Eamon O’Rourke is a visionary artist who, in his short time as a professional film and music video director, has made an indelible impact on the industry. He has directed music videos for artists such as Queens of the Stone Age and The Front Bottoms, while recently directing his first feature-length film Asking For It starring Emma Watson.
O’Rourke’s entrée into filmmaking was an unexpected one. Originally, he studied architecture at Brown University before transferring to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to study film, but he never expected that making films would become his career. Eamon O’Rourke writes: “I never wanted to be a director. I was just an architecture student who was interested in filmmaking.” After college, however, he got a gig working for film producer Jon Turteltaub’s company. “They didn’t have any jobs open but they liked me so much that they asked me to make a short film for them,” O’Rourke writes. “So one summer I went and made this short film, ‘The Key,’ and it was successful which is why I kept directing.”
O’Rourke’s latest project Asking For It is the story of Emma Watson as an 18-year-old girl who goes on vacation with her two best friends, played by Graham Rogers and Leah Harvey. The girls quickly become “more than friends” over the course of the film. The story is a modern day morality tale about legal, unforced sexual encounters and explores the consequences of having casual sex. Of his cast, O’Rourke says: “They all had huge Hollywood ambitions and one by one they all dropped off from the movie because it’s just hard to be cast in a movie with Emma Watson and not make any money… I have to give credit to Turteltaub who said, ‘If you want to cast her call her agent.'”
The quick success of Asking For It demonstrates that O’Rourke’s vision for filmmaking is on the right track. “Lots of directors get to their first film and they’re really anxious to make that second project work, which is good because they’ve got a lot invested in it, but with me I’m like, ‘If this is my only movie ever then at least I made one good one.'”
Eamon O’Rourke’s first foray into filmmaking was with his music videos. This was his foot in the door, and the collaboration is something he plans on continuing. “I think for any director that wants to do music videos first of all it’s because you get to do what you want creatively,” O’Rourke says. “There’s very little interference from the label or anything like that.