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| Two for the road: Jorge Luis Borges (Luis Gnecco) and Jay Parini (Fionn Whitehead) in Borges and Me Photo: Courtesy of EIFF |
His first “artistic” outlet was as a journalist and then he went back into the world of finance but realised quickly that it was never going to be his “passion” even if he concedes he was rather good at the cut and thrust of finance.
His journalistic experience, however, had sown the seeds “and I thought that might be good enough to embark on a career in literature before I realised that there were so many great writers out there already that I would never make it”.
He felt that film might be the answer because it was a collaborative medium in which he could express himself and have his vision seen.
His latest film Borges And Me encapsulates many of those strands as Jay Parini, a 23-year-old American graduate student at the University of St Andrews with dreams of becoming a writer, embarks on a road trip around Scotland with an irascible 70-year-old blind literary giant from Argentina Jorge Luis Borges (incarnated playfully by Luis Gnecco). Parini is astutely played by Fionn Whitehead who was the lead in Dunkirk.
“So I came to all this later in life and the story [from a screenplay by Oren Moverman] in a way talks about how you find your voice as an artist and it speaks to me on that level,” said Turtletaub who attended with several of the cast and crew the world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
He began his Hollywood career as a producer, first with a romantic comedy Laws Of Attraction with Julianne Moore before striking gold for his company Big Beach with an independent breakaway success Little Miss Sunshine (directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris) before making his own directorial debut with Gods Behaving Badly, a satire from a novel by Marie Phillips which deals with a young mortal couple (Alicia Silverstone and Ebon Moss-Bachrach) who encounter a group of Greek gods living in New York City. Further down the line came Puzzle (an adaptation by Moverman of an Argentinian film) in which Turtletaub worked for the first time with Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald.
Macdonald consolidated his love for Scotland but he had been on visits for several years and had become a fan. He recalls visiting Glencoe as “a paranoid American who had been forewarned about the dreaded midges. I covered up completely in an outfit that I think was back to front with a zip going in front of my face. I looked completely ridiculous especially as there people walking around in tee-shirts and shorts and, of course, there were no midges”.
When he stumbled on the memoir by Borges in a bookshop he saw the perfect excuse to turn it into a road movie ranging across Scotland from St Andrews to Inverness and Orkney and back again. “When you live here I guess you become jaded by the sheer of beauty of Scotland but every quarter I turned I had my camera out taking pictures. Borges, of course, loved the work of Robert Louis Stevenson and called him the greatest writer in the English language.”
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| Borges and Me team line-up outside the Caledonian Hotel before heading for the film’s world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival - from left Marc Turtletaub, Alan Cumming, Freya Mavor, Fionn Whitehead and Jay Parini Photo: Courtesy of EIFF |
Turtletaub expanded: “Parini doesn't really know how to find his voice. If you're looking for it, like many of us who become artists, it is usually trying to imitate someone else. I know when I started writing, if I was reading Ray Bradbury, I'd write a bad version of Ray Bradbury. If I was reading Hemingway I would write a bad version of his style. Whoever I read, it would be a bad version of them. I think that using imitation is often the first thing that we do as artists until we begin to sort of shut our eyes and ears and find our own voice.”
Unlike many authors who keep a safe distance from any film being made of their work, Parini could barely keep away. “I've worked in film for over 25 years and it’s not usual to have the author or the screenwriter on the set. Jay asked me if I would mind if he was around, and of course, I agreed. He said he would like to be there every day. And I thought, oh, that won't actually happen. He won't last the pace … but he was there every day of the shoot. He was sort of my best cheerleader, which is so important when you're interpreting not only someone’s book but also their life. He was so positive, not only with me, but with the crew and the cast. He was a great bonus” confirmed Turtletaub.
“Then there were moments where he would add things very subtly. One example is the scene in Loch Ness, where Freya [Mavor] had to sing a song. Suddenly we realised actually we needed more lyrics. And Jay was there and I asked him to write another verse or two of the song. He asked to see what we had so far and he went off and literally 20 minutes later came back with it. I was astounded but he said simply ‘I’m a writer That's what I do.’”
The film unit was based in Glasgow where Turtletaub was impressed with the population’s literary perspicacity. “Scotland has a reputation for folks who love literature and are knowledgeable about it. And I kept running into people who knew about Borges. In the first week I walked into my local grocery store, and there was a young man, perhaps 25, and on hearing my accent put two and two together and told me that Borges was his favourite writer. A week later I came back to the same store and a different guy told me he had just finished the book a week ago. He would also have been under 30. Two weeks later I was back in there with a different person on the checkout who said: ‘You're the Borges guy – my girlfriend is translating Borges.' There were coincidences like this that stalked us through the whole shoot.”
Borges And Me is published by Canongate. The film which has world premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, is seeking distribution.
