I don’t know anymore why I copied the interview of this semihustling neoliberal
capitalistprick.
1.
I have a bunch of questions about Art and
authorship and filmmaking. I have a big question to start off, but if you don’t
mind me asking a more basic one to begin with – is this a workday for you, in
effect?
2.
Yeah.
3.
So can you tell me what you’ve been doing today?
4.
Interviews. [And] I did some editing this
morning on a short documentary that I’m making about a film calledEndOfTheRoad,
which came out in1970, and which WarnerBros. has remastered and is going to
release this fall. And I agreed to make something about it for them to put on
theDVD to help drive sales. So that’s a project I’ve been working on for
thelastfourmonths.
5.
And what have you been doing with that? Do you
mean getting ready a voicerecording, or actuallyshooting?
6.
I shot interviews with everybody that’s
stillaround that was involved with the film, so I’m just cutting it now. I have
a portabledrive that I carry with me everywhere so I can cut on the plane or
whatever.
7.
Is that a WimWendersfilms, EndOfTheRoad?
8.
No, it’s based on theJohnBarthnovel.
9.
Yeah, okay. They made a film of that?
10.
Yeah, they did. It’s become sort of a cultfilm.
It’s notavailable, and it’s prettyinteresting. GordonWillis’s firstfeature as a
directorofphotography, StaceyKeach, JamesEarlJones, cowritten and coproduced
byTerrySouthern. It’s an interesting movie.
11.
And Warners released it back in the day?
12.
No, AlliedArtists released it, and Warners
obviouslypicked it up in some kind of yardsale. I’ve been bugging them about it
for years, so now it’s happening.
13.
I’m curious about that kind of leveraging. You
wanted them to release it, and did you say [toWarners] you would do some
ancillary thing?
14.
Yeah, I said, If you guys do this, I’ll create a
special piece of material to go with it, to help sell it.
15.
Okay. Is that something you’ve done in the past?
I know you’ve done a lot of these DVDsupplements, been involved in
commentarytracks. Is that something you’ve done with a particular mind toward
getting things out there?
16.
Not in this way. I’ve never gone to somebody and
tried to force them to restore or rerelease a movie that I thought should be
out there. And as such, I felt some obligation to [“]sweeten the pot[“] a
little bit. But honestly, the film itself is
intriguing enough that I wanted to knowmore about it, and this was a great way
to do that. And it’s been reallyinteresting, because the descriptions of the
experience on the part of the people making the film have reallybrought home
the idea that movies, and the act of making movies, don’t matter the way they
used to.
17.
Based on having conversations with the people
who were involved in the production, you get that sense? What is the language
they’re using to talk about the Cinema that is different than what you find
today?
18.
I don’t know that anybody would necessarily say
that that’s what they said in the interviews directly. What’s clear to me is
that in cultural terms, the experience for them of making this movie, which has
a lot on its mind, was viewed as both special and at the same time [A favourtie
phrase ofSoderbergh.] a necessary part of living in this culture. There was a
sense of artistic duty, in a way, to use your energy to make something that
meant something, and that they, in a sense, were successful in creating a
reallyunique environment. And I reallywas struck by that. Certainly I try to
create an environment that’s conductive to good solutions. But this sounded
like a reallyspecial circumstance the way everybody was talking about it. And
it made me realise, Wow, in thelate[19]60s and theearly[19]70s inAmerica,
movies meant something in cultural terms. People were looking to movies for
notnecessarily answers but for clues, at least, about what was going on and how
we should be interacting with each other and the world. And that just for the
most part isn’t true anymore, certainly isn’t the default mode of americanFilm.
19.
Yeah.
20.
So it made me sad.
21.
Well, I think a lot of us in film have
thesameresponse and feel like there’s this particular period that was offering
that up. You can see the way that films were being made and the way that
they’re being talked about, the kind of criticism around them, that kind of
excitement, as a golden age that we don’t have [now]. But I wonder – I feel
that either we have a nostalgia for that, or particular filmmakers like you
might try to do things, not to say in the spirit of that age, but.
22.
Well, yeah, I do in the sense that my – when I’m
on set, yeah, I pretend it’s 1971, and that I can do whatever I want, and that
anything I can appreciate the audience can appreciate, that I’m the audience.
Absolutely, I put myself in that mindset and draw inspiration. That happened to
be a particularlygood year inCinema all over the world, so absolutely. It
remains to be seen, since I’m the generation after that, what the generation
after me will be using as their RosettaStone, I don’t know.
23.
Right, I’m curious about that. And in being the
generation after that, do you feel like you missed out? One of the questions I
have is, do you feel like your career has been well timed, in the sense that,
did you come up at a moment where there was a support for the type of things
that you wanted to do?
24.
Yeah. I feel generally that I came up at at a
veryverygood time, that a few years earlier side of that, ofSexLies, and maybe
that doesn’t work out the way it worked out. I would really not want to be
coming up now. I feel that filmmakers starting out now trying to make features
have a muchmoredifficult time than I did.
25.
Is that because of just the sheer number of
people that are doing it, as opposed to the structure of the industry?
26.
Yeah, it’s reallyhard to break through. The
democratisation ofTechnology has been good in the sense that you can make a
reallygoodlooking movie for not a lot of money now. The problem is that’s what
everyone is doing, and the odds of it getting shown have dropped. [There’s
another interpretation, a muchmoresimple one. The one which either he is
incapable of conceiving or he suppresses.] Back then, the hard part was getting
it made, but if you got it made, you had a prettygood chance of getting it
released somehow, and now that’s nottrue. And I was allowed to make mistakes.
This was still at a time when I was allowed to makeSexLies, and then fivemovies
in a row that nobody saw, and not be put in moviejail. You can’t do that now,
you just can’t.
27.
I haven’t seen – I’ve looked at a lot of
filmmakers of your generation just to see anybody who’s had that experience
like you, where the movies are notcommerciallysuccessful yet you’re still given
support. Did you feel during that time that the clock was ticking on you to do
morecommercial things? Or did you just feel, this is my career, and if it goes
this way, it goes this way?
28.
Yeah, I was learning. I was trying to figure out
what kind of filmmaker I was, or should be. I was trying to figure out what my
strengths and weaknesses were. It was a veryimportant period, even though some
of the work I wish was better. But I didn’t feel in a hurry. I guess it would
seem strange from the outside, for someone with my professional history to say
I’ve never been in a hurry. But no, there’s never a sense of, things are
passing me by, it’s always been entirelyself – the clock is internal in the
sense of, [A metaphor poetic, another favourite device of his] how do I get
better at my job? What experience do I need to have that will make me better at
my job? And there’s not really a clock on that.
29.
And do you feel you’ve packed in terms of your
skills, and then are on a decline? Or your enthusiasm is not what it used to
be?
30.
I think I’m better than I was tenyearsago at a
lot of the things that – I’m better at filtering. That’s all you’re doing
everyday, you’re filtering. You’re reducing from an infinite number of films
down to onefilm in everymoment, everytime you make a decision. And I’m better
at filtering, I’m faster than I was tenyearsago. I’m notbetter at any of the
things that I think are reallyimportant, or that would enable me to make
something transcendent. In that regard, I don’t feel I’m any closer to anything
than I was when I was seventeen. Maybe evenfurther away.
31.
And what are those things, if you can see those
things? It’s not skill, it’s.
32.
If I know what they were – it’s something new,
something that hasn’t been done.
33.
Okay. So let me back up a little. I hope this
doesn’t sound toostraightlaced, the way these things are framed. You’ve read
some of the book so maybe you see how this works.
34.
Yeah.
35.
Thefirsthalf is about artistry, and I believe
you said this in congressional testimony a couple of years ago. One of the
lines was, “I’m a filmmaker, and so by some loose definition, I’m an artist.”
Based on that, do you think of yourself as an artist, and if so, what does that
term mean to you? In what way are you an artist?
36.
If you define Art as an expression, a personal
expression that is designed to be expressed by other people, in an attempt to
transmit some sense of what it is to be here, then yeah, then technically I’m
an artist. It’s easy to fall into the idea of, well, an artist paints. But I
think Film is anArtform, I think Cinema is anArtform. It was the
dominantArtform of thelastcentury. I don’t know what’s going to happen to it in
this century. But there’s no question in my mind that Cinema was the
dominantArtform of thetwentiethcentury, and that, you know, 2001[ASpaceOdyssey]
was one of themostsignificant piece of visualArt that anybody’s ever created. I
know that for a fact. So it’s hard to, it neverfeels comfortable to place
yourself in the company of the artists that have come before you and say,
“Yeah, I’m with that group.” When we hadSexLies atCannes and that all played
out, I remember I did an interview onTelevision, and thefirstquestion was,
“Fellini, Altman, Coppola, MartinScorsese – these people have all
wonPalmeD’Ors. Are you in that company?” And I just sort of laughed, like
that’s a trick question. What am I supposed to say to that? Because you never,
nobody, filmmakers that are in my sort of generation, that I know, none of us,
we’re our own thing, and it’s up to time to figure out what we mean, or what we
meant. So none of us think of them, of the greats that we admired, as being
contemporaries or peers or anything like that. So, that’s a longwinded answer
to that question. It’s a qualified yes.
37.
You had immediatelybrought film into the
equation when I asked you that question. And you’ve worked in a lot of
different media. But if you said to yourself what the key aspects of your
artistic practice were, what would they be? What does your work as an artist
entail? Do you think of it in terms of output, or in terms of particular tools
that you’re using to create?
38.
I guess I start from the premise of, you should
make things, you should make as many things as you can. Perhaps what I admire
most in other artists is being prolific, is working. I probablygot that from my
father. My father was an workaholic. My father went to work, and then after
dinner, he would be at the diningroomtable for hours, continuing to work. And I
guess I kind of swallowed that a little bit. If I’m awake, there’s a verystrong
chance that I’m working on something. So I probablyplace the scale and breadth
of a body of work first, before even quality.
39.
I’m sure some critics would agree with that
assessment. But scale and breadth is what a lot of artists, particularly
filmartists, seem not to be interested in, in favour of being morespecialised.
40.
Well, there’s no part of the business that
encourages you to do anything but what you’ve donesuccessfully before. If
you’re someone who’s interested in exploring your abilities, you’re swimming
upstream. I’m not trying to make myself sound heroic, because that is not a choice
for me. I can’t not want to try things. That’s just part of my DNA. I’m not
choosing to do that. It’s what I have to do to stay engaged. So I have to find
a way to navigate through the business that allows me to satisfy my need to try
things.
41.
Okay. Relatedly, my next set of question has to do with collaboration.
It seems to me if you want to be prolific in any mode ofArt, you should just go
it alone, and paint, or shoot video yourself and do all the recording and
editing. And yet, for the most part, you have chosen not to do that, you’ve
worked with different scales and crews. But when you conceptualise your work as
an artist, do you think of yourself as someone who has a personal vision, who
is a solitary artist and then brings people into projects? Or do you think of
yourself as a collaborator, someone who conceptualises these works [“]in terms
of[“], I will work on this with this group of people?
42.
I understood from the beginning, when I started
making films, that theonlyversion of a film that you can make alone is probably
not that interesting. You look at, say a GodfreyReggiomovie, and you would
think, Oh, he just goes out with a camera over the course of several years, and
just shoots this thing and then he cuts it, and that’s reallykind of a onemanband.
And having worked withGodfrey on one of his films, I can tell you he has a core
creative team that works veryhard, and that he [analyses] relies on to sort
of analyse the film as it’s being made, and it’s verycollaborative.
And I take advantage ofthe people around me, both in literal terms by just
sucking their brains out and using them and delegating. To me, the great thing
about having a core group of people that move from project to project is it
enables us to, while we’re shooting one, be prepping thenextone, because it’s
all thesamepeople. So at lunchtime, You have a miniproductionmeeting about
thenextmovie while you’re shooting another movie. But also, one of the reasons
I’ve been able to do alot of stuff is I delegate. I give people a lot of responsibility.
I’ll say, Here’s what I need you to do. In that regard, there’s the famous
joke, what is the sentence that StanleyKubrick never said? The punch line is,
“Use your own judgement, don’t bother me with the details.” I give people a lot
of freedom to bring something of their own to this. If I say I’m looking for a
certain kind of location, for example. I hope and expect that they will do the
parts of my work for me that are not going to be any better if I did it, you
know what I mean? I would never delegate something to someone that I felt was
absolutelyreliant upon a specific decision or action on my part, that was
tooimportant to be given over to somebody. But I’m alsoverygood at determining
what stuff doesn’t fit that definition, and I give it to people to do. That’s
theonlyway you can have multiple films happening at thesametime.
43.
So, would you describe your preproductionprocess
as somewhat more openended, things aren’t locked down, and say, you mentioned
the locationexample, if you let someone choose a location, then you’d kind of
build things around that, rather than having something storyboarded in advance?
44.
Oh yeah, absolutely. And when I’m working with
the writers, it’s a veryfluid situation. I may take a run at certain things and
say, I’m thinking of something like this, make this better, in order to just
help. I may say, Why don’t you work on that sequence, and I’ll take a run at
this sequence, just so that we’re getting somewhere quicker. But [“]at the end
of the day[“], [Another favourite phrase. Pretentiousprick.] I’m relying on
them to write the thing. I have no interest in being the writer on it, having
credit as a writer. My job is just to tell someone what I want to shoot, what
kind of thing I would like to see. I guess you’d
call it macromanaging. [Semihustling entrepreneur inNYC.]
45.
Okay, you’re at the other level, all right. The
thing about writing, it seems to raise a similar question. You used to be a
screenwriter, or coscreenwriter, cocredited. You seem not to do that
morerecently. Is that something where you feel someone else can do it better
than you, and then you can step in and direct it?
46.
Yeah. I wrote to get in, I wrote as a way of
getting in. I have written, but I don’t think of myself as a writer. With one
possible exception, all of my best work has been written by other people. And I
enjoy that process a lot. Perhaps the three mostpleasurable weeks I’ve ever had
in the business were when ScottFrank and I met in his office everyday to create
what became the shootingdraft ofOutOfSight. That was reallyfun. That was just
pure fun, just sitting in a room trying to top each other, and make this thing
as good as we wanted it to be. But it was just us. You know, sitting alone,
trying to generate something, it’s horrible.
47.
There’s a lot of blank page.
48.
Yeah, it’s just horrible. I don’t enjoy it. What
I think I did when I started, and I see this in a lot of other directors, I
think when I started I was of the mistaken belief that I should be writing and
directing. And as soon as I got out of that way of thinking, everything started
to improve. And I’ve had conversations with other filmmakers, young filmmakers
who aren’t as busy as they should be because they onlywant to direct what
they’ve written, and some of the things they’ve written they haven’t been able
to get financed. And I keep saying, You gotta shot. If you’re a director, you
have to be making things. You can’t tell me that there’s nothing out there that
you want to make other than what you wrote. You just can’t convince me of that.
A couple of them have listened to me and gone off and directed stuff and been
verysuccessful doing it, a couple of them still haven’t worked.
49.
If I think of the old creativewritingadage, You
have to write what you know, I’ve never heard a similar thing about shooting
what you know. But certainly a lot of filmmaking privileges shooting things
that are closer to your experience. When you’re working with other writers, do
you have a sense that you’re taking someone else’s vision and then transforming
it into yours?
50.
It depends. It depends on at what stage I got
involved. Was this an idea of mine? Was it a script of theirs that
alreadyexisted? If it’s an idea of mine, then it’s muchmore, the dynamic is
going to shift a little bit to them trying to give me what I want in a
moreobvious way. Because I may have walked in with a certain construction and a
certain style that I want to see. If I’ve read a script that’s already been
written, if we’re moving forward now and this thing’s getting made, then
obviously they did something that hooked me already. I’m not going to come in
and rip the engine out of this thing. So all I’m doing at that point is trying
to, thebestanalogy I can use is, I’ve stepped onto the rear car of a moving
train, and I’m working my way up to the cabin so that I can be out in front of
it. It’s a process, and by the time I get to the front of this train, I feel
like I’m driving it, too.
51.
Who’s the conductor on this train? You’re the
coconductor?
52.
It’s ultimately training myself to be the
conductor.
53.
But it can start before you; you can hop on.
54.
Yeah, if that’s a script that’s already been
written, I chased it down and got on the back, and I’m trying to get up to the
front.
55.
I don’t know what’s mostpresent for you right
now, but where would you say something likeContagion, where did you come into
that?
56.
That was Scott[Burns] saying, I want to make an
ultrarealistic movie about a pandemic, and I said, Great, let’s do that. So it
was his idea that we kind of explored together. He did all the research, and
then we would have conversations about the characters? Who are we following?
That’s the question you alwaysask, who are we following? And then we’d agree,
we have this many characters, here are the various narrativethreads we’re going
to set up and pay off. And then he would go off and do a
draft.
57.
And then would you say things like, I want to
see more of these characters, less of these, or, I want them to be over here,
or, We need to balance how often these characters are appearing.
58.
You would participate in that?
59.
Yeah, sure, absolutely.
60.
Then [“]at the end of the day[“], that movie
exists for us. Do you think of that then as a, maybe you don’t conceptualise
these things this way at all, but certainly on our side, we alwaysdo, do you
think of that as, This is my film, or this is this collaborative product, that
comes fromWarnerBros., and you directed it, and that Scott wrote, with your
input?
61.
I think we all look at it as our film.
Theclearestway I can put it is that I directed it. To me that says exactly what
I want it to say, and it doesn’t have to be any larger than that. It’s
absolutelyappropriate for me to refer to it as my film, in thesameway it would
be absolutelyappropriate forScott to refer to it as his film, or anyone who
worked on it, frankly. I tend to like to refer to things as ours, you know, we.
62.
Yeah, I’ve seen that. And noteverybody does
that.
63.
I think it’s unfair to sort of act as though
there wasn’t a lot of help around. But in this medium, I think thebestresults
come from the director having the final word. And that’s nottrue in every other
medium, but I think it is true in movies. When I look at the movies that I
think are great, ninetyeightpercent of them were controlled creatively,
ultimately, by the director. Not the producer or the writer. There are
exceptions, but most of the time it’s the filmmaker.
64.
I guess that’s one of the other arguments for
[also] being the writer, is having morecontrol.
65.
If you’re a writer and you want control, you
should not be in the moviebusiness. You should be inTelevision or writing
plays.
66.
Is that why you didn’t do morework inTV, because
it’s more of a writerbased medium?
67.
No, it’s, there’s a version of for-hire that I’m
comfortable with, and then there’s a version of for-hire that I’m
notcomfortable with. And it has to do with, ultimately, the edit and sort of
the final version of the piece, the edit and the scoring and things like that.
I wouldn’t want to be in a situation, if I’m directing a pilot for a series or
whatever, where I can’t have control over the final product. I wouldn’t be
happy. So the answer is, If I were going to be inTV, it sounds like I would
have to create something form scratch, come up with an idea, and execute it the
way I would like to see it done. And then at that point you’re hiring other
people to kind of follow in your footsteps. But the couple ofTVthings that I
did, the two FallenAngels-pieces and KStreet, I had the cut. I contractuallyhad
finalcut. Each of us [directors] did onFallenAngels, we all had finalcut.
That’s what made it kind of unique. I’m sorry it didn’t go on for longer,
because they had a reallyinteresting group of people, and it was fun. But
that’s notnormal. That was Showtime and Propaganda being kind of progressive.
68.
In a way, I think those were the infant stages
of cablechannels developing that original content, and if it had been ten or
fifteen yearslater, there would be a buzz about those. I remember those were
way under the radar.
69.
Yeah, they really were, even then. Now I think
they’d be generating a lot morebuzz, if you got a group of directors like that
to do stuff like this, there’d be a lot moretalk about it.
70.
Yeah, I concur. Okay, should I move on? I know
you read around a lot. Maybe you stay away from academic filmstudies, which is
perfectlyfine. But one of the things we do is we spend a lot of time
scrutinising filmcontent for its meaning and its significance, either in
isolation or as part of some larger cultural moment. And then sometimes we
think about those things just completelyremoved from who created them, and
sometimes we’ll actuallytry to look at particular individuals or groups we
think of as the authors of those films, however designated. So the question in
this relationship is, When you direct a film, whether from a screenplay you did
have involvement, in, or where you hopped onto this moving train, do you
feel that you as a director seek to convey any particular meanings to viewers,
about the world at large, about institutions or Politics, about humanrelations,
cultures, and peoples? Or do you think of yourself as a storyteller, who tells
stories about people and places that someone else will put into some kind of
context?
71.
Well, I think that is personal, in the sense
that directors are their films, to an extent that’s almostcomical sometimes.
Everydecision you make is an expression of what you want to see or what you
believe. Even for someone who by all definitions may be pedestrian or
middleoftheroad, that is their worldview, in a way. And it’s everybit as
legitimate or complete as someone whom we consider to be a great filmmaker. And
in that sense, they don’t feel like choices to me, in thesameway I talked
about, I need to be engaged and free to explore stuff because I can’t work any
other way. It’s not a decision, it just has to be that way. Whatever the
ultimate takeaway is from the body of work that has my name on it, we can be
sure that it is a manifestation of what I think, what I feel, what I believe.
And that if it isn’t coherent or clear, it’s not
necessarily a failing, in the sense that people are complicated and
contradictory sometimes. It’s going to be as funky as the world is, it’s going
to have all the sort of sloppiness and energy hopefully that the world has.
[Petit bourgeoisie who advocates neoliberal policies.] I’ve been in it
enough to realise that I don’t have to think of it in those terms while I’m in
it, you know what I mean? I know there’s no way for it not to be a part of me,
and to be a part of what I am. That’s just notpossible, it’s notpossible for
anyone. And it really does become, then, somebody else’s job to kind of
organise it or try and figure it out.
72.
All right. It seems to me that, maybe during
pressjunkettime, you’re asked to participate in the organisation of that
material. And so I’m curious how you respond when people, viewers for example,
or maybe critics, look for a connexion among your films, not to say impose but
to bring to the table a view of them as “about” something in particular.
73.
I look at it as, if I’m asked about these kinds
of things, I kind of treat it, depending on the question and the context, I
look at it as having vetopower. If somebody proposes something that I just feel
isn’t true, a premise or an intent, then I’ll say, Well, that may be the way it
came across. I can onlytell you that’s not what I meant. So maybe that’s a
failing on my part because I didn’t communicate clearlyenough within the film. But
I’ve seen too-often that, it’s like a fan watching a basketballgame. Their
experience of that basketballgame and their belief of what it meant to the
players involved is never going to line up with what the players experienced. It’s
just different to be on the floor. At the end of the day, it’s not really my
job and probably isn’t even reallynecessary for me to correct people. It is a
piece ofArt. And what I know for sure is that nothing anybody says is going to
rearrange those pixels. It is what it is. And hating it doesn’t improve it, or
diminish it, or change it in any way. Those pixels or grain, whatever you want
to call it, that is the form they are going to take forever. That’s why a
certain point, I feel lucky in that I’ve never really cared what people have
said, because it doesn’t change anything.
74.
So it wouldn’t bother you if someone got
something out of watching one of your movies that you had said, That wasn’t my
intent, but oh, it came out this way, that was part of the communication.
75.
Yeah, I think that’s just part of life. That’s
analogous to somebody being at a dinner, and making a comment that somebody
thinks is a joke, and they laugh at it, not realising that it wasn’t really a
joke. Those kinds of misinterpretations happen all the time in life. Why
shouldn’t they happen when somebody is looking at something as complex as a
movie? So that stuff doesn’t bother me. It can be frustrating when somebody
doesn’t know what they’re talking about, in either direction. I don’t read
reviews, but occasionally something might be written that’s sort of an overview
that I’ll take a look at, or somebody will send me something to look at. And it
can be frustrating to see. Anybody who says that I don’t understand the visual
grammart of, say MichaelCurtiz and [19]40sstudiofilmmaking, I can tell you does
not know what they’re talking about.
76.
I know a particular piece.
77.
Yeah, I’ve heard about it. I’ve had friends
angry on my behalf, You’ve got to see this thing. No, I don’t have to see this
thing. I can tell you my understanding of that particular language is verydeep,
deeper than what they are seeing. It’s axiomatic, If they knew what I knew,
they then would be writing about what I knew. And I can tell that they don’t.
there are huge swaths of inlfuences, inferences, references, connexions that
are wound into, for instance, that film [GoodGermanThe], that are
completelygoing over their heads. Now that’s notsaying, Oh, I’m smarter than
them. I’m just saying that stuff has been swallowed and regurgiated by me in a
way that, by making it, can’t be duplicated by writing about something. So that
can be frustrating, where you feel like, they never are wrong, as far as the
public is concerned. I’m wrong all the time. When I make a movie that nobody
goes to see or gets shitty reviews, the sort of takeaway is that oh, I screwed
up, I’m wrong. They are, by virtue of having their last word, sort of
infallible. I remember somebody asked PaulineKael once, Do you ever go back and
see things twice? And she said, Why would I want to do that? Why would I want
to find out that I was wrong? So it’s a small price to pay.
78.
That’s an interesting case, where you said
everything you do in the creative process, the output becomes part of you. It
seems there’s a critical stance where we look at the output, and that has to
stand for all the decisionmaking around it. So you can look atGoodGermanThe and
say, Soderbergh doesn’t know this, this and this. And in a way, that’s
reallysaying, Based on the evidence on screen in front of me, I can infer that
this person has this Knowledge or not that Knowledge. So it’s a matter of, the
filmtext itself is the way that critics sometimes with the filmmaker, for
better or worse. And yet, as critics all we produce is criticism.
79.
And you know, it was ever thus. And it’s
onlyrelevant to me in the sense of its impact potentially on the commercial
performance of the movie. Bad reviews don’t bother me in the sense that I feel
bad or I think the film is bad or anything. But in certain cases, GoodGermanThe
being one of them, getting negative, in some cases virulentlynegative, reviews
killed that movie. We didn’t have a chance. We had nothing to build on. That
was a movie that reallyneeded critical support to move out into the world, and
people needed a lens to view it through. Critical support could’ve been that
lens. We didn’t get it, and the thing was DOA. It was just viewed as a
disaster. That’s where it’s relevant to me, it was like, Shit, we got
reallycrushed, and the movie tanked.
80.
I seem to recall you said that in interviews
before it was released, that this was a film that would need critical support
to take off. My sense is that the choice to talk about the movie in terms of
technique and the classicalHollywoodstuff is the thing that critics then ran
with and reallyscrutinised-almostexclusively.
81.
Yeah, obviously, I threw down the gauntlet, and
what we got into was a situation where people were going to say, How dare you
pretend to knowmore about this than we do. That was the tone of a lot of the
feedback, which is, Nobody knows the visual language ofCasablanca better than
we do, how dare you. And that’s just absurd, that’s just crazy.
82.
That takes me to another, similar line of
questioning. It seems to me that you’ve kind of limited this divide between
speaking in the voide of the filmmaker and speaking in the voice of the
filmlover. You used that analogy about being a basketballfan and trying to
experience the player’s point of view. Obviously you’ve been on both side of
that. In the conversations I listen to with you and other filmmakers, to some
extent you seem to be attaching yourselves to the filmmakers themselves, and
thinking about films in terms of the productionprocess and decisions being
made. And in other cases you seem to be thinking about them as a viewer, in
terms of the pleasure that stories and images give you. Do you ever have to
separate those? Do you feel like you move oneway or another, depending on
whether you’re actuallyhaving a conversation with someone who was involved in
it? When you watch a film, do you think, This is a great film, or I wonder how
they did that?
83.
I think all that’s happening all the time.
[Another favourite phrase of his, all the time.] It’s notpossible for me to
detach one of those trains of thought. And I don’t see it as a problem, because
it doesn’t reduce my pleasure or impair my ability to sort of immerse myself in
a film. In fact, in increases it. Being able to watch a great movie, and to
experience it as a filmgoer and as a filmmaker, is reallyexciting. When you see
something that’s reallygreat, I get an added boost out of it because I’m
watching it through a couple of different prisms.
84.
So you get a boost in terms of the pleasure of
artistic experience, and the possibility of channeling that into your work?
85.
Sure.
86.
I don’t know if you put things into a
comparative dimension, but do you ever look at particular filmmakers as makers
fo individual works or overall bodies of work, and say, There’s a
careertrajectory that I reallyrecognise as somewhat similar to mine, or,
there’s an artistic mode, that person seems to be trying to get at
thesamethings withArt that I am? Or do you just think about it in this larger
sphere of, There is great work.)?
87.
Yeah, I think so. I do my own, you get a bunch
of directors together, and eventually they’re going to start talking about
other directors that they like or don’t like, or rate or don’t rate. Obviously,
none of us would ever do that for publication. But there’s onegame we like to
play. We play the pantheongame a lot, which is, you have to have made three
great movies to get into the pantheon. So it’s fun to sort of go down the list.
there are a lot of people who are in easily, and then there are some verygood
people who are kind of on the cusp. That’s a fun game to play. But in general,
I’m not a comparative person in the sense that, nothing makes me happier than
seeing something good by somebody else. I want that. I draw inspiration from
that. I don’t want movies to be bad. I want to see reallygreat stuff. I don’t
viewArt as a zerosumgame, and that if theCoenbrothers make a great movie
somehow they’ve stolen a piece of the greatmoviepie for me.
88.
There’s a parallel universe where all that
badmovieenergy is going.
89.
Yeah, I’ve never looked at it that way. But I do
believe that there is, within a certain, say calendarperiod, a finite amount of
greatArt that can exist. If you made fiftymovies a year or
fourhundredsandfiftymovies a year, there are still only a handful of them that
are going to be great. This doesn’t work on a linear scale. It doesn’t scale
from fifty to fourhundredsandfifty with a proportional number of great films
being produced. That’s not how Art works. So I’m rooting for the good stuff. To
the point where, there can be a film by a good filmmaker, and I may have issues
with that particular film, I may not like that particular film. But let’s say
for the sake of argument that it’s someone who’s acknowledged as being worthy
of attention, and skilled, and not someone who does stuff that’s down the
middle. And let’s say it was an original screenplay, and it’s not a comicbook
and it’s not a sequel. Whether or not I like the film personally, I’m rooting
for the film. Its success helps me and other filmmakers like me. I don’t look
at it and go, I hated that. I’m so mad that it made onehundredmillionsUSD. It
making onehundredmillionsUSD makes it easier thenextday for me to go in and go,
I’ve got an original screenplay, and it’s kind of odd, it’s not really down the
middle, and everybody’s morereceptive to that because of what this filmmaker did.
So I’m aware of how closely the people who pay for things are tracking the
performance of certain films and certain filmmakers. And the bottom line is,
clearly I’m still a sort of wild card. People don’t know exactly what they’re
going to get when they say yes to me. They could be getting onething; they
could be getting another. I try to tell them what it is. When all the
Moneyballstuff happened, people said, Wow, you must be really pissed off. I
said, No, not really; it means I’m still capable of scaring people. That’s a
good thing. That means I’m still enough of a crazy person to make somebody pull
the plug.
90.
So you value the risks you were taking there?
91.
Absolutely.
92.
There was mondaymorningquarterbacking on your
part?
93.
It really was a sort of irresistible force,
immovable object situation. Because this thing was on a certain path, I was
taking it on a certain path, and it clearlybecame a path that nobody was
comefortable with. And this is what has to happen. There’s no other result that
can happen. I get it. Thenextday, I’m like, What else have we got? That’s how
Haywire happened, and I’m reallyhappy withHaywire. I would never have made that
movie otherwise.
94.
You walked into that after theMoneyballthing?
95.
Yeah, I looked around, found that, got it
together quickly. I don’t look back.
96.
Out ofMoneyball, did you shoot
documentarymaterial that you would repurpose?
97.
I don’t know what you would do with it. I shot
about twothirds of the interviews that I needed, and I don’t think there’s any
use for them. It’s in a vault somewhere.
98.
The things that you said anticipated my next
question, which was about where you saw yourself in contemporary filmculture,
and whether you see yourself as part of a community of likeminded artists. You
seem to be discussting that now, with the idea that “if good films get made,
that’s good for me,” in terms of creative energy and influencing you to
continue to work.
99.
Yeah. If I’ve played any part in getting
moreindependentminded filmmakers working in the studiosystem, I’d be
reallyhappy. Because I think that’s what should be going on. I want to
seeGusVanSant given money to make movies, as much mony as other people who
aren’t as good asGusVanSant. I grew up on studiomovies that were reallygood,
that wer made by reallygood filmmakers. So I never had that prejudice that a
lot of filmmakers did have and do have, or a lot of critics and people who
write about movies had or do have, about who’s writing the check. I don’t give
a shit. The delineation I make is between good movie, bad movie, not who
financed it. To have the opportunity, I waited longer than a lot of people in
my position, nineyears, before I made a fullon studiomovie with moviestars in
it, which would be OutOfSight. Because I wanted to make sure that it was going
to be the right choice for me. But doing that and doingErin and doingOcean’s, I
reallyhoped someone was going to follow me, and that there were going to be
other filmmakers of my generation and my taste who were going to follow me and
go make movies forWarners and Fox and everybody. This is what should be
happening. This is good for everybody. [Petit
bourgeoisie whose onlyconcern is to climb social ladder, so that he can enjoy
the luxury provided byStateCapitalism.]
100.
Do you feel proud that to some extent that has
happened? Do you feel responsible, without taking creding for that?
101.
Well, it’s an evolving, living thing. It’s hard
for me to judge if my desire had been fulfilled or not. I don’t know. You could
look at it and go, Well, it was for awhile, but not anymore. I don’t know. I just know that I hoped that other people would follow me
through that door and see that you can work in this arena and still have
control. It can still be yours. There’s nothing wrong with popular
entertainment. There’s just something wrong when it’s stupid. I watch everything. I’ll go from[DesertoRosso]
toOldSchool in thesamenight. I just want it to be good.
102.
From reading interviews, it seems your tastes
are verycatholic.
103.
Yeah.
104.
At thesametime, maybe I can move back to the
historical, 60sand70stype question. You have repeatedly gravitated toward that
era, as something that you invoke as the type of films and filmmakers that
inspired you, particularly in theUS but also european artCinma, to use that
phrase. And as you mentioned, other filmmakers of your generation were inspired
in thesameway. In a lot of cases, it seems to be people like you, who grew up a
little bit after those films were being released, or coming up in the late
period of it, and you rediscovered them some other way. So it’s not the film of
your youth really, but something you had to reexperience in a different
category. What is it about that era that speaksparticularly to you? Would you
say you have a strategy to embody a similar sensibility? How can you mix old
and new to do something original? Is it, as you say, you walk onto the set and
it’s 1971? How does it work?
105.
First, I would put forth the premise that the
way things imprint on you when you’re between the ages of thirteen and
seventeen is unique. I don’t know why. Maybe a brainperson could tell me
whether I’m talking out of my other hole. [If you’re uncertain, don’t say it.
Fuckingmoron.] But my experience of it is that between the ages of thirteen and
seventeen, when I was seeing all those films and others, they had an impact
that was verydifferent when I was quoteunquote an adult. So in my case, it’s a
function of circumstance. I’m inBatonRougeLA, I’m going to highschool on the
campus of[LSU], which happened to have a significant and wellcurated
repertorycinemaprogram going on every night. And I was hanging around with
these collegestudents who were alsointerested in making films, and we were
seeing everything. [An imperialist.] And that’s reallylucky. I was reallylucky
to be in that time at that place, and to have access to those works. And everything
sort of flowed from that. Had I grown up somewhere else, at another time, then
it might be another era of filmmaking or it might be a type of film from
another part of the world that would’ve influenced me. This is just how the planets lined up. [What
arrogance.] And it syncs up, like you were saying. I was thirteen
in1976, so 1976to1980, the moviebrats are at their peak at the beginning of
that, and then by the end of it, most of them have selfdestructed. Then comes
the1980s, theworstdecade in americanCinema. And I’m then feeling, as the
corporations have taken control of the movies again, I want to do what those
people did. So it’s largely a function of circumstances, a lot of that.
106.
So it’s that combination of abundance amid
scarcity that a lot of people seem to have an experience of, not all from
living in small towns with universities.
107.
Well, it’s what makes. If you’re coming up now
and you have access to everything, what is your filter? I was lucky in that I
had this filter that happened to be these people that were programming this
theater atLSU that turned out to be reallygood. Because you can’t see
everything, you do need a filter at a certain point. Especially if you’re going
to make films, you need to decide what to look at, you need to be looking at
good stuff. But who is your filter for that? Like you’re saying, the abundance
now turns out to potentially be a problem. Your best weapon is your
specificity, and you can’t cultivate the kind of specificity that you need to
distinguish yourself as a filmmaker without identifying a certain kind of thing
that you watch over and over again. Because it’s important not just to watch a
lot of films. There are certain films that you need to watchrepeatedly. And I
did. Again, this is at a period where I”m a teenager, I can seeJaws
twentyninetimes, I can see Apocalypse[Now] sixteentimes, I can seeShiningThe
eighteentimes, AmericanGriffith in rerelease thirteentimes, LastDetailThe
twelvetimes. I’m a kid, I’m not really paying attention in school, and the matinees
are cheap. I would go on a sunday and sit through allfiveshows. I don’t think
people are doing that anymore. And that was a reallyimportant part of my
Education. And I loved it. I looked forward to it. It wasn’t a chore. My dad
would drop me off at11AM and he’d come get me at10PM.
108.
So you are doing the repeatviewing thing. In a
way that does anticipate the way people started viewing things in the1980s.
When I first started teaching, I realised all my students were watching
theBackToTheFuturefilms on constant repeat onTNT, and had lost all grasp of
worldCinema or classicalHollywood, the kind of things that we would get on late
night or daytimeTelevision back in the day. Those had ceased to exist for these
people, blackandwhite had ceased to be anything young people could look at.
They’d go back to the same early1980sfilms. In a way, maybe that was those
people’s way of creating scarcity and distinction amid all this other stuff.
109.
Right. Which is find if you want to grow up to
be RobertZemeckis. Then that’s what you should be doing. I was watching the
stuff over and over again that was the stuff I wanted to do. There’s this
evolving lecture that I have whenever I’m asked to speak to a filmclass that
I’ve been working on for a couple of years. It keeps changing. I’m trying to
download everything that I feel I’ve learned in like an hour about directing.
It’s been hard. But I talk about stuff like that.
110.
Is one of the thing you tell people to
specialise?
111.
Yeah, you’ve got to have a thing. What’s your
thing? Even if your thing is that you don’t have a thing. What are you bringing
to the table? What is distinguishing you from thenextperson?
112.
You’re describing this kind of
selfcurationprocess. Then that’s something you feed into an artistic profile?
113.
Yeah.
114.
Great. And if you’re willing to be reflective
about this, I want to ask about the idea of auteurs. As I said before, you seem
to read a lot aboutFilm, even if you’re not looking at reviews as such. But not
just filmreviews, but other kinds of critical discussions about filmmaking and
filmmakers tend, particularly to give it artistic people whose string
directorial personality or strong artistic vision informs the film released
under their name. Does that concept match your own experience of filmmaking? Or
does it seem like an imposition on the part of those people inthe stands?
115.
For someone like me, I don’t know that it
matters. In my life and my work, I’m a processperson. As a viewer, I’m a
resultspersons. Either on a macrolevel or on a microlevel, the delineation of
responsibility doesn’t really matter to me, because I’m just looking at the
result and trying to get out of it something I can use. It seems, like I said,
prettyselfevident to me that there are certain people taht clearlyhave a
verystrong signature that carries across everything they do. But that also
happens to be true for people who make things that aren’t good. I guess I’m a
sort of mixture, because I’ve never taken a possessory credit, I don’t take
writingcredit on things even when I’ve done writing. And I’ve nevertaken a
producercredit on a movie that I’ve directed, evenwhen I’ve performed producing
duties. You look at that and say, What does that mean? I guess it means that,
like I said, directed by, I don’t know what else you need to say. I guess I
find all that other stuff kind of redundant. My whole thing is, I want my name
up there once. I just want it up there once. I think you reduce the power of it
every time you repeat it. Directed by, to me, that’s a great credit. And I
don’t view it as themostimportant credit, just, for me doing what I do, it’s
sufficient. So I don’t know, the auteurthing, it’s kind of funny. [What’s
funny, asshole?] You have to remember that the people that created it were kind
of provocateurs. I guarantee you that half of them would argue for it or would
propose it just to get an argument going, not out of any real sense of “we need
to order the world in this way, and things need to be look at this way.” You’re
talking about Truffaut and Godard and Bazin, these french people writing
aboutMovies, they liked to say, Let’s stir it up a little bit. Let’s say,
You’ve been looking at this all wrong, this is the way it is. We can’t assume
that these ideas were created in a vacuum. These were ambitious, combative
young guys, and they were trying to make a name for themselves.
116.
And they were experiencing movies in a way that
nobody ever did before or since, that sense in the postwarperiod of, suddenly
things come flooding over across theAtlantic to them. But that construct has
just struck and become the default mode of filmwriting, even when it has no
real basis.
117.
Yeah, that’s what I mean. It’s sort of like
saying, Everyone is either blond or brunette. When in point of fact, there are
many morepossibilities than that. So I guess, again, I don’t have to
reallyparticipate in it because I’m in it. Let me put it to you this way. I
have never heard another filmmaker, or been present when other filmmakers, were
ever talking about this issue.
118.
Yeah, that’s my sense as well.
119.
Nobody who actually does it gives a shit and has
any interest in that argument.
120.
But people still want to bbe remembered as
artists to some extent, right? Or they want their work to be taken
[considered]seriously.
121.
I don’t know. I can onlyspeak for me. But I’ve
neverheard another director even bring this up. Like you said, When we have the
pantheondiscussion, you’d certainly like to be somebody that, tenorfifteenyears
from now, somebody goes, Yeah, he’s in the panthedon. He’s made three great
movies.
122.
You need critics to do the legwork so people can
have that conversation without starting it from scratch.
123.
Well, it gets into this issue of authorless
texts. I think there are a couple movies that I’ve made, that if they were
thought to have been made by a young filmmaker or had been thefirstfilm of
another filmmaker, especially from another part of the world, that they
would’ve been viewed verydifferently. Have I benefitted on occassion from being
me? Sure. I’m sure it works both ways. But I guarantee you, a couple of my
movies, if you stuck somebody else’s name on it and said, Oh, that’s a female
director who just graduated from theLodzfilmschool, that there’d be
verydifferent reaction to the film.
124.
In a way, for better or worse, you’re watching
people connect the dots from your previous work. This can get to a useful
question, particularly as you say that filmmakers don’t talk about films in
these terms. This can go in your lecture to filmstudents. A lot of us as
Artsresearchers want to illuminate the artistic practices and workroles of
contemporary filmmakers, not just performArtappreciation about the films
themselves. But maybe, as is apparent, we really don’t have muchaccess to
productionactivity. And even if we don’t get it wrong per se, [wrong word.]
we’re just asking reallydifferent questions about the type of work, the type of
output. As a piece of advice, I would ask, what might we as researchers do to
gain insight into the challenges filmmakers face and the way you create works
for the screen? Is there a way for us to write about things that really speaks
to me the way you guys are doing it?
125.
It’d be reallydifficult. You really have to a
fly on a wall from beginning to end to get a sense of what the issues are and
how decisions get made. Because there are so many of them. So many questions
have to be answered all the time [elongated] under so many sets of
circumstances. You would really have to be attached at the hip to get a sense
of it. If you care at all, it can be like standing in the exhaust of a
jetengine. It can be veryintense, and it reallytests your ability to remain
calm. The physicality of it I think would surprise people. It’s
physicallydemanding, just the amount of energy it requires day to day over a
long period of time I think would surprise people who’ve onlywritten
aboutFilms. It crushes people. It’s physicallyintense, and it’s
obviouslypsychologicallyintense. I rememberFrankMarshall once gave an
interview, and he said, I think everybody that finishes a film should get some
kind of award. I remember laughing and thinking, Yeah, it’s kind of true. There
are times when you think it’s a miracle that somehow this thing ended up being
done. And WarrenBeatty said, Films aren’t finished, they’re abandoned. And
that’s partiallytrue, too. The problem is that, as I was saying, these
makingofs or even the commentaries or whatever, you’re reducing in some cases
years of experience into a couple minutes. And there’s no shortcut to
understanding what those years were like. I’m not saying people should be
patting us on the back all the time. You could say that it’s notevenrelevant,
when I was saying, the way I look at a movie, I don’t care who did what. I’m
just looking at the movie. So you could say, I don’t have to know how hard it
was, or how easy it was, or who you had to please or who you had to argue with.
The movie is what it is. And that’s legitimate. You could probably make that
fly in a cour of law. [?] But if you’re going to write about the business at
all and why movies are the way they are without being in the roome where those
decisions are made, then I think you’re kind of flying a little bit blind. I
wish, just for historical purposes, not because I think it would make me look
good or make Sony look bad, I wish there was a transcript of the
nintyminutesconversation between [among] me and AmyPascal and MattTolmach
the day before I was fired [fromMoneyball]. That was a fascinating meeting. I
found it fascinating, and I was not in a bad mood when I left. I said
toMattTolmach, June18, remember that day. I was able to look at this and go,
This is a reallyinteresting moment in this business, in terms of twoforces
trying to figure out where to go. It was fascinating to me.
126.
I’m sure a lot of us, on the other side, would
be interested.
127.
Yeah, to see what that conversation was.
128.
Is it theArtversusEntertainmentconversation? Does
it involve those trajectories?
129.
Yeah, people would realise it’s not what it
seems necessarily from the outside, so I don’t know. [You don’t know much about
shit.] Like you said, it’s all about access, and nobody and nobody wants to
give access anymore. People are tooscared, and I’be tooselfconscious. I just
wouldn’t want somebody around because it’s like having somebody hang out in my
bedroom. It’s just notappropriate for me. To me, this is a veryintimate
situation.
130.
Aside from all those cameras. But they’re
notfacing you.
131.
No, they’re not.
132.
Interesting. Well, you’ve done the thing
forEndOfTheRoad, do you have a sense that you are trying to illuminate
something about the way that film was made or what was going on in
people’sheads?
133.
Well, currently, we’ll see how it ends up, I
came up with a new rule recently that has helped me get my arms around it. My
rule is that they nevertalk about what they think of the movie. I onlyuse
material in which they’re talking about someone else or they’re talking about
their experience of working on it. And it’s resulted in this reallyinteresting
kind of conversation about what it felt like to work on that movie. So it’s
turned into something that’s interesting to me, because I believe that is an
important part of the process that doesn’t really get discussed, which is the
experience itself. These things represent years of my life. I want the
experience to be useful and fun and notwasted. The sum of it to me is not
theDVD in the shelf. It’s the time, all that time. I want to come way feeling
like that was a good use of everybody’s time. That’s what this piece has sort
of become about, in a way.
134.
But then you feel that, say with thing
likeDVDcommentaries, that that also gives you a forum to discuss how your time
was spent on particular films or to talk to other filmmakers likeMikeNichols
about how his time was spent?
135.
Yeah, my reasons for doing those other
commentaries are purelyselfish. I’m looking for information, I”m panning for
gold. I want to knowmore about how something good got made. What was your
filtering process, JohnBoorman, when you madePointBlank? So that’s just me
being kind of greedy. [Revealing sentence.] But that’s appropriate. If some
filmmaker fifteen, twentyyears younger than me said, Oh, I want to do the
commentary with you onKingOfTheHill, because I have a lot of questions about
that film, I’d be happy to do that, to hand down whatever I feel is relevant or
useful. That’s why I try [not to] do those alone, because I think they’re
reallyboring if it’s not some sort of conversaion.
136.
If you were just walking through your own
narrative of it, that would be insufficient? You want to have other people
asking you questions, driving the directio of that?
137.
Yeah. I did it once, obviously in a joking way
onSchizopolis, but yeah, I would never do that alone. It seems pointless.
138.
Maybe I can ask you about working in
differentArtforms. You’ve hinted in different interviews, correct me if I’m
wrong, that you’re mostly a formalist, interested in visual challenges, less so
in being a writer. But at the same time you’ve worked in
virtuallyeveryArtmaking mode parallel to featurefilms, Television, documentary,
experimental video, with acting yourself and playwriting and theatrical
directing, and now painting as well. And inFilm, you’ve played virtuallyevery
creative role aside from composing soundtracks. Do these different modes connet
up in your mind in a particular way? Do you think of them as different
expressions of an artistic temperament? Or is it just that you want to try
different things out of interest? You’re trying to find a mode that
streamlinesArtmaking for you?
139.
My exprerience of it is veryfluid, that making
things, making stuff is making stuff, no matter whatever the medium is. I don’t
make any distinctions based on medium or jobdescription. You’re either creating
or you’re not. And a lot of the way I work is a result of how I started, in
which you had to do a lot of things yourself, because there were only
twoorthree of you. So you had to learn everybody’sjob. And that’s a great way
to learn. I guess I didn’t see any reason why that shouldn’t continue in the
professional realm. And I viewed myself as a formalist early, and then I felt
like I got out of that, I think. It felt like it. It felt like there was
something going on in thefirstfourfilms that I obviouslywanted to blow up when
I made-Schizopolis and –Gray’sAnatomy. But I’m surprised morepeople, who are in
a position to, aren’t doing morethings in moremedia. When somebody says to me,
So why are you making all these movies right on top of each other? I go, Well,
because I can. Why wouldn’t I? If I’m in a position to be able to make that
happen, why wouldn’t I make that happen? What am I waiting for? And that was
another thing that I learned from the people that I started making films with,
don’t wait for permission. People who wait for permission end up notdoing
anything.
140.
So you’ve just taken it in stride that you say
to yourself, To get the shots I want to shot, I should be the
directorofphotography, and then that’s going to entail learning theTechnology
around that, or learning how to use the theRedOne. Rather than saying, I don’t
need a soundtrack. Here’s a guitar. Wait, I don’t play the guitar. I can’t do
this. You just jumped into that?
141.
Yeah. Again, because of the way I started,
everyaspect of this has been interesting to me. All the jobs are interesting to
me. I’d be happy with any job on a movie. I justthink it’s all reallyfun and
interesting. I guess that’s part of the reason that I’ve neverfelt compelled to
be sort of obvious about trying to take possession of something that I’ve
worked on and make it clear to everyone that this is mine. That’s not my
experience of it. I’ve worked as a crewmember on movies in which the director,
or on commercials and videos, sorry, in which the director was a kind of pasha.
And I just really didn’t like the vibe that that put off, and the reaction that
I saw it creating in the crew. I just thought, Wow, that’s just notcool. And
not what I was sort of taught. And that finds its way into the work, that
belief. Like I said, directors really are their movies. If you see a director
whose movies have a lot of screaming and crying in them or people throwing
plates, I guarantee you hang out with that director, at some point he’s going
to throw a plate. They can’t help it.
142.
We thought it was a fiction. It’s pretending,
like Oliver said about acting.
143.
No, this is the thing, ultimately we all make
what we like. We make what we like, we make what we want to see. And so it
makes perfect sense that you’d meet a filmmaker and go, Wow, you dress like a
pimp because all your movies have hookers in them. That makes sense.
144.
We should all give a wide berth to
horrodirectors.
145.
Yes, yes.
146.
But now you’re a horrordirector, since you’ve
describedContagion that way.
147.
Sort of, way. A little bit horror,
IrwinAllenmovie.
148.
Let me ask a related question about things that
you’d like to do, and as you see yourself, by your definition, having your
career wind down. Do you feel you’ve done everything you wanted to try, worked
in every genre you wanted to try, or every Artform you wanted to try at this
point? Are there things where you say, If I had moreenergy, I could be
convinced to do this project?
149.
I don’t think so. There’s a verystrong sensation
on my part right now that’s it’s just time to switch horses. It’s strongenough
to make me sacrifice doing a couple of things that I still have, likeCleo and
[The]SotWeedFactor. I don’t want to add any more stuff onto the end of this
train, I just don’t. I just feel ready to make a switch. And I’ve learned to
pay attention to that instinct.
150.
So you’ve said with things like3D, you had an
interest in it, but it’s notstrongenough now to go whole hog with that?
151.
I just found that, I shot this 3Dtest
forContagion, because I thought that at some point, somebody’s going to make a
drama in3D. Somebody must. So I shot this little test, and I was kind of
alarmed to find that two of the elements in your dramatoolkit, probably
thetwomostimportantelements in your dramatoolkit, the overtheshoulder and the clean
single, were reallyweird in3D. That reallyconcerned me, because those are go to
angles when you’re making a drama. The over lookedreallyweird because you had
this hube blob sitting on oneside of the screen in your lap. And then if you
didn’t, if you adjusted the stereoscopy or whatever you call it, the relation
between the twocameras, the ocularity, interocularity, that’s what it’s called,
so that the over did not move off of the screen. You can determine by adjusting
how far out something moves past the plane of the screen, so you can have it
sort of closer to you, or you can have it at the plane of the screen. So when
you move the shoulder, the blurry shoulder, when you moved it off the plane of
the screen toward you, it feltreallyweird, because it was this blob in your
face. But then when you moved it to the plane of the screen, it made everything
seem reallysmall and far away. And then the clean single made it just look like
you’d taken the actor, cut them out and stuck them onto a background. And I
just decided, that’s distracting. That’s notgood. And I’m reallycurious to see
if anyone is ever going to be able to make an audience cry in3D. Because I’m
not sure you can.
152.
Until they look at their ticketstubs, and see
what they paid for that 2D to3Dconversion.
153.
I don’t think it’s going to go away. I think
it’s going to find its plateau prettysoon, and then it’ll be that. It’ll be
another tool. If I were going to makeCleo, I would make it in3D. I think a
KenRussellmusical essentially in3D would be awesome. But I still think, a buddy
of mine, when we were talking about this issue, said, Avatar in2D is still
thebiggestmovie in the world. And I agree. I don’t think that piece
ofTechnology is transformative in any meaningful way in terms of the
audienceexperience. I don’t. I think it can be cool, but I don’t think it’s, I
think people would trade anything in the world for characters that they’re
interested in.
154.
Over the long haul.
155.
Yeah.
156.
So can I ask you about painting? I don’t really
have a segue here except, does painting represent a parallel artistic strand
for you? Or is it at the complete opposite pole from what you’ve been doing?
157.
No, there are obviously connexions. I’m bringing
it to it a certain amount ofKnowledge regarding composition and tonality and
things like that. What I have to learn thesameway that I did when I started
making films is, I now have to learn how to achieve certain effects. When
you’re starting out and you’re trying to learn, you’re imitating things that
you’ve seen in movies so that you can figure out how they did them. So that’s
sort of where I am now. I’m at the veryverybeginning of that process, of having
an ides of something that I like, and having to figure out how to create it on
a canvas. As simple as learning how to, when you make a painting, you’ve got to
start with the thing that’s furthest away, and build. If I’m painting a
painting of the street, I’ve got to start painting the stuff that’s in the
distance first and work my way forward, so that I’m layering on top of that, so
that it has the correct feeling of depth. that’s just something I’m starting to
get into. If I’ve got threeobjects in the frame that one is in front of the
other is in front of the ohter, I’ve got to paint thefurthestone away
first, right, and then the one that’s second, and then the one that’s closest.
158.
And then would you say this is something you
realised upon coming to painting, or you said to yourself, Oh, I’ve had to do
this in my filmmaking, I can just port this right over?
159.
No that was something that, as soon as I started
to actuallytry and paint, I veryquickly, I did not understand the sort of
hierarchy of depth on a canvas until I actuallystarted trying to paint on a
canvas.
160.
And the things you bring to painting, do you
say, This is an extension of this skull I’ve developed, like about composition
and tonality?
161.
I hope so. I hope that there are both ideas and
techniques that I can appropriate from filmmaking that will help me distinguish
myself in another visual medium. Certainly I’m not yet thinking like a painter.
One of the things I’ve been doing as an experiment is painting frames from
movies, pulling stills from movies and recreating them on a canvas. That’s a
good toe in the water for me. It feels safe, and yet I’m learning technical
things about how to achieve certain effects and make things look a certain way.
So that’s been fun.
162.
Are you trying to paint in a realist way or in
the way that the film image looked?
163.
For now, I’m trying to recreate the filmimage.
164.
So is it things that you’ve been particularlyinvested
in before? What kind of frames?
165.
It varies. I’m working on a frame fromKlute
right now that I like a lot, just an image that I think is reallyarresting. I’m
prettysure I can reproduce that on a canvas. I’m going to try. So it’s stuff like
that.
166.
Some of thesamethings that you borrow for
filmshots.
167.
Yeah.
168.
Do you plan to make a living there? Do you see
yourself as a professional or just an amateur?
169.
I don’t know. I think it depends. It’ll be a
couple of years before I can even answer that. There’s alsoprobablygoing to be
some photography. I have some ideas for, not just pure photography like, Oh,
here are some pictures I’ve taken, but something along, I don’t know if you’re
familiar with this photographer, DuaneMichals, but he shoots series, they’re
stories. They’re frames, and there’s clearly a narrative in there. So I’m
interested in building on that idea. I’m fascinated by the idea of, in
stillframes, shooting a sequence of somebody chasing somebody inNewYork. If I
were going to do that in sixstillframes, what would they be? So I think for a
while there’s just going to be a lot of stuff coming out, and then I’ll figure
out what to do with it.
170.
All right. What’s themostgenerous way to ask
this? Are you at all selfconscious about the potentiallyclichéd nature of the
trajectory of the filmmaker turning to fineArt in the twilight of his career?
171.
No. I just don’t care. I’m just trying to stay
excited. It doesn’t really matter.
172.
And are you interested in staying involved in
filmindustries as a patron or an activist or a preservationist like you have
been?
173.
No. My sense right now is that it’s really going
to be kind of a closed door. That’s the way it feels right now. I’ve got
twomoreyears being national vicepresident of theDGA. This’ll be my last term. I’m
hoping by then that all this stuff will be wound up. It’s feeling right now
like I really need to step away from all of it for a while. The degree to which
somebody may call me and ask me to look at something and help me with an edit,
I don’t know. But I feel like sort of just being away from it for a while.
174.
Well, on behalf of the filmculture at large,
we’re going to miss you. Who will we choose to take your place?
175.
Oh, there’s always aJohnnycomelately. No, look,
shit, I’ve got it great. Theonly frustrating thing about talking about it,
other than, in thisEconomy it’s terrible to be talking about giving up a
wellpaying job, is that I don’t want it to seem like a complaint. It’s really
not. It just feels like time for a change, a radical change. And I love it
toomuch not to love it, you know what I mean? if I can’t go to work everyday
excited and loving it and loving all of it, I have toomuchrespect for
theArtform than to go to work. That should be your attitude. There’s a point
where that isn’t true for me anymore, where I won’t be looking forward to it. I
just think it’s out of respect that I need to then switch off.
176.
Based on our discussion, is there anything else
people should know about you and about your work? Do you feel like we’re
getting it right, asking the right questions? Do you feel you’ve had the career
that speaks to how you saw yourself or have seen yourself as an artist?
177.
I’m reallyhappy with how things have turned out.
If duringSexLies, you flashforward and said, This is what you’re going to do
over the next twentytwoyears, then I’d go, Wow, cool. I’m reallyhappy with all
the opportunities I had, and I really wouldn’t change anything about it. I
would change things about the movies, maybe. But I feel, like I said, that the
timing of when I came up was good, and that I’ve benefitted from being in the
right place at the right time a lot. And I’ve alsotaken advantage of that. I
feel I’ve been sensitive to every potential opporunity that has been in front
of me, and I feel that I’ve taken advantage of those opportunities or tried
veryhard. I don’t feel like anything reallyslipped by me that I missed because
I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve tried to maximise whatever juice I might have
to make things happen both for me and for other people. So I’m happy about
that. As much as I didn’t enjoy producing, for the period that we
hadSectionEight up and running, we did a lot of shit in a veryshort period of
time. That was an extremelyproductive entity. It ended up being
almosttooproductive. I think the workload really got crazy for both of us.
178.
Considering how much other work you were doing.
179.
Yeah, we both had dayjobs, and it was becoming
reallyoverwhelming. And I just don’t like producing. It’s a terrible job. But
I’m happy about that. It’s a good list of thing to have been associated with.
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