Neil Jordan
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Neil Jordan (born February 25, 1950) is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He has made films within the queer horror genre (Company of Wolves, Interview with a Vampire).
Unconventional sexual relationships are a recurring theme in Jordan's work, and he often finds a sympathetic side to characters audiences would traditionally consider deviant or downright horrifying. His film The Miracle, for instance, followed two characters who struggled to resist a strong, incestuous attraction, while The Crying Game made complicated, likable characters out of an IRA terrorist and a transgendered woman. Vampire, like the Anne Rice book it was based on, focused on the intense homosexual relationship of two undead men who murder humans nightly (although the pair never have sex, they are clearly lovers of a sort), accompanied by an equally lusty vampire woman who is eternally trapped in the body of a little girl. While Lestat is depicted in an attractive but villainous manner, his lover Louis and the child vampire Claudia are meant to capture the audience's sympathy despite their predatory nature.
The unusual sexuality of Jordan's films also comes to the fore in The Crying Game and Breakfast on Pluto; both concern a transgendered character. The two films, however, are very different, with Crying Game a realistic thriller/romance and Breakfast on Pluto a much more episodic, stylized, darkly comic biography. While his pictures are most often grounded in reality, he occasionally directs more fantastic or dreamlike films, such as The Company of Wolves (based on a story by Angela Carter) and Interview with the Vampire (based on a story by Anne Rice).
Filmography
- Angel (1982) - Also Writer
- The Company of Wolves (1984) - Also Writer
- Mona Lisa (1986) - Also Writer
- High Spirits (1988) - Also Writer
- We're No Angels (1989)
- The Miracle (1990) - Also Writer
- The Crying Game (1992) - Also Writer
- Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)
- Michael Collins (1996) - Also Writer
- The Butcher Boy (1997) - Also Writer/Executive Producer
- The End of the Affair (1999) - Also Writer/Producer
- In Dreams (1999) - Also Writer
- Not I (Short film) (2000)
- The Good Thief (2002) - Also Writer/Executive Producer
- Breakfast on Pluto (2005) - Also Writer/Producer
- The Brave One (2007)
- Ondine (2009) - Also Writer/Producer
- The Borgias (2011) - TV Series: Also Writer/Executive Producer
- Byzantium (2012)
- Moments of Eternity (2016)
