Butterworth, Jeremy 1969(?)-

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BUTTERWORTH, Jeremy 1969(?)-

(Jez Butterworth)

PERSONAL:

Born 1969, in St. Albans, England. Education: Attended Cambridge University.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Curtis Brown Group, Ltd., Hay-market House, 28/29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, England.

CAREER:

Playwright and screenwriter.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Critics' Circle Award for best new writer, Lawrence Olivier Award for best comedy, George Devine Award, Writer's Guild Award for best new comer, and London Evening Standard Award for most promising playwright, all 1995, all for Mojo (play).

WRITINGS:

AS JEZ BUTTERWORTH

I Believe in Love (play), produced in London, England, 1992.

Mojo (play; produced in London, England, 1995), Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1995.

(And director) Mojo (film adaptation of the play), BBC Films (London, England), 1997.

Mojo and a Film-Maker's Diary (includes the script for the film), Faber and Faber (London, England), 1998.

(With brother, Tom Butterworth) Birthday Girl (film), Miramax Films, 2001.

The Night Heron (two-act play; produced in London, England, 2002), published as Royal Court Theatre Presents The Night Heron, Nick Hern Books (London, England), 2002.

Screenwriter, with Tom Butterworth, of short films Going Underground and The Night of the Golden Brain; screenwriter of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, 2005. Author of ten-part television reality series, 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

British playwright Jeremy "Jez" Butter-worth burst onto the London theater scene in 1995 with his award-winning play Mojo, which he subsequently adapted for film. Robert L. Daniels, who reviewed a New York production of the play in Variety, wrote that "it takes awhile to become accustomed to the rapid fire dialect in Jez Butterworth's play, but once attuned to its explosive nature, Mojo becomes a riveting descent into a dark comic abyss. Tight ensemble acting and a grisly, funny touch of the macabre keep the tension mounting at an unnerving clip."

The story is set in the London district of Soho during the late 1950s. The film is cast with Hans Matheson as young singer Silver Johnny, the new sensation in the Dean Street Atlantic Club. His agent, Ezra (Ricky Tomlinson), is summoned by the powerful promoter Sam Ross (Harold Pinter) to discuss the singer's future, while Ezra's flunkies, Sweets (Gwynn Jones) and Potts (Andy Serkis), gleefully anticipate profiting from Johnny's success. Another member of this crowd is Skinny (Ewan Bremner), who is tormented by Ezra's not-quite-right son, Baby (Aiden Gillen). Ezra's right-hand man, Mickey (Ian Hart), has been dealing with Ross behind Ezra's back, and when Ezra refuses to hand the club over to Ross, he suffers a terminal fate.

David Rooney, who reviewed the film for Variety, felt that Butterworth "creates a keen atmospheric sense of a London shaking off the remnants of gray austerity and easing into the new identity of the hip metropolis it was to become in the 1960s. Contributing to this are the rich, dark colors of Hugo Luczyc Wyhowski's smart retro production design, extensive use of period tunes and the insistent drum beats of Murray Gold's score."

Butterworth and his brother, Tom, wrote the script for the film Birthday Girl, which took two years to shoot and which stars Nicole Kidman and Ben Chapman. Butterworth met Kidman following one of her performances in an acclaimed London theatrical production, The Blue Room, and she was the first real celebrity he worked with. Chapman plays John Buckingham, a lonely bank clerk living in Butterworth's birthplace of St. Albans, who sends away for a Russian mail-order bride. When Nadia (Kidman) arrives, she stuns him with her looks and her willingness to partake in the sexual adventures he craves. Nadia does not come without baggage, however. Soon, two gun-toting, vodka-swilling men, Alexei (Vincent Cassel) and Yuri (Mathieu Kassovitz), show up. John is turned off by Nadia's inability to communicate with him and by her heavy smoking, but he is unable to get a response from the Web site where he first made the arrangements for her arrival. When Yuri and Alexei demand that John steal money from his bank for them, things start to unravel. David Noh wrote in Film Journal International that "this sprightly romp puts the 'q' in quirky, but definitely manages in its way to be a singularly affecting romantic comedy."

The Night Heron is a play set in rural England, where two men, Griffin and Wattmore, live in a shack in the marshes of Cambridgeshire. Butterworth's work has been compared to that of playwrights Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. As Variety critic Charles Isherwood wrote, Butterworth "has cited Beckett as an inspiration, and the desperate comic interaction between the play's two seedy central characters, a pair of down-and-out ex-gardeners living on French fries and the rabbits they catch on the marshes, does at times recall that celebrated Irish writer's most famous creations, the hapless pair from Waiting for Godot." "At the same time," added Isherwood, "the bones of the plot, revolving around a weird lodger and an unseen menace, suggest early Pinter." Isherwood felt, however, that this play recalls even more powerfully the work of Martin McDonagh, with its setting, sense of isolation, plotting, suspense, dialogue, and "threat of violence."

The pair are in dire straits because Wattmore was fired from his job due to accusations of child abuse, and Griffin left as well in support of his friend. He plans to enter a poetry contest being held by Cambridge University, and when they take in lodger Bolla Fogg, just out of prison, she assists in this quest by drugging and kidnapping a Cambridge student to help them write the poem. "Butterworth went to Cambridge" noted Matt Wolf in Variety, "and The Night Heron is particularly good on the class tensions that continue to flare up amid privileged surrounds."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Back Stage, November 28, 1997, Victor Gluck, review of Mojo (play), p. 45.

Daily Variety, October 8, 2003, Charles Isherwood, review of The Night Heron, p. 8; April 7, 2004, Dana Harris, "Butterworth Falling for 'Flim-Flam,'" p. 5.

Entertainment Weekly, February 15, 2002, Lisa Schwarzbaum, review of Birthday Girl, p. 44; October 24, 2003, Thom Geier, review of The Night Heron, p. 115.

Film Journal International, January, 2002, David Noh, review of Birthday Girl, p. 39.

Harper's Bazaar, March, 2001, Adriana Leshko, review of Birthday Girl, p. 336.

Hollywood Reporter, January 22, 2002, Duane Byrge, review of Birthday Girl, p. 28; October 22, 2003, Frank Scheck, review of The Night Heron, p. 13.

Variety, October 13, 1997, David Rooney, review of Mojo (film), p. 92; November 17, 1997, Robert L. Daniels, review of Mojo (play), p. 76; April 29, 2002, Matt Wolf, review of The Night Heron, p. 31; June 24, 2002, Adam Dawtrey, "Butterworth gets real," p. 14.