In the name of friendship
Bono and ‘Brothers’ director Jim Sheridan share a bond.
By Geoff Boucher
December 9, 2009


U2: Bono and The Edge wrote “Winter” specifically for Jim Sheridan’s film “Brothers.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

In 1977, an Irish teenager named Paul Hewson signed up for mime lessons at the Project Arts Center in Dublin. It marked the very last time that Bono, as Hewson is called today, made any serious attempt to stay silent onstage. Still, that class at the avant-garde drama collective did lead to an enduring friendship between Bono and Jim Sheridan, the arts leader who would go on to become Ireland's most celebrated filmmaker. ¶ "We have this relationship with Jim that's alchemical," Bono said of the bond between the rock band and the six-time Oscar nominee, who so long ago ran a Dublin hot spot for acting, music and the arts. "The Arts Center was a sort of progressive theater group run by Jim and his brother, Peter, and all kinds of bizarre characters were there. I think the first time that we played as U2, it was at a thing called Dark Space, a 24-hour music festival in this sort of warehouse called the Project Arts Center. There's so much history for us. . . . " ¶ The next chapter of that history is "Brothers," Sheridan's wrenching film that features the haunting new U2 song "Winter," written specifically for the movie. The story finds its axis in family, war and redemption -- it's a sort of "Best Years of Our Lives" for the troops in this modern American Heartland era of Wal-Mart, hard-luck economies, YouTube and desert camouflage.

The movie, which opened Friday, tells the tale of the Cahill brothers, Sam ( Tobey Maguire), who is a family man and a respected battlefield leader in Afghanistan, and Tommy ( Jake Gyllenhaal), the family black sheep who is fresh from a stint in prison. Sam is married to Grace ( Natalie Portman), who first mourns her husband when he is reported dead in combat and then finds out that he is alive. The Marine who comes home to her, though, is very different than the man she married and carries a dark secret back from the distant mountain ranges.

The film is a remake of the acclaimed 2004 Danish film "Brødre," and Sheridan said he was initially reluctant to take "a very good film" and transport it to America, but he found in the story too many compelling elements to let the chance go by. Bono said he and the other members of U2 -- the Edge, Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton -- had been "fiddling around, improvising and trying to find something" in the same thematic territories.

"We saw the picture and we said, 'Oh, yeah,' that's exactly where we wanted to go," Bono said. "We quickly drew the character in 'Winter' and it's based -- in no literal way, you try not to do that -- on that moment in the film where [Maguire's character] is locked up, down in a hole. In my head, that character starts scratching a diary."

Some of the lyrics to "Winter": "Now I'm 25 / I'm trying to stay alive / In a corner of the world / With no clear enemies to fight / It's hot as hell / We're like butter on toast / But there's no army in this world / That can fight a ghost."

The shards of imagery fit the film but don't attempt to mirror it, Bono said.

"If you're literal, you become part of the narration and that can be an irritation to the director," he said. "I think with this we tried to get to the essence of the story the loss of innocence and the reasons that people do put themselves in harm's way for the love of their country. That's a pregnant thought right now, isn't it?"

Movies were a huge influence on U2 -- no surprise for anyone who has watched their career focus on concert theatrics, grand narratives and potent visuals through music videos and photography. If there ever were a band that aspired to be both art house and summer popcorn, it's U2, but that doesn't even take into account the influence film music had on a group that has created soundscapes as different as the western sunsets of "Joshua Tree" and the Berlin siren wails of "Achtung Baby."

Giorgio Moroder's "Midnight Express" score and the screen music of Nino Rota in Fellini films were key compass points for the band early on, as important in some ways as the Beatles and Ramones, Bono said.

"In Dublin, there weren't a lot of gigs, and going out to movies . . . that's part of who we were growing up and the music we made," Bono said. "It's very easy for us to see things from a director's point of view because we think of it like that," Bono said.

The great treat for Bono was escaping his usual first-person approach to songwriting. "It is great to not have to dig up your own dirt and try to find diamonds in somebody else's ground."

The Edge agreed: "Jumping off someone else's work is always fun. . . . It can lead to all sorts of opportunities and, in this case, they came quickly."

It's paid off for them before. Their song, "The Hands That Built America," from Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," was nominated for an Oscar.

And it's not the first time a Sheridan film has featured the sound of old friends. The title track for "In the Name of the Father" was performed by Bono and Gavin Friday (another Dubliner from that same mime class' invisible walls). Friday and Bono also wrote "Time Enough for Tears" for "In America."

Sheridan also added U2 directly into the story of "Brothers" -- in one pivotal scene, Grace and Tommy have a breakthrough in their trust and affection for one another while sharing a joint and listening to "Bad," one of the band's mid-1980s classics of epic swoon. Tommy makes a wisecrack, expecting Grace to be an 'N Sync fan; Sheridan said he didn't think twice about the inclusion of his old mates.

"It felt right as far as their life and marking time, their age and the story," the director said. "It fits, so that's what I used. Their music is a touchstone for a generation."

Despite that praise, Bono said he and his bandmates didn't have to stretch their arms to catch all the bouquets that Sheridan threw their way on the project. He was demanding, just the way they hoped, just as he always has been.

"It's like family, but that makes it sound too . . . comfortable," Bono said with a chuckle. "It's not comfortable. Jim will push you and we like to be pushed. The film is about friendship and fraternal relationships and, by the way, when we're with Jim, we talk about little else."

geoff.boucher@latimes.com

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