-->
68.
Like what?/Comedy. [It has nothing to do with the future
of a county] We have the best comedy in the world, hands down. I’m very proud,
for example, that we have Chris Rock.
69.
Are you a LouisCK fan?/I love his show. He seems like
someone who would be fun to know. Seems like. And we do sports entertainment
better than anyone. It’s phenomenal—the production values, the computer
graphics, the commentators dotdotdot.
70.
What teams do you follow?/I followed theJets, simply
because they were such a train wreck this season. But I follow stories more
than teams, stories like RobertGriffinIII or ColinKaepernick.
71.
Do you watch basketball?/I was going to say that the only
thing I don’t really watch is basketball. It has to do with my personality, how
I’m wired. You can’t make a play in the first quarter of a basketball game that
will determine the ultimate outcome the way you can in baseball or
football—like if a touchdown is scored in the first quarter, that could
conceivably be the only big play of the game. So I can never figure out why I’m
supposed to watch the first half of a basketball game. Well, except for the
pure athleticism—seeing something like the crazy BlakeGriffin dunk from last
year.
72.
Any other American achievements you’d like to endorse?/We
produce the best petfood exclamationmark. I’ve traveled the world, and I’ll go
to the mat on that one. When I open the cans for my cats, our cats, my mouth waters.
You could serve the stuff on a cracker.
73.
What brand are we talking here?/FancyFeast. It comes in
individual little trays that peel open. I think they’re even called appetizers.
This is the cat equivalent of eating at Nobu every night. So that’s three
things we lead the world in. Pretty good, right? America, fuck yeah
exclamationmark.
77 Comments Add Comment
[Question]/[Answer]
27Jan2013,
9PM, 77Comments
By MaryKayeSchilling
1.
So, retirement./Just to be clear, I won’t be directing
quoteunquotecinema for lack of a better word. But I still plan to direct, theater
stuff, and I’d do a TV series if something great were to come along.
2.
You said something once about playing baseball when you
were growing up. You were obsessive about it, an excellent pitcher, but one day,
you woke up, I think you were agetwelve, and you knew you had lost “whatever it
is that makes you know you’re better than the other guy.” The next day, you
played badly, and you never recovered. Is that similar to what’s happening with
film?/No. It was a combination of things. I had talked about it in the
aftermath of Che.
3.
Was that the nail in the coffin? You’ve said that the
twopart, fourhour[s]plus biopic was not only a ["]bitch["] to make
but that you wish you hadn’t made it./Well, the first part of that is true. But
it wasn’t just that. These things, I can feel them coming on. I can feel it
when I need to slough off one skin and grow another. So that’s when I started
thinking, All right, when I ["]turn["] agefifty, I’d like to be done.
I knew that in order to stop, I couldn’t keep it a secret, so many things are
coming at you when you’re making films that you need to have a reason to be
saying no all the time.
4.
And what was that reason?/It’s a combination of wanting a
change personally and of feeling like I’ve hit a wall in my development that I
don’t know how to break through. The tyranny of narrative is beginning to
frustrate me, or at least narrative as we’re currently defining it. I’m
convinced there’s a new grammar out there somewhere. But that could just be my
form of theism.
5.
Is it similar to how you were feeling in1997 when you
made the satire Schizopolis, an attempt to “blow up the house,” as you
put it?/Yeah. If I’m going to solve this issue, it means annihilating
everything that came before and starting from scratch. That means I have to go
away, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take. And I also know you can’t
force it. I love and respect filmmaking too much to continue to do it while
feeling I’m ["]runninginplace["]. That’s not a good feeling. And if
it turns out I don’t make another one, I’m really happy with this last group of
movies. I don’t want to be one of those people about
whom people say, “Wow, he kind of fell off there at the end.” That would be
depressing.
6.
You’ve made eight remarkably different films since2009:
the superlowbudget drama TheGirlfriendExperience, with pornstar SashaGrey; the
documentary AndEverythingIsGoingToBeFine, about the late monologuistSpaldingGray;
the corporate farce TheInformant!; the disasterflick Contagion; the actionpicture
Haywire; the stripper["]dramedy["] MagicMike; and now the
medicalthriller SideEffects. You’ve also got the upcoming Liberace biopic,
BehindTheCandelabra for HBO. Do they add up to some kind of statement as you head
out the door?/Not at all. A couple of them were just happenstance. Haywire
started because I got fired off Moneyball and I needed to go to work; I just
happened to see GinaCarano on TV and wanted to build a film around her. MagicMike
came out of the blue, and we jammed it in. SideEffects happened because another
film, TheManFromUNCLE, ["]blew up["]. Half were planned, and half
were not.
7.
There’s this theory out there that your strategy is “one
for you, one for them.” In other words, you do a bigfilm, a studiofilm, like
ErinBrockovich, so you can then make smaller, more experimental films, like Bubble,
which had no script and was improvised by nonprofessional actors. Would you
agree with that?/No. There may be some directors who do that, but anyone who works
with me can tell you that I don’t operate that way. I can’t spend two years on
a project without being totally excited about it. Any movie I’ve made has been
because of the challenge it offered me as a director, because it provides a new
canvas. Even the ["]bigbudgetstuff["] like the Ocean’s films.
8.
So the studios didn’t pressure you to do Ocean’sTwelve
and [Ocean's]Thirteen after the first one became a massive hit?/No. They didn’t
care. We kind of had to talk them into it. Those movies provided a really
unique set of opportunities visually. They’re not easy for me to make. The
first Ocean’s was, directorially, a lot harder than Traffic. Not even close.
But they allowed me to play in a way the other movies don’t. It’s the closest
to a comicbook as I’ll ever get. I viewed them as like RoyLichtenstein panels,
which was really fun. And I’m very happy with them visually. When you look at
what passes for a tent pole now, the Ocean’s movies are pretty gentle in terms
of their spirit, and I like that about them.
9.
What do you think people mean when they call a film
Soderberghian? [Those dumbass "phrasemakers", they have no idea what
they are talking about.]/I have no idea. But never use that word to describe
your movie in a pitch meeting because it won’t get made.
10.
Really? You just made a sevenmillionUSD film about
strippers, MagicMike, that has earned something like onehundredsixtysevenmillion
USD worldwide./So pitch the movie as MagicMike. Otherwise, if you’re using my
name, you could mean TheGoodGerman.
11.
But you’ve shown an incredible ability for getting films
made, particularly the ["]midlevel["] [?], characterdriven,
superheroandvampirefree films that conventional wisdom says don’t get made anymore,
from the esoteric scifi sciencefictionfilm Solaris to, yes, even a
somber, blackandwhitemovie about postWorldWarIIGermany. How do you account for
that?/On the few occasions where I’ve talked to film students, one of the
things I stress, in addition to learning your craft, is how you behave as a
person. For the most part, our lives are about telling
stories. So I ask them, “What are the stories you want people to tell
about you?” Because at a certain point, your ability to get a job could turn on
the stories people tell about you. The reason [then-UniversalPictures chief]
CaseySilver put me up for OutOfSight after I’d had five flops in a row was because
he liked me personally. He also knew I was a responsible filmmaker, and, if I
got that job, the next time he’d see me was when we screened the movie. If I’m
an asshole, then I don’t get that job. Character counts. That’s a long way of
saying, “If you can be known as someone who can attract talent, that’s a big ["]plus["].”
12.
You’ve talked at length about giving actors as much
freedom as possible. That’s resulted in a number of performances that have
launched, revived, and revitalized careers. In the case of JenniferLopez in
OutOfSight, you’re responsible for her only good film performance./It’s not
that I never say no; I’m just not trying to control them. I’m looking to
amplify and showcase whatever it is about them that I find compelling. You
know, my attitude is that all of us have to submit to what the film wants and
needs to be. So the best version of the thing is sitting up here, and you have
to submit to that.
13.
How do you accomplish that?/I keep the environment pretty
relaxed. Relaxed but focused. I work with the same people all the time. There’s
a form of ["]bandhumor["] that develops: insidejokes and references
that only a core group of people understand. It’s fun. Some people believe
tension is a good creative tool, that you get more out of people if you make
them feel insecure. I’m not one of those people, and I don’t want to be around
that when I go to work.
14.
Before shooting began on MagicMike, MatthewMcConaughey
says he sent you two emails full of painstaking details about his character.
The first email was ninepages, the second was ten. Your responses were “Sure”
and “Go for it.” Is that true?/Matthew understood the part so well and had such
good ideas that I had no desire to ["]box him in["]. So I just said
yes to everything, which turned out to be the right way to go. I think the only
note I gave him, when I first pitched him the part on the phone, was that his
character believed in UFOs.
15.
UFOs?/It wasn’t a way of diminishing the character. It
was actually the opposite. My mom was a parapsychologist, so I grew up around
that stuff.
16.
You’ve talked in the past about obsessively viewing films
for inspiration, like TheBattleOfAlgiers and Z for Traffic. What did you watch
for MagicMike?/SaturdayNightFever was our model. It’s
one of those movies people remember differently than what was actually true.
Going back, we were startled by how dark it gets. This girl is being raped in
the back seat of the car, and Travolta doesn’t really do anything, he just
drives around. He does things that you probably wouldn’t want your
protagonist doing today.
17.
And what were you watching for your new film, SideEffects,
which is set in the psychopharmaceutical world?/FatalAttraction. I watched that
a lot. That’s a very well directed movie. AdrianLyne knew exactly what he was
doing. The eighties was a terrible decade for American films, with a few
exceptions in the independent world. It’s basically when
the corporations took over. And one of the few, to my mind, interesting
aspects of the decade were these psychologicalthrillers that popped up. I don’t
know why they stopped being made. Maybe they priced themselves out of
existence.
18.
The movie is an ["]oldschool["] ["]nailbiter["],
not a diatribe on antidepressants, drugcompanies, and psychotherapy. Still, it
takes a pretty dim view of all of those things./I think if you were to talk to
Dr.SashaBardey, an adviser on the film, he would tell you that there’s a place
for SSRIs, but there’s no question that a lot of people are looking for the
shortcut. He would also say a combination of prescription meds and therapy can
help people who are in a really bad way, but that there’s a difference between
those people and the ["]gardenvarietyfeelings["] of anxiety or
depression that most of us go through occasionally because of a set of
circumstances.
19.
[Spoiler alert] In SideEffects, CatherineZetaJones has a
sex scene with RooneyMara, and your HBO
film BehindTheCandelabra stars MichaelDouglas as Liberace and MattDamon as his
lover. Are you trying to spice up or break up the DouglasZetaJones marriage?/[Laughs]
That was just coincidence. I got the idea of doing a Liberace film when we were
making Traffic, so thirteen years ago. Out of the blue, I asked Michael if he
would be interested in playing Liberace, and he said yes. He told me later that
he thought I was just fucking around with him. I don’t think he understood
where this was coming from, and I didn’t either.
20.
Candelabra brings you back to more lighthearted
territory. At least it looks like a lot of fun. Michael and Matt making out
[kissing], for instance./It was really fun. The world of it was just bananas.
It was great to see Michael and Matt jump off the cliff together. Nobody can
accuse them of being shy. They just went for it. It’s pretty gay.
21.
Can Douglas sing?/He can sing as well as Liberace, who
sort of ["]talkedsang["] like RexHarrison.
22.
How did Matt get involved?/He came to do a day of work on
Che. I gave him the book BehindTheCabdelabra, by ScottThorson, and said, See if
you’re interested in playing Scott. Matt said yes, but when Michael had a
little gathering at his house for a brunch, it was literally the day before
shooting started, I could sense Matt was anxious. He said, I’m not sure where
we’re going with this guy. I told him to just show up to work the next day, get
into his outfit, and put the hair on. It was one of those things where there
wasn’t anything to say, I didn’t know what string of words to put together to
explain it to him. It was about the physicality of just being there. From that
point, it would be obvious what had to be done. And it was. By the second day
he said he felt good, and by the end of the first week he was totally ["]dialed
in["].
23.
Are you disappointed that it’s not being released in
theaters?/Not at all. After WarnerBros. put it in turnaround, we showed it to
every studio in town. No one wanted it, even though we only needed fivemillionUSD.
24.
That seems inconceivable. No, stupid./It was crazy. But
HBO was immediately into it, and the experience was great from beginning to
end.
25.
JohnHuston, one of your influences, said that the ideal
film “would be as though the reel were behind one’s eyes and you were
projecting it yourself, seeing what you wish to see.” It reminded me of
watching your movies. I can almost feel your impatience, like you can’t get
close enough to what you’re shooting. It’s almost as if you want to be the
film./Right. I wish it all happened faster. When I get stuck, I slow everything
down, I send everyone away. I know, from experience, that you can’t rush it.
The opposite is that when you’ve figured it out, you can’t move fast enough. People
tell stories about Hitchcock, that for him the shooting part was not fun. I
don’t believe he was as bored by shooting as he and others claim; for me,
there’s nothing more fun than watching a performer do something you don’t
expect. But I understand what he means: The exciting
part is the idea, and then the execution of it sometimes is just laborious.
26.
What do you consider the most important thing about the
execution?/That we’ve made sure to take advantage of all the opportunities that
the story provides. I want to feel we came out the other end of it considering
all the options. The worst feeling in the world would be if we weren’t rigorous
enough. Contagion was a tricky one. We overhauled the movie in postproduction,
cutting fortyfiveminutes of material. And it was because we were trying to do
twothings. Take advantage of what that subject had to offer while avoiding disastermovie
clichés. We had a list we refused to do: Can’t show the
president. No helicopter shots. You can’t go somewhere and show people
suffering where our characters haven’t been. Those restrictions made us
think laterally, which was good.
27.
The DVD for your 1999 crime film TheLimey includes
an exceedingly entertaining directorcommentary with screenwriter LemDobbs,
who berates you for screwing up his script through cutting or rewriting./I’m
glad I got to work with Lem again on Haywire, because that’s a fairly typical
exchange for us. It’s not anger, he’s more incredulous than he is angry. I
enjoy those conversations, because he’s very bright, he’s seen everything, and
he has a strong point of view.
28.
His chief criticism is that you favor style over substance,
that you’d rather show a detail than an emotion. He’s not the only person to
say that about your films./That’s a reflection of my personality, probably, and
I would argue that some of the things I’ve done that frustrated people upon a
first viewing, tenorfifteenyearslater you’re happy that they’re that way. I
remember describing making movies as a form of seduction and that people should
look at it as though they’re being approached at a bar. My whole thing is, when
somebody comes up to you at a bar, what behavior is appealing to you? And there
are certain things that I’m not willing to do to get a reaction.
29.
Like what? Pander?/It’s not pandering so much as being
obvious. Do you want to hang out with someone who has
the most obvious reaction to everything that happens? That’s boring
exclamationmark. And when I see a movie that’s doing the obvious thing all the
time, it’s frustrating. [Yesyesyes exclamationmark]
30.
Your 1999 book, GettingAwayWithIt, is a combination of
your own diaries from that time and interviews with director RichardLester,
whose films, like AHardDay’sNight and TheKnackDotdotdotAndHowToGetIt, were
major influences on you. At one point you complained to him: “I feel like a
codger saying ‘It’s never been this bad,’ but I really think it’s never been
this bad dotdotdot. People who make dumb movies that make a lot of money are
now treated with the kind of respect that used to be reserved for people who
made good movies.” You must be apoplectic [adjective, informal/ overcoming
anger; extremely indignant/ relating to or denoting apoplexy (stroke)] now./ It’s true that when I was growing up, there was a sort of
division: Respect was accorded to people who made great movies and to people
who made movies that made a lot of money. And that division just doesn’t exist
anymore: Now it’s just the people who make a lot of money. I think there
are many reasons for that. Some of them are cultural. I’ve said before, I think
that the audience for the kinds of movies I grew up liking has migrated to
television. The format really allows for the narrow and
deep approach that I like, and a lot of people dotdotdot. Well, the point is,
threeandahalfmillion people watching a show on cable is a success. That many
people seeing a movie is not a success. I just don’t think movies matter as
much anymore, culturally.
31.
Around the same time you also said, “If you go much over
two hours, I think you really better have a very good reason.” I was thinking
about that as I sat through the big december releases, which seemed to average
twohoursandfortyminutes./The thing I also see a lot of is multiple endings, I
feel like movies end like five times now exclamationmark. I remember being very
conscious of TheLordOfTheRings movies having a lot of endings. But I wonder if
the audience has come to expect them. Music has become
another of the most abused aspects of filmmaking. I’m mystified by the
direction scores have taken in the last ten years. It’s ["]walltowall["],
it’s the movie equivalent of the ["]vuvuzelas["] from the lastWorldCup
exclamationmark. I don’t understand it at all. For me, it’s ideal when you can
get the music to do something that everything else isn’t doing.
32.
I’ve always appreciated how you don’t use the soundtrack
to telegraph emotions; your scores are remarkably subtle. TheInformant! was one
of the few times you used music conspicuously, but it really worked for that
film./A lot of people had mixed feelings about that score. Look, it was a very specific choice in the
sense that, what I said to MarvinHamlisch was, this music is not for the
audience. This music is for him [Matt Damon’s character], it’s his soundtrack.
For the movie, it worked. But that’s not typically what you’re doing with a
score. I think that’s why people reacted ambivalently.
33.
Have you noticed how loud trailers have gotten?
34.
They’re punishing exclamationmark. I’ve cut trailers that don’t do that,
and they test badly. I will point out to the studio that sitting some people in
a room and showing them this one trailer is not how they will be seen in a theater,
where you get six in a row. I don’t want my trailer to feel like the other
five. Their response is always, Look at the numbers. That’s one good thing - well,
there have been many good things about working with HBO - but there are no
numbers, no focusgroups.
35.
What else has gotten worse?/The worst development in
filmmaking, particularly in the last five years, is how badly directors are
treated. It’s become absolutely horrible the way the
people with the money decide they can fart in the kitchen, to put it bluntly.
It’s not just studios, it’s anyone who is financing a film. I guess I don’t
understand the assumption that the director is presumptively wrong about what the
audience wants or needs when they are the first audience, in a way. And probably
got into making movies because of being in that audience. But an
alarming thing I learned during Contagion is that the people who pay to make
the movies and the audiences who see them are actually very much in sync. I
remember during previews how upset the audience was by the JudeLaw character. The fact that he created a sort of mixed reaction was viewed
as a flaw in the filmmaking. Not, “Oh, that’s interesting, I’m not
sure if this guy is an asshole or a hero.” People
were really annoyed by that. And I thought, Wow, so ambiguity is not on
the table anymore. They were angry.
36.
Critics used to have the role of standing up for
ambiguity. But you’ve never been a fan of filmcritics./It’s what DaveHickey
said: It’s ["]airguitar["], ultimately. Was it helpful to read
PaulineKael’s work when I was growing up? Absolutely. For a teenager who was
beginning to look at movies as something other than just entertainment, her
reviews were really interesting. But at a certain
point, it’s not useful anymore. [I agree] I stopped reading reviews of my own
films after Traffic, and I find it hard to read any critics now because they
are just so easily fooled. From a directorial standpoint, you can’t ["]throw
one by me["]. I know if you know what you’re
doing, and, "Wow, critics", their reading of filmmaking is very
superficial. [accurate] Look, nothing excites me more than a good film.
It makes me want to make something good. But I have certain standards, and I
don’t grade on a curve. If you want to be a director, I’m going to treat you
like I treat everybody. So it’s frustrating when critics praise things that I
feel are not up to snuff.
37.
Do you think it’s deteriorated since Kael?/No. I think
her reading of that stuff was pretty superficial as well. She had a great gift
for setting movies in cultural context, but what set her apart from most
critics, and especially a lot of critics today, was that she was at her
absolute best when she loved something. And that was exciting to read.
Nowadays, I find critics to be very facile when they don’t like a film, but
when they do like something they get ["]tonguetied["].
38.
Do you still see films in theaters, with audiences?/Sure.
It’s strange because you’d think there would be a lot of good theaters in
Manhattan, but there aren’t. There are a couple, but in general, it’s not fun
to go out to movies here.
39.
Somehow I don’t think you’re someone who worries about a
legacy. But what do you think yours will be?/I have no idea. As Orson Welles
said, I’m the bird, you’re the ornithologist.
40.
SexLiesAndVideotape sparked the indiefilm explosion of
the [theNineteenhundred]nineties. Could something like that happen again?/It
would be hard because movies cost so much to market. I’m encouraged by VideoOnDemand,
which is a verypromising distributionmethod. But it’s much harder for
filmmakers now. You’re sort of expected to emerge ["]fullblown["]
[by strangers.] [Dumbasses.] That’s rare. Some people do, but I didn’t. Like I
said, you can’t make five films in a row that nobody sees. You’d be in ["]moviejail["]
[What does it mean?]. I feel really lucky that I got to make the mistakes I made
and still get to do OutOfSight.
41.
Are there young filmmakers you’re excited about?/ShaneCarruth. He did the film Primer, and he’s got a terrific new
movie at Sundance. And I’m acting as a presenter on the new GodfreyReggio film [Visitors], which is exciting. I
mean, this is a guy who doesn’t build a film based on other things he’s seen,
like I do. It’s his own thing.
42.
For a filmmaker as prolific as you are, what do you make
of TerrenceMalick’s ["]thirtyyearsinthemaking["] TreeOfLife?/Everyone
works in their own way. And as is often the case with
people who are unique, the problem isn’t TerrenceMalick or QuentinTarantino,
the problem is all the people who came after them and want to be TerrenceMalick
and QuentinTarantino. But that’s the way it’s always been. [Moneygrubbing
assholes.]
43.
I once asked Tarantino if he would change anything in any
of his films. He said, “No. It wouldn’t be in the film if I didn’t want it
there.” That doesn’t sound like something you would say./Well, I’m remaking, it’s
been a long process, but I’m overhauling Kafka completely. It’s funny, wrapping
a movie twentytwoyears later exclamationmark. But the rights had reverted back
to me and PaulRassam, an executiveproducer, and he said, “I
know you were never really happy with it. Do you want to go back in and play
around?” We shot some inserts while we were doing SideEffects. I’m also dubbing
the whole thing intoGerman so the accent issue goes away. And Lem and I have
been working on recalibrating some of the dialogue and the storytelling. So
it’s a completely different movie. The idea is to put them both out on disc.
But for the most part, I’m a believer in your first impulse being the right
one. And I certainly think that most of the seventies directors who have gone
back in and tinkered with their movies have made them worse.
44.
Are you entirely satisfied with any of your films?/OutOfSight.
It’s less flawed than the others. Or TheInformant! As I look at those two, I
feel like I don’t know what else I would do.
45.
Are there many films you wanted to make that didn’t
happen?/Less than a handful. There are tons of excuses you can make for
something not happening. It’s a very imperfect process, getting a movie made. And
I’m one of those people who just ignores that stuff. The film doesn’t have to
be perfect. The deal doesn’t have to be perfect. [It is easy to say.] I’ll
["]reverseengineer["] into whatever box we have so that we can do it
and do it, less money, less time, whatever. [Reverseengineer what? Into what box? Another dumbass parallel from Science into Filmmaking.] I’m looking for reasons to say yes.
But, sometimes, nothing works.
46.
Like ConfederacyOfDunces. Whatever happened to that?/I
ended up walking away. We had this lawsuit over the rights [against ScottRudin
and ParamountPictures in1998], and we got the project back, and at that point, it
was a good lesson to learn, actually, because I realized once we got it back
that my enthusiasm had been beaten out of me. Now it was an obligation, as
opposed to something that I wanted to do. I don’t know what’s happening with
it. I think it’s cursed. I’m not prone to superstition, but that project has
got ["]badmojo["] on it.
47.
We should talk about your painting, since, well, we’re
surrounded by your paintings exclamationmark. A portrait of SamuelBeckett, a
panel of vivid stripes in the ColorField style. Looking at your work, I can see
you’re not a beginner, your fluency with different styles is impressive. You’ve
been drawing since you were a child, right?/Yes, and both my parents did, too.
But it wasn’t until I was older that I started looking at visualart closely.
What’s exciting is to feel at the very beginning of something. It’s also
terrifying starting from scratch, but panic has always energized me. It’s the
same process as anything: identifying who your heroes are, figuring out what
they did, and then just going and doing it. I can stare at my LucianFreud book
for hours and hours, but at a certain point you have to go to the wall and
imitate. So it’s very basic right now: Can I make things look the way I want
them to look? That’s where I’m at right now.
48.
I get the sense that, as with film, motivation is not an
issue./I was watching one of those iconoclast shows on the SundanceChannel.
JamieOliver said PaulSmith had told him something he hadn’t understood until very
recently: “I’d rather be ["]numbertwo["] forever than ["]numberone["]
for a while.” Just make stuff and don’t agonize over it. Stop worrying about
being ["]numberone["]. I see a lot of people
getting paralyzed by the response to their work, the imagined result. It’s like
playing a ["]Jedimindtrick["] on yourself, and Smith is right.
That’s the way I’ve always approached films, the way I approach everything.
Just make them. [It is easy to say for him.]
49.
What are you gravitating toward as a painter?/I go back
and forth between portraits and abstracts. I’m not really interested in
landscapes or still life. I’m more attracted to faces. In fact, whenever I
think of a film I’m about to make, I see a face with a certain expression on
it. For my photography, I’ve been studying the work of DuaneMichals. He’s
famous for these photosequences, which tell stories in a cinematic way. I
bought a few of his books, and I’ve begun to think about sequences of my own
that suggest a narrative. I’m always curious to hear how something was made though
I have no interest in why an artist did something, or what his work means. Like
with JacksonPollock: I’m always interested in what kind of paint and canvas he
used, I just don’t want to know what he meant. You’re supposed to expand your
mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.
50.
Given how often you layer and deconstruct scenes in your
films, I’m curious if you’ve ever worked in collage. Maybe I’m being too
literal./Actually, I’ve got a big collage in L.A. I was sitting in an airport
reading UsWeekly one day, and I realized all the hours of my life I’d spent
reading tabloid magazines. I thought: I can’t have wasted all that time
exclamationmark. So I spent six months building this sixfootbyninefoot collage
of people on the red carpet. It was really fun.
51.
You’ve spent hours of your life reading Us?/That shit is
made to be read in an airport exclamationmark.
52.
Do you have a fantasy of what your typical post cinema
day will be?/A little bit of everything. I’m really looking forward to reading
a book, finishing it, and picking up [starting] another one.
53.
Based on a list you put together two years ago, of
everything you read and watched between April 2010 and March 2011, you had no
problem reading while you were making films. What are you reading now?/I tend
to alternate between fiction and nonfiction. I just finished a wonderful novel
by PaulMurray called SkippyDies. Right before that, I finished TonyFletcher’s
book about theSmiths. They generated a lot of good music in a short time, then
kind of burned out and crashed. I recently reread three RaymondChandler novels,
which were amazing all over again. I literally don’t
think he uses more than twohundred different words. [Another dumbass
exaggeration? Interesting researchproject?] Of all the arts, I think the
novel comes closest to being inside another person’s head. Probably because
none of it is being literalised; you’re creating the images based on what
you’re reading, so you’re never quoteunquotewrong.
54.
So painting, reading. Given your workEthic, that probably
adds up to half a day./I’m importing this liquor from Bolivia: Singani. Technically, it’s a brandy. I was turned onto it while I was
doing Che and everybody on the crew got hooked. You don’t get that burn in your
throat like you do with most hard liquor, so it’s dangerous. You can drink it
like water and then you’re invisible.
55.
You’ll be the US distributor?/Yeah. That took fiveyears.
There’s also at least one nonfiction book that I’m working on. Another
filmmaking book. And I’m working on a play with Scott[ZBurns].
56.
Is the Cleopatra musical with CatherineZetaJones still
happening?/Yeah. And I’m working on a play with Scott[ZBurns].
57.
MikeNichols has been a mentor pretty much since you
started dotdotdot./He’s a good problem solver. I try not to make it a burden. I
try to pick the right time to get his reaction.
58.
I imagine he’ll be particularly helpful as you move fromFilmToTheater./We’ve
talked about what skill set is transferable from one to the other. But whatever
I do in the theater, the pieces have to be original pieces. In order for me to
take advantage of what I can do, it would be pointless for me to do straight
plays or revivals. The projects have to be something that I’ve been involved in
creating from scratch, so I can use the sensibility I’ve developed as a
filmmaker. I don’t have the background in pure stagecraft. I just saw this great
production at theIrishRep, ACelebrationOfHaroldPinter,” starring JulianSands. I like Pinter a lot, maybe because his work
reminds me of my own home growing up. There was all
this ["]unspokenheaviness["] going on, but everything happened offcamera.
We knew my parents weren’t getting along, but they kept it to themselves, which
was in fact a very generous thing for them to have done. And good for my career
exclamationmark.
59.
Was it classic WASP behavior?/No. My father was Swedish
and Irish and my mother was Italian with a little Irish in there as well. They
were just very different people. I’m a blend of both of them. My mom does not
think in a linear way. She’d be very comfortable in this room [he gestures to
the ["]organizedchaos["] of his studio, crowded with canvases,
painting supplies and cardboard boxes]. This is not what my dad’s office looked
like. My father was a teacher and an intellectual, linear, rational, organized,
hard working. I got something from both of them, but I was closer to my father
growing up so it took awhile to realise I was like my mother too. That dichotomy
is featured in everything I’ve done.
60.
What TV do you watch?/Pretty much what you’d expect:
BreakingBad. Can’t wait for that next season. MadMen. Boss. I feel very lucky
because DavidFincher sent me advance episodes of HouseOfCards. I’ve got three to
go, and I’m totally hooked. What I like about all those shows is that there’s
an aesthetic that’s adhered to no matter who is directing it. They have rules,
there’s a tool kit. I don’t like seeing stuff where there’s no coherence to the
choices that are being made. And all those shows are shot like movies. That
trainrobbery episode in the last season of BreakingBad? They had like eight
days to shoot that episode. That’s good shit exclamationmark. And HouseOfCards
is the most beautiful thing you’ve seen on a screen. Oh, and I watch Girls.
61.
You fit right into the Girls demo, which includes a large
percentage of men in their forties and fifties./Really?
62.
Must be the buttfucking. Many of your films, beginning
with SexLies, have been about communication and miscommunication and the
noisiness of the world and the destruction of language, which has only been
exacerbated by Twitter. So I’m wondering: Do you tweet?/I created a sort of
shadow name that I’ve posted a few things on. Like anything, it’s a tool. What
is it going to be used for? Is there some aspect of it that can be positive? I
guess the answer is, Maybe. I look at the young woman from Pakistan,
MalalaYousafzai, who was shot by theTaliban for advocating that girls go to
school. It’s hard to believe something like that can still happen, but I look
at that and think, Is this technology a way to generate
enough outrage that some change will occur? I don’t know. One thing I do
know from making Art is that Ideology is the enemy of problem solving. Nobody
sits on a filmset and says, [Example]“No, you can’t use
greenscreenVFX to solve that because I’m Catholic.” There’s no place for
that, and that’s why I’ve stopped being embarrassed about being in the
entertainmentindustry, because I’m surrounded by intelligent people who solve
problems quickly and efficiently, primarily because issues of Ideology don’t
enter into the conversation.
63.
That’s a ["]onehundredandeightydegreeturn["]
[Another dumbass phrase.] from fifteenyears ago, when you called the filmbusiness
the silliest in the world./After making a lot more films, I realized that the
movieandTVbusiness is, for all its inefficiencies, one of the best run [operated]
big businesses we have. It’s very transparent, financially, and the only
business I know of that successfully employs ["]trickledown["]Economics:
When movies and shows make money, the profits go right back into making more
movies and shows, because the stock price is all about market share. And these people
excel at problemsolving, that’s ninetyninepercent of the job. I look at
HurricaneKatrina, and I think if four days before landfall you gave a movie
studio autonomy and a onehundredth of the billions the government spent on that
disaster, and told them, “Lock this place down and get everyone taken care of,”
we wouldn’t be using that disaster as an example of what not to do. A big movie
involves clothing, feeding, and moving thousands of people around the world on
a tight schedule. Problems are solved creatively and efficiently within a
budget, or your ass is out of work. [you're fired.] So when I look at
what’s going on in theGovernment, the gridlock, I think, Wow, that’s a really
inefficient way to run a railroad. TheGovernment can’t solve problems because
the two parties are so wedded to their opposing ideas that they can’t move. The very idea that someone from Congress can’t take something
from the other side because they’ll be punished by their own party? That’s
stupid. [If it is indeed true, it is stupid] If I were running for
office, I would be poaching ideas from everywhere. That’s how Art ["]works["].
You steal from everything. I must remember to tweet that I’m, in fact, not
running for office.
64.
Okay, so here’s your chance: What is the efficient way to
run a railroad or a Government, as the case may be?/I’m of the minority opinion
that presidents should be given more power for less time. Let him, no “her” yet
exclamationmark, put the ideas he campaigned on into play, like a new taxcode,
and let’s see if it works or fails, quickly. If it doesn’t, then two years
later the people who said it would never work get their chance. A
["]watereddown["] version of an idea isn’t a good indicator of
whether it’s a good idea. I read this great book by DanielLazare,
TheFrozenRepublicHowTheConstitutionIsParalyzingDemocracy. The Founders
[TheFoundingFathers] very clearly indicated that they had no idea what the
country would be like in onehundredyears, and if theLaws they’d written didn’t
work, they should toss them out and write new ones. The problem, of course, is
that building or fixing things takes time. Tearing shit down is easy. The
analogy I use is that if you throw a party with fortypeople, it takes only one
asshole to ruin the whole thing. And that’s kind of where we’re at. I wonder
what would happen if I started a virtual country. Are there laws that would
forbid that? What if I had my own virtual country with onemillion people?
65.
Well, isn’t a film set kind of like your own country for
a limited time? You have to be a leader. What did you find to be the hardest
part of that?/Being good and clear. Because if you’re being clear, you may not
be good because you’re too obviously trying to be clear. If you can find
interesting ways to be clear, you’re really onto something.
66.
Have you met any naturally great leaders?/GeorgeClooney.
He inspires people. He listens. He’s generous. He’s loyal. He’s funny, which is
crucial. He solves problems better than anyone I know. That’s why people keep
telling him to run for office, but he’s too smart for that. If there were fivehundred
of him, you could take over an entire country, but of course, threeweeks later,
you’d lose it again because of all the parties.
67.
Do you still feel like a pessimist in a country of
optimists?/When I hear people talk about twothousandandtwentyfive, I’m like,
this could all turn into MadMax a lot sooner than that exclamationmark. I was
talking to Dr.LarryBrilliant, who consulted on Contagion, and I asked him,
“Does the world seem to be spinning out of control as fast as I think it is?”
And he said, “Oh, yeah.” But, look, I don’t want to sound like a bummer. There
are lots of things that America does really well.
74.
This conversation has been condensed and edited from two interviews
conducted on 09Jan2013 and 11Jan2013.
75.
*This article originally appeared in the 04Feb2013 issue
of New York Magazine.
76.
Photo: Nicolas Guerin/Contour by Getty
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