An Interview with Kevin Liddy

by Stephanie Miller, New York Times correspondent

Kevin Liddy is an enigma. I ponder this as I wait outside La Cocina, an obscure Dominican grocery store on the southwest corner of Houston/Mott. I'd met Liddy before so why was I nervous? This is a job, I remind myself. This is work. So, why did I spend two hours making myself up for this interview? Why did I stammer like a nervous young debutante when Liddy returned my call? Why was I now shivering in a little Prada skirt, Valentino top and high white stilletos on a cold December night in New York?

Of course, if you'd met Liddy, you'd understand. Described by Norman Mailer as "a lion of a man, brooding with sheer masculine energy", Susan Sontag on the other hand talked of his "feline, almost feminine grace" with longtime friend Gore Vidal enigmatically referring to him as "a perfect lady". Again, if you'd met Liddy, you'd understand that these seemingly conflicting descriptions are somehow not contradictory. Before I have time to resolve the mystery, a cab pulls up and Liddy is standing in front of me. Clad in his trademark Armani suit with beret and eye-patch, he cuts a striking figure. "You made it" he says, as if I had any choice. Of course I made it. This is Kevin Liddy after all.

He swans into the store and orders for both of us in perfect Spanish. "Eggplant and pork stew okay by you babe?", he winks at me as he orders. Five minutes later, we're heading up broadway in a cab and Liddy launches into an impromptu interview. Ignoring my first question, he talks about the Galway Film Center, who celebrate their 21st birthday this year: "I seem to remember teaching on a course- the first course?- in 1988 which produced a pop video for The Little Fish, a local Galway band. And the following year there was Pat Comer directing Bert O Lucky- the same Pat who won a deserved IFTA for the Des Bishop series on the Irish language this year- and I think I was assigned to shoot it as a more fruitful way of guaranteeing there would be footage to cut!"

He's on his way to a reading of his new play In a Treaty City, Broken with Harvey Keitel and I've got about five minutes to get my story. I try to get him to talk about working with Keitel but he keeps bringing the conversation back to the Galway Film Center: "My abiding memory is more of a feeling than events themselves. And that feeling was a sense of community, naiveté to be sure, but above all a desire to learn, to make it one's own. During this time I was often asked to teach film theory, editing, script writing, etc and I felt at the time- and still do- that if we even produced more discerning viewers, if we could take the passivity out of watching films that would be reward in itself".

We pull up outside the Atlantic Theater. My heart misses a beat. Is it over already? I try to bring up the subject of his controversial translation of Ulysses into Greek but he's like a dog with a bone: "I was very involved with Filmbase in Dublin at the time, on the board and in training, and also teaching in Rathmines. On one of my teaching weekends away in Galway I remember Paddy O Connor taking me aside to discuss a documentary on his father and his greyhounds. Many years later that idea became The Gamble, an award winning hour long documentary funded by RTE and the IFB. And I would meet many ex-students over the years who got jobs on films such as The Field or later in Concorde Anois - the Golden Harvest of the west!"

I have to admit, I've never heard of this obscure film center he talks of but I gather Galway is a small town in the United Kingdom. Somehow, though, I'm captivated by his charm and dynamic energy. With a seductive glint in my eye, I ask him about the women in his life. He leans over, puts his hand on my knee and returns my gaze: "Singling out people is often times invidious but it would be churlish of me not to mention the guiding hand of Lelia Doolan who seemed to be everywhere, encouraging, baiting, relentless. Some things never change. Congratulations on 21years, to the no guts no glory brigade, to the men and women who crashed on couches to get the effin' thing made. And all without an administrators salary to go home to". He removes his hand from my knee and looks at his Rolex - "Gotta go babe. Can't keep Harvey waiting".

I watch as he disappears into the December snow. I feel seduced. I fell cheap; used. And already I'm wondering about when I'll see him again.

Kevin Liddy's new play In a Treaty City, Broken opens in the Atlantic Theater, February 23rd.

© New York Times, 2009