Category: interviews

Profit And/From Pain

Charles Thomas Samuels [“S”] interviewed Michelangelo Antonioni [“A”] in Rome in 1969. I finally figured out the occasional non-sequiturish statements in the transcript were originally photo captions.

S: In an interview I had with him, John Updike said something that fascinated me: “Being an artist is dangerous because it allows one to turn one’s pain too quickly to profit.”
A: I couldn’t use that phrase today-“being an artist”-as if that were something exceptional. And if somebody transmutes his pain into profit, very good. I find that the most wonderful way to kill pain.
S: Why do you say “today”? Could you have used the phrase “being an artist” in some other period?
A: Yes, of course. I think that during the Renaissance everything was influenced by art. Now the world is so much more important than art that I can no longer imagine a future artistic function.
S: But today what is the function?
A: I don’t know.
S: You don’t know?
A: Do you?
S: Yes.
A: Then tell me.
S: You want me to tell you what the function of art is! No, you tell me what you think of Francois Truffaut.
A: I think his films are like a river, lovely to see, to bathe in, extraordinarily refreshing and pleasant. Then the water flows and is gone. Very little of the pleasant feeling remains because I soon feel dirty again and need another bath.

Interview with Michelangelo Antonioni in Rome, July 29, 1969
by Charles Thomas Samuels [zakka.dk via greencine]

WTD: E!-SPAN

Open news conference at the Cannes Film Festival are such absurdist theatrical frenzy, I half wonder if movie publicists didn’t cook them up as a job security measure. The event serves up celebrities for an intense, dadaist interrogation by the world’s most randomest journalists, whose competitive, provocative questions are designed to elicit a controversial or “newsworthy” [sic] non-scripted quote, something they can use.
In a more rational world they wouldn’t be chopped up into meaningless squibs of quotes in the Hindustani Times; they would be televised in their entirety on a C-SPAN of the entertainment business, celebrity reality–no, celebrity verite–television.
The one or two quotes I’ve seen from the Oceans Thirteen conference, for example, are easily as entertaining as the post-scrum junket sitdown Time’s Josh Tyrangiel got with Clooney, Pitt, Damon, and Barkin. Freed from artistic pretense, seriousness, or faux populism, these people sound like what they are: giddy, privileged multi-millionaires who decide to have a good time while doing the more tedious or repetitive parts of their jobs.
That said, what jumps out at me in the Time interview is what’s apparently unsaid. Read the whole thing, but check out these parentheticals and tell me why they had to be there:

Are you worried Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and George Clooney are going to start a pogrom?
BARKIN: I worry that every time I go to my hotel room, there are going to be areas that are cordoned off from me.
PITT: What’s a pogrom?
It’s an anti-Jewish riot. Pretty common in 19th century Eastern Europe.
CLOONEY: [Jokingly] You guys got a long memory. Jeez.

And what went under this one? “Whatsername”? “The Old Ball & Chain”? “Her”?

As we’re talking, there are paparazzi in boats out in the harbor taking pictures. Having just been through the celebrity muck of Cannes, who gets it the worst?
CLOONEY: There’s no question, it’s Brad.
PITT: Well, exponentially, with us together …
CLOONEY: But even before he was with [Angelina Jolie], we used to chum the water with him.
PITT: This is not a joke. They used to send me out to take the hits.

Lucky Stars [time via kottke]
[not disclosed anywhere because the company’s called Time Warner, I guess?: Time and its partner CNN and People and Oceans Thirteen‘s producer/distributor, Warner Brothers, are all the same company.]

Titius Has A Posse: BLDGBLOG Interviews Walter Murch

Holy smokes, I’m in like. Geoff sat down with editor/polymath Walter Murch for BLDGBLOG to discuss, of all things, the music of spheres. At least obliquely. I’d say they were Renaissance men, but as their discussion shows, the Renaissance was only just a rediscovery. They’re more like Ptolemaic Men. Here’s a very interesting aside on the possibilities of innate cinematic structure that isn’t even in the top quartile on the interview’s interestingness scale:

BLDGBLOG: When you’re actually editing a film, do you ever become aware of this kind of underlying structure, or architecture, amongst the scenes?
Murch: There are little hints of underlying cinematic structures now and then. For instance: to make a convincing action sequence requires, on average, fourteen different camera angles a minute. I don’t mean fourteen cuts – you can have many more than fourteen cuts per minute – but fourteen new views. Let’s say there is a one-minute action scene with thirty cuts, so that the average length of each is two seconds – but, of those thirty cuts, sixteen of them will be repeats of a previous camera angle.
Now what you have to keep in mind is that the perceiving brain reacts differently to completely new visual information than it does to something it has seen before. In the second case, there is already a familiar template into which the information can be placed, so it can be taken in faster and more readily.
So with fourteen “untemplated” angles a minute, a well-shot action sequence will feel thrilling and yet still comprehensible: just on the edge of chaos, which is how action feels if you are in the middle of it. If it’s less than fourteen, the audience will feel like something is lacking, and they’ll disengage; if it’s more than fourteen, so much new information is being thrown at the audience that they’ll also disengage, though for different reasons.
At the other end of the spectrum, dialogue scenes seem to need an average of four new camera angles a minute. Less than that, and the scene will seem flat and perfunctory; more than that, and it will be hard for the audience to concentrate on the performances and the meaning of the dialogue: the visual style will get in the way of the verbal content and the subtleties of the actors’ performances.
This rule of “four to fourteen” seems to hold across all kinds of films and different styles and periods of filmmaking.

The Heliocentric Pantheon: BLDGBLOG Interview with Walter Murch [bldgblog]

Wednesday In The Car With Claude

merc-rendezvous-lelouch.jpg

Now the story can be told. It’s interesting how long it takes stuff to bubble across the Internet. A recent spate of blog discussion of Claude Lelouch’s 1976 cult short film, C’etait un Rendezvous was prompted by the film’s mention in GQ this month. Similar waves of discovery and amazement accompanied, in reverse chronological order, the pairing up of Rendezvous with a follow-along Google Map, and a couple of years back, the film’s triumphal re-emergence on DVD after lingering for decades in bootleg-VHS obscurity.
But in the spring [Mercredi 24 Mai 2006, precisement], Lelouch took some French TV dude along to re-travel the route and talk about the making of the film. The result: answers for a lot of the rumors, questions, and legends that accumulated around the film. Too bad no one bothered to ask Lelouch before now. [But then again, my point is, I’m kind of bummed that I’m only finding this out now, four months after it was shot.]
1) Lelouch was driving
2) his Mercedes 6.9 [which he still has, which is one of my alltime favorite cars]
3) because the pneumatic suspension would produce a much smoother image.
4) The Ferrari audiotrack was dubbed in afterward.
5) The woman at the end is his wife.
6) The whole thing was done on a whim, after shooting something else with a car-mounted camera, and using a leftover magazine of film.
My favorite line of the whole interview: “Yes, I was scared. I was scared of running out of film.”

C’etait un Rendezvous The Making Of {youtube via jalopnik]
French discussion and transcript from April [axe-net.be]

What If It Was Carson Daly? Would You Hate Him?

You could make a really good-looking movie right now for ten grand, if you have an idea. That’s the trick. I was watching Alphaville this weekend, and I’d love to do like a ten-minute version of Alphaville here in Manhattan. It’s so easy now. I don’t know what the ultimate result of that will be—whether you’ll see a sort of a film version of iTunes, where you can access things that have been made independently by people…
But then the question is—whose vetting process is this, and who are these people? …
I don’t know where the middle point is—“I can’t find anyone to vouch for the legitimacy of this thing that somebody’s asking me to download”—and access that’s being controlled by a bunch of people who, it’s possible, if you met, you’d actually hate.

– Steven Soderbergh shooting the breeze with Scott Indrisek in the August issue of The Believer and on the Wholpin DVD, vol. 2 [via greencine]
Related: Carson Daly-backed Online Video Site* Launches [fishbowlny]
* funded by Half Nelson producer Jamie Patricof, btw

Rem Sleepless, Or Discussion Is The New Performance Art

Much like the 24-hour interview-a-thon itself, Claire Bishop’s report from the Serpentine Pavilion starts out hilariously–my original title for this post was to be “LOLOLOL”–and ends with unexpected substance and insight. Whether her declaration is the first, I don’t care, but Bishop nails it when she tags “the incessant production of talks and symposia” as “the new performance art. Authenticity, presence, consciousness raising—all of the attributes of ’70s performance—now attach themselves to discussion. In this environment, it would seem that Obrist and Koolhaas are the new Ulay and Abramovic.”
This had me laughing out loud:

Like trying to watch all five Cremaster films in one go, there eventually came a breakthrough when the experience was no longer painful. Mine arrived when I realized that our interviewers were suffering, too. Koolhaas’s opening gambit to laidback design legend Ron Arad couldn’t conceal his resignation: “I have always felt sympathy and respect for you, but never the inclination to talk to you. Now I have to ask you questions.”

Speech Bubble [artforum.com]
Previously: On watching Cremaster 1-5. In order.
Serpentine Eats Its Tail
Unrealized Projects, an agency, a book, a NYT article

I Do: Ed Burns Interview About The Groomsmen

I interviewed Ed Burns the other day about his new movie, The Groomsmen, which follows a group of childhood friends through the emotionally fraught run-up to one posse member’s wedding.
And while you’re poking around on The Groomsmen, check out Apple’s own making of promo. Apple definitely recommends setting up a Final Cut Pro post studio in your guesthouse in the Hamptons.
Ed Burns Gives Some Good Phone About The Groomsmen [daddytypes.com]
Ed Burns: Risky Business [apple.com]
The Groomsmen website has release dates; the movie’s playing in NYC, NYC Metro, and LA right now and going national Aug. 5th [thegroomsmen.com]

Filmmaker Interviews: Kevin Smith

Here’s a radio interview with critic Joel Siegel, who’s apparently trying to pad his reactionary conservative resume by loudly walking out of a press screening of Kevin Smith’s Clerks 2. The interview is with Smith, although Siegel doesn’t seem aware of that fact for quite a while.
Smith v Siegel [tmz.com]

The Word I’ve Heard Bandied About Is “Star-Studded”

mangold_moma_sm.jpg

And let me put it this way: when you’re talking about the films of James Mangold and you see the words “star,” “stud,” and “special” together that can only mean two possibilities: Joaquin Phoenix or Sylvester Stallone.
And if either of them are a no-show Tuesday, I’m sure moderator Anna Deveare Smith’ll be able to channel them as only she knows how.
In one of my other lives, I’m the co-chair of this benefit for MoMA’s Film and Media department, A Work In Progress, which this year honors Walk The Line director James Mangold.
The gig is this coming Tuesday, May 23rd, from 7-11pm, at MoMA and if past years’ have been any indication, the event will be awesome (and will run slightly over schedule).
Check out the invite here, and then buy a beneficently priced ticket or two here. [$400 to see the celebrity ear hair, $225 to see the celebrity bald spots, and $150 to eat the celebrity hors d’oeuvres.]

A Work in Progress: An Evening with James Mangold [ersvp.com]
Previously: And the AWIP goes to: Marc Forster, Alexander Payne, Sofia Coppola, David O. Russell

“ps – Manalo Blahnik [sic] made the shoes.” [except for the Chuck Taylors]

Because I happen to know that she prefers the US spelling, “autarchically,” I believe this interview with Sofia Coppola is translated from the French:

SC/…I had been interested also by this period myself, the XVIIIth century in France, for quite a while, the atmosphere at Versailles, a place that functionned autarkically. I liked the idea of reconstituting that period, of doing a costume drama: to do that became then some sort of challenge for me.
JML/ Did you first try to do that film before shooting Lost in Translation?
SC/ I was working on MA’s screenplay much before LIT. In fact LIT was at first nothing but a distraction from MA, a means for me to get away from a project that I knew was going to be rather Pharaonic. After LIT I decided to concentrate myself entirely to MA, it then became a sort of obsession for me. I really put myself to work on the screenplay of MA on the very day that followed the end of LIT’s shooting.

“Title: In Marie-Antoinette’s Head” [ohnotheydidnt via greencine]

5/15: Matt Stone & Trey Parker Masterclass at NFT [London, En-guh-land]

After you sit back and digest the delicious hilarity that Mr. Hankey’s creators will be appearing as “part of The Stanley Kubrick Masterclass series,” peruse the NFT description of the event:

In London for this ‘Skillset Masterclass’, Parker and Stone will explore the art of creating political satire, getting inspiration from Bruckheimer to Thunderbirds, the merits of puppet versus cell animation, the idea of absolute creative freedom and how far is too far.

Since they offered to talk about absolute creative freedom, ask them about working with constraints and in collaborative environments, since their flabbiest, least funny, least nailed down, most disappointing achievements–Team America World Police, Orgazmo, BASEketball–were the ones where they were given carte blanche?
Also, which one of them grew up Mormon?
The Skillset Masterclass with Matt Stone & Trey Parker [bfi-org.uk via kultureflash]

Wonder Showzen Guys Give Onion Interviewer Grief

Nice. If this guy worked for anyplace but The Onion AV Club, he’d have left this interview shaking like a leaf wondering how he’s gonna get his story done.

JL: My favorite moments are when you see someone lash out at the puppet, and then we have the guts, after he hits us, to move closer. There’s so many times that someone hits us and we just run away like babies. There’s a guy who pulled a knife on us, and we kept going toward him.
VC: We ran away, and then from a distance, we said, “Okay, now let’s learn to love each other. What will it take? We’ll take baby steps.”
JL: And he’s holding the knife out.
VC: And then we took little steps closer, and within five steps, he started to go for us, and we took off.
JL: That guy was saying to himself, “I just don’t want to go back to jail.” And that was our protective bubble.

Wonder Showzen season 2 is on these days. [avclub.com via waxy]

Douglas Coupland Interviewed Morrissey

I like interviews with creatives as a way to learn more about their process and to understand better how a work came to be. Interviewing someone can be a chance to learn from someone I admire how he sees the world and how he goes about bringing his ideas to fruition.
When I interviewed Sofia Coppola and she told me she’d never seen Caddyshack, I was stunned, but I didn’t make a big deal about it at the time; she was nice and I didn’t want to embarass her. [I hope you’ve seen it by now, Sofia. I’ll ask you about it again.]
Of course, from the interviewee’s standpoint, they have to do a million of these things, and they often just want the work to stand on its own. Then, too, there’s the invasive cult sycophancy aspect of divulging every nook and cranny of your soul.
Anyway, it all comes to mind as I read the slightly-too-meta account by Douglas Coupland–who hates interviews and interviewing–of traveling to Rome to interview Morrissey–who hates interviews and being interviewed.
Papal attraction [guardian/observer via tmn]