Courtesy of U2’s Bono, Wim Wenders will make a rare appearance at the Foyle film festival this week, reports MICK HEANEY.

by Mick Heaney

It has taken more than a decade, but Wim Wenders, the German film director, has finally brought to the screen The Million Dollar Hotel, the pet project of Bono, the U2 singer. As an ardent traveller it is no surprise that Wenders - currently riding high with his documentary film The Buena Vista Social Club and appearing this week at the Foyle film festival in Londonderry - was drawn to the film’s transient setting. Throughout his career he has been obsessed with journeys and dislocation, and his key artistic influences are largely foreign - American, British and Irish rock’n'roll are as important to him as the culture of his homeland. So it was natural that he should be drawn to a story formulated by an Irish rock singer.

“Bono is the one who started the whole movie,” says Wenders in his laid-back but precise English. “He wrote the story to begin with, a long time ago, and suggested it to me. He then developed the script with Nicholas Klein.

“Now we’re finally finishing it. We’ve been working on this project for almost eight years. If it’s all worth it in the end it’s fine, and I think this is.”

The film has gestated slowly for Wenders. Bono had the initial inspiration 12 years ago, when U2 were being snapped by the Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn in downtown Los Angeles for their album The Joshua Tree. At the time Bono was struck by one of their locations, the real-life Million Dollar Hotel, once an opulent establishment but now closer to a flophouse, albeit a rather grand one.

With the assistance of Wenders and Klein, Bono’s story grew to be set in the hotel. But the Irish star’s constant touring and recording, as well as Wenders’s other film work, inevitably slowed progress, as did other more conceptual uncertainties.

“For a number of years we tried to take the contemporary Million Dollar Hotel into the future and make it a science-fiction film that takes place in 2050,” recalls Wenders. “You would have to have allowed for inflation, so for a time it was called The Billion Dollar Hotel. But we settled on it being a contemporary film, taking place in Los Angeles in 2001, which is practically tomorrow.”

The finished film, which opens the Berlin film festival in February, stars Mel Gibson as an FBI agent investigating the death of a millionaire’s son in the eponymous hotel, with Milla Jovovich and Jimmy Smits also featuring. Bono makes an appearance and performs the soundtrack, recorded in Dublin this summer with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Of course, music was the binding force that initially drew Wenders and Bono together.

“Bono is a really extraordinary character,” says Wenders. “I think we must share something, some kind of creative partnership of ideas and maybe also of faith.

“There is a unique thing going on between rock’n'roll and movies at the moment. There was always a certain affinity between the processes of film making and rock’n'roll, but it is getting more intense now.

“It’s great to unite these energies, because they are the two best mediums to explore the Zeitgeist. I think that Bono feels the same.

“If you’ve seen the Zooropa or PopMart tours you realise how much they are linked to reflections on media, language and on the future of images. There is something happening in U2’s music and Bono’s thinking that is very much tied to my work.”

Music has always been deeply imbued in Wenders’s films. But his connection with it goes far deeper. Born in Dusseldorf in 1945, like many Germans of the post-war generation he turned to rock’ n’roll as a diversion from his homeland’s horrific past. Far from being a mere pastime, however, music sparked his creativity.

“Music has been a constant source of energy in my life. I owe it to rock’n'roll that I made movies in the first place.

“Without the influence of the Stones and the Beatles I don’t think I would have dared to be a film maker - I probably would have become a dentist or a lawyer. It gave us the guts to get up there and sing or, in my case, to get up there and put up my camera.”

Van Morrison was another of his early heroes, and has remained so, to the point that Wenders has long wanted to visit Belfast. Next week he gets a bit closer to his goal, getting as far as Londonderry for the film festival. It is a coup for such a small event to capture one of the world’s great directors.

“There are some places that are very dear to me, even if I only go there once or twice, and I have a feeling this might be one of them,” says Wenders. “Also it’s a small festival - it’s good to alternate between big and small movie events. I feel it’s really worthwhile to go to a place where they haven’t been spoiled with many world-renowned stars and actors, where you hear real questions and have to give real answers.”

Wenders makes a big deal out of regularly being “exposed to reality”. As well as switching between big and small festivals such as Berlin and Foyle, he tries to alternate between full feature films and more spartan documentaries. Ironically, such a small-scale documentary has provided him with arguably his biggest critical success of the 1990s.

The Buena Vista Social Club, his film about a group of veteran Havana musicians recorded by Ry Cooder, has been charming the American and European audiences already intoxicated by their salsa music. Moved by the rhythms Cooder had brought back from Cuba, Wenders produced a lively and touching chronicle of the aged musician’s lives, as well as filming some exhilarating concert footage.

“I think we were privileged to make this film with them at a time when their lives hadn’t been turned upside down. The Grammy had been in the newspapers so they realised the music was popular, but it hadn’t started to change their lives in any way. It wasn’t really until they stood on the stage in Carnegie Hall that they realised the dream of their lifetime had come true, so to speak.”

Given the film’s strong elements of music and travel, Wenders’s sure handling of the subject matter was to be expected.

His films may often deal with alienation in the face of globalisation, but - like Bono - he is ambiguous on the subject, excited by the opening up of previously “disconnected” communities to outside influences. For Wenders, such outside influence and travel - to Havana, Los Angeles or Londonderry - are important to him as an artist and as a person.

“In my heart I’m a European citizen, but in my head I’m probably more German than I want to be. Germans aren’t always known for spontaneity, humour or emotion, so maybe I’m trying to get out of my German skin that way.”

© 1999 Sunday Times. All rights reserved.

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