I’ve been thinking about some of your other movies. Do you think you could keep a secret like The Crying Game in today’s internet and social media age?
I don’t know, I didn’t think I could keep it then actually. When The Crying Game came out, I asked Harvey Weinstein, could I write a letter to all the American newspapers, to all the critics? So I literally wrote a letter asking them could they find a way to talk about the movie without divulging the secret? To everyone’s amazement they did. So I didn’t think it was possible then and I think people didn’t think it was possible then but I think people liked the film so much they didn’t want to destroy it for others. I mean, The Sixth Sense came out in the digital age, didn’t it?
Sort of on the cusp. We didn’t have Twitter and Facebook back then.
Yeah, okay. Well, maybe not. People tweet as they’re watching movies now, don’t they?
There are still secrets that are kept. Actually the critics who did spoil The Crying Game were Siskel and Ebert.
Did they? I didn’t know that.
You never knew that?
Oh my God, did they? The strange thing about The Crying Game was when Jaye Davidson was nominated for Best Actor, they were running big ads and posters, “Jaye Davidson, nominated Best Actor” and they were still pushing the movie as the movie with a secret. Still people went along and they enjoyed it. It’s very strange the way the public approach your work. It’s very weird.
The other side of it is with audiences being more progressive today, could they see The Crying Game and go, “What’s the big deal? Of course he’s transgender.”
[Laughs] A lot of people said that then. A lot of people saw the movie and said, “Of course.” Of course they knew. A lot of people did say it then. I think the reason people were surprised in The Crying Game was because Forest Whitaker’s character was killed in the first third of the film and I think they thought, “Oh, that’s the surprise. The main character dies. I could’ve seen that coming.” Then they didn’t see the other one coming. I don’t actually know. To me it was an interesting story. I didn’t want to make a movie with a secret. I wanted to make a movie about a guy who fell in love with a girl who turned out to be a guy.
You created “The Borgias” and unfortunately there’s not going to be a fourth season. Are you going to be satisfied with the finale of season three?
No, I’m not. I don’t think any of the fans are either. It was interesting when I was shooting one of the final scenes there, it did seem to me all the family had descended into certain darkness. They had all become the monsters that legend would have it to be. Lucrezia had killed her husband, managed to poison him, the pope was hiding something really essential from his daughter for the first time but I wrote a two hour movie to conclude all of their stories which I called The Borgia Apocalypse. It would’ve satisfied everything that the fans seemed to be upset about, but I’m not in control of the decisions of Showtime. I asked them to make it and we even agreed to reduce our fees to make it more palatable, the budgetary numbers, but they said no. So we shall see what happens. The script is still there.
What will be your next movie?
I’ve written a ghost story that I want to make. I want to make a ghost story, an erotic ghost story, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to raise finances to make it this year.
Would it be a different twist on the genre like Byzantium is a twist on vampires?
Yeah, it would be a different twist on the genre, but I don’t think of them as different. I just think of them as stories really. A story interests me, I want to make it. It doesn’t matter.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
