Film-maker Carney correct about Keira
The Irish director took flak for his comments about Keira Knightley, but he had a point, writes Donal Lynch
FROM a journalist’s perspective, there is a magical moment in an interview when the subject begins, finally, to drift away from vapid self-promotion and into something approaching the way they might speak to their friends and family. You know then that this is something that will genuinely interest the reader and elevate the piece above the zillion quasi-advertorials that masquerade as interviews.
Some industries try everything to make sure this elevation never happens; they control what is asked and will even cut off answers if they drift too far out of softball Hello! magazine territory.
Without doubt, the film industry is the worst in this regard. A few minutes with an A-list star or a big director is all most journalists are granted (legendary interviewers like Lynn Barber don’t even bother with film stars any more for this reason).
Mostly, there are people in the room and outside the door with clipboards. The ‘talent’ themselves remain rigorously on-message. It’s a sliver of access for a slice of promotion and, in an era where traditional media has undergone huge upheaval and PRs now outnumber actual hacks, them is just the breaks.
Such a landscape made John Carney’s off-the-cuff remarks about Keira Knightley and the making of 2014’s Begin Again all the more remarkable, however.
Carney said: “I like working with actors and I wanted to come back to what I knew and enjoy film-making again — not that I didn’t enjoy Begin Again, but Keira has an entourage that follow her everywhere, so it’s very hard to get any real work done…” and “I learned that I’ll never make a film with supermodels again.”
There were two sounds that seemed to follow this. The first was that of the clipboards being dropped. The second was the long, shrill chorus of people who, to borrow from Bob Dylan, felt angry that “the whip that’s keeping them in line doesn’t make him jump”. Mark Romanek, who talent-wise isn’t fit to lace Carney’s boots and who is probably better known for directing pop videos, wrote that his experience of Knighley was that her mother was her own entourage and, just to show he wasn’t taking it personally, tweeted that Carney is an “arrogant shithead”.
Lynn Shelton, who directed Knightley in Laggies, wrote that Knightley was “magnificent top to bottom”. And Evan Cabnet, who directed her on Broadway, described her as “brave and fearless” onstage.
All of this was harmonised with the opprobrium of the media generally. One Irish journalist, Colette Fahy, wrote that it sounds “like (Carney) has a problem with successful women” — Chanel ambassador Keira Knightley obviously being representative of all successful women.
Carney was forced into what was described as a “grovelling” apology, which might have been the only moment last week that he truly let himself down. His description of her as a supermodel, for instance, seemed spot on. At this point in her career, Knightley is a jawbone and a pout, more familiar to most of us for the ubiquity of her image in duty-free than for any rousing performances she has turned in. She is a beauty for the ages, but the very symmetry of her face makes it curiously inexpressive. She smoulders but does little else convincingly. Writing a few years ago in the Sunday Independent, Gwen Halley summed her up as “simply a face. A perfect face, without a hint of depth or possibility. Keira Knightley, a pretty girl, projects only Keira Knightley the pretty girl.”
Ironically, the film industry that was so quick to leap to Knightley’s defence last week, would seem to be largely in agreement with that. Unless you count the Teen Choice Awards, Knightley, who, in every other way besides talent, fits what Hollywood wants in a leading lady, has never won an acting gong of note. Her performances don’t seem to stir strong responses, unless you count the one that followed the Chanel ad a couple of years ago, which the British Advertising Standards Authority deemed too “sexually suggestive” for young viewers.
And I would have to second Carney’s opinion that she could be a somewhat difficultto-deal-with pretty girl. I’ve interviewed Keira Knightley and nothing the Sing Street director said seemed incongruous with her behaviour that day. At the time, I wrote that she was “tense” and that there were “practised sips of water and strained little pauses between questions as nobody trusts themselves to risk winding her up even more”.
In reality, you could have cut the air with a knife at all times. She point-blank ignored certain questions and despite her salad years — she was only in her early 20s then — displayed the kind of jadedness you’d expect from someone who had already been chewed up and spat out by the movies.
There was a security guard in the room, minders and handlers outside and generally just the kind of “entourage” that Carney claimed made it hard to get work done. It was claimed last week that an actress might struggle to be “vulnerable” in front of a director whom she suspects may criticise her later, but you could equally say that it is impossible for a director (or a journalist) to elicit that necessary vulnerability when their workplace is crowded with uninvited guests.
But none of this really seemed to matter for Knightley. In another field besides acting, moonlighting as a corporate shill might affect artistic credibility but, by the time we spoke, Knightley’s performances for Chanel had seemed to burnish her celebrity.
In the “group interview” which I was given to accompany the one-to-one, she was asked what convinced her to sign her multi-million pound make-up and perfume contract. “Hmm well… I can’t answer it like that can I?,” she responded. “Ummm… the artistic challenges?”
John Carney, by contrast, has built his career on artistic challenges. And you would think that people would give the man who directed Once some credit when he said that Knightley didn’t come across as a singer-songwriter in Begin Again. A supermodel with a prop (the guitar), more like.
One has to hope that John Carney’s foray into interview straight-talk doesn’t scare him back into his box. He toiled his way to the top of his craft through ambitious and low budget fare like November Afternoon and On the Edge. By contrast, the person he was expressing the mildest of criticism about was a child actress who was in blockbuster films by the time she was in her teens. They are in a different league: Keira Knightley doesn’t really need honesty. For John Carney, it should be his stock-in-trade.
‘At this point in her career she is a jawbone and a pout... she smoulders effectively but little else’