Cinema for me is…
Stephen in 23 Frames
1. Describe yourself in ten words.
Kind, hard-working, compassionate, talkative, curious, diligent, passionate, dependable, humorous, punctual
2. Your best quality? Your worst habit?
Best quality – Enthusiasm, Worst quality – Enthusiasm
3. Your dream job?
Film Critic
4. What do you like most about your country?
We’re a nation of storytellers.
5. Your favorite dish in your country?
Fish and chips.
6. Which word or phrase in your native language do you like the most and what does it mean? ‘slàinte’ – it means cheers but also good health
7. What European capital have you visited lately?
Paris.
8. Other than your own, which European country would you love to live in?
Italy.
9. What does Europe mean to you? 3 values.
A sense of belonging, history, modernity.
10. What film made you fall in love with cinema?
Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995, US).
11. Your favorite film theatre? What do you like about it?
Irish Film Institute. It shows the best movies, provides a place for cinephiles to gather and is right in the center of Dublin.
12. Who is your movie hero?
My father, the man who introduced me to cinema from Sergei Eisenstein to Kathryn Bigelow.
13. Which movie director would you like to be?
Paul Thomas Anderson
14. Briefly describe your favorite scene.
The neon dappled climax to Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982, US) where the soulless android shows the most humanity by saving the life of his enemy. He then delivers one of cinema’s most haunting monologues in the pouring rain. “…time to die.”
15. What are the 3 best European films you have seen in the last year?
Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018, PL)
Loro (Paolo Sorrentino, 2018, IT)
The Hole in the Ground (Lee Cronin, 2017, IE)
16. Which film character do you most identify with?
The child in Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988, IT).
17. Your favorite soundtrack or song?
Nicholas Britell’s score to Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016, US).
18. If you had to live in a movie, which one would you like it to be?
Living in an Italian-Irish family, I pretty much already live in Moonstruck. Always lots of drama.
19. Your life becomes a biopic. Who plays the role of you?
A young Marcello Mastroianni.
20. Which talent would you most like to have?
To be able to write movies.
21. What is your most treasured possession?
My copy of ‘The New Journalism’ by Tom Wolfe.
22. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Being selected to be a judge at the Venice Film Festival.
23. What is your motto?
What’s for you won’t pass you by.