The neurotic, tiny owl-like writer goes to Hollywood
Jon Ronson's accidental career has led him to a posh hotel in Venice with George Clooney, he told Aine O'Connor
Sunday November 15 2009
Writer Jon Ronson has fallen into all kinds of things. From being cast in a small role in his local theatre in Cardiff, to accidentally becoming the keyboard player in a band for three years. Then there was his co-presenting of a late-night radio show with Craig "Royle Family" Cash, via a column in Time Out which led into a not-really-thought-out but generously budgeted six-part series on the BBC. All this well before he turned 30.
His career in print journalism was thriving anyway, but although the BBC series (The Ronson Mission) wasn't terribly highly thought of, in its own way it led to a documentary, Tottenham Ayatollah, which firmed up his direction and started making his name. His style, gonzo naif, has spawned imitators, of which Louis Theroux is perhaps the best known.
His book, Them: Adventures with Extremists, led onto his next series in 2004, Crazy Rulers of the World, which in turn led to the book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, a huge success which infiltrated popular culture with what many parents already secretly suspected -- the idea that Barney was an instrument of torture. And that has led to the Cipriani Hotel in Venice, George Clooney leaning on the piano while Marvin Hamlisch plays a medley of his award-winning movie scores.
Granted, it has also led to a rainy day in Dublin, Ronson in a hotel suite fielding questions about those men who stare at goats. And George, who stars in the film version. Ronson isn't new to being on the receiving end of journalism, but he is on this scale. He doesn't mind; he's tired but friendly and unguarded, although slightly baffled by two recent results of interviews.
One interviewer got him in trouble for claiming he said his native Wales was "ghastly". "I've never used the word 'ghastly' in my life, let alone about Wales," he says. "I was pissed off, because it made me sound like a posh woman, which is what she was."
In another case he had words put in his mouth. "It's just lazy," he says. "They weren't so bad to complain about, and also if you do complain you're the one who looks like a twat, but it was interesting. I can see why big stars don't do interviews."
Ronson is pleased with his book's on-screen incarnation. Nick Hornby advised him to let the screenwriters do their job and he took the advice, likening the process to a relay race. He thinks the film is "sweet and funny". He and his wife Elaine went to a screening with Kevin Spacey, and when his wife laughed out loud a minute and a half in, Ronson relaxed. The film's starting premise is altered from the book -- "My wife has never shagged the editor" -- and it isn't as dark as the book either. "Had the film got as dark as my book got, I wonder whether it would work structurally, whether audiences would like that or not." The past setting of the film softens its kick, suggesting that the First Earth Battalion and dabbling in New Age-ism was a quirky moment in time. Ronson says, "The film this reminds me most of is Little Miss Sunshine. It's Little Miss Sunshine goes to war so we'll see whether people go for it."
The glamorous, red-carpet aspects of the process have proved interesting but not tempting. "Maybe when I was 20, but not now. I'm a neurotic, tiny little owl-like Jewish writer, and what interests me -- and this will probably sound crap but it's true -- what interests me is working well. My wife really loved the glamour of Venice and there was this moment in Venice which was amazing [the one with George and Marvin in the Cipriani] and you've got to be pretty hard-hearted to not love that moment.
"Maybe when I was a kid I would have enjoyed it and had sex with lots of people and so on but the only thing that really matters at the age of 42 is paying the mortgage, making sure that your family is secure."
He met his wife when they were both journalists; she then trained to become an upholsterer and currently "seems to walk our dog Floppy all the time". Although, with their 11-year-old son Joel to look after, perhaps she has more to do than walk the dog.
Despite appearing to have had a series of strokes of luck, Ronson's career is also very much down to determination. His interests were always in music, reading and writing. He never fell into accounting. He considers writing to be his vocation, "My wife often says I'm lucky to have a vocation because a lot of people don't and that just means really, really enjoying what you do. I do feel lucky about that."
Ronson says his success has not given him unfettered freedom in the day job. "I wish that were so, but it's not. In fact, I'm writing a book at the moment and I've been trying to get Channel 4 to let me do a series to go alongside it and they've said no." However, he does feel he's been lucky to meet extraordinary people from psychic Sylvia Browne to George Exoo (the controversial euthanasia practitioner) and all manner of conspiracy theorists.
Ronson says he goes after the people rather than attracts them, although Them gained a fan, then a friend, in Robbie Williams. "We were going to go to a haunted house actually. I spent ages trying to set it up." In the end Robbie decided he didn't want to do it. "But he emailed me yesterday, so he still likes me! I'm very fond of him. How could you not?"
The Men Who Stare at Goats is showing in cinemas now
- Aine O’Connor
Originally published in
