Michel Gondry
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director on working with Björk, playing cut-and-paste dialogue games with Charlie Kaufman and why he made the jump from music videos to feature films
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday February 07 2007
Sandra Hebron: A very warm welcome to Michel Gondry. Thank you so much for being here. I watched The Science of Sleep again this morning and I was struck by how everything is connected. And I felt, even in the first few minutes of the film, that there's an awful lot in there of what interests you and how you approach the whole idea of being creative. Do you think that's fair?
Michel Gondry: Yes, that's really accurate. In fact, you could see this film as the first album of a rock band. Let's say you sign the contract when you're 20 and you record the first album at 21 - you pour your whole existence between age 0 and 21, all jammed together, all the ideas that you accumulated, all come out in this first album. Then the second album is where you express all the thoughts between the first and second album, which may be about two years later. In my case, I kind of did it the other way around. Obviously, this is a movie, but it has the qualities and maybe flaws of what a first album is like. So it kind of reflects what you just said.
SH: Yes, and there were just lots of things that were very personal in there.
MG: It's true. It's the first screenplay I wrote and directed myself. I could only explore what is inside me. I couldn't really do something about a guy running a restaurant. I have to find what is inside myself to work on.
SH: So just to pick up on that, could you please tell us about your family background and what it was like growing up, because you didn't have the most conventional upbringing.
MG: We were not freaks or anything; we lived in a quiet suburb, in Versailles, but we were not typical of Versailles. Versailles is a very bourgeois place with a lot of retired military types, and we were the other side of that. I would say that my father was a rightwing hippy. He was a self-made man; he had long hair and was very interested in music and pop culture. My maternal grandfather was an inventor with many patents for electronic musical instruments. So it was a background that mixed science and art, which I think is a really nice mix to grow up with. My parents were really encouraging and not judgmental. So that describes a little about where I grew up. It's interesting because now my son is 15 and I wonder what's the best for him - I had a lot of encouragement and tolerance from my parents, but I also have many friends who didn't get that from their parents and in a way they have more strength from spending years where nobody believed in them. But I have made my choice and it would be really mean to not encourage my son. So I do encourage him.
SH: Let's pick up on two of the things that you've mentioned - music and invention.
MG: Well, I've always liked the idea of inventing stuff. My father told me, because I was naïve, I would think things could work and therefore do them, because I would have no doubt even though there was no solid foundation for this confidence. I don't think I would be a real inventor. But when I set out to do animation, which was my first step into film-making, I realised I could achieve this idea. I could take some elements, create a sort of clumsy invention, and make them work for the camera. But yes, invention is in my background, and I don't know if it's the genes or just being in contact. My grandfather lived across the garden from us, and in his attic he had a lot of radios, appliances and inventions that he had made over 50 years, such as a keyboard called a clavioline, which can be heard on some Beatles songs - it was popular in the 60s. So we had all that at home.
SH: So in that context, what was it that prompted you to pick up a camera for the first time?
MG: My father had a Super 8 camera when I was a kid and sometimes he would use it. I did some animation with it. I did a lot of flipbooks. But mostly, it was when I shared an apartment with a guy with a small 16mm camera and I asked him if I could use it. I was in this band, Oui Oui, in Paris in the early 80s and I did some animation for them. But the first time I thought that this could be something I could do for a living was when I came back from the art store and I had spent a good amount of money for this project I was working on, and I realised that if I were to do animation, I could have a good time at the art store, which I've always liked - I love to buy notebooks and pencils and paper. I remember clearly when I came home to my apartment in the 18th arrondissement in Paris, with all these art supplies, that that was something I would like to do for a long time.
SH: So you started to make videos for your band, and that meant that they got seen and you got recognised.
MG: That's the beautiful thing about being a person who makes things. I explain this to my son sometimes. He has great energy, he's a painter, he's 15 and he's amazing, but he says that sometimes, when he's depressed, he has no desire to make anything. And I always tell him that we are fortunate because we have ups and downs, but when we are in a good mood and we create something, we can look at that object when we are down in the dumps and get ourselves up again. There's also the other dimension of other people looking at it and giving you feedback. The beauty of doing film is that you construct whatever you do block by block and you can build something that will stay.
SH: In terms of your work then, how do you balance your own vision when you're collaborating with other people?
MG: That's a good question. Right at the beginning, when I was in the band, the leader of the band was very opinionated about visual and musical ideas and I was never in a position where I could just say, "Okay, it's going to be like this." I remember the first video we did was called Ma Maison, which means My House. I wanted to do a video with shadows to indicate the way we live our lives, but he just rejected the idea, even though we didn't really have a choice. He wanted a video about insects. But I had this flexibility, so it didn't bother me. I thought I could take on his idea and yet do something really personal. So I learned right there to collaborate but to make sure that I could use somebody else's idea and still feel that I'm not just the technician, and I'm not being used. I think the art of that is trying to figure out the positives of outside input and what's negative, and then filter out what you think is taking away from what you believe you want to do, and use what reinforces it. When I started to work together with Björk, it was the same thing. So when we did our first video, for Human Behaviour, I was thinking: "Great, we're going to Iceland and we're going to shoot a lot of great landscape." And she said no - she had a similar idea as my friend Etienne in Oui Oui, she wanted to use animals to reflect human nature. And it was great, because as soon as she started to throw some ideas, they started to bounce in my mind and imagination and I immediately came back with other ideas, and we did a video that was very collaborative. But I didn't feel that I was being used, because little by little I would gather elements by different collaborators that would always reflect me. This became clearer when I did a compilation of all my videos, which came out before Eternal Sunshine. And at this point, I had met a lot of very strong personalities. From my bandleader Etienne, a very creative and opinionated person, to Björk and Charlie Kaufman. I was starting to feel like maybe I was just the arm of those people, and they are my brain. I started to doubt a little bit. But when I put all the videos together, I realised that they were going in many directions but the core of them was me and it made me feel really strong about myself, and gave me the strength to start the communication on Eternal Sunshine. I had a difficult position on my first film [Human Nature] because Charlie Kaufman had a very big aura and I was a little swallowed up in that project and it was good for me to come out of that and express my point of view. I didn't know how much this film would reflect of me. So when I did Eternal Sunshine I was really scared, even though I brought the concept to Charlie Kaufman and I was more part of the creative process, I was still concerned that I would be asked: "Why did they get you to direct this movie?" or "Why didn't Spike Jonze direct this?", which I faced all the time with the first film. So my compilation clarified all that because people could look at them all together and decide that I had a brain of my own. And when I was asked to talk about this film, I got asked intelligent questions, which was very pleasant.
SH: Which is a good point at which to look at one of those videos. This is Hyperballad, with Björk. It was very difficult to choose just one, but in the end I chose this one, partly because I love it, but also because it has a dreamy quality, which fits in with tonight.
[runs clip]
SH: Everytime I see it, it makes me think that things get categorised in certain ways - people think of that as a music promo, but actually I would see that as a perfect piece of experimental film-making. Could you talk a little about the creative process to get you to that?
MG: Björk had a very beautiful idea in this song - she explained to me that the song is about a woman in a relationship, and there are all these inside tensions, but because she wants to preserve the relationship, she goes to the top of the mountain and she lets it go by imagining that she jumps from a cliff and breaks into pieces, thus letting all the negatives out. Then she comes back and she can go on with her life and relationship. That's what I like about Björk, she's really a hard worker and she's very sensitive to the human condition. It sounds so pompous but she takes a very simple, everyday element - like in this case a relationship between a boy and a girl - and find the magic in that, and find how to make it work and use all our creativity to solve problems. So, on my side, once she told me the reason why she wrote this song, I imagined her being dead and alive at the same time. So we had her lying down, with makeup to make her appear dead, and then we had a holographic image of her singing superimposed on her. And this was the first time that I had used motion control, which is this big machine that you can programme and do all this at the same time. So we shot all that on one piece of film by superimposing 14 exposures. I remember my DP was going crazy. He was telling me: "If you screw up one exposure, you'll ruin all the film." He was against it but I liked the idea that there was a good chance that it could all go wrong, kind of stimulating. And it worked out. We were all sweating when we were projecting this. In my calculations, I had calculated the motion of the camera, but I forgot to add the volume of the screen, and the camera would have crashed into the screen, so right in the middle of shooting, I had to recalculate. But I think it's really interesting to have a heavy, technical aspect to deal with while making sure that your message comes across. You have to go to the technique to make it happen, so you can't be too precious about detail, especially in this form of working, where you do everything in the camera. So you can't look back and say, "Oh maybe that should be a little more blue or green." Those are details, but in the end you just want the piece to make sense.
SH: I also like that there are times in your films where they're obviously very technologically complex and very carefully thought through, but then there'll be something very low-tech in there. Is that part of balancing things out, or do you just have a fondness for cardboard and low-tech?
MG: I think your first explanation is quite accurate. I like to use a bit of chaos when I shoot. I think it may be something from the way I shot my first film - I was very scared, of course, and I prepared everything, I wanted to make sure that the characters did the right thing at the right time on the storyboard. But then I realised that in life, there is so much more than what you can predict or write in advance, that when you shoot the story, it's good to leave some gaps where you lose control. So you can prepare so you know what's going on when you come to the shoot, but you also want some gaps where nobody knows what they're doing and are left to react in the moment. I think this combination of chaos and organisation gives a kind of quality.
SH: So let's talk a bit about your first feature. You'd been making music videos and commercials, very successfully so. At what point did you decide that a feature film would be the next step? And why did you choose to do it in that particular way, in America instead of France?
MG: It's connected to Björk. We did this video called Isobel, where everything was shot on film. And then we screened it at the Electric Cinema in London, and it was the first time I'd seen a video I'd shot projected on a big screen with a roomful of people who were there just to see it. And I realised how different it was instead of it being one of the millions of things bombarding the audience on a small screen. And I thought maybe I could continue to do my work, but for a story that would be projected on a big screen. That was 10 years ago, and it was probably about five years after that that I did my first picture. So it wasn't like it happened the next day. But I remember, until then I was happy being a video director, and I thought directing a feature film was way out of my field. But when I saw that on the big screen, I thought why not and tried to find a way to get there. So I went to America because in France, if you don't come up with your story... I didn't have confidence in my own writing at this time and I thought I would find material in America. I worked on different projects. First one was a very big, franchise movie called The Green Hornet, and I worked with the screenwriter who wrote RoboCop and Starship Troopers. We worked together on a story that we thought was really interesting, but after one and a half years, it was shelved by the studio. It was really... at this time, my son was really into this type of story and I had to tell him that I was not going to do it. We already had the designs for the cars, the weapons... So it was a very long process, and through Spike Jonze I met Charlie Kaufman. He had this spec script that was not being shot and didn't have people willing to do. So I took this project on and this became Human Nature.
SH: Let's take a look at Human Nature.
[runs clip]
SH: How was it for you, working with someone else's script, something that was not your own original work?
MG: In a way, I was used to that, because as I was saying before, I had been working with a lot of artists and I would be able to integrate their vision and ideas and work with it. It was a little difficult because my understanding of the language was not so perfect, and sometimes I would be embarrassed to ask Charlie what exactly he meant. And I was really trying... And you know, when you're the director you have to constantly pretend that you know what you're doing. You have a team of 50, 60 people working for you, asking for your decisions, and you have to constantly pretend that you know where you're going when, like everybody else, you don't really know. So I had to do a lot of pretending. It was really scary. And some parts of the story, I would really identify with - I have to be honest, I really identified with the Rhys Ifans character, it really captivated me. The part of the scientist, who was very ambitious and kind of selfish, I had not had time to absorb it, so I think you can see in the movie... I don't know exactly what to think. The first thing I realised when I did this film is that you do all this work but can't enjoy it because you just see pieces that you stick together. And then when it's finished, you look at it and remember each pain and it's hard to watch it as an ensemble. While with the videos, I could watch it and say, "Yes, that works" or "No, that doesn't work." For a feature film, I will never really be able to achieve that. But with Science of Sleep, it's the first time I can watch it over and over again. I think Charlotte [Gainsbourg] and Gael [Garcia Bernal] did such a great job. Maybe it's because I wrote the screenplay, and I feel as if they took my torment away from me and so when I watch them on screen, I'm glad I'm not on my own. So I really like to watch Science of Sleep over and over, but maybe it's just because I'm a narcissist.
SH: Let's talk a little about working with actors. I don't think it's just a matter of being lucky that got you great performances.
MG: I'm not saying I got lucky. I think I just learned to deal with people being uncomfortable in front of the camera. I remember when I did my first video that was not animated, and not with my band, it was with this band that was not very good. But I had to do it because it was a job for me. And I was glad to do it because it meant that I could make a living while being creative at the same time. So good luck for me that this video was never finished. It was a lot of work but something was missing. But my producer Georges Bermann, who also produced Science of Sleep, he gave me my first piece of advice: "Whatever you do, after each shot, go to your actor or your singer and tell them: 'You were great.'" I had this idea of taking this woman and making a fairytale around her, and she was wearing this wedding dress. Something very important was missing - I never made her try the dress. She looked like a transvestite in that dress. It was horrifying. And I had to go to her after each take and say she was great. It was so embarrassing. So I had to learn to lie a little bit. Now I work a little differently. Actors are so used to being complimented, so sometimes I feel I need to put them a little off their balance, so they feel they don't know what they're doing and are refreshed. So when they ask: "Was I good?", I say: "Yes, but don't worry, if you were bad, I wouldn't tell you." I want them to feel comfortable but not too comfortable. A lot of times, I throw in counter-orders at the last minute. My flatmate, the one who lent me his camera, he did the lighting on the Science of Sleep. In the 90s, he did a re-edit of L'Atalante, which is one of the great movies of French cinema. I had a chance to look at some footage, and you would see Jean Vigo, the director, he would say, "Action!" and then "No, no, stop!" and then "Yes, go". This sort of uncertainty I guess would project on the actors, and creates an atmosphere where everybody might think, "I'm not sure if we're shooting or not, but I'm going to go anyway" and it puts them in the moment. That was one of the elements that I absorbed. When you reach a stage where there is no uncertainty, you enter the world of schtick, where everything is predictable. So I always try to preserve that, sometimes by overcomplicating a situation, or sometimes by letting my doubt come across. So I give people a lot of freedom. When I worked with Charlotte and Gael, I would not give them a lot of direction - it's stupid because they have their own ideas and if I give them my take before they try theirs, they will never get to know what they had in mind. In the scene where Stéphane presents his calendar, in my mind, he's very shy and awkward, but Gael had worked on this presentation during the night and was very confident and very funny. So he asked if he could do it his way and I said yes. When he asked me later what my idea was, I said my idea doesn't matter. I get the credit anyway as the director.
SH: You worked again with Charlie Kaufman, but this time, you were the one bringing the idea to him.
MG: This idea came from my friend Pierre Bismuth, who is a contemporary artist - he's at the Lisson Gallery here. We share a lot of ideas. A lot of people in the art world, maybe I have this complex, but they seem a little bit condescending. I remember I was trying to have this conversation with some people about video, and they said to me: "Oh but you do promos, they're not the same." Maybe it's not, but I'm trying to be creative. So Pierre didn't have this attitude and we shared lots of ideas. One of his best friends, a girl, was always complaining about her boyfriend, and he was tired of her whining about it, so one day, he asked her: "Listen, if you had the opportunity to erase him from your memory, would you do it?" And she said: "Yes." And he probably said: "Thank God, because I won't have to hear this story any more." So we talked about this idea where people would get cards that informed them that they had been erased from such-and-such's memory and we started working on the storyline. Then I met Charlie and I gave him a combination of the storyline and the concept, and he wrote the script. So I was involved in the creative process right from the beginning. The screenplay he wrote on his own, but I wanted to make sure that this movie talked about issues that I experienced and could grasp, and that I could feel as my movie.
SH: Let's watch a clip from Eternal Sunshine.
[runs clip]
SH: Often when people talk about your work, they mention words like "playful" and "childlike". How important is that idea of innocence, and sweetness, when you're thinking about the stories that you want to tell?
MG: I don't think it's intentional. I read some critiques of Science of Sleep that said that Stéphane has the sexual life of a six-year-old. Since he's very much like me, I guess it's probably true. I don't think you can want to be childlike in the same way that I don't think you can decide what your interests are, what drives you. You can't decide to make a movie that shows how immature you are. It would be really stupid to do that. But when you're in love with somebody, you feel like a child, it's simple as that to me. I'm trying to connect with those memories and moments. Basically, you're in love with someone, and you feel you're so much yourself. You're back to the time when you were not aware of what you should be and you were not worried about being satisfactory to other people. But I'd like to say something about the clip you picked - it's very technical and shows how the creative process continues at all levels of film-making. When this scene was originally written, Clementine was talking about a book she liked when she was a kid. And I felt when I read the script that I don't connect with that, it's a story that I don't know. This is a key part in the story where Joel decides that he doesn't want the memory to be gone, he wants to preserve it because it's too much himself. I felt it was a little too intellectual and too distancing, so I had this idea and I said to Charlie: "Take the text for the scene," which we had already shot and were editing, so there was no way to go back to shoot it again, "and take 25% of the words which you have written and recycle them into a scene where she talks only of herself, not about a book she liked". He really liked the challenge, and in 20 minutes he wrote the scene, exactly as you heard it. And basically, the trick is you show her when she uses a word that you can hear, and show Jim Carrey or the doll when she's saying a word that we didn't shoot. So it's a combination that's completely artificial, but turned out to be one of the most touching scenes in the film. Many people mention this scene as their favourite in the movie. You know, you would think there was great chemistry between these two actors, I guarantee no. Sorry to say it, but it took a lot of artificiality to create something. But I thought it was interesting that you picked this scene.
SH: I picked it partly because in a small space of time, you get a good idea of the film overall, but also the different layers going on in there. But it's fascinating to hear this other thing about it. Let's move on to Science of Sleep - the relationship between Stéphane and Stéphanie is very nicely played and there actually does seem to be a connection between them.
MG: Yes, in this case, there was very good chemistry.
SH: It must have been difficult because their characters are so closely aligned - they have so many similarities.
MG: This movie was a little weird for me because it's obviously very personal. I started to write it years ago, and Stéphanie's character was not really there, just a fantasy then. In the process of starting to work on the film, I met this person who was very creative and we had this bond, and I decided to make Stéphanie a little bit like her, a person that I personally had feelings for. It was not easy. When I shot the film, I still had not a clear idea of whether this person liked me or not, and that was my direction to Charlotte, that I didn't know if she liked him or not. It was like I was trying to find out my own truth by asking her if she liked him. And she told me that she did, but she was wrong. But that's life.
SH: Well, as part of the research process...
MG: With my own emotions, I prefer laboratory conditions. It's interesting, when I was experiencing rejection and pain, I remember calling my brother and telling him: "I'm so depressed, I'm so low." And he said: "Great, you're going to do a good movie."
SH: You said it took five years thinking about it before making it, and it seems to me like the work that you'd done before was you trying things out and then bringing them into the feature, which you may not have been aware of at the time, but it's interesting that you then felt free to bring those things into the feature.
MG: I don't want you to think that the videos were just a way for me to try things out. They exist in themselves. I think they all come from my own experience - for instance, the big hands thing, I experienced that when I was a kid. I would wake up from a nightmare and I had this fear that my hands were this big. I found after the film that there is a scientific explanation for this. You have two maps of your body in your brain, which correspond to all your nerve endings and all the connections. One controls how you feel from the outside, and the other controls how you tell your leg or hand to move. You know the concept of the homunculus? It's this little guy with a small head, big lips and huge hands and small penis, which is often used to illustrate the size of the proportion of the brain that is allocated to these parts of the body. So I went into a museum and I saw this guy in a sculpture and he looked exactly like Stéphane.
SH: There's another layer in there, in that you're certainly very knowledgeable about cinema, and these come through in the various references in there, the clearest one being the Goddard crime-flick reference, as well as the odd Hitchcock reference.
MG: In which sequence?
SH: When he's falling.
MG: Ah, it's the use of the back projection. Hitchcock was very articulate and creative in how he used available technology to tell his stories, and because he was very focused on how each frame needs to be composed to express exactly what you want it to express. So yeah, you can think of Psycho, for instance, when the policeman is hit and then trips down the stairs - it's done with back projection. It's interesting because it's a very technical idea, but it gives the feeling of falling back onto something that doesn't hold you, like in Vertigo. Maybe there is some sense of nostalgia, but I like using back projection - which is basically, you shoot a scene, then you project it on the screen from behind and then you put your subject in front and you shoot it all. Now people use blue screen most of the time because of the loss of definition of back projection. But what you get is perfect integration. So when Stéphane is swimming, ie flying in his dream, my producer kept asking me to use blue screen and I insisted that he had to swim. So we had this big tank which we filled with water - it was supposed to be hot, but it wasn't. We had a big screen behind it where we projected the animation. All the imperfections make it interesting. We have seen people flying so many times since Superman, so I didn't want to feel like we were doing something that had been done. But I remember screening that at the dailies and my producer worrying about what to do about the bubbles. But I insisted, "No, that's great." So I guess when Hitchcock did it, it was state-of-the-art technology, but for me it's different. It's still pretty advanced in that there are a lot of things you can do that people don't realise.
SH: I have a hundred other things that I want to ask you but I'm very conscious that there are many other people here tonight have questions for you.
Q1: I loved your film, especially the way you layered many realities in it yet trusted us to flit from one to the other without being confused, or enjoy being confused for a few seconds. Were you at all concerned, when you wrote it, that we wouldn't follow?
MG: Yes, I was concerned. As I was saying before, I had so many ideas that I wanted to bring in, but I think they were all honestly connected to each other and are all part of Stéphane's brain, so I went with it. In fact, there was a moment when I wanted to add a card in the film, but it was too late. The bit just before he gets rewarded for his calendar. I think people sometimes get confused as to whether this is happening in his dream or his reality, so I was going to add a card, which is kind of corny, but it would help people to make sure they know that this was a moment in reality. But by the end, you know that you're experiencing what Stéphane is experiencing, that is, he is confusing both worlds.
Q2: What I like most about your films is how you manage to capture objectively on film something that is usually very insular, what's in someone's head, dreams, hallucinations, etc. I was wondering, technologically, where do we go from here? We have Imax, 3D, would you consider dream films for people to experience while they're sleeping?
MG: I don't know. My next project is much more straight narration. I don't think in these terms. I think film has been working for more than 100 years, but there's a lot of room to experiment. If I go into Imax, the technology is so heavy, it would just take over. I don't know, I have more joy exploring and seeing what's going on in people's heads than the technical aspect of it. The visual aspect comes from thinking about how to show what's going on inside Stéphane's head without using big sets or CGI - we couldn't afford that. So we had a small team doing animation. The best and worst part of this was that the person I was thinking about as Stéphanie was actually there helping to make the set. So that's more how I experiment, instead of thinking about whether to use Omnimax or whatever. I don't want to change the medium, I just want to use it to tell my stories.
Q3: How easy or difficult is it to be you with all this inside your head?
MG: I think everybody has lots of stuff in their heads. I feel lucky that I can make a living with it. I don't feel I'm necessarily more special than everyone else. Everybody dreams, maybe not everybody wakes up with big hands but maybe they had the feeling. I know this guy, he made a sketch where he had small hands - he's very funny and he's in my new movie. We're going to have a fight, me with my big hands and he with his tiny hands, in slow motion and then fast motion. It's actually good material from which to make a living.
Q4: You've produced some beautiful, visually amazing videos. Do you find it conflicts with when you try to put straight narratives on film?
MG: What I find out more and more is that my videos, they're very visual but there's always a narrative. Even if the narration is not necessarily like a story, there's always a shape. For example, in this video I did for Björk called Bachelorette, it's a spiral. It's a reality, then there's a reproduction of the reality, then a reproduction of the reproduction, etc. And another video I did for Ciba Matto, it's a palindrome, it goes forward and backward at the same time. So I think, without really knowing it, I created patterns of storytelling and I use them now I'm working on feature films. I don't see that as a conflict. Frankly, I want to fight the idea that people think that I just go for the pretty images; obviously I want people to think I'm smarter and deeper than that, so I always say, "No, I don't care about the visual, I just care about the character and the story." But that's not true, it's a combination. But I think when I was doing those videos, I never put an image in just because it's pretty. Narration is what is important to me, in all the different kinds of work I do.
Q5: How involved were you in the special effects and animation - did you just brief a team or were you in there cutting things out and sticking things down?
MG: We actually did the animation eight months before we started principal photography, and the story was still evolving. So we had to commit to certain things, even things like how the character would be dressed. So it was chaotic, and I decided that that was going to be part of the quality. I tried to work with people who challenge themselves, they're not in a schtick configuration. We did these two months of animation, with a team of about 10 people, in a small house in the countryside. Lots of things would not work, but... I'm not saying I mixed everything to make sure that everything looked messy, but it was a lot of experimentation. Sometimes you test something and it looks really good, but then when you do it again it's not as good as the test. I remember when we did the animation with the buildings popping up and down, in the test it was amazing, but we never recaptured that. It gets more clumsy after that, but that became a part of the film's quality.
Q6: Do you think adulthood is overrated? Does it ever annoy you that people keep mentioning the childish elements in your films?
MG: I remember having this conversation with Björk, and she was saying that I cannot hang on to my nostalgia too much. She's right, nostalgia is dangerous because it blocks you from seeing what's modern, what's now and you have to beware of that. You like stuff that reminds you of when you were in this maybe more innocent place. But then you have to find what's happening now - I don't know if that's what it means to be adult. The film I'm working on now, I don't think it's more mature, to be honest. But it's about people in a city coming together, so it's more about real life, I would say. I can't really say if adulthood is overrated because I can't really see the difference between me now and me when I was a kid. I think I have the same personality. But what I would say is that rebellion and attitude, like the rock attitude, that's definitely overrated. Most people who start out as rebel kids, violent and against the establishment, they end up being the defender of the establishment when they grow old. As far as they come from their parents, they go back and become just like their parents. I noticed that among my friends. So yes, rebellion is more overrated than adulthood.
Q7: In your films and videos, there's a lot of texture and physical elements in your special effects. It's like you're not trying to make it real, it's more about creating a feeling. Can you talk a little bit about that?
MG: That's an interesting parallel, because on the one hand Stéphane is disconnected from reality and has a tendency to not see things as they are. On the other hand, he has a very vivid dream life. But the film itself is sort of the other way around. I'm bringing my son back into the conversation: when we went to live in New York, I told him: "We're going to live in New York, we're going to have a great time but you can't play video games, that's forbidden." I have a half-brother, he is 20 now. He's wasted his life playing videogames - you know what I was saying earlier about enjoying the rewards of producing something. It's physical, because you make something that you can hold and you can show it to people. My son, his notebook is full of drawings and paintings - he has this for himself. But if you just play on the computer, you don't have this. You could see that as being nostalgic and against modern technology, but I use modern technology. So I think the physicality of film is maybe connected to that.
Q8: How liberating was it to write it, and what sort of struggle did you have in creating a narrative structure within it? And do you feel you've been successful in translating that initial liberating experience into the shoot and into the finished film?
MG: To me, the success of a film is when I watch it and feel the characters exist on their own, when I don't feel that they're miming me or my experience but are really there. Whether the writing is liberating - to me it's liberating in that I wanted to write and direct it and I was scared and uncomfortable but I forced myself to do it all the way through. So there's the satisfaction from overcoming this obstacle. That's very liberating. In terms of the writing, I don't see it as liberating. Now maybe I see it as such, it is easier and more pleasurable for me now but at the time, it was more embarrassing than liberating.
Q9: You seem to be part of this great loose group of video directors who've started to make a real mark on cinema, like Jonathan Glazer, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham. Do you collaborate with them at all, is it a tight group or is it just admiring from afar?
MG: We respect each other. I worked with Spike and Chris - we did the first three parts of the Work of Directors series. It was Spike who initiated that. I'm more of an individualist and if I had to find a family, I would be back with my band Oui Oui or Björk, people who are not doing the same work. So I don't really feel a community with other directors. But it's true, when I made that DVD with Spike and Chris, we really bonded; we did the promotion in many countries and we had to do all these interviews but we had a great time and exchanged lots of ideas. But I still feel closer to people like Pierre Bismuth. Maybe there's an element of competition and jealousy there, I'm a little insecure so I tend to be a bit jealous sometimes.
Q10: I'm interested in your use of language in the film - you used English, Spanish and French, and gobbledygook in it. I was just wondering if you were deliberately making a point about communication?
MG: Not directly, but I have been this situation before - for instance, I can be in a restaurant in London and I can be at a table with 20 people, everyone talking English but not one person is English. It is a fact that now everybody uses English. I know this couple - he is Mexican and his wife is Italian, and they both speak English with thick accents. But that's their common language. I thought that was helping the story in that Stéphane is back home but he feels like a foreigner, very much like an outcast, which prompts him to withdraw more into his dream life. As well, I didn't feel close enough to France as a country to do a full French movie. Maybe I will never do that. I moved away from France quite a long time ago now, so a lot of my experience is now in a second language.
SH: Just before we finish, you mentioned a few times the film that you're working on now. Can you just say a little bit more about it?
MG: We're finishing the editing right now. It's called Be Kind Rewind, it's with Jack Black, Mos Def, Mia Farrow and Danny Glover. It's about these two guys working in a video store, and they by mistake - Jack Black's character becomes magnetised when he tries to sabotage a power plant - and they erase all the tapes while the boss is away. So they have to find a way to cover up, so they start to reshoot the films themselves. So when a customer comes in, they just act out the scenes and reshoot. We shot Ghostbusters, RoboCop and Driving Miss Daisy.
SH: We should tell you that The Science of Sleep is released here on February 16. Please join me in thanking Michel Gondry.
没有评论:
发表评论