope Foundation, a Third World aid and development organisation.
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Michael Dwyer can be contacted at mdwyer@irish-times.ie