Strickly Speaking About ‘Ulysses’ : Movies: ‘It was crying to be interpreted,’ the director of the ’67 film says of the novel that inspired him. His appearance is part of UC Irvine’s ‘California Joyce’ symposium.

Joseph Strick was all of 6 when he first encountered the novel that would become the centerpiece of his film directing career.

It was 1929, and “Ulysses,” James Joyce’s dense masterpiece, already was controversial for its stream-of-consciousness style and sexual honesty. Strick recalls that his father “smuggled” a copy into America from France and that the book became “a holy cultural artifact in our home.”

When Strick turned 16, he finally felt up to investigating “Ulysses” on his own.

“I was stoned” by the novel, he told about 100 people at UC Irvine Tuesday night after a screening of his adaptation of the novel, filmed in 1967. The program was part of a six-day “California Joyce” symposium at UCI that ends Friday.

“The beauty of the language, the greatness of the conception. . . . Over the years, I’ve found extraordinary moments in (the novel) that have driven me on,” Strick said. “It’s the seminal literary work of the 20th Century, and it’s meant so much to me.”

Strick, who before attempting “Ulysses” had established himself as a serious filmmaker with “The Savage Eye” and an adaptation of Jean Genet’s “The Balcony,” told the audience he’d dreamed of turning the novel into a movie because “it was crying to be interpreted.” Instead of being daunted by the difficult prose and explicit nature of the central characters (especially the sexually repressed Leopold Bloom and his adulterous wife, Molly), Strick felt “charged and thrilled” by the challenge.

He had trouble acquiring the rights. Jerry Wald, a Hollywood producer, was gathering funds and competing with Strick for the project but finally backed off to tackle something far different.

“He said to me: ‘Joe, I just don’t have the time to think about it now. I’m too busy with ‘Peyton Place.’ ”

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When Strick started production in Dublin, he had about $450,000 to work with (“less than it takes to cater most films these days”). His crew searched out cheap locations and all the actors, from the extras to the stars, such as Milo O’Shea (who played Bloom) and Barbara Jefford (Molly), worked for minimum wage.

The movie has paid for itself at least three times over. Its popularity, Strick noted, may have been due as much to the wild publicity “Ulysses” generated as it was to the movie’s merits.

“We opened in London, and the film was promptly attacked as dirty, as nasty. Ironically, the publicity (helped keep it) playing in London for a year. Right there, we got back the money it cost to make.”

The movie also met with cries for censorship in America, where it was given an X rating (primarily for the adult themes and language; there is little nudity) and showed up mostly in art houses.

“To this day, the movie can’t be shown in Dublin,” Strick said. “The opinion on Joyce is wide there, too. Some people think he’s the genius that we do. Some people think he’s a dirty book writer.”

Later during his presentation, Strick took the audience step-by-step through one of the film’s most remarkable scenes, in which Bloom enters a circus-like dream state while on his way to a brothel.

Strick began by pointing out what a huge task it was to “surgically alter” the novel into a two-hour picture. Originally, the plan was for a movie “that ran 18 and a quarter hours, but we couldn’t get financing for that.”

As the brothel scene was shown, it became clear how proud Strick is of the work. Some passages, he now feels, “were over the top,” but most play out well and, most important, are faithful to the novel. The audience seemed to agree.

“This is certainly not (the kind of movie) for a ‘Jurassic Park’ audience,” Strick said, “but I do believe there is a big audience of people who want material on their level. Make a good, intelligent film, and they will go to it.”