The same advice might just as well have been offered to the film's director, Sam Peckinpah, whose tussles with producers and studio bosses have long since passed into Hollywood myth. I'd like to make Brazilian films for international audiences that are not big-budget."And are there any actors he'd particularly like to work with? "Hundreds," he says immediately, before giving it some thought "Gary Oldman. What's Gary Oldman doing these days? I'd love to work with him, although I'd be scared." Now there's an artistic marriage as unlikely as Meirelles and Le Carr?but you wouldn't want to miss it.'The Constant Gardener' is released on 11 November. [Michael Mann ended up shooting the film with Tom Cruise.] The thing is that I'm not ready for an American subject yet Maybe in eight or nine years. I mean, why would I want to work in Hollywood?"Maybe for the money, I suggest. "I have my own commercials agency back in San Paolo, and I have all the money I need," says Meirelles.
"I'm middle-aged now [he's 50] and need to be doing stuff I want to do. My ideal career would be to do what Pedro Almodovar does in Spain. "Everything from action movies to films set in the Middle Ages I was even offered Westerns. The nearest I came was flying to Los Angeles to discuss directing Collateral when Russell Crowe was on board.
Many of the themes of The Constant Gardener will be taken up by Meirelles' next project, Intolerance, which will be filmed in seven different countries (including Brazil and Kenya) and look at the effects of globalisation. What is quite clear is that his worldwide success isn't making Meirelles any more amenable to Hollywood."To be precise, I had 115 offers from Hollywood after City of God," he says. Julian's activist wife is out to prove that international drug companies have been using sick Kenyans as guinea pigs for unproven treatments for TB and Aids. Meirelles says that he can identify strongly in this aspect of the story.