EMMYS For Enniscorthy!

Wexford's Long Lost Son Scoops Three!

By Seán McCarthy - NUJ

Borat producer, Irish American Director Jay Roach is a man with the world's attention this year, once again, with his new HBO film 'RECOUNT'.

Having produced the highly successful and hilarious big screen comedy Borat with English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, Jay Roach seems to strike gold at the box office every time he makes a film. Blockbusters 'Meet The Parents' and 'Meet The Fockers' starring Robert DeNiro and Barbra Streisand are being followed up with Little Fockers which Roach is directing as he did the previous two.

Roach has also made all the Austin Powers movies with the ingenious Mike Myers and has directed the fourth installment in the continuing Austin Powers saga, while also celebrating the release of his new HBO film 'RECOUNT' which just scored more gold at the 2008 EMMY AWARDS this past Sunday.

The charming, highly intelligent and somewhat reclusive director is also in production with the film 'Bruno' written by Sacha Baron Cohen who starred in, and co-wrote, the world-renowned 'Borat'.

So there are plenty of new Jay Roach movies on the way, and it seems like a good time for Jay Roach to take a breather from his hectic schedule, and chat with me about his new film 'RECOUNT'' which has all the heads in Hollywood, and Washington, turning full circle.

Jay is celebrating quietly with his family and friends this week in Hollywood. Then again, why wouldn't he be celebrating? Sure isn't his Texas family originally from Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland and isn't that reason enough to celebrate? Of course, three shiny new EMMY awards goes along way to help a little too.

Starring Kevin Spacey, Bob Balaban, Ed Begley, Jr., Laura Dern, John Hurt, Denis Leary, Bruce McGill, and Tom Wilkinson, 'RECOUNT' is a hugely entertaining, fast-paced film which chronicles the five weeks between the November 7th 2000 Presidential Election between George W. Bush and Al Gore and the December 2000 Supreme Court ruling that upheld Florida's count and gave Bush the White House.

Two-time Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey heads up 'RECOUNT', a movie which pulls back the on veil the headlines to explore the human drama surrounding the most controversial presidential election in U.S. history.

Directed and produced by Jay Roach alongside Emmy winner Paula Weinstein, Len Amato and the late great Oscar winner Sydney Pollack who died May 26th 2008 after seeing a first screening of the film.

Also producing on 'RECOUNT' is Michael Hausman from the executive production team on 'Brokeback Mountain'. 'RECOUNT' airs on HBO beginning October 2nd 2008 and is also available on DVD.

The film has also garnished well-earned attention elsewhere, including in France where it was honoured at the The Deauville Festival of American Cinema. Under an output deal with producer HBO, the film will not see theaters but go directly to HBO, and in Europe the new Orange Cinema Service, launching later this year, will screen 'RECOUNT'.

Originally nominated for a staggering eleven EMMY awards, 'RECOUNT' walked away with three EMMY awards on Sunday at a star-studded awards ceremony in the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles.

Two of the awards, one for 'Outstanding Made-For-Television Movie', and the second for 'Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special', were presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to Jay Roach and his film production team at an ABC network event staged at the Nokia Theatre Los Angeles.

The third EMMY award for 'RECOUNT' had previously been presented at a separate 'Creative Arts Awards' ceremony held also at the Nokia Theater in LA.

The film comes out just months before the United States votes its next president into office, and the controversial film is already turning heads in Washington, with former Bush adviser James Baker III even giving the film his subtle nod of approval.

Seán McCarthy: Congratulations Jay on winning so many EMMY awards for your new film 'RECOUNT'. Now I believe you originally hail for Enniscorthy County Wexford? Tell me something about your Irish heritage Jay?
Jay Roach: My family came over in the late 1800s from what is now Enniscorthy in County Wexford and settled in Texas in the Gulf Region there, and quickly of course, being good Irish people, populated quickly and spread out all over Texas. My parents ended up in New Mexico where I was born. In 1978 I was studying overseas as part of an overseas study programme. I bought a tiny motorcycle, a little Honda 125, and rode it across Wales and caught the ferry to Dublin and went South to Enniscorthy and actually looked up a few relatives there, and even found a small castle with the Roach name on it. I even ended up spending a night on a beautiful little Dairy Farm there at was run by some relatives. It was one of the best times in my life, to be honest. I rode all around Ireland, over to the West Coast and up through Northern Ireland and then back to Scotland. I think I was 20-years-old, and it was just one of the greatest adventures of my life... getting to reconnect with the Irish heritage.

The castle Jay Roach is referring to is the castle on the estate of the gorgeous and highly visited Artramon Farm which overlooks the Slaney River on the northern tip where the river Sow joins the Slaney in County Wexford, Ireland. Castle Artramon is a prominent landmark on the west side of the inner harbor. This fifteenth century castle was indeed originally a seat of the Roaches but was granted to the Le Hunte family in the seventeenth century. It is now a renowned guesthouse and working dairy farm operated by a German family. Visit www.artramon-farm.com

Seán McCarthy: What is it about the whole story on the Florida 'RECOUNT' that has the world so captivated Jay, eight years later?
Jay Roach: Well I think that democracy depends on fair elections and that's true of any country where democracy is the main form of government. I think also, you know, Americans are often sort of bragging about our democratic system, and so people got to see a little bit of chaos even in our system, and for us, it was terrifying. It seemed like everything we had taken for granted unraveled a bit and you'd wake up every morning wondering not only who the president was, but if it could be figured out to avoid some gigantic constitutional crisis. So, I think it was a relatable predicament from anybody's point of view, internationally or here in the United States. This was not part of the normal process... it's never been that close before. There has never been as contentious a situation in an election, and so questioned as that election. What ended up turning it into an even bigger crisis was that there was so much evident corruption in the way that the 'RECOUNT' was accomplished, that it did become sort of extraordinary.
Mixing year 2000 news footage and verbatim dialogue into fictionalized re-enactments, 'RECOUNT' scrutinizes the painstaking process that culminated in the Supreme Court decision in Bush vs. Gore. The screenplay is written by Danny Strong who is also an actor and is best known for his roles in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Gilmore Girls'. Ron Klain is played by actor Kevin Spacey, who delivers an unforgettable performance as the Democratic political operator who was, among other positions, acting as General Counsel to Al Gore at the time of the Florida debacle.

Seán McCarthy: What was it about Danny Strong's script that first nabbed your attention?
Jay Roach: What I liked about the script when I first read it was that the individuals, the characters involved, turned it into even more of a kind of almost like something you'd see in the back rooms of Rome. So much manipulation, so much power and leveraging and putting partisan operators in various positions who should have been in charge of what should have been an impartial 'RECOUNT'... that it developed it's own kind of 'super-dramatic flavor', partly through, again, these individuals involved. Like Kathleen Harris for example or James Baker. And on the Democratic side too, I was taken with Ron Klain who stepped up and fought this battle to get the votes counted.

Seán McCarthy: The tagline for 'RECOUNT' draws the conclusion that 'The future of the nation was changed by a chad'. How was the future of the nation changed by this chad, Jay?
Jay Roach: Well, depending on how you look at it. Very few votes ended up separating the two candidates in the final certification. A few hundred votes was all it took, and by a lot of people's estimation there was a much bigger difference in ballots that were thrown out by a kind of process that looked at the chads and hanging chads and decided that none of them had any indication of how the person voting had voted. So, by preventing those votes from being counted, we ended up with a candidate ... we ended up with George Bush instead of Al Gore, and the next eight years are now the history we're all familiar with. There was a recount a year later by a media consortium where they actually dug up as many of the ballots that they could get their hands on, which was pretty much all of them. I think they could not find about two thousand of them at the time, and statistically that was really a small enough number that it was a pretty accurate recount. And, to people's surprise, the recount showed that Bush would have still won if you counted all the votes that were being argued over in the Supreme Court. However, if all of the votes had been counted, 'any' discernable, Al Gore would have won by a very very small margin, still in the hundreds of votes. So, however you fight this, it was incredibly close and the chads might have made the difference.

Seán McCarthy: I believe in 2007 there was quite a buzz about writer Danny Strong in Hollywood. How did Danny Strong's script first nab your attention?
Jay Roach: It was a big deal, that script, when it got out. It was read and passed around way before it actually went into production. It won an award, they have a contest for the most popular 'un-produced' screenplay among all of the studio development executives and agents and so the script had quite a reputation, and it deserved it. Once I got on, and once I saw how compelling the script was just as a document onto itself even before it was a film, it made it easier to convince cast and crew to jump on. It was a very suspenseful read, and yet somehow managed to get in a tremendous amount of information that people seem genuinely curious about.

Seán McCarthy:: Renowned Director Sydney Pollack, who was due to direct 'RECOUNT' before he was diagnosed with cancer and pulled out. He did however stay on as Executive Producer I believe. How was it to step into Sydney's well-worn shoes for this movie?
Jay Roach: Sydney was a hero of mine since film school. I think the first film of Sydney's I ever saw was Jeremiah Johnson (1972 - Directed by Sydney Pollack) and I started just watching everything, even back to some of his earliest films. I had been a student of his approach, and like me, I think he always believed in the audience first. He was a master, and I just hoped to be able to absorb anything I could from him. And then when I heard that Sydney wasn't going to be able to direct this, and it was a very complicated emotion, he called me personally and to meet with him, he and Paula Weinstein (Executive Producer on 'RECOUNT'). It was a complicated set of emotions to hear that he wasn't going to do it and that he was sick, but that he wanted me to do it because I just loved Sydney and I had only hung out with him a few times but they were always incredible experiences and he'd just been intensely supportive and we had tried to work together on other things. He stayed involved and it was a great honor to be able to kind of sit as his feet and learn. But he could only stay on for a little while at the beginning and then he had to go in for the battle for his life for several months and I didn't get to talk to him much while we were actually making the film. Towards the end... we were sending him cuts all along and not hearing from him, but at some point he stopped taking chemo and kind of came up from under the cloud of all the medication and watched the film and invited Paula Weinstein over to see it, and he was incredibly supportive. It wasn't what he expected, and it wasn't the film that he would have made, but he thought it had transcended what he had imagined. And yet he also had some rally good critiques and he gave us a couple of notes and I executed them and it helped the film tremendously. So, it was very very gratifying to hear that he got to see something close to the final product before he died, and was very proud of it.

Seán McCarthy: An all star cast includes Kevin Spacey, Tom Wilkinson, John Hurt, Laura Dern and Dennis Leary, one of Ireland's favorite Irish American actors who plays Michael Whouley, lobbyist and strategist for the Al Gore camp. Why was Dennis Leary so perfect for this role Jay, and how was it to direct him?
Jay Roach: Well he was absolutely perfect. When people meet Michael Whouley they can't believe how close! It was a little bit accidental. We had though about him (Dennis Leary) but didn't think we could get him, and then finally called him and Dennis said yes. But nobody could find Michael Whouley. He's a very mysterious political operative who loves to be out of the public eye and who is sort of speculated about as a kind of wizard behind closed doors. Leave it to Dennis Leary who called him (Whouley) himself finally and said, "look I'm going to play you, and I might as well play you accurately. You gotta meet with me!" because he had refused to up until that time. And, in a way, being both Boston Irish they bonded immediately, they bonded over hockey and their experiences there in Boston and Dennis sat with him for a few hours and was the only person who got to meet with him during our entire process, and just completely absorbed the essence of Whouley. He is an incredible guy in real life, Whouley. I thought Dennis brought a whole other thing to it though... this great sense of humour and irony. He and Kevin Spacey have such great chemistry that even in some of the most expository scenes where they are just talking about 'chads', they turn that into a comedy almost like a buddy comedy

Seán McCarthy: John Hurt, who has performed quiet a number of Irish characters in the past, plays Christopher Warren in 'RECOUNT'.
Jay Roach: He's such a master, so much dignity and poise. Christopher was a complicated figure in the story because he was in charge of the Democratic side for awhile but then had to leave and was always conflicted about even fighting the results of the election because he felt like it might not be a dignified thing to do, to challenge a Presidential Election, it might actually lead to some sort of upheaval they could never recover from even if they won the recount. John Hurt though, I thought, was very smart to come in and say "You know what? Warren Christopher was right. It should have been a dignified process. I'm going to play him with that exact commitment even though it turned out to be a loosing proposition. Like with a lot of the other actors, there was a lot of sitting around talking about what would be the correct way, and how could we absolutely get it right while keeping it interesting.

Seán McCarthy: Tom Wilkinson's performance in the role of Secretary of State James Baker III who was heading up the legal team in Florida of George W. Bush at the time of the recount, is reported to have given your film 'RECOUNT' the two thumbs up, I believe?
Jay Roach: He saw the film and then actually invited us to have a big event down in Houston Texas at the James Baker Institute, which is partially devoted to election reform. He and Jimmy Carter spoke at the event and Jimmy Carter who monitors elections around the world had teamed up on a commission to study possible reforms in the electoral process here, and they had issued a big report in 2005. They hosted a screening of 'RECOUNT' and held a big debate afterwards, which got pretty feisty but which was very much a good conversation between two great Statesmen about what was so incredibly dysfunctional in our electoral process. Jimmy Carter even said he would not have allowed his organization to monitor the election in 2000 because the United States electoral process doesn't meet the criteria that many third world countries past before he can get involved. I thought that was a pretty sad commentary on our electoral process.

Seán McCarthy: What makes Kevin Spacey such a believable actor?
Jay Roach: He reminds me of the way the actors work in the UK and Ireland where there's a commitment to the craft and a commitment to the deal with the audience and a little less focus on the self and the personality, you know, the celebrity. It comes from the theatre I think, and Kevin is always connected with that approach and he certainly can dig down deep into his own personal experiences to pull out something that's completely honest and real and true and raw and emotional. But he also again has a connection with the amount of craft to actually sculpt and structure the performance so that the audience can have access to it. It's kind of the whole deal, the whole package, like people like Tom Wilkinson and John Hurt are masters of.

Seán McCarthy: Three EMMYS Jay for 'RECOUNT'. Fantastic going. Are awards important, and if so, why?
Jay Roach: You know, they're always nice and certainly I am honoured. I make a lot of comedies, and comedies don't typically get mentioned during awards, so I have spent a lot of years just being happy with the relationship with the audience. I think that's still what matters the most. There is nothing more important to me than sitting in the theatre on opening night and just hearing the audience connect with the movie, drama or comedy. I got to see 'RECOUNT' in theatres here for special screenings before it aired on TV and that's the biggest reward. It sounds clichéd to say that but it really is what matters the most.

Seán McCarthy: When can we expect your good self and Susanna to come to Ireland and stay for a while? Are there Irish stories that interest you?
Jay Roach: There are so many stories that I have heard people talk through, and I've actually been exposed to some of them through Tammy Hoffs my mother-in-law. Tammy is seventy-something years old, and I don't know if you've seen the movie Harold & Maude, but she is that character Maude. She's just filled with unlimited energy and is still directing films like she's a twenty-year-old. She's very connected to Irish storytelling and she has made a lot of friends in Ireland and she's constantly saying we have to come out to Ireland. My wife Susanna played in Dublin just a few months ago with The Bangles and it was the best show of their European Tour she said, and she had a fantastic time there. I would just like to bring my children there to Ireland to connect with their ancestral home, and it would be a great pleasure and honour to find a reason to come back to Ireland. I've also heard that the Irish crews are incredible and that it's a great country to makes movies in.

Jay Roach graduated in 1975 from Eldorado High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He earned a degree from University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts in 1986. He is married to singer songwriter Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles and the happy, super-busy couple, who live in LA, have two sons. Jay Roach is presently producing 'Brüno' starring Sacha Baron Cohen. Brüno is a mockumentary comedy film slated for release May 15th 2009 and directed by Jay Roach. It is produced by, co-written, and stars Sacha Baron Cohen. The character originates from Cohen's previous Channel 4 and HBO series 'Da Ali G Show' and Bruno is the third based from characters from the show, following the movies 'Ali G Indahouse' and the worldwide hit movie 'Borat: Cultural learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan'.

For more information on 'RECOUNT' visit: hbo.com/recount

As well as being the wife of Jay Roach, Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles is a hugely successful singer and songwriter in her own right and has released numerous solo albums to a vast fan-base worldwide as well as her huge success in The Bangles. Like her husband, her mother Tamar Hoffs is also a Hollywood-based film producer and director whose new Irish movie "Red Roses And Petrol" starring Malcolm McDowell and Olivia Tracey has just been released in select theatres across the USA. For more information visit RedRosesAndPetrol.com