Director Who Made U2’s ‘Rattle’ Hum

It’s not just that ex-USC film school wunderkind Phil Joanou is only 26. Sitting cross-legged on a swivel chair in his Universal City office, the jeans- and boots-clad director looks 26.

Little wonder, then, that he wasn’t escorted right in when he arrived at the backstage entrance of a concert hall in Connecticut last year to meet the rock band U2. Joanou had to convince the guards protecting the welfare of the world’s most popular group that he really was a film maker fresh off the plane from Hollywood and not just another fan out to shake singer Bono Hewson’s hand.

Once he was admitted to the inner U2 sanctum, Joanou stayed up all night and got along famously with the Irish quartet. The end result: “U2 Rattle and Hum.”

At his age, Joanou (who made his feature directorial debut last year with the high school comedy “Three O’Clock High”) is not all that far removed from the rock video generation. He knows that the rock concert picture has historically been a risky proposition, and that an abundance of pop music on television may well have diminished--not whetted--fans’ appetites for rock on the big screen.

“I felt it would be a challenge to do one of these kinds of films today in the wake of MTV, where you’ve got 24 hours of music videos a day being pumped into American homes for free,” says Joanou. “They’ve seen it all, and they see it for free, so why would they want to pay six bucks to see this movie?”

Why, indeed?

Reason No. 1: Ireland’s U2 can rightly be claimed to be the world’s most popular and widely respected rock ‘n’ roll band at this moment. No. 2: Joanou, unlike most rock video makers, does have a clue about how to effectively capture a live performance on film.

“U2 Rattle and Hum” is full of dynamic, intimate and passionate live rock footage. In the black-and-white segments that dominate the picture, Joanou made the shows look as if they took place in some smoky, sweaty, dimly lit nightclub rather than impersonal basketball arenas.

He also relied on U2 to provide the on-stage movement and drama instead of “fixing it in editing” and making hundreds of quick cuts to create the illusion of excitement, as is the standard practice of rock video making.

“I think the version of ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ in the movie has about 18 cuts in it, whereas if you look at the video the band did for that song last year, it probably has 250 cuts in it,” says Joanou. “I wanted to get as many long takes as I could--in other words, make it as different as I could from MTV, which is all about cutting.”

“The movie is not a documentary,” says Joanou. “It was a decision I made consciously not to focus on the band sitting around talking about what it’s like to live in Dublin, and even when I did have them talk, I usually used it only as a transition or to get a laugh here and there. I didn’t want it to feel like a ’60 Minutes’ episode. I wanted it to feel like a rock ‘n’ roll movie.

“Come to this movie if you want to hear music, loud music, and you want to see this band live in different musical environments, on stage or backstage with B.B. King working on a song or with a gospel choir or recording at Sun Studios in Memphis. But if you want an informative, objective look from a documentary point of view about who they are as people, I suggest you read ‘The Unforgettable Fire,’ which will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about this band and probably more that you didn’t. I mean, believe me, I couldn’t get through that book.”

What the film “U2 Rattle and Hum” has in common with the biography “The Unforgettable Fire” is that both projects were instigated by the band itself, which then cut loose its documentarians. Early on in the movie, during some hilariously abortive interview segments, it almost appears as if U2 is refusing to cooperate with the film it commissioned and financed.

Says Joanou: “They said, ‘You’re gonna have to capture us the way we are. And the way we are is, we generally don’t like being filmed. We generally don’t like being interviewed. We generally don’t like having cameras around us when we’re on stage.’ And they didn’t. And they fought against it.”

“It was a bit like a big-game hunt. I had to track them to get the footage--and somehow harness what they are live to execute it on a level where it was acceptable cinematically.”

“U2 Rattle and Hum” appears to be having a respectable run in more than 1,300 theaters. It grossed more than $3.8 million its opening weekend.

But Joanou has already got his sights trained elsewhere.

He has an office in the Amblin complex overseen by Steven Spielberg, with whom he’s developing two film projects. (Spielberg gave Joanou his big break, directing two “Amazing Stories” episodes, after catching his USC student film.)

Next up, though, is a film noir thriller for Warner Bros. And there’s been talk of a narrative drama about a female singer in New Orleans, with a screenplay by Bono and musical score by U2, though the band members wouldn’t have acting roles.

Joanou rests assured Hollywood isn’t holding it against him that--after his early hype as a film-school whiz and Spielberg protege--his first feature, “Three O’Clock High” (a sort of “ ‘After Hours’ Goes to High School” nightmare comedy), fared less than spectacularly at the box office.

“Believe it or not, I actually even saw a teeny-weeny profit check off the video and cable sale. I went out and bought dinner; that’s about what it was. But it wasn’t like the studio came back and said, ‘You lost us $40 million, we would never use a kid like you again.’ It was really a first step, and people looked at it that way.

“It was disappointing to have it come and go and not really be noticed. It’s hard to work on anything for over a year and then have it gone in less than a month. My goal as a film maker is to reach an audience. I don’t want to make films that only 15 people go and see that are kind of inside jokes that play in six theaters. I want to make films that a lot of people can enjoy.”

Echoes of Spielbergian philosophy? Joanou prefers a musical correlation.

“It’s one of the reasons I really admire U2. They’ve been able to make music on their own terms that has an edge, that has a message, that’s intense, and yet reach millions of people on a level of entertainment and be hugely successful. That’s something I’d like to do as a film maker.”