VERONICA GUERIN Q&A with CATE BLANCHETT & director JOEL SCHUMACHER Movie Interview by Reece De Ville

Present at the London press conference of VERONICA GUERIN are actress Cate Blanchett and director Joel Schumacher. Significantly, you don’t have Veronica Guerin depicted as a saint, though one character in the film calls her ‘saint Veronica’. JOEL SCHUMACHER: In a very sarcastic way. Instead, we have a very complex woman here, a woman who’s something of a negligent parent as the granny brings up her young boy, as you see in the film. JOEL SCHUMACHER: You’d never say that about a man. CATE BLANCHETT: There’s an inherent cultural sexism isn’t there, that goes along with that… You think so? CATE BLANCHETT: I do. I mean I wonder if that would have been put to Russell Crowe’s character in THE INSIDER. JOEL SCHUMACHER: You know there was a terrible tragedy in the United States. There was a young male journalist, Daniel Pearl, who went to Afghanistan and left his young pregnant wife behind, and was captured and murdered. And no one ever talks about him as reckless or careless or negligent, as he was just doing his job. CATE BLANCHETT: And what he was doing was important… JOEL SCHUMACHER: Yes How do you see Veronica Guerin, and what was your attraction to the project? JOEL SCHUMACHER: Well, I thought she had real balls. And I think that one of the things that all story tellers do, which is my job, and the reason we go to movies and plays, and read novels and hear stories is that I think we’re constantly wanting to see stories about people who do things that maybe we wouldn’t do. Or don’t do. And, I hate bullies and I love the fact that she just wouldn’t step down from these thugs who constantly tried to silence her. And also I thought that I’d love to know her, as she seemed to be mischievous and have a sense of humour, and not think of herself as a saint or a martyr and she had an ego, and she was a real human being. CATE BLANCHETT: I don’t think that she had a lot of support. JOEL SCHUMACHER: Zero CATE BLANCHETT: People talk about the beating and how could a woman continue after she’d been punched in the face to do what she does, after her son’s been threatened. But, the paper gave her the option that you can either write the story or press charges and she chose the less public option to press charges. She took him to court and they let him off. So, what’s a girl to do? On a moral, existential level, what is she saying to her son? That it’s ok? What kind of world am I creating for my son on one level. But also, the only way to really protect herself and to protect other people from suffering the same fate was to do something about it. I really think that in terms of heroism, and I was talking to my husband the other day about this and, quite rightly, we’re living in cowardly times. When to actually stand up and say ‘I think this’ and ‘I’m prepared to fight for this’, we just think ‘what an idiot’’. And I think that it’s such an inkblot test as to how or what we think is important. The heroes that we see in films are people that get away with things, and they’re naughtily pleased that they get away with things. And now anyone, particularly a woman, who stands up and fights for what she believes in is considered fool hardly and reckless and irresponsible. JOEL SCHUMACHER: Especially when she’s attractive and young. But, I often think that, being an old hippy myself, there was a time in the 60’s and 70’s where there was a mantra that one person could make a difference and I think, especially in the United States, that we’ve become very cynical that our vote doesn’t count. Especially after the election, where people thought ‘my vote doesn’t count’, people don’t vote, they don’t speak up. As Cate said, they’re very afraid to speak up. I even have a friend, a very important columnist, she wrote a criticism during the Iraq war and Newsday sent it back to her and said ‘Could you just write about entertainment right now, during the war?’ CATE BLANCHETT: I just visited America, and I landed on the day they unleashed their ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and I thought I really don’t want to be in America right now. But I was so pleased, as there was such a strong voice of dissent. JOEL SCHUMACHER: There was. The good thing that happened is that there was a healthy debate about it. I think she did shine a light on something that was a war zone and that was controlling. It became so liberal and they bent over backwards for human rights. A lot of hands were tied, the journalists couldn’t print names. She wasn’t a martyr, and she wasn’t doing this totally in self sacrifice, I mean she was ambitious she was successful, she had an ego… CATE BLANCHETT: She was a journalist! JOEL SCHUMACHER: Yeah, she obviously was becoming very famous writing about these things. She was criticised for exaggerating the problem by the other papers, which obviously wasn’t the case. I think the murder was a wake up call. These things happen in our cultures. It usually takes some terrible tragedy to cause action. Unfortunately. Continued on page 2

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