A SIGNIFICANT, unique bond began three decades ago when a young reporter, Joe Jackson for Hotpress, when to interview the late Richard Harris in a Dublin hotel. Ultimately, their connection – exploratory, sometimes feisty, sometimes a mirror of souls – would yield 30 hours on tape of Harris being recorded in interview as never before. The actor also wanted the journalist to take on his biography.
On Saturday October 29 at 4.30pm, mid-point to Richard Harris International Film Festival 2016, Jackson will present his multi-media play in the making, ‘Richard Harris Revisited’.
Spool back in time to a suite in The Berkeley Court. From Jackson: “I had been annoyed for a long time at how he just told anecdotes in interviews. There was a darker side to Harris that I was determined to get”.
An angry, faulty start to their jig turned around and a forthright 2-page article went to press, albeit to no great reaction. There were other connected works later, the interview published in Jackson’s book ‘Troubadours and Troublemakers’; a play script potentially for TV development, ‘Father and Son’ that the scribe had based on the breakdown of Harris’ marriage to his first wife Elizabeth, mother to his three sons.
“Harris believed deeply in the concept that we all wear masks. In 1989 he asked me to become his biographer and subsequently we did other things. The last interview was 18 months before he died [lymphoma], a seven hour interview when he was due to start filming ‘My Kingdom’, on Lear. There was another three hours on dictaphone in a pub later”.
At Belltable, anticipate a show dominated by Harris’ voice, expressing himself in a profound and revelatory way, perspectives on life, his life, relationships, faith, death. “He was intensely religious towards the end, wondering what he would find on the other side”.
There’s an audio clip of Jackson “tearing him to shreds” after one to-do. Another item is a video of Harris breaking down movingly as he reads a poem to his father. This, from a man “who believed in telling tall stories, spreading myth and makebelieve”. In Jackson standing up to Harris “who hated arselickers, the answers in the end were scarifying”.
“Harris thinks he was emotionally immature and admitted that he had really devastated the woman he was involved with. He also admits he has the sole reason for the breakup of his [three] marriages”.
Jackson is motivated by “the importance of Richard Harris to me as a man, as a writer, as an actor”. Take a seat at what should be an insightful exploration of the man, delivered in person and other platforms.
Book €10 at venue manager www.limetreetheatre.ie
