The road to the Riverside

ARTIST Richard Piers Rayner says that his conversation is likely to be peppered with phrases like: "When Tom Hanks said to me..." in future. That follows the verbal pat on the back given by the Hollywood star at the London premiere of hit movie Road To Perdition. "All these people are here because of you," Hanks told him.

Modestly, the actor was neglecting to mention his role as the star of a project that's seen the graphic novel illustrated by Stockton-born, Middlesbrough-raised Rayner turned into an acclaimed US movie tipped for Oscar success. "I hope I'm dispassionate about it, but the film is everything I hoped it would be," says Rayner.

"Basically, when you sell the rights to Hollywood you sell your soul to the devil and don't know what to expect. There's no commitment on their part to do anything we did, but I'd say 90 per cent of the book is on screen." Rayner's other passion, Middlesbrough FC, has taken a back seat while he basks in the limelight that the film's opening and mingling with stars like Hanks has put on him. That success can only help when he publishes his graphic novel - that's a posh name for a comic, he says - about the club's fortunes in the three years he's been its artist-in-residence. Who knows, Steven Spielberg might even snap up the film rights as he did to Road To Perdition, in which Hanks stars alongside Paul Newman and Jude Law.

Does Rayner have any casting suggestions for a Middlesbrough FC movie if it was made? "Paul Newman as Terry Venables," he jokes.

Sitting in the living room of his home in Crathorne, near Yarm, he reflects on the long process, stretching back four years or more, that culminated in the premiere. He's been a professional artist all his working life, a career suggested early on in his Middlesbrough school days.

"I always did well in art and English literature, I was absolutely hopeless at everything else," he recalls. "I remember an English teacher saying to me, when I was only five or six, 'I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see a book from Richard' and that set me on the road."

Since the 1980s he's been working for DC Comics in New York and was approached about illustrating a 300-page graphic novel about 1930s gangsters being written by American Max Allan Collins. This was the type of project that appealed as he loves drawing reality-based stories, particularly period pieces, and gets "quite obssessive" about detail.

Road To Perdition was based on true-life incidents surrounding a gangster named John Looney, although the story was moved forward slightly into the 1930s. For the film he became John Rooney and Irish rather than Italian. Crime writer and novelist Collins sent him the script for the novel from America in 25-page segments. He set off on the Road To Perdition.

Rayner says there's no need to visit places depicted to draw an accurate picture as pictures and other information are readily available. He and Collins never actually met until the film premiere.

"You only speak if things are going wrong. As we went along, we got to know each other's strengths and the scripts would reflect that," he says. "When I was working on it there was a kind of feeling, which Max calls my hunch, that we had something that was more than worthwhile doing. I thought we were working on a superior graphic novel, and almost at once our New York agent said, 'let's see if there's any interest in buying the film rights'."

The comic arrived in Steven Spielberg's hands in something resembling a cinematic game of pass the parcel. Producer Dean Zanuck read it and loved it. He handed it to his producer father Richard Zanuck, who sent it to Spielberg. He, in turn, showed it to Hanks. Even then, Rayner didn't hold his breath for the film to appear, knowing that Hollywood voraciously snaps up books, with only about one per cent getting made into movies.

Ironically, the graphic novel itself wasn't an instant hit, coming at the tail end of a failed line of adult-orientated DC comics. Since the film came out in the US, the novel has climbed into the prestigious New York Times bestsellers list and is the first graphic novel to do so. Screen writer David Self made changes, including cutting incidents and adding new characters, but Rayner is happy with the result. He only regrets that scenes involving Al Capone were filmed but cut from the final print as he enjoyed drawing the real life gangster. They're not lost forever, as deleted scenes will feature on the DVD version.

Director Sam Mendes, who made the Oscar-winning American Beauty, singled Rayner out for praise while promoting the film. He acknowledged that several scenes were copies of the drawings in the novel. One shows a boy from small town America arriving in the big city for the first time. "The reflection of the skyscrapers can be seen in his face against the car window. This was done by stage hands bumping the car to make it look like it was moving and superimposing the Chicago skyline, which had been digitally altered to remove modern buildings.

"Sam said that six seconds of film took a month to do and I said it took me a month to draw," says the artist. He's hopeful the movie's success will mean graphic novels are more highly regarded in future. "We've drawn attention to the potential of a media that tends to be under-rated," he notes.

His early work was mainly in horror comics until he won a best newcomer award at the US comic book awards equivalent of the Oscars. DC Comics approached him because they needed an illustrator for a English-set comic. Since then he's drawn for projects such as Batman, Swamp Thing, Captain America and the Dr Who comic.

He's tried to veer away from traditional comic strips and towards more reality-based stories. He likes to leave a North-East stamp in every comic he illustrates. Middlesbrough's Transporter Bridge features in a Dr Who adventure. Whitby is disguised as small town Illinois in Road To Perdition, which also features his wife Bernadette in the background of one drawing and a friend as a priest in another. The eagle-eyed might also spot footballer Peter Beardsley as a gangster.

"It was meant affectionately," adds Rayner. Missing from Road To Perdition is his trademark - a bottle of Newcastle Brown, which he usually draws in the background of every novel he illustrates.

He's been a follower of Middlesbrough FC since seeing his first game as a child in the early 1960s, influenced partly by his grandparents, also fans, buying a house near the ground. So he jumped at the chance when he saw the post of artist-in-residence advertised in the club programme three years ago.

His residency did not get off to a good start. "The first year it looked like my sequel to Road To Perdition was going to be Road To Relegation," he says. Eventually, he aims to publish an illustrated account following the club's fortunes over the past three seasons. "All the comings and goings, and behind-the-scenes stuff made into a reality-based comic book," he says. "There's a wealth of material. I take pictures at matches and usually get four or five images I can turn into a sequence. The thing is to turn it into a narrative, told from the fans' point of view."

He even remarks that his work as artist-in-residence led to a mention in a football report in The Times. You get the feeling that, despite all the acclaim for his work in Road To Perdition, a mention in the same breath at Middlesbrough FC means just as much, if not more.

* Road To Perdition is showing in cinemas now