May 19, 2009
Lisa Nesselson, our guest correspondent at this year's Cannes Film Festival, graces this blog with her account of what's transpired so far, including the long awaited appearance of "Antichrist,"the latest opus from self-confessed "world's greatest filmmaker," Lars Von Trier.
We're, like, five days into the 62nd Cannes Film Festival,
and I gotta tell you, "Agora" rocks and "Kinatay"
sucks. Oh, wait -- this isn't that kind
of blog.
Five days into the 62nd Festival de Cannes, the lint-free
navel around which the cinema revolves much like the earth in its eternal
trajectory around the sun, one can only gaze at the screen with thousands of
one's fellow acolytes and marvel at being here at the apex and epicenter of
cinematic creativity. Oh, wait, this
isn't that kind of blog either.
Since it would be unwieldy for the auditorium's capacity of
1800 international film critics to shout out how many stars they'd give a movie
they've just seen, the crowd resorts to applause and/or boos. In the
Competition line-up, Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist" has gotten the
most of the latter to date.
Von Trier confesses in the press kit that this is "the
most important film of my entire career!" Although the
writer/director/provocateur has always had a knack for self-promotion -- on no
fewer than three occasions during the film's Monday press conference he managed
to work into the conversation that he's "the best director in the
world" -- even he'd have a hard time topping the wording of the press release from the Pompidou Center in Paris for the
complete retrospective of his work (including films he shot between the ages of
11 and 13) slated from June 8-22.20 For
anyone trying to situate Von Trier's place in the creative firmament, he is
described as "a Danish filmmaker both adulated and decried, and heir to
Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles."
Rats. I was going to
drop that very sequence of names to describe myself on a job application. (I
know, I know -- it's not all that often you see a classified ad under the
heading PRETENTIOUS MYTHOMANIACS WANTED.)
"Antichrist" takes place almost entirely in a
remote wooded setting full of tall trees, the better to go out on a limb. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe, a
formerly loving couple afflicted by bottomless, entirely justified, grief,
throw themselves into a form of self-prescribed couples therapy such as that
dispensed in the environs of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Throw in some
talking animals, literally stunning visuals and Mother Nature's most devilish
tricks and what's not to like?
Speaking of being anti-Christ, religious opinions create a
world of trouble in Alejandro Amenabar's "Agora." Set in the 4th
century A.D. in Alexandria,
Egypt, the film
introduces us to one of at least three real-life heroines in this year's line-up
who were born far far too soon for their own good.
Rachel Weisz glows with a beautiful mind to match her hardly
shoddy exterior as Hypatia, an astronomer and philosopher whose father Theon
(Michael Lonsdale) is head librarian at the Library of Alexandria.
(There were two -- who knew?
The first branch was destroyed when Caesar hit town and the second one
was sacked by fundamentalist Christians offended by the open stacks of scrolls
and intellectual activity.)
Hypatia is pleasantly obsessed with the question of whether
or not the earth moves, while her fellow citizens are more and more occupied
with dissing each other's gods. In the
lull after the authorities stopped tossing them to the nearest lion, Christians
have been fruitful and multiplied. Once
they are permitted to openly profess their beliefs in the title spot, the
science-and-reason crowd, made up of pagans, is quickly outnumbered. The pre-show for the Dark Ages gets underway
when Christians not only get the upper hand but take lethal issue with the
Jews.
Two men, one well-born, the other a slave, are in love with
Hypatia who, interestingly, doesn't see the percentage in giving up her life of
free inquiry to be subservient to a man, however much he supports her
intellectual pursuits.
Another real-life figure to get the short end of the distaff
stick is Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), a talented and headstrong young
seamstress and clothing designer who, in an English village in 1818, meets the
poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw), to whose name the words "doomed" and
"Romantic" are frequently affixed.
They are the protagonists of Jane Campion's sensitive and affecting
"Bright Star."
Shortly after meeting Miss Brawne, Mr. Keats calls her a
minx. He may even call her a minxess.
We need to revive this charming and only slightly derogatory
term posthaste. Imagine the cleansing
thrill of reading "Miss Britney Spears, the noted minx, is said to possess
external reproductive organs of a most fetching contour. This our reporter was
able to confirm upon witnessing the minx of the hour's perhaps less than demure
egress from a motor-driven conveyance."
Polite English society of less than 200 years ago was so
attuned to language and so constrained in its courtship rituals and notions of
propriety that a man sending a few lines of prose or verse to a female
acquaintance was on a par with buying someone a drink followed by "Your
place or mine?" today. Anyone
wondering what it might be like to be lovesick will find as fine a cinematic
depiction as possible on screen.
With each utterance an auditory feast and comparative
literature the stuff of spirited daily conversation, one can't help wondering
how we went from this to Twitter in less than two centuries.
The third real-life heroine is Ida Dalser (Giovanna
Mezzogiorno), depicted in Marco Bellochio's "Vincere," who gave birth to Mussolini's son Benito Albino, who the budding
young journalist and politician recognized only to later doctor the documents,
deny Ida's claim and have her committed to an insane asylum.
Ida stuck to her guns with heartbreaking results.
Mussolini in 1907 at a public meeting asks to borrow a
watch. Noting the time he declares
"If God does not strike me dead in the next 5 minutes, He doesn't
exist." God was obviously on his coffee break -- or playing cards with the
unemployed pagan gods left over from the old Roman Empire
-- and so the wider world as well as Ida Dalser and her unfortunate son got
saddled with the original deadbeat dad.
On an infinitely lighter note, on Friday Martin Scorsese
helped dedicate the Roger
Ebert Conference
Center at the American
Pavillion with Roger and his wife Chaz in attendance and beaming. Scorsese, the
subject of Roger's most recent book, praised Roger for being such a champion of
all kinds of films and Roger, using the voice synthesizer on his computer explained
that he'd spent 7 years of his life in Cannes
"one week at a time."
Filmjerk.com added a few years to Roger's track record,
reporting that "Sisk then introduced the
Cannes Festival Director, Thierry Fremaux, who also spoke of Ebert's key
involvement with the Festival since its inception." Roger is an extraordinary
and prolific writer, but Mr. and Mrs. Ebert hadn't "incepted" Roger
yet when the first festival got underway in 1939, only to be called off when
Germany invaded Poland.
This led directly to WWII and Quentin Tarantino's
"Inglourious Basterds."
Which the world (or that portion of its population in Cannes) will discover on
Wednesday.
-- Lisa Nesselson
May 18, 2009
I was about ten minutes into the Criterion DVD of "The
Friends of Eddie Coyle" (1974 | $29.95 | it will be coming out tomorrow)
when it occurred to me that every film
about Boston
worth seeing involves crime, the mob or neighborhood gangs. Is that the city I
live in? What happened to the Freedom Trail, the Red Sox, stuffy Brahmins,
Henry James, the Kennedys, the Blue Laws or "Make Way For Ducklings?"
It would be easy to blame Peter Yates adaptation of the
George Higgins novel for this trend, but, as Paul Sherman notes in his
indespensible guide "Big Screen Boston," it
has been going on since "Mystery Street" (1950) , a
kind of "CSI: Boston" directed by John Sturges, which Sherman identifies
as the first Hollywood feature shot here on location. Since then, unless you
include the likes of last year's "Bride Wars," the Best of Boston flicks would
involve grim, sour little noirs, thrillers and melodramas like "The Boston
Strangler" (1968), "The Thomas Crown
Affair (1968)," "The Brinks Job " (1978),"The Verdict" (1982),
"Good Will Hunting" (1997), "Monument
Ave." (1998) "
and the recent spate of Dennis Lehane-ish tales like "Mystic River" (2003), "The
Departed" (2006)
and "Gone Baby Gone" (2007) . Meanwhile,
Ben Affleck's "The Town," an adaptation of Chuck Hogan's "Prince of Thieves," a
noirish, truish story about a Charlestown bank heist, starts shooting locally
in a couple of weeks.
And, of course, there is the "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," which
is the template for all of the above.
Had you lived in the city in the period in which it takes
place, watching the film is like time traveling: everything comes back, the
sideburns, the leather jackets, the hardened little neighborhood punks, the
flyblown bowling alleys, the vomit-streaked second balcony of the old Garden,
the sad and dark and treacherous "bahs."
Despite the erratic accent, Mitchum is near perfect (he kind
of looks like the Bear in the Bruins commercials on NESN during their late
playoff run)
as the fifty-ish mob gofer and thug desperate to avoid jail time.
Richard Jordan as the double dealing Federal agent Foley is baby-faced and creepy (is he
inspired by convicted real life FBI agent John Connolly?
). Peter Boyle as the dicey bar owner Dillon presides over a joint that once graced
the now tony corner of Newbury
Street and Mass Av. Steven Keats as the
gap-toothed gun dealer Jackie Brown (he looks a little like a weary Ben
Stiller) has one of the best of the film's many great Higgins lines ("This
life's hard, man, but it's harder if you're stupid.") And could those college kid bank robbers Brown
is selling M-16s to be the Weather Underground?
Watching that brought me back to the early 80s and the days when I was a furniture
mover for Marakesh Express and did a job with this guy who a few days later narrowly escaped
being arrested by the FBI; he was alleged to have been a member of a
leftwing terrorist group accused of shooting a New Jersey State Trooper and was on the Ten Most Wanted list. Who knew? He was a good mover, though he did
talk a lot about his attack dogs. And when
Coyle and Dillon are watching Bobby Orr and the Bruins battle the Black Hawks they are sitting in what
looked like the same section in the Garden where I got stomped by drunken,
brawling college students when I worked as a security guard at the 1977 Beanpot
Tournament.
Ah, memories. So I guess these films are about the Boston that I know and
lived in after all.
May 17, 2009
In which Egoyan deftly avoids getting mired in my
pseudo-Jungian posturing about the internet and the collective unconscious and
calls Andrew Sarris on the present state of the Auteur Theory.
Also: sex. [Part 1 of this interview appears here.]
PK: It's sort of like a repository of the subconscious of
everybody is using it.
AE: But that's very interesting dramatically, right? It's
very interesting that we have access to that and then the question is how do we
define those communities? If we understand that it's a repository of collective
subconscious, then what is the manifestation of that in a physical way? So is
it, you know, your classmates? Is it your classmates' parents? Or is it, you
know, as Simon finds, it just sort of expands rapidly out from that.
PK: Has your son seen the movie?
AE: He had a very strong emotional response but I think
it's... yeah, I mean I never expected nor set up the screenings of my previous
films for him to watch. He did that entirely on his own time and volition. But
I wanted his feedback on this one in particular, so...I think he really...He likes
the language of it.
PK: You mean the visual language?
AE: Just the way it's structured, the way the story's told.
PK: And does he show any signs of becoming interested in
making films himself?
AE: Not films, he likes writing a lot.
PK: How, uh, retro.
AE: Yeah, how retro, right.
PK: You should encourage that.
AE: I shouldn't, I know.
PK: He'll probably be one of the last people that writes in
the world. You get sort of a sense of the danger, or the depths, of the weirdness
of the internet when he starts to get in touch with that group of people who
are like mourning the disaster that never happened, and the skinhead, and it
just seems to be getting into creepier and creepier territory. I was wondering
why you maybe didn't take that even further than you did.
AE: Well, I felt that in a way that to put him on the cusp
of a situation where the police might think that he's about to stage some sort
of attack in the school, which I think we take it to that point, where he imagines
that...And that's as far as I really needed it to go. Because there is a lot of
stuff that we cut out, I mean, where there were a lot more crazy sort of people
around him, but it seemed forced and it sort of took away from what Simon was
actually, you know, headed for himself.
PK: Not to harp on it, but do you monitor your son's internet
experience?
AE: No, you know, we haven't. We're just very open with him.
We monitor some of his game playing, but not the internet, and I hope that's
the right decision. I think just given the kind of kid he is...again, I think I
would have been horrified if my parents were monitoring that sort of behavior
when I was his age, so. At this age it's difficult to do, right. If you're 16
you can break anything if you want anyhow. Before, when he was really young, he
didn't really have access to it at all, so. I think it's different now, I think
if you have a kid who's like 6-years-old you would have to be probably more
vigilant. But he didn't really have access to it until he was in his, you know,
early adolescence.
PK: I've interviewed Don McKellar a few times and one time,
I don't know how it came up, but he said that he had someone close who was
killed in the Lockerbie plane disaster, had you heard that?
AE: Yeah, yeah.
PK: Did that have any input into your story at all?
AE: No, no, actually, I didn't recall that, actually. I
think that this actual story [the true story that "adoration" is partly based
on in which an Arab terrorist had his pregnant Irish girlfriend unknowingly
bring a bomb onto and El Al flight] left a huge impression on me when it
happened in '86. It came up again when I was reading Robert Fisk's book, "The
Great War for Civilization." He
devotes 5 or 8 pages to this, because it really was one of the most remarkable
episodes in those early days when we realized that terrorists could go that far
in destructing human beings.
PK: This is even before Al-Qaeda too.
AE: Yeah, and the amazing thing is that he's [the terrorist]
completely unrepentant, the person who did this. He was up for parole and he
refuses to sort of, in anyway, atone for what he did, so. And this idea of
creating this fictional child from this episode was really compelling.
PK: Was there an actual child?
AE: There was a girl that who was born to the Irish mother,
but I didn't pursue that.
PK: So you don't know what's happened to them now.
AE: No.
PK: But the guy is in jail.
AE: Yeah, he's apparently serving the longest prison term in
British history.
PK: You have to admire that in a perverse way, that he would
be honest to the parole board and say that he's still not repentant, because he
could have got out of it.
AE: But he does have a child, right, that's the amazing
thing...the idea that that could be such an abstraction is fascinating, or
horrifying.
PK: You couldn't conceive of any circumstances where that
would have crossed your mind, I imagine? Sacrificing any member of your family
for some sort of ideal like that.
AE: I think that's what comes up in the film. If you're of
that persuasion, I mean, you would get on the plane yourself. The idea of
actually engineering it so that someone else becomes the detonating device
raises all sorts of issues, I think. And, again, how was that planned? I mean,
is that why he got her pregnant? Was it that calculated? It just seems so mind-boggling.
PK: I think the most interesting response to his motivation
was the guy that said, "Well maybe he wasn't a coward but he just really wanted
to be a spectator." You know to admire the atrocity he created, as if it was a
work of art. Which is kind of like the motivation of some of the other
characters. They're manipulating people in order to put on a performance of
some kind, for whatever reason. So it's kind of like a metaphor for the
directing process. Did you have that in mind when you did it?
AE: I think that there are lots of metaphors for the
directing process in a lot of characters that I create. I think that as the
technology has advanced, we all have this opportunity to try and manipulate and
orchestrate other human beings to do things they wouldn't be doing otherwise. I
think that first came up, really, from my first films. In "Next of Kin," where
a boy tries to kind of redirect a family, a make believe family. And I guess in
that way the films are really personal, right. I'm very aware of the perversity
of my enterprise.
PK: So you're an auteur. God help you.
AE: You know, it was funny when I read this statement by
Andrew Sarris about "Adoration." I was wondering, I wonder if he'll even remember what that
word means, you know. I mean, yes, I was really versed in that idea, of the
auteur theory, and like I said at the beginning it seemed to me that there was
an incredible possibility that films could be read like books. Now I do think
that still happens, when you look at how films perform on DVD, and people
probably collect DVDs like they collect books and read those DVDs. I'm not sure
if happens in cinemas as much though.
PK: You get people that are repeat customers. They go to the
same movie, you know, again and again to catch the nuances and see how it's put
together.
AE: But do they want to see it on screen to do that, or do
they wait ‘til it comes out on DVD?
PK: I think that's one of the reasons "Star Trek" is pulling
in all that money, is that you get all these people who are going...I know
somebody who's seen it three times in the first week. I don't know if that's
the same thing, but I think it is partly, because the film is well made and
probably people can draw subtleties and allusions to their lore of "Star Trek."
I've gone to movies again on the screen that I particularly liked or perplexed
me, and it's not the same when you see it on DVD, I don't think. But that's old
fashioned, I guess. So, your previous film, "Where the Truth Lies," would you describe that as a Hollywood
experience?
AE: It was an odd hybrid...it certainly had the production
values of a Hollywood movie because of the
incredible, weird, money that the producer was able to access. And it's
certainly a Hollywood story, I mean, I think
that the characters are public entertainment figures, and they certainly see
themselves in that world. It's certainly set in Hollywood, a lot of it. Is it a classic Hollywood film? Probably not. I mean, the narrative
construction of it is probably more complex than a traditional Hollywood film. But it certainly has the gloss and feel
of one, and probably that it was part of the stylistic approach to it was kind
of to make these references to a certain type of film. I think that's really
embedded in that movie in a number of ways. Because it's being narrated by one
of the characters as though he were in a Hollywood film, and I think Kevin
Bacon's character is trying to tell this version of a story that he would
rather people not know about, and the best way for him to tell it is to make it
into this very rich and overblown and decadent kind of Hollywood tale. And it
serves his purposes to do that, so in order to show that, I had to inhabit that
movie.
PK: It's got kind of a "Sunset Boulevard" structure to it.
AE: Yeah. I mean, I am a huge fan of noir and I came to
realize that the neo-noir movement in the 70s was closer to the actual noir
movement than we are now to the neo-noir movement. I sort of felt that there
was an opportunity to have another take on it.
PK: I think Tarantino maybe took us off on a tangent on
that.
AE: Yeah, but it was an amazing tangent, you know. like I
remember "Pulp Fiction" came out the same year as Exotica and it was pretty amazing, you know, how open people were
at that moment to kind of these structural reinventions.
PK: That really was quite a year. I had forgotten that they
came out the same year.
AE: And also "Before the Rain" was also that year as well.
PK: That was like when you could say, oh maybe cinema will
survive for another 100 years. Then... "Titanic" comes out.
Which I kind of
liked, actually...well there you go. So was it a Hollywood
experience in the terms that you have people who are not letting you do
everything that you want to do because there's a lot of money invested and it
has to make a lot of money?
AE: Well I mean look, it's a natural product of, the higher
the budget, the more pressure there is to accommodate different agendas. You
can't be naïve about that, and that's one of the reasons why you make a film
like "Adoration" for a smaller budget, because it's a very specific film and
you want to have complete control over it. It's not a mystery. That's the film
industry. It's always been like that, and if you're fortunate enough to have
made some people a lot of money you might be able to avoid some of that, but,
you know, none of my films have really been box office hits, even "Exotica" or "The Sweet Hereafter."
They were very modest
box office. And that's just the nature of what I do and it's a particular
sensibility. It was thrilling for me to be able to explore the territory of "Where
the Truth Lies" and to paint on that sort of palette, but you know there were
things that clearly didn't work for certain people. It's interesting though,
it's had a much more positive response in DVD and it's actually coming on to "Exotica"
in terms of people watching it. But you know, films are...
PK: It's got sex in it too.
AE: Yeah it's got sex, I suppose, though I don't really know
if that's much of a sell anymore. People can get sex anywhere. I had a lot of
fun making it. I enjoyed making it, and I think the people who respond to it
enjoy it on its own terms. But certainly in terms of my body of work it stands
out as something of an anomaly.
PK: You didn't write it, for example.
AE: No, well I wrote the adaptation, but not the original
book.
PK: Did you ever consider with this movie, for example - you
mentioned that you were very taken by the story - to actually follow up what
the character would've done, you know the real character, instead of having
somebody pretend to be that character...Did you ever think of maybe telling that
story instead of like taking it up one more remove from the real?
AE: Um not really. You mean to actually track her down, the
actual child?
PK: Yeah, the actual child.
AE: It's an interesting documentary subject, absolutely. I
think it would be fascinating, but it's for someone else to do.
PK: Or fictionalize the story of the actual kid?
AE: It becomes a problem if I wanted to use this technology,
because if it happened in '86 then I would have to set the story in 2001, 2002,
right. And it wouldn't have made sense. So, it was a toss up. There's a whole kind
of explanation in the outtakes, as to why it's not that particular story. But,
you know, it seemed to muddy the matters. I think if people remember it they'll
remember it for what it is.
NEXT: Critics who suggest better ways of making the director's movie
and why they are not helping.
May 15, 2009
Every new film by Atom Egoyan is
a cinema event. Some are masterpieces -- "Exotica" (1994) and
"The Sweet Hereafter" (1997) are two of the best films of the 90s, and the latter I would put on my top ten
for that decade. Even when they do not totally satisfy -- I had some
reservations about his new film "Adoration"--
they inevitably provoke thoughts about such issues as identity, innocence,
guilt and the role of technology. And he is one of the smartest people making
films these days and always fun to talk to, as I was privileged to do so
recently.
Hey, why not listen in?
PK: When was the last time we talked? During "Exotica," I
think?
AE: I know we met during "Exotica," and I know we met after
that, but it could have been...I really don't remember, I remember "Exotica"
because it was my first tour.
PK: Have you been touring a lot with this one?
AE: I mean yeah, not necessarily coming to Boston,
but I mean I got from, I was doing London and
then I was in Germany and
then I just came out to LA and San
Francisco for the film festival. It's all so strange
because I'm trying to coordinate it with a post on this new movie. We waited a
long time before releasing this; it was premiered a year ago in Cannes, so...I was
expecting that it would be a bit more organized, but it's just the way it is. I
think that there's just a lot of stuff coming out now. It's a different time,
right, than the 90s.
PK: It's tough competing with "Star Trek," I guess.
AE: Yes, there's that. There's that annoying little film
that kinda happened to open the same weekend. It was funny seeing Bruce
Greenwood, he was up here promoting "Star Trek."
PK: He was in "The Sweet Hereafter,' right?
AE: Right, and "Exotica. 
PK: Well, he did well, he had that bug crawling down his
throat. You saw the movie right?
AE: No, I didn't...So you just gave that away.
PK: Your film is probably more worthy of discussion. How
have you found the response?
AE: Well, you know it's interesting. It depends. I think
there are people who are incredibly passionate and lock into and can read it
and then there are people who don't. And I think the division between those
types of audiences, even in terms of the types of films I make, has become more
extreme, you know, and I think its just a question of attention span, really,
and being able to read, as I said, a piece of film in the same way that you
would read a book or that you would be able to devote yourself to something
that someone has spent a long time with. Maybe its always been that way, I'm
not sure, or maybe I just wasn't as aware of it as I've become, but it seems
that people who take the time and get the ambitions of the piece, I think
respond really well to it. And I've had incredibly great conversations with
people about it. And then there are people who just say "oh that too complex,"
or, "oh, I don't understand what's going on," or, "there's too much going on."
They're just very dismissive, and it's easy to be dismissive. That's I think
what I've found, of course, with anything if you want to not engage with it
then you just don't engage with it.
PK: I find that more and more it becomes sort of cool to be
dismissive of things that seem intellectually challenging.
AE: Yeah, well I'll tell you the other thing that was
horrifying about this last tour on the stage is this just incredible
proliferation of people who have blogs and who have sites and a lot of them are
just really unschooled when it comes to being able to engage in any
conversation about filmmaking. There are
a few of them who are really great, like incredibly ardent and focused. But
there are a lot of people that have a platform now and just don't really have
the history or the chops to deal with it, and are really giving these very
cursory and quite ironic sort of reviews of things that they don't have any
formation or ability to read or understand. I mean, I don't mean to sound
elitist, it's just I know you've been around a while and I'm sure you're
noticing this as well. There's just this incredible...Maybe it's always been the
case. Again, I think I'm aware of the fact that I just wasn't really as aware
of how there's a certain type of person who has a platform who wouldn't have
been able to express their views before in a way that would've been
PK: Ignorant blowhards?
EA: Yeah. And some of them become personalities, and they
have followings, and that's a little scary.
PK: Would the initials of one be HK? Not to mention any
names.
AE: Actually, I did
meet him this past time, and I don't know what he's up to these days, but when
he first came on the scene he was actually earnest.
PK: A symptom of this trend might be all the film critics
who have been canned in the past few years. It's indicative, I think, of the
fact that the whole idea of talking about movies as an intellectual thing or as
an art form is held in contempt by a lot of people.
AE: Yeah, and I think that unfortunately extends down to the critical community, because
they're afraid of their editors accusing them of being too elite, or too
rarified, and that's unfortunate as well. So yes, it is encouraging when I can
still, I mean obviously it was a favorable review reading "The New York Times," but even "USA Today,"
thought that was really considerate, and I thought it was really great that
they're able to buck that trend.
PK: So you would say that the internet among whatever other effects
it's had, has just not elevated the dialogue on film.
AE: Well, there's no question that it's elevated the
intensity around film. Film is one of the things people love to talk about, so
there's an incredible forum for people talking about film. It's just, like the
internet does - and I think you see this in the film a little bit too - it
creates this excitement, but it doesn't necessarily leave a lot of room for
consideration or pause, because people have to be engaged at all times, and
there's not a lot of filtering, so I would say there's a lot more discussion around films, it's just that the time an
individual film is being given or treated, it's just diminished.
That also has to do with that there are just a lot more
films being made, and that's one of the beauties of the digital revolution.
When I started making films, it was a very cumbersome and expensive
proposition, and you had to convince people that you had an idea that was worth
telling, and then you had to kind of bring together some sort of a budget.
We're now in a time where anyone can create images and find global distribution
for them, I mean that was unthinkable 20 years ago, and that's very exciting,
but it also means that there's a lot of stuff to wade through, and I think
people become overwhelmed. So the actual fact that a film has been made is not,
in and of itself, cause for any sort of attention.
Maybe that's the way it should be. Film has taken the place
of a novel, or any other art form, where people have access to the actual
production. It's just that there's been a lot more pressure on the festival
programmers, and the critics certainly, to discern what's worth talking about.
PK: Throughout your career the films you've made have taken
as part of their subject the current development in communications or media
technology. In this case it's the internet. What made you decide to take on
that topic at this point?
AE: Well, because I'm dealing with a 16 year old kid. And
that's part of his life.
PK: That's a tough age.
EA: Yeah, I think that having a film on the cusp of turning
16, you realize the internet is huge for them, and they have whole identities
that they use to communicate with in chat rooms and amongst their friends,
which might be quite different from the way they relate to each other in their
day-to-day life. So what I was trying to do in "Adoration" was create a visual
equivalent of what a chat room feels like, because text is just not that
interesting to film. And I think it is really exciting for someone to find a
forum around their work or their ideas or their experiences, but it can only
take you so far, and you still then have to kind of deal with these things in
the real world, and that's the passage that Simon's going through.
PK: Does that technology exist yet?
AE: It does, but I've glamorized it. On Skype
you can go up 9 people
PK: It's like the
Hollywood Squares.
EA: Yea, and iChat,
but its not that fast, its not equal to what you're seeing in the film. We also
invented a bit of technology where he can actually watch himself as he's laying
it down, I think there's that one moment, it's a little futuristic...but I didn't
want it to feel SciFi. I wanted it to feel, you know, current.
PK: I bought it as a state of the art sort of thing. How
would he be able to afford to pay for that, though?
AE: It's his grandfather. His grandfather's loaded. I mean,
the grandfather forced these gifts on him - the cell phone, the computers, you
know. There's no amount of lucre coming from the grandfather's side, right. But
that's money certainly not finding its way to Tom [the grandfather's son and
the boy's adoptive uncle played by Scott Speedman].
PK: To make up for his whole distortion of the past, I
guess.
AE: Yeah.
PK: That seems to be a refrain in some of your films, is
that you've got a young person who is trying to reclaim the past in order to
take charge of their own future. Have you noticed that as a theme?
AE: Uh, it is. But its only...You're not so aware of it when
you're making it [the film], but certainly when someone brings it up like
yourself and you go: yes, sure. And again, it's that process of negotiating
technologies in order to discern. It's kind of embarrassing how clear a line
there is between, let's say, Van in "Family
Viewing" or Raffi in "Ararat." They're
both young men who are trying to understand their own histories and have to
deal with technologies that can either enhance or diminish their experiences,
their own lives.
PK: In this case is your son sort of the inspiration for the
protagonist of the movie?
AE: I mean, the age is, you know, because it brings back a
lot of memories of when you were that age, and what you were grappling with.
But I mean in many ways he's just a better adjusted person than I was at that
age...there were a lot of things I was dealing with, and high school drama was a
revolution for me, it was this incredible opportunity to kind of create
dramatic scenarios from things I was experiencing, and be able to share that
with friends and parent. That was just so rich for me, and the relationship I
had with this particular grammar teacher at the time, who was very encouraging,
and I've been revisiting a lot of that time in my own history. And I think
that's what the film emerged from, this idea of a boy who is seized by this
opportunity, who doesn't necessarily have the...he's not like one of these drama
guys, so the teacher, who because of her own history, understands what he's
doing, guides him, and yet, she has her own agenda. And I think that's probably
one of the more challenging aspects of the film, is that Sabine [played by
Egoyan's wife and frequent collaborator, Arsinée Khanjian]
is telling the boy that she's doing one thing but really she's doing something
very different, you know, I think that the idea of teaching this kid about
multicultural, what tolerances are, that's just a pretext for getting into this
guys house, right.
And I think that's the other thing I've always been
fascinated by, is that in the dramas that I write, how you can never really
understand what someone else's agenda is, how you can be drawn into a situation
and find it really compelling without really understanding what's at play, and
I find that to be very rich sort of territory.
PK: I remember this scene in the movie at the end when he
throws the cell phone into the fire...I've often wanted to do that with other
people's cell phones, but...
AE: But there haven't been fires. They're [the other people]
usually in theaters.
PK: I know, really. Do you have a cell phone, and how deeply
involved are you in the technology? Do you twitter?
AE: I don't twitter; I have a blackberry. I got it when I
started working on this new film, and I realized the people who I was working
with were expecting that sort of access. The problem is that I'll probably keep
it now...
PK: So you were resisting for a while.
EA: Oh yeah, I don't think we need to be that connected all
the time.I mean,
I think twitter is the best example of that. That to me just seems an insane
amount of intimacy. That's the problem, is that I think there's been a major
shift in my thinking about this. In the films that I was doing in the 80s there
was this sense that technology was creating these filters, and was somehow
draining us of inabilities to feel intimacy with each other. And what's become
obviously these new technologies is, in fact, the opposite. We're just
saturated with a degree of intimacy we could never have anticipated, and we
still don't quite know what to do with it, right. I think the idea of the
impulse to let people know what you're up to at every moment is, to me,
unfathomable.
PK: Narcissistic is a word that comes to mind.
EA: But there's a casualness to the narcissism which has,
you know, becomes really....and I guess combine that with the inherent narcissism
of an adolescent who's trying to figure out his own life, you know, and the
desire to dramatize their own life, you know, which is a huge part of
adolescence as well, and I think that's all part of what's happening in the
movie.
PK: Plus I think it alienates you from your
actual experience of what's going on in the real world. You know, like walking
down the street and seeing the birds or something like that.
AE: But, you know, the fact is most people are conditioned
now to hearing something, to having a soundtrack to their day-to-day life, you
know, and it's such a seductive concept, that once you're sort of hooked on
about it, it's difficult to let it go.
PK: You think that's a bad direction?
AE: I try not to be moralistic about it. I mean, I think it
is what it is. So, when I'm creating drama, I'm trying to understand my
characters navigating themselves in the world as it appears to me now. I think
there are good things and then there are bad things and I'm trying not to be
too moralistic, and I think that my whole view of technology has always been that,
as I said before, is that it's something that can enhance and give you access
to your past, in the way that Ben finds these little home videos and family
viewing, or certainly the expedition that Raffi goes on in "Ararat," and
certainly what this boy is dealing with. I mean, I don't know if he would have
been as excited to go as far as he does if it wasn't for the intensity of what
he's experiencing on the internet, you know, the questions that are being
raised. It's just that by nature, the technology is not designed to provide
resolutions. It's just too open ended. It just feels like you can keep going
and going, and so it's really up to us individually to decide when to get on
and off.
Next: Terrorism and the internet as the collective unconscious!
May 14, 2009
Perhaps in order to combat the juggernaut of "Star Trek" which probably will be dominating the screens when her film "The Girlfriend Experience" comes out next month, Sasha Grey made this porn parody. I say, more power to her. She will go far.
PK: One of the things, in the other interviews I've read,
that really bugs you, is when people think that all people in your line of work
are victims. What is your background? It makes me wonder what sort of
upbringing or what sort of influences you had that made you interested in this
sort of work.
SG: I don't necessarily think it's my upbringing...I know that
people always try to find a reason, "Oh, there must be a reason why she did
this." I think it's sometimes disappointing that people can't just accept,
whether they agree with it or not, that an eighteen-year-old girl can make a
conscious decision to step into a career that most people probably won't agree
with. I think it takes balls to do that. To go with it full force no matter
what the criticism will be. But I say that because I've dealt with the media
from the very beginning of my career, you know. I did the article that Steven
and his writer "discovered" me in. I had only been in the business for about
two and a half, three months at that point, so from there that led to being on
tabloid television the first six months of my career.
So all those things fell in place very quickly, like a
domino effect, and every time I did one of these things, it's just the media,
it's selling things. I get that, and I went on there knowing that I would be
placed in those circumstances, but I was playing the same game they were: they
were going to use me and I was going to use them. It's publicity at the end of
the day: I need to get show ratings, and I want fans, and I want the exposure.
But do I agree with what they're saying? No, because I'm not going to sit there
and let somebody persecute me for my beliefs, you know?
And I go back to judgment. You know, somebody might be a
Christian or a Mormon or a Scientologist, I'm not going to sit here and
persecute you for your beliefs just because I disagree with them. I'll
respectfully disagree, and it's just sometimes really frustrating in that
context when it's like, "There must be a real reason for you doing this psychologically."
Yeah, I saw something that I wanted to do, and I wanted to challenge it, and if
you don't want to accept that that's fine but don't tell me where I came from.
PK: What was the first porn movie that you saw, the one that
made you think this is something you could do well?
SG: I'm afraid to admit I watched a lot of free porn, which
I don't advocate. Because I was at my girlfriend's house a lot, so I'd just go
on her computer. It wasn't really just one thing cause I watched, primarily, I
watched gonzo, so it was, you know, sex scenes without the story. That's what I
was watching primarily. So I couldn't say it was one thing, I think it's just a
buildup of seeing kind of the same repetitive nature in everything I watched.
PK: And after a while it became sort of too repetitive and
you thought that maybe...
SG: Yeah, and I mean, you know as a sexual being, yeah, I
enjoyed watching it. But I think there's so much more that can be done. There
is so much free stuff out there, why would you want to pay for something that
you can get for free already, and I think with the way the economy is right
now, I'm hoping it'll go back to the way it was in the late ‘70s and the early
‘80s where you actually had to make a real film with sex in it. And people
actually wanted to pay for it and go watch it all the way through.
PK: When "Deep Throat" came out, it was the number one movie
in America
at the box office.
SG: I actually did a remake of that.
PK: You did?
SG: Yeah, a couple months ago. It came out in March.
PK: Is it, like, a full-length feature?
SG: Yeah. But it's called "Throat"
because we couldn't get the licensing
rights to the actual title. It's not an exact remake, it's kind of a modern
adaptation. You still have a girl with a clit in her throat but it's quite
different. It's more of a dark comedy than just a straight comedy. And you're
dealing with different characters, a different storyline.
PK: Are you going to remake some of the others, like "Behind
the Green Door?"
SG: I think they were actually talking about doing that.
They already did "Debbie does Dallas"
and...
PK: Just like regular Hollywood.
SG: Remaking everything. Can't make anything for yourself. I
mean, I took part in it but I do kind of believe like, why are we doing
something that's already been done pretty good?
PK: Do you get any resistance from your family members or
anything like that?
SG: Yeah, my mom. I don't think any parent would jump for
joy that their kid's doing adult films. But we still talk a couple times a
week. We still have a good relationship. And, you know, we respectfully
disagree with each other's beliefs.
PK: She's not a Mormon.
SG: No, she's Catholic.
PK: Oh.
SG: So, you know, I love her, and she's my mom, and I'm not
going to be a child and not talk to her because she doesn't support my career
in my life. But, you know, she gave me this life, so I do love her. My brother
and my dad and my sister are all, like, "Don't do drugs and accomplish what you
say you want to accomplish."
PK: Have they seen this movie?
SG: No, but they will.
PK: They'll see this one.
SG: Yeah.
PK: But not the others.
SG: No. My mom did buy my "Penthouse" though. She's like,
"This is acceptable, I can go buy this." She picks it up and is like, "This is
my daughter!" to the guy at the newsstand. So I'm like, what is that double
standard, you know, why can a guy like Hugh Hefner have this huge empire, and
he's glorified because maybe it's a little softer and a little tamer, so we're
ok with that. But a woman tries to do it, and she's a slut and there's
something wrong with her. But Hugh Hefner's fine. He's completely fine.
PK: Have you ever met
him?
SG: I haven't, actually.
PK: Do you admire the sort of thing he did? It was very
pre-feminist but he did sort of contribute to the sexual revolution.
SG: Definitely. I definitely think he contributed to the
sexual revolution whether "Playboy" still is or isn't, I wouldn't want to
comment on that. But I go back to the whole double standard issue, it's like,
why is it ok for society to accept a man who runs a pornographic company, but
it's not ok for a young woman to do the same thing. Because young women are
vilified when they do it. But men are glorified. And I think that's wrong.
PK: Do you think it's changing?
Slowly, yeah. I don't think it'll be something that happens
overnight, but I think by doing interviews like this or speaking at Brandeis
last night where you actually get to be up close with, whether it be a fan or
just somebody who might disagree with you but still wants to hear you talk,
it's showing a new breed of porn stars, I think. I did this whole op-ed piece
for this college newspaper because this girl was claiming that I was abused and
degraded and there's something seriously wrong with me, so I wrote back. I
don't necessarily always feel the need to, because, again, I go back to you can
have your own opinion, but when my fans bring that kind of stuff to me, and my
fans start to question me, then that's not OK. So I do think that we are,
culturally speaking, at a time where women are becoming more powerful in their
sexuality and saying, "Hey, I'm not afraid. You can call me what you want, but
this is my choice and I'm happy with this choice."
PK: So what's your
next project?
SG: I go home to LA tonight, and next week I'll start
shooting my directorial debut. I'm working on a sex philosophy book, it's
coupled with my photography, and I have an adult novelty line coming out this
summer. And I might be filming another film with Lee Demarbre in
Canada,
who I did "Smashcut" with as well.
PK: That's kind of like a horror, slasher kind of movie?
SG: Yeah, it's...
PK: Not any sex in it or anything?
SG: No, it's kind of inspired by Herschell Gordon Lewis' films. It's definitely
campy and fun, but I kind of see it as a dark comedy as well, in certain spots.
It's very classic Canadian comedy, which I enjoyed because it's not something I
was really familiar with before I shot the film.
PK: And your directorial debut is what kind of movie?
SG: It will be a feature, actually, for adult films. For my
company. It's....well, I don't want to give it away.
PK: But it's got a narrative.
SG: Yeah.
PK: And graphic sex.
SG: Mm hm.
PK: Will it appear in theaters?
SG: I am thinking of doing an R-cut to do it in independent cinemas in LA and New York.
May 13, 2009
Sasha Grey has said that before she settled on her current
name she had considered calling herself Anna Karina, after Jean-Luc Godard's
muse, lover and star of his own take on the prostitute experience, "Vivre sa vie
" (1962).
I find her more on the tough cookie side a la Julie Christie in "McCabe &
Mrs. Miller "(1971). Either way, I wouldn't
be surprised if she isn't the female Hugh Hefner before she turns 30. Here's
more of the Sasha Grey experience.
PK: You say the films that you're making and the work that
you do is being political?
SG: I think it would be stupid of me not to say they were,
you know, because you're dealing with...well, the first thing that comes to my
mind is feminism. I mean, that's the criticism I deal with up front all the
time. And again, I go back to...I don't want to force my opinions or my beliefs
or my ideology on anybody, that's not what I'm here to do, but if you want to
listen ,that's great, you know? I'm happy to share my thoughts, but in this day
and age I think all women are feminists in their own right, whether they're
anti-porn or pro-porn or somewhere in between. Outside of feminism, these adult
films are incredibly political, because you're dealing with the First
Amendment, and why are there three different adult film companies, (or maybe
two right now...one just went to jail) there are two adult film companies right
now on trial for obscenity, when obscenity is still not something that's
clearly defined in our Constitution. I feel like our rights are being taken
away or attempted at being taken away from us and it's something that we have
the right to do. We're not hurting anybody. This isn't, you know, what some
people might have thought it was in the ‘70s where it's involved with the mob
or slave trading or sex trading. Which I think, then you get into that whole subject,
now that just gets me heated talking about that kind of stuff because the adult
film industry gets tied into these groups by ill-informed people that project
their ideas: "Because you are in adult films, you must be involved with this or
you must be doing this, and you create the monsters and the evils in the
world."
PK: So its not "Boogie Nights" anymore.
SG: No. I think some people want it to be, definitely, and
that's why I say, like you asked earlier, if someone wanted to get into this
business I would say its should be something you really feel passionate about
and have more of a reason than just wanting to have fun.
PK: You're still having fun, though, doing it.
SG: Definitely, yeah.
PK: You mentioned feminism...a number of women say that
pornographic films, are products of male domination and degrade women and keep
the stereotype of women as being subjugated alive in the culture?
SG: There's two things I have to say about that: I feel, at
the end of the day, on a very general, simple level, you either like chocolate
or you like vanilla. You believe in God or you don't believe in God. So you are
entitled to your own opinion and you can have a belief in whatever you want. It's
America,
but until you are in somebody's shoes and experiencing that firsthand, it's
just an opinion. It's not a fact. So, you know, people can have their own
opinions and their own beliefs, but I won't subscribe to them. I don't feel
like I have to sit and defend myself to those people.
PK: That was one. You said you had two things.
SG: Well, that...I did say two for you.
PK: I don't think there's been any scientific proof that
pornography influences people's behavior that's really been accepted.
SG: No, I mean, there was a study about a month and a half
ago that showed Utah has the highest consumption rate of online pornography. So
the people that are telling us, and like, I hate to say this because now I feel
like I'm judging other people and now I feel like I'm becoming defensive, but
it shows you that the people or the groups that vilify the adult industry and
don't believe in advocating to young people to use sexual protection, birth
control, condoms, whatever, they don't believe in advocating that, but yet they
have the highest consumption rate of adult films, and they have a very high
rate of teen pregnancy. So I think that shows you that that's, it's like a sore
thumb. It shows you that there's a lot more to deal with in society when it
comes to sex, whether it's adult films or not.
PK: Or maybe, consumption of pornography makes people into Republicans.
SG: People are Republicans and then they become hypocritical
consumers in the things that they condemn. That's life.
PK: You've described yourself as a commodity and you have no
qualms about that. Can you discuss that a little bit?
SG: Well, getting into the adult industry at eighteen, I
knew that a lot of people would have problems with it, and I wanted people to
know that I was very clear on my intent. That, yeah, I know I'm selling sex,
and I'm not just getting into this by accident or by mistake. I may have other
reasons as well, creative and artistic goals to reach, but it's still business,
and I understand that and I'm OK with putting myself out there as an object.
Because, I think you know, Steven was saying it the other night at the
screening, at the end of the day we're all selling something and we all want
something, whether its monetary or not. But now that's transitioned from being
the laborer where I get a small piece of the pie, to now owning my own company,
directing my own films where I solely benefit.
PK: I saw the film with a group of critics who seemed to be
disappointed that there wasn't more actual sex in the film. Do you get that
response very much and do you think it's kind of a come-on to a certain extent
that you're featured as the star of the film and it's more about talking about
stuff than actually doing it?
SG: The reason for that is that you're dealing with a
specific type of escort, a woman that is a GFE. She provides more than just the
sex -
PK: What was that?
SG: GFE. The Girlfriend Experience.
PK: Oh, ok.
SG: She provides this service, so how do you depict that in
a film that distinguishes it differently from maybe a girl on the street who
has a pimp, or a girl that just gets called up to go to a hotel room and have
sex with a client and leave. These particular women, these particular escorts
provide more than just the sex and at the end of the day it is about these faux
relationships that are created with her clients.
PK: Is it hard to separate professionalism from your personal
life because sex is such an essential part of people's being so when you sell
that aspect of yourself, aren't you really selling a part of yourself that's
sort of precious or intimate? Precious...I'm sounding like a Mormon myself. Sorry.
But you know what I'm talking about, right?
PK: Yeah, I know what you mean. Uh, no, I don't feel that
way because I feel that I'm...I don't limit myself just to adult films, and I
find what I do in adult films is artistic and creative, and although I said it
is a commodity, I do see other, I see an artistic medium within it, and that's
how I personally approach it. So whether it be in adult films, what most people
know me for, or my music, or my writing, or my photography, all of these things
that I do, they're all very personal to me. My music project took
me over a year to release, because I felt more self conscious about releasing
that than I did having sex on camera. I think that's incredibly personal to put
something so special and close to your heart out there for the world to hear
and listen to because you know, not everybody will understand that and
everybody understands sex, whether they love it or hate it or are confused by
it.
So no, I don't feel like that and I think it also helps that
I have somebody in my life that understands my ideology and respects it and,
you know, unlike Chelsea, my character in "The Girlfriend Experience," I don't
have to spend quality time with the people that I'm having sex with on camera,
so everybody knows what they're coming to do on set, but I do have a very
healthy sexual relationship off camera. I think in the adult industry you have
to have an equal balance of both, because I think it can become unhealthy to
only have sex on camera.
PK: And your boyfriend is cool with all of the....
SG: [She nods in the direction of her boyfriend, Ian Cinnamon, who
is sitting next to her]. Yep, you know, I think the hardest point was at the
beginning when we first started dating, because you're learning how to balance
those two things but now, you know, I run my own agency, I book myself so I
know my schedule to a T the next two months and I work less, you know, I'm not
having sex on camera as much as I was the first few months. But that's also a
conscious business decision on my part so come time I launch my production
company, coming soon, it'll have more value.
PK: So you get as much satisfaction on the business end as
you do on the actual creative process.
SG: Definitely. I mean, I don't think I'd have it any other
way I wouldn't want
PK: So you're sublimating your sexuality. Another thing that
disturbed the critics that were in the screening was the ‘Erotic Connoisseur.'
Is that an actual...do they actually have people like that?
SG: That was something that when Steven and the writers
interviewed some of these women, I guess all of them described similar men -
these "hobbyists" that review these women and they're the scum of the earth,
basically, to these women.
PK: Like all critics, I'd say.
SG: Well, it's quite different. So I think for them
naturally they had to throw that in the film and show that part of it.
PK: He was played by an actual critic too. Glenn Kenny. I
hope he's not like that in real life.
SG: No. but he is that funny. I mean if you find that funny.
PK: The lines that he was improvising, even though his
character was repugnant, were witty.
SG: Yeah, definitely.
PK: That's the whole secret of criticism: be repugnant but
witty. Do you think this film will help to cross over? There seems to be a line
between adult entertainment and the mainstream, I guess you'd call it, variety.
Do you think this film is going to blur that line somewhat and is that a good
thing?
PK: I'm not sure if it'll be just this film that does that. But I think because
I am playing a non-eponymous character, I'm not just playing a bit part as
Sasha Grey, I think that definitely helps a lot, and it shows that you can't
always judge somebody just because of their immediate profession, you know? But
I think that's an uphill battle that people from the adult business will always
deal with, just because sex is still such a taboo subject. It's hard for people
to talk about. But for me personally I try not, although I have an uphill
battle, I try not to distinguish between what I do in adult, what I do in film,
what I do in music. I try just to look at it as, "This is my body of work as an
artist, and these are all things I hope to continue to challenge as I grow
older and live my life."
PK: Do you see yourself doing more...conventional, I guess is
one way to describe it, roles? Would you turn down appearing in the next
"Ocean's" film with Soderbergh or something like that.?
SG: I don't think I'd ever turn that down! Steven was an
amazing, amazing director to work with, and he has such an intense process on
the set that he knows how deliver and communicate what he wants in such a quiet
way, in such a liberating way as well because you hear horror stories from
other actors about other filmmakers, it's like, "He didn't let me play this
character or be that character," and you know, you can sometimes confine actors
too much and put them in a box and it ends up inhibiting their performance.
That's one of the reasons that Steven chose to shoot the film this way.
PK: Did you learn anything while making this movie?
SG: I mean, there was obviously a lot I learned, nothing
that I can just...you can go down laundry lists. But most of all, the most
important thing I feel I took from it was revalidating that anything's possible
when it comes to filmmaking in that, you might have very little but you can
create something amazing and beautiful. People always make excuses for what
they don't have, and they don't look at what's right in front of them and use
that to create something beautiful.
PK: I imagine you've seen the film a few times, right?
SG: I've only seen it twice, actually. I saw the cut that
went to Sundance and I just saw the final cut a few nights ago. It wasn't
finished. So I saw the one that went to Sundance right before and then I'm not
sure at what time between January and now they actually finished the film.
PK: What part of the movie moved you the most, would you
say?
SG: That's so hard to honestly answer because I think, and
any actor can relate to this, you're always so self conscious about your
performances and you feel like nothing's ever good enough. You wish you would
have done something differently. But I think the film as a whole turned out
great.
PK: I like the scene where you're at the rendezvous place
and the guy doesn't show up. That must have been a challenging scene to do.
SG: Yeah, we were low on light too! By the time we actually
got out to the stone staircase outside we only had a few takes to get that.
Next: Remaking "Deep Throat" and what Mom has to say.
May 12, 2009
Twenty years ago Steven Soderbergh started his career and
rebooted Independent Cinema with a film about a lonely guy who got his jollies
by watching videos of women talking about their sex lives. This depiction of
sex at three degrees of separation, of media engendered narcissism, voyeurism
and onanism, was called "sex, lives and videotape."
Today, the practices it depicts are no
longer very shocking and have been superseded by the internet, where they are called "blogging."
As for straight porn itself, the VHR cassettes of the old days
have also become pretty quaint. Instead, much harder stuff is available in an online industry whose profits
dwarf those of Hollywood.
One of the hot young talents in that industry is Sasha Grey, who was about one
year old when "Sex" came out. She has the wholesome good looks of a Catholic
high school girl but has made about 160 films since the age of 18 with titles
like "Anal Cavity Search VI" and "We Suck!
POV Tag-Team Suck-off."
It was inevitable, perhaps,
that their paths should cross and they would collaborate on a film. It's called
"The Girlfriend Experience," and in it Grey plays a $10,000 a night call girl
whose specialty is making small talk with rich guys -- who have a lot on their
minds because the film takes place last October when the economy was in
free-fall and Obama and McCain were in the final stretch of their presidential
campaigns.
As I discover, talk is something Grey has a talent for in real
life, as well.
PK:You started out in the adult entertainment business when you
were in college, right?
SG: Uh, well, I started planning for it, yes.
PK: Did you work this out with, like, a guidance counselor or
something?
SG: No, far from it, far from it. I was actually 17 at the time,
going to college and working full time. I wanted to get in the business,
because I saw an opportunity for myself to change the business because, you
know, there's not a lot of people in adult entertainment who actually make
interesting, creative films. And although I enjoyed them, I thought, "I can be
one of those people to change that and, you know, push some boundaries, whether
they be sexual or creative."
PK: Have you done that, do you think?
SG: Definitely, and, you know, as a performer, personally, I
believe you're limited in the change that you want to make unless you start
creating your own movies. Which, at the end of May, I'll be doing, starting my
own production company and directing my own films. So that's the obvious next
evolutionary step for me, I guess you could say.
PK: Becoming capital instead of labor.
SG: Exactly.
PK: What advice would you give to a 17-year-old with an interest
in this business?
SG: I would say, don't just do it for the money. It has to be
something you actually want to do for yourself. And, you know, I think, for a
good reason, not just for fun, because the novelty of it will soon fade away.
Because a lot of people, I think, get in the business thinking it's just fun
and forget it is business. You know what I mean? You're not just there for
yourself, you're there for an audience and a consumer that, you know, they're
either going to buy your product or they're not. You know, "Why should we buy
Girl A's movie when we could get Girl B's movie for free on the Internet? They
look exactly the same and they sound exactly the same."
PK: That sort of competitive thing's going on in the movie also,
that you're trying to get a leg up on some of the other call girls.
SG: Yeah, but, I mean, in the adult business I come from a
different perspective. I don't go into it thinking, "Oh, you know, this girl
looks this certain way, acts this certain way and has this going on for her."
For me it's the business aspect. You know, there's so many of the same exact
movies out there, and because of the advent of gonzo adult films there's no
storylines. It's not a feature movie: it's just sex. It was great when it first
started I enjoyed it when I first started in the business because it was
something fresh and unique to me. But once you do that enough times, what
separates that from just filming your neighbors having sex?
PK: I've tried that. You get arrested.
SG: For lack of a better way to describe it, it's like, I don't
want to see ugly sex. You know, if I'm paying for something and I'm paying to
see two people have sex, I want it to look nice, I want it to be titillating,
and I want it to be able to be something that I can watch over and over. I
think a lot of people have lost sight of that because they get comfortable and
you know, something works for them for you know, fifteen, twenty years, and
they're fine doing that.
PK: Is it important for an audience to feel for the characters,
rather than just as sexual objects?
SG: In adult films?
PK::Yeah. Is that the direction you'd like to go with adult
films?
SG: I don't necessarily think in the context - you're just
watching the film, should you care about the person that's in it? No, because I
think that's just, like, glorifying celebrities. You know, we're not demigods;
whether we're in adult films or not, or whether you're a mainstream actress, or
you're in a rock band, I think society treats you know, celebrities like that.
And I think, I guess it's ok and that's part of the job, it is a business. I
think if you want to get to know the people there are ways, like social
networking, to do that. You know, a large part of my fan base comes from the
fact that when I was brand new to the industry I used these social networking
mediums to get out there to my fans and to pretty much self promote, all by
myself, without a publicist, without a manager so-
PK: You don't have a manager?
SG: I do now, yeah. But I think, do you necessarily care when you
see, you know, when you go watch "Changeling" and you see Angelina Jolie's son is
missing? You might care for that moment. But you're not going to go home and
think about it and worry about it at the end of the day. I think that way of
thinking almost continues to vilify the adult industry, like, "Oh, we should
care for them because they're having sex on camera for other people," because
you don't understand it. And I don't mean you, I'm just saying society doesn't
understand it, and you need to feel sorry for somebody because you don't necessarily
know how they feel about what they're doing or why they're doing it.
PK: What are some of your favorite movies....not necessarily adult movies.
SG: Um..."Fat Girl" is a really good film.
PK: By Breillat?
SG: I really enjoyed that.
PK: It's a little grim.
SG: Yeah, it is. Um, let's see, there's a few that are skipping
my mind at the moment. Let's go back to that.
PK: I heard that Steven Soderbergh first got in touch with you
kind of like a fan...contacting you on MySpace, or something?
SG: One of his writers, Brian Koppelman, who wrote "The
Girlfriend Experience" actually wrote me through MySpace, of all places.
Because, like I said, I didn't have a manager, I didn't have an agent, so that
was the only place you could really contact me at the time. He and Steven had
read an article about me in "Los Angeles Magazine" that
kind of profiled me for the first three months of being in the business, and
they were interested. It was a really unorthodox way of casting, but I met up
with Steven after that, maybe for about 45 minutes, and that was it. And he
went off to film "Che" and "The Informant," and now here we are with "The
Girlfriend Experience."
PK: You were familiar with his work before that?
SG: Oh yeah definitely, I was a huge fan, so it was, like, the
geek-out moment for me when Brian wrote me that. It's like, "Yeah, right" and
he's like, "OK, I'll have Steven leave you a voicemail," and he did, so...
PK: "sex, lies and videotape" seems so quaint these days.
SG: Doesn't it? It's so normal.
PK: So what was the process like? How different was this from
your usual films, in terms of challenge and anxiety?
SG: I would say this was a lot more intimidating, just because
it's not something I do every day. I do have acting experience, but I was
trained in theater and, you know, I never, aside from one film called "Smash Cut" that I did in May right before this, you
know, I didn't have a whole lot of [conventional] film experience. So going
into this was a lot different, and you're working with someone you really
respect and you really admire, so you always want to do good in those situations.
I'd go back to my hotel at the end of the night and think about a scene we did
and think, "Oh, I wish I'd done this differently or, you know, maybe I
shouldn't have done that." But the preparation, I mean, the whole nature of
this film was to bring part of my personality into this character, while at the
same time building a character. That I found to be really challenging, because
Steven really wanted to create this experimental environment where we don't
need to worry about running into a light or making our mark and it was really
liberating as an actor because you can concentrate on the scene and that's all
you need to worry about. But at the same time, it gives you enough rope to hang
yourself. So, um, it was an interesting way of creating a character, but at the
same time bringing that experimental nature and quality to the film so that it
remained as natural as one could be in front of a camera.
PK: And what was the ratio between improvised dialogue and what
was written?
SG: I'd say probably 80-20 because there was an outline he did
have, he knew how the story would begin, what the middle was, and what the end
was. But we would get to set every day and sometimes we would pick up the daily
newspaper because you know, it was either the day before or the day after we
started shooting the economy crashed So, you know, that naturally fell into
this film because you're dealing with a film where the characters make a lot of
money and spend a lot of money, so that was something that was always on
everybody's minds during the process.
PK: Are there many similarities between your character's
profession and your own?
SG: Uh....not so much. I mean, I think because we don't have the
emotional or fake emotional quality that Chelsea
has to bring and give in exchange with her clients. In adult films, everybody
knows why they're there. You know, yes, you are getting paid to have sex on
camera but the situations and the way they work are quite different in that
aspect. You don't have to get on set and pretend like you're somebody's
girlfriend and care about them and love them and call them when you're done and
ask to go on another date.
PK: So you wouldn't be interested in any of that kind of work
yourself?
SG: No.
PK: What other differences are there between yourself and the
character you play in the movie?
SG: There are plenty of differences, I mean, she believes in
these little personology books ...did
you see the film?
PK: I did, yeah.
SG: Ok. She uses these...It's a study on 20,000 people and you
know, it's based on birthdates.
PK: So it's an actual thing.
SG: Yeah. And your birth date...you can open this book look up your
birth date and it's supposed to, you know, give you a four-page description of
your personality and your characteristics and you know, what your destiny is in
life, what other birthdates sync with yours and those people would make good
matches with you. For me, you know, if that's your thing that's fine, that's
what makes you happy, that's fine, but to me that's like religion. It's just a
way of not dealing with life and not dealing with everyday problems that
everybody has to incur and I'm...most importantly I don't use those types of
things as scapegoats to you know, avoid dealing with everyday life.
PK: Does it work at all?
SG: I don't think it works. I think you can open one of those
type of books whether it be personology, astrology, numerology, you can look at
one of those books close your eyes and point to a page and you can find
something that sounds like you even if its not your birth date or your sign.
PK: You describe yourself as an existentialist?
SG: And that's why I say I don't believe in these things!
PK: You don't believe in any sort of overreaching religion or
ideology or...
SG: No.
PK: What is existentialism? It's a term that everybody uses and nobody
knows what it is. I don't know what it is.
SG: I don't think it's something that we could sit here and talk
about for ten minutes. There's... for me, it's why I don't believe in personology.
It's about control and destiny of your own life and making your own decisions
and to put it simply in a nutshell, which you can't really do because I think
that's disrespectful to all the people that spend their lifetime dedicated to
that philosophy, you know what I mean? That's for any philosophy, whether it's
existentialism or not but you know, in short as you can get without
disrespecting it that's you know, what I see as the big difference of myself
and this character.
PK: Yet the people who are attracted to you are trying to find
this hidden essence that's below the surface, like the journalist that's
interviewing you - in the film. Do you think that's an illusion, that there is
no real inner self?
SG: In the case of Chelsea,
there's obviously a lot going on there that you don't see. But again, you're
also dealing with a five day period, so you're only seeing a small window into
her life and my choices as an actor going into that were to the women [in that
trade?] whom I met who seemed very guarded and when we would try to ask them
questions, it'd be like, "Everything's fine, and it's all positive and you
know, life is just great," and you could just see this veil of "you're not
telling me something and I want to know what it is." But personally you know,
outside of dealing with the film and this character, me, myself, I try to be as
introspective and as reflective as I can. Because I don't think a lot of people
in this day and age are. You know, I don't think we, even just dealing with
everyday life whether you forget that I do adult films and you know, just going
to the grocery store, interacting with people, I think we as human beings in
society today we're afraid to reflect and we're afraid to look at the big
picture that is life. You know, it goes back to the personology books or, if
you're religious - and I don't condemn people for their beliefs because that
would be hypocritical of me, but if that makes you happy that's fine but I do think society today is incredibly
afraid to reflect on who they are as individuals and as human beings and how
they affect society. That's why I think, you know, we have poverty, we have
people that just they decide to become complacent: they might have had hopes
and aspirations, but they accidentally get somebody pregnant and then they, you
know, drop out of college or they don't do what their intentional goals were as
an early 20-something or a teenager.
Next: We leave Existentialism behind and move on to the politics
of porn and the porn of politics.
May 11, 2009
Having called it so well when it came to Iraq,
John Podhoretz turns his acute neo-conservative analytical mind to something
else he knows nothing about -- movies. In "Thinking on Film," his apparently ironically
titled column in "The Weekly Standard," Podhoretz tells us why the end of the film criticism profession is a good
thing.
"This deprofessionalization," he writes, "is probably the best thing that could
have happened to the field. Film criticism requires nothing but an interesting
sensibility. The more self-consciously educated one is in the field -- by which
I mean the more obscure the storehouse of cinematic knowledge a critic has--the
less likely it is that one will have anything interesting to say to an ordinary
person who isn't all that interested in the condition of Finnish cinema."
And so, tough shit for anyone who might have been entertained by,
for example, the works of the hilarious and moving Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. Or, while we're on the subject of Scandinavian film, who cares about the upcoming delightful and genuinely audience pleasing film "O'Horten"
by the Finnish director Bent Hamer? If people like John Podhoretz don't know
anything about them, how can they be any good?
And never mind that Finnish director, Ingmar Bergman. Or was he Swedish?
Frankly, no one is interested. As for anyone who might be interested in such nonsense, as Podhoretz wrote
on the occasion of Bergman's death, "They [don't] admire the medium. They [are]
offended by its unseriousness, by its capacity to entertain without offering
anything elevating at the same time." They are, he concludes, "embarrassed by the movies."
These deluded, serious people who waste their time learning about
the medium they are embarrassed by also claim to admire such uninteresting
films as "Vertigo" ("silly," says Podhoretz), "The Searchers" ("turgid, wooden,
boring, weird") and "2001" ("a crashing bore").
Instead, they should take a look at some of Podhoretz's favorites, such as
"Cinderella Man,"
"Road House" and "The Phantom Menace."
Part of film appreciation, then, is not watching anything made
before 1989. But the most important qualification is ignorance. Ignorance, in film viewing as in
foreign policy, is bliss. The less you know, the less likely you're going to
let silly things like knowledge or taste get in the way of your interesting
sensibility telling you to get teary-eyed at the family values hokum of Ron
Howard's "Cinderella Man" despite its smearing of the great part-Jewish boxer (he
fought Max Schmeling in Nazi Germany wearing a Star of David on his trunks) Max
Baer. Or have fun with "The Phantom Menace" despite the incredibly annoying and
racist rantings of Jar-Jar Binks, the most despised character in "Star Wars"
history. Or get all patriotic and invade Iraq.
Come to think of it, I'd gladly
have the John Podhoretzes of the world dictate the discussion on film rather
than see them in a position to determine the nation's future. So while we're
getting rid of the film critics who at worst can only cause someone to waste
ten bucks on a film they won't like, how about getting rid of those neo-con
"pundits" who still pollute the media long after coaxing the country into total
disaster?
May 10, 2009
Most people get annoyed when I try to read politics into
popular movies, so I'm somewhat relieved that I'm not the first one to notice
the Spock/Obama connection made clear in the latest "Star Trek." Such as: both
are mixed race, both are logical, both have funny ears and are in love with an
African American woman. And "Live Long and Prosper" might just as well be
Obama's slogan for his health care and economic proposals. (One of my favorite
analyses of this is from ever amusing Debbie Schlussel; eg: "Spock: in real life, he's
a Jew; Barack . . . in real life, he's a Muslim." Fun-nee!)
Could that aspect of the film have contributed, however
subconsciously, to its warp-sized $76.5 million opening weekend? (Answer: not
as much as the $100 million or so marketing campaign or the lemming-like
compulsion of Trekkies past and present to go see the film again and again and
again...).
At any rate, I feel justified in analyzing the subtext in "Star Trek" and in other summer movies. Take "X-men Origins:
Wolverine," for example. It's not like the filmmakers of that one are trying to sneak their
politics by you, what with the character of Major Stryker (played by Danny
Huston, replacing the more menacing Brian Cox from the previous episode) with
his special ops "Team X" consisting of mutant commandos and given carte
blanche to kill anyone anywhere to "defend the country." Sound a little
familiar? Stryker is a kind of mix of Dick Cheney (whom Cox actually looks a
little like -- Huston looks more like Donald Rumsfeld), Lee Marvin from "The
Dirty Dozen" and Dr. Moreau as he takes his mutant specimens to a secret island to
transform them into an ultimate weapon. With it he hopes to eliminate threats to the nation before they exist -- his rant justifying
this "Pre-emptive strike" policy sounds like it was plagiarized from Richard Perle.
Which brings to mind a "Star Trek" comparison that I haven't
seen many pick up on. What about the resemblance of Kirk to George W. Bush? For example: Both have dissipated, good old boy (Iowa looks
like the Texas of the future) backgrounds that they have to shake off to become
respectable leaders. Both have father issues, with both fathers being
military heroes whom they begrudgingly want to emulate. But I think the key similarity, and it's what distinguishes
Kirk from Spock and Bush from Obama, is that both have a "from the gut" style
of leadership and decision-making. When Commander Pike tries to woo Kirk away
from his dissolute days and put on a uniform and serve his Federation, he tells
him that he's got the kind of seat-of-the-pants, go-for-broke style that Star Fleet Command has been lacking lately.... I guess after two centuries they might have forgotten just what that kind of shit that lind of decider can get you into.
So it would seem that "Star Trek" is praising the new
administration at the expense of the previous one. But that notion overlooks the fact
that, at least for the most part, Spock is seen as a pigheaded, priggish jerk who is invariably wrong and
Kirk as a regular guy who is always right. In the film Kirk's more intuitive strategies of dealing
with problems, which the namby pamby rationalizer (or is he relying entirely on
reason in his decisions?) Spock dismisses, prove to be correct. So maybe
Spock's resemblance to Obama is not necessarily complimentary according to the
movie, which appears to be endorsing the macho, shoot-from-the hip style of Kirk/George
W.
Or maybe not. I won't give away any more of the story than I have
to, but the basic motivation of the villain is not so much revenge as it is to
make a pre-emptive strike, through the plot magic of time travel, to save his own
civilization and family. And that backfires even worse than the invasion of Iraq.
May 06, 2009
What would an interview be without an annoying digression
about misogyny? In this case it might be more germane than usual, what with
Tyson spending time in prison on a rape conviction. Toback, though, proves more
than up to the task. We don't even get a chance to talk about ear-biting.
PK: One of the criticisms of the movie is
that you don't offer any other point of view than that of Tyson when it comes
to the accusations of abuse in his marriage to Robin Givens and his conviction
for raping Desiree Washington. Any response?
JT: Well, we show Robin Givens giving her
side to Barbara Walters and on national television and basically accusing him
of abusing her and brutalizing her, not physically but she says verbal abuse or
emotional abuse and she's terrified of him and he's bipolar and he's psychotic.
I mean, you can't go much further than that, you know, you might say he doesn't
like chicken.
Desiree Washington...you know the idea is all
through the movie to get Tyson's view of things and either you believe him or
you don't. Ultimately he's told me how despicably untrue it is over the years
and he'd have no reason to invent this to me. I mean, what was the point? What,
am I going to go and run to the press and say "guess what Mike Tyson admitted
that he was rightfully convicted of rape." I assume that's true anyway because
most people are stupid enough to think that convicted means guilty.
It's funny because there isn't the same
reverse assumption. One assumes, correctly, that O.J. Simpson was guilty, even
though he was "innocent." But rarely do people think convicted means anything
other than guilty because the social framework, even after all of the cynicism
that is there and should be there about the criminal justice system, still
gives the law the benefit of the doubt and I don't know whether anyone's ever
remarked on this. I have and I can almost prove that the worse the crime the
greater the assumption that the person is guilty, which, of course, also is
absurd, because if it's going to be wrong, the criminal justice system x
percent of the time, why would it be wrong any less frequently or more
frequently for severe crime than for petty crimes?
It's going to be wrong because human judgment
is wrong very frequently when you weren't there, when you don't know, when you
don't have real evidence. And here, where you have two people who had different
versions of the same event whatever that event was. But my point here was not
to ask Don King whether Mike Tyson did what he really said took place. Or
whether Desiree Washington says, yes, it happened exactly the way I testified.
By the way, why do we need to ask her that? What's
she going to do, contradict her own testimony? Have her say exactly what she
said when he was convicted? I believe one of the ways of knowing, at least
thinking you know whether something is true, is not necessarily to hear five
people give there versions of it. Listen to one person give their version of it
and you can feel whether you believe that person. I believe someone watching
Mike Tyson and listening to Mike Tyson speak can make up his or her own mind
about the whole case just based on him. Is he lying or is he not lying? I've
watched people talk about things and have no other view and know that they're
lying. I don't know what the truth is. I know that person telling me this. I
don't need to speak to anybody else. I know he's lying; I can feel it. Well I
would say, here's Mike Tyson: let the audience make up its own mind. Is he
lying or not? If you think he's lying then you think he's lying. If you say
there's no way he's lying, that's the closest you're going to get to the truth
anyway, you know. It's Bob Evan's famous phrase, "there are three versions of
every story: your version, my version, and the truth."
PK: He's a wise man. He's still alive, isn't
he?
JT: Yeah, very much so.
PK: I was thinking about an issue that's been
in the news a lot lately, views on violence against women in connection to the
Rihanna/ Chris Brown thing. What's frightening is that they did a survey of high school
students and around half of them said that she "deserved it."
I'm just wondering how this movie will play in that kind of environment.
JT: I don't know. I think it's such a volatile
subject. It's such an incendiary subject.
I was shocked, by the way, at that statistic. It's
one of the rare cases where what I would have predicted
was so far off from what happens that it makes me feel completely out of it. I think you know once you get into subjects
where people's deepest personal responses to their own lives are involved, it's
very hard to get any kind of sense of rationality, because who knows how close
people are to doing things like that themselves, or are afraid of it happening
or suspicious that someone's about to do it. It's such a horrifying and
frightening part of personal relationships because you're talking about the
person who's supposed to love you and it's like with parental abuse, which is a
tremendously underestimated and under talked about subject. Spousal abuse is
talked about all of the time, parental abuse very infrequently, and yet it goes
on all the time.
It gets in the news every now and then
because of a particular case, that famous case where, that guy, what was his
name? He was beating up his wife and their little daughter and they finally
killed the daughter. In New York
there was that famous case a few years ago and I can't remember that name. This
was an upper middle class guy who had some... I can't remember whether he was a
doctor or a lawyer. He was a fairly prominent, successful guy and the woman was
too and they had a little girl and they just brutalized her horribly and he was
also brutalizing the wife.
But the thing is when you're supposed to love
and care about somebody and you do show love and affection but you also show
violence, it's such a horrifyingly shocking, incongruous, twisted, perverse
dynamic that no one can enter a subject like that rationally. You can pretend
to and get clinical about it, but that's a false stance, you know.
Obviously you can say, which any sane person
says, that rape is an atrocity and it's always a disaster and it's always
catastrophic. But the closer you get to situations of violence when there's
people who are supposed to like each other and love each other and it's within
the family...that's I think why "Capturing the Friedmans" had the hold that it had on a lot of people. This gruesome, horrifying,
twisted, demented story -- and, by the way, this was a case where you had
everybody's version of everything and you didn't have a clue about who was
ultimately telling the truth and wasn't. No matter how many times you get
different versions of the same story because you never really knew whom to
believe, or at least I didn't. I always felt everybody was suspect. But here
was this family that was actually close on some level and yet filled with this
horrifying, vile, odious, loathsome anger and twisted sexual longing. It's
never something that can be resolved because it's so aberrational and yet it's
so potentially part of any dynamic. You go back to the Bible, you go back to
the mythical stories of that kind of demented behavior, you look at half of the
great original Biblical stories and you have some kind of crazy twist within
the family.
PK: I think this is going to be the last
question so I'll make it a compound question. This film, as with your films
with Robert Downey Jr, may have the effect of getting Mike Tyson back into the
limelight and I don't know what kind of career he'd go into now that he's not
into boxing. But also it kind of jumpstarts your own career. You haven't made a
movie for 4 years or so. What do you foresee in the future for yourself and for
Mike?
JT: Mike I think is .. he's got a big sort of
Wii type game,
a video game of some kind or virtual game with Mohammed Ali, which I'm sure
people will get interested in and I'm sure he'll make appearances. Eventually,
I think he should work with kids who have backgrounds similar to his because
he'd be great with them. They'd look up to him. He'd be a terrific influence on
them. That's something, I think, when he gets his financial life in order, he
will do.
Um, I want to make a movie called "The
Director," which I've been working on for a while and I'm excited about it. I'm
writing a movie about John DeLorean with Brett Ratner and Bob Evans, actually.
PK: Who's still alive.
JT: He's very much so, very much so, and a
great guy, by the way, and very smart with a phenomenal sense of humor.
PK: Don't tell him that I thought he was dead.
JT: You know. King Vidor, whom I directed in "Love and Money" ...Stanley
Kauffmann referred to him as "the
late King Vidor" in a review in the "New Republic" and King called me up and he
was so upset and he said "Who is this person Stanley Kauffmann?" and I said "He's
the critic for the ‘New Republic,'" and
he said, "I know that, but who is he?" and I said, "What do you mean, who is he? I
don't know what you mean." and he said, "he said that I'm dead." So I said, "Well
I didn't know about that," and he said , "Listen to this." And he read it to
me. He said "The late King Vidor." He said, "Who is he?" And I realized after a
while that he meant who is he in the way that I would like him to be dead for
telling me that I'm dead when I'm still alive.
PK: Kauffmann is about a hundred years old
now, isn't he?
JT: Yeah, I know.
PK: And now Vidor IS dead. So who had the
last laugh there?
JT: Right. So I want to do "The Director,"
and maybe five or six more movies before I finally do move on to the next
plateau.
PK: The next plateau being?
JT: Meaning atomic separation, meaning
wherever my atoms are going from here.
PK: It's kind of like the long view. Is this
film opening wide, by the way?
JT: It's opening wide in the third week. It's
opening New York and LA on the 24th
of April and Boston, Chicago
and San Francisco
one week later, so I guess that's the first of May, and then everywhere else. They're
going very wide with it, I will say, without trying to sound too hyperbolic,
self-congratulatory or too grandiose. We've had, starting with Cannes last year, insanely good responses, including from women who went in with a real
anger and expecting to despise Mike Tyson in the movie. We've been getting
almost "Shrek"-like responses to the movie, which is a good turn out. Which has
been true now in about 15 different cities, and I'm thinking, how did this
happen? But you know.
PK: Tyson is the Shrek of heavyweight champions. You think you have a
future in documentaries?
JT: I had a great time making this. Yeah, I
I'll tell you what, the older I get the more I'm interested in non-fiction as
opposed to fiction, generally. I read more non-fiction than I do fiction now. Actually,
"Sight and Sound" ask a bunch of directors and critics every ten years to pick
their ten best films of all times. On my last list five years ago or four years
ago, whenever it was, I had number one "F for Fake" number two "Hotel Terminus." So, two
nonfiction films. And number four was "Shrek 2."
PK: You blur the boundaries between documentary
and fiction.
JT: Yeah, and this is good.
PK: What was Mike Tyson's response to the
movie?
JT: We were in my screening room with the
screenwriter and he said it's like a great tragedy, the only problem is I'm the
subject. The second time, he said he really liked it, it was fascinating. The
third time was at the Sundance. We were at the dinner and he said, "You know,
people always say that 'he's crazy, I'm scared of him' and I never really
understood what they were talking about. I always said, 'Why are they saying that about me?'" He said "Seeing
this movie tonight, I actually said to myself, I'M actually scared of that guy."
PK: The opening shots when he's knocking out
Trevor Berbick --
that is scary.
JT: And Ali, as you later see in the movie,
saying to him "Get him for me," because he had humiliated Ali. You know what
happened to Berbick?
PK: No, I don't.
JT: Berbick, about a year and a half ago, was
involved in a drug deal with his nephew in Jamaica, which is where he's from,
and he was macheted to death in the parking lot of a church where they had
their drug transaction. Berbick was the
mad guy. He was half gay and before the [Larry] Holmes fight -- He was sitting next to Joe Lewis on the last night
of Lewis's life; he died later that night. Lewis was in a wheelchair, completely
senile, and all through the fight he kept saying to me, which boy you got ahead?
which boy you got ahead? And they're standing in the ring, Holmes and Berbick. Holmes was a 6 to 1 favorite and Berbick takes his mouthpiece out and the
referee says, come up, buddy and he [ Berbick] spits in Holmes's face and
Holmes was shocked and the whole first round Berbick is screaming "You're a punk, you're a
faggot, suck my dick, suck my dick you faggot you sissy." Holmes is, like,
terrified, he's, like, in the ring with a psycho and he's backing off and Berbick is screaming "Faggot!" and throwing
punches and I thought he was going to knock him off in the first round.
Third or fourth round, Holmes hits him with
one punch and it kind of startled Berbick. Fifth round, he hit him with a good
combination. And then they were in a really close fight and he [Holmes] got a
majority decision. But I thought, Berbick is a tough, frightening guy. And then
he humiliated Ali in Ali's last fight in the Bahamas. He just brutalized him.
Ali just took punishment and that's when he said to Tyson, "Get him," and Tyson
really went after him.
PK: And then the machetes.
JT: And then the machetes, yeah. Macheted to
death at a church.
PK: There's a movie there, I think.
JT: Yeah, I think you're right.
May 05, 2009
Now that we've taken a breather we can go into round two
with that relentless verbal onslaught known as James Toback.
At the end of round one he was telling how Mike Tyson, the
subject of his new documentary, choked up as he explained his willingness to kill
people.
A sensitive guy
.
PK: In your 23 years knowing [Mike Tyson], have you ever
felt physically intimidated or threatened?
JT: Never for a second, and the only abrasive moment we had
was in this restaurant on Columbus Avenue in the upper sixties which used to be
owned by DeNiro and Paul Herman and Baryshnikov and Regis Philbin, it was a
hotspot for a while, actually it was the night that John Gotti was there
playing on the jukebox over and over and over and over again that, it wasn't
called ‘You're My Hero', that Bette Midler song where you know, what was the
name of that song she keeps saying ‘you're my hero'...anyway. Well, John Gotti
got deeply upset when somebody tried to put another song in because it was, as
Anthony Fargas says, Antonio Fargas in "The Gambler,"
"you're fucking up the sequence of my songs," when a similar event takes place with
a jukebox in a Harlem bar [in that movie].
But in any event, I was meeting Mike for dinner that night,
he was just about to hire Don King as manager, and Jose Torres, who was a
friend of Brian Hammil's and mine, was very upset because he expected to be the
manager, and Mike, you know, we said that, you know, he'd never hire Don King,
he'd never go to Don King, and Brian called me and he said "don't forget to
remind Mike that he's the one who always said he would never hire Don King." 
And I ended up bringing it up and pressing it a bit and
after a minute or two Mike said, "I don't wanna talk about it, I'm going to Don
King, don't mention it again." And I said, "you're the one who said you would
never hire Don King, I'm only quoting you to you." "I don't wanna talk about
it, I'm gonna hire him." "Why would you wanna do that now, when you insisted
only an asshole would ever do that, and someone who didn't think and didn't
know what he was doing." "I don't wanna talk about it" "Well what else is there
to talk about of even vaguely similar significance when you're making a
decision, if I'm your friend it's something that obviously I have to do." "Well
you don't have to do it 'cause I don't wanna hear it, I'm not gonna listen to
it."
At that point I said "Well then we have nothing to talk
about" and he left and that was it. But that was the closest we came even to an
unpleasant, and I certainly wasn't physically afraid.
In fact a funny thing happened when he talks in the movie
about the eye thing, you know, that fear is the overriding theme of the movie,
he talks about being consumed by fear all the time, everything stemmed from acknowledging
his fear but allowing his fear to express itself and then exorcising his fear
by infecting his opponent with it, coming into the ring still with some fear,
staring into his opponent's eyes, and when his opponent looked away both of
them knew it was all over, the opponent was now the one overwhelmed by fear,
and Mike with complete confidence.
That drama of how to deal with fear, how to take fear and
put it into the opponent, I think is the thing that made him champion, it made
him great, it made him the human being that he was, the champion that he was.
But I think, see... [loses his train of thought]
This is an interesting thing. This happens, I always, it's
like my brain goes on a track, and it's like when you're doing, when you're
playing contrapuntal music and all of a sudden you lose one voice of the three.
What was the point I was making that led me into this? I was coming from
somewhere...
PK: You were talking about whether you ever felt threatened
in his presence physically...
JT: Oh yeah, here's what I was... thank you for reminding
me. We were doing a photo session for the cover of the "L.A. Weekly"... "The
Boston Phoenix" isn't owned by the "Village Voice," they're not...
PK: No.
JT: Yeah, yeah wow, well hang in...who does own the "Phoenix?"
PK: Stephen Mindich...
JT: Wow. So what happened was we were doing a cover thing
and at one point the guy, the photographer said "ok, stand opposite each other"...
No, I'm sorry, it wasn't that, it was Brett Ratner was
taking these pictures for the "Guardian" in London. I'm wrong. It was a different session
[photographic session with Tyson promoting the film]. But anyway, he said, "Look
straight into each other's eyes." So we're belly to belly both of us with
stomachs that could use some serious chopping at this point, but we're looking
into each other's eyes and he cracked up. And I said "what are you laughing at?"
And he said, he got crazy, he said "that look right now." He said "that's crazy"
and he really cracked up and he said "you could scare anybody with that look in
the ring."
And I knew what he
meant because there is with psychotic people or closet psychotic people, there
is an inability to hide the psychosis when you really let it go. And I wasn't
intending to let it go, I just did 'cause we were eyeball to eyeball like that.
And instead of coming back at me and giving me the look that he used to have,
which is really not part of his personality anymore, I mean I think he's lost
that as he puts it "warrior soul." I haven't. I'm not a boxer, but I'm still, I
think, closer to being homicidal than he is, you know.
PK: Thanks for the warning. I should've patted you down
before we started talking. This is kind of a kinship you had from the beginning
when you met him back at "The Pickup Artist" I guess and he was fascinated by
the fact that you had this mental breakdown after taking LSD at 19 years old.
JT: Right. He didn't know what it meant. "What do you mean
mad? What do you mean insane? What do you mean by mad?" And I knew anyone this
eager to find out what madness is will find out soon enough. And he found out
when he was in prison ten, twelve years later curled up on a concrete floor in
solitary confinement. And when he got out he told me that the first thought he
had was "now I know what Toback was talking about that night in Central Park, I am now insane." And the difference is
that he didn't have Max Rinkle who
was one of the guys who synthesized LSD in his laboratories in Switzerland to
give him an intravenous antidote.
PK: There is an antidote for LSD?
JT: I got one.
PK: Yeah? Do you know what it was?
JT: He gave me a compound of thorazine, mellaril, heroin,
morphine and [indecipherable]
PK: And you lived.
JT: I did, and he thought I wouldn't. He actually made me
sign a statement that if I died, I was responsible because I fully understood
what he was giving me, that it was likely to kill me, but I was taking it
anyway. This is all dramatized in "Harvard Man," in that
scene where Adrian Grenier has the voices and the hallucinations and then can't
get rid of the voices and goes, and John Neville plays the doctor, gives him
the antidote. And I signed the document and I said to Dr. Rinkle a couple of
weeks later when I was ok, I said "how did you know that had I died you
wouldn't have gotten in tremendous trouble, because even though I'm 19 and
capable presumably of signing something and not...how did you..." He said, "Oh, I
would've been in tremendous trouble." And I said, "Well how did you do that?"
He said, "You had to have it, you needed it." He said, "I had to think of you
first." He said, "You were the person I had to save, not myself." He said, "Anyway
I'm an old man. You have your whole life ahead of you, if it caused me to lose
my license then so be it."
PK: That's supposedly the biggest LSD dose that anyone ever
took.
JT: No one's ever claimed to take more. And he actually
wasn't sure that I had until I told him where I got it and what form I took it
in. Because there were blue sugar cubes and I had got...you know LSD was legal
then. You could come in with LSD into the country. I came in, I gave a cube to
the customs official. He asked what all the sugar cubes were and I said 
"They're
pure lysergic diethylamide 25 which I got at Sandors Laboratories in Switzerland."
He said, "Oh what's that?" And I said, "Aldous Huxley took it, Cary Grant takes
it, Robert Graves has taken it, it's fuckin' phenomenal." And I gave him a copy
of "The Doors of Perception" that
I had, and I said, "This is the answer, this is the truth." And he said, "Well,
how often have you taken it?" I said, "I've never taken it." He said, "Well,
how do you know?" I said, "I know."
PK: Customs agents were different in those days.
JT: Herman Melville was a customs agent.
PK: That's true
PK: It must have been from that tradition
JT: The Melvillean tradition.
PK: You have no other points of view in the movie except for
Tyson. Why is that?
JT: I didn't want any other points of view because as I say
it is a self portrait, if you take the metaphor of Gaugain presenting a
portrait, a self portrait it isn't a photograph, it's not what you would be
getting if there were, well, first of all there's no way of getting the
accuracy of a photograph in a documentary because you've got a whole bunch of
different people's views. But it's not a photograph. It's his version of
himself orchestrated by me and presented by me.
But basically the
idea is to give in an almost clinical way Tyson's version of his life. And to
do it in a style that I wanted to use for ten years. The last part of "Black
and White" has the split screen moving images, the multiple voices, and
hallucinations and shifting images. The opening credits of "Harvard Man" are in
that style. I wanted to go for it with the whole movie, to make a movie in that
style. And there was no movie ever, that I can think of, that needed it or
called for it more than this one did. Multiple voices, the chaos of the brain,
voices that won't stop.
So what he says earlier in the movie is that you're looking
at different images of his face and um his face calls for multiple images. It
is a face that separates itself, almost cubistically, when you look at it. There
are so many different personalities at work in the face.
PK: Plus the tattoos.
JT: Yes, exactly.
PK: He sort of draws you into his point of view in an almost
claustrophobic way.
JT: That's right, and that's the intention. I mean, you have
one of the most recognized, most intriguing, I hate to use the phrase that "People
Magazine" uses or Barbara Walters whoever ... But, let's say the, let's say
more people are interested in Mike Tyson around the world than practically
anyone who's lived in the last hundred years. If you see, for instance, the
response he gets in cities in Europe and in Black communities here and in Asia
and South America --- it's bedlam. And what
they are looking for is the truth about this guy. "Who are you?" "I want to pay
homage to you whoever you are. I'm drawn by you." To say nothing of the people
who hate him and revile and most of whom are white and here in America. But to
take that figure and his fascinating presence seems to me a very interesting
task particularly since his life calls into question all of the themes that are
obsessing me and in my work and have been since the beginning: race, sex,
madness, love, money, crime, and death.
PK: That covers it, I think
JT: It does. Yeah, I left out baseball. But you can't have
everything.
PK: Basketball, too.
JT: Right basketball too. I use Ray Allen
[in photo of "Harvard Man" above, with gun] and I use Allen Houston so I'm
taking a vacation from basketball for a film
PK: Tyson, the way you described him, is almost like the
anti-Obama.
JT: That's right. That is right and you know, I'll bet you
without being able to prove it unless we get him on the phone now, that Obama
is massively fascinated with Mike Tyson. A lot more fascinated than Mike Tyson
is by Obama. By the way do you know who Mike Tyson's ex-wife's brother is?
PK: No
JT: The wife, the ex-wife in the movie that he speaks of
quite lovingly is a great mother to his children. You know who her brother is?
PK: I don't know.
JT: You won't guess this in 10 trillion tries.
PK: I won't even try.
JT: Michael Steel, the chairman of the Republican National
Committee.
PK: It must be interesting getting together for the
holidays.
Next: He said, She said.
April 30, 2009
The last time I interviewed somebody at the Liberty Hotel it
was known as the Charles Street Jail. That was about 25 years ago and the
subject of the interview was a white-bearded, sleight, elderly fellow known to
some as "The Globe Man" -- not for any journalistic reason, but because he used
to ride around Harvard Square in an old station wagon inscribed with countless
cryptic writings and surmounted by a huge, papier maché world globe, about eight
feet in diameter. He was being held pending a hearing after being arrested at Logan Airport
where he tried to board a plane for the then West Germany without presenting a
passport. His plan was to chip off a piece of the Berlin Wall as a symbolic
gesture to eliminate national borders. Perhaps his plan worked: a few years
later I bought a chip of that old Cold War symbol just as it was being torn
down when I attended the Berlin Film Festival in 1990.
At any rate, things have changed at the old Charles Street Jail a/k/a the Liberty Hotel.
Instead of the howls of penned-in felons echoing from the walls of the rotunda,
the little conference room in which we are sitting offers muzak that is even
more grating to the ear. After many requests it is turned off. And the person I
am interviewing is James Toback, the outlaw filmmaker whose works -- including "Fingers"
(1978), "The Pick-up Artist" (1987),
"Two Girls and a Guy" (1997), "Black and White" (1999) and "Harvard Man"
(2002) -- have explored sex, race, macho
shitheadedness and other outré topics, and have earned both kudos and contempt
from critics.
We are discussing his latest film, Tyson (you can read my review of the film in this week's Phoenix), a documentary in which
Toback's pal, the former Heavyweight champion, confronts his controversial
reputation as a wife-beater, rapist and ear-biter. As well as, in passing, Toback's own dicey reputation
as a womanizer, addict and compulsive gambler.
PK: You know this used to be a jail right?
JT: I do know that, and I have to say you don't know anyone
more paranoid about prison than I am. Particularly after seeing Tyson talk
about prison, which I think is among the side benefits of this movie, because
it's a cautionary tale about spending a single day in prison. Because if you
think if Mike Tyson had that reaction to being in prison, how would I fare?
PK: So you've known him for...
JT: ...23 years.
PK: When he came out of prison you'd known him for...
JT: I'd known him for about ten years then and he was a
different person, as he says: ‘prison changed me, I was never the same'.
PK: For the better?
JT: I think it was for the better in the sense that it
deepened him and made him a more complex and fascinating person. It was
certainly not for the better in terms of calming his... {interrupted by the phone]
Yeah, so it made him...after he came out it made him a more haunted and
terrified figure. As he says he woke up in the middle of the night thinking
that the woman he was with was a guy who was about to stab him. And you know, I
mean, it's interesting because I've been thinking of that in relation to [Robert]
Downey [Jr, star of Toback's "The Pick-up Artist," "Two Girls and a Guy" and
"Black and White." ], what's happened with him, and it's the Achilles Syndrome,
you know, with his mother given the choice of a short, dramatic, exciting life
or a long, middle-of-the-road, bland life, and she chose the short dramatic
life. And aesthetically that's the best choice, but...
PK: How about the short, bland life?
JT: Then you get the worst of both worlds
PK: Downey
was just out of rehab when you cast the two of them in "Black and White" in
that infamous scene.
JT: Yes. Right. One out of rehab, the other out of jail.
PK: You're just kind of playing with fire when you do that
sort of thing.
JT: I like to. You know, I think particularly in a movie you
get some interesting effects when you have people at their, when they're sane,
but when they have just been through an ordeal. And I think that that's what I
was trying to, and I've said that about Downey now, because I don't know that
he could ever do the kind of work he did in "Two Girls and a Guy" with the sort
of smiley fame and success that's coming now. I don't think it has ever served
anyone well in terms of art or talent, although it's nice to have money and be
famous and have everybody cater to you and say nice things, but that's never
been a spur to dramatic boldness. Particularly in movies, where people get less
and less ambitious as they get richer and safer and more famous.
PK: So you're a fan more of Iron Mike than of "Iron Man" then?
JT: I didn't even see it. There's a certain kind of movie I
don't go to see, not because I have anything against it, it's just not what
Leonard Koppett once referred to as ‘my dish of tea'. You know, I mean there's
a limited number of movies one can see, and comic book movies, I never liked
the comic books in the first place, so there's just nothing... I went out of
curiosity to see one of the Batman movies just because supposedly it was
different, but I just don't get it, you know it's not for me. It's not that I'm
snobbish in taste, I go see stupid comedies happily. Like "Old School" and
stuff like that that I can see two or three times if they're funny enough. And
anything Will Farrell is in I go see, because I crack up just watching his
face. But to see a kind of effects comic book movie has never interested me in
any way at all.
PK: Have you been in touch with him... I mean he used to be
your persona almost in what, three films I guess?
JT: Downey?
Well yeah, I mean he's been like an alter-ego and I feel in a way I invented
him 'cause I gave him his first role, and "Two Girls and a Guy" I think is one
of the great performances in film history. In fact I know Chris Walken feels
that way and Dustin Hoffman and Daniel Day Lewis, I mean there's a whole cult
around his great performance in that movie, which is coming out again on
Blu-Ray actually soon. You know, and I spoke at his wedding, it was a very
beautiful ceremony. I think that, you know he's in a different place now as an
actor and I think it's much better for his longevity. I think if he'd been
going along indefinitely on the course he was on he probably would not have
survived a hell of a lot longer. So if you want to make a case for longevity,
he's certainly on the right track.
PK: So you think he's on the straight and narrow for good now?
JT: I think as long as whatever system is in place remains
in place, whatever that might be, with a wife, who knows what's going on, and a
twelve step program and maybe if there's medication, whatever it is it's
working and I would think any time you get into that level of addiction and
then you go off into an opposite direction, of escape from that addiction, it's
not because you snap your fingers, it's because you put a whole bunch of
elements in place in a very rigorous, strict format and you stick to that
system. It's like getting in shape physically. You know you stay in shape if
you continue to work out x number of hours every day and keep your diet; if you
lapse you lose it. So I think as long as he's doing the steps, there's no
reason to assume it can't go on indefinitely. The paradox is, as I was saying
before, and I think this has always been true, that it's hard for an artist
particularly who draws on his chaotic side, as Downey always did, to maintain that level of
originality and inventiveness. That's not to say you've become dead as an
artist, but you're just a different kind of artist without that. Tennessee
Williams was terrified of going into psychoanalysis for that reason. And he
said "if I'm cured of my demons will I have anything left as a playwright?" And
the irony is that most people would have said
"no you didn't because once you got out of analysis your plays were
infinitely less than they had been before." He actually thought his last plays
were just as good or better than his earlier plays.
PK: You've been in analysis though...
JT: I was in analysis for three years.
PK: And you kicked some addictions.
JT: I stopped two addictions but only because they were
killing me physically. I would not have stopped them otherwise. So I actually feel
I cheated, because one of them was alcohol. I was drinking, I never get drunk,
I had a buzz 24 hours a day which I maintained by chain-guzzling champagne as
the production report on "Exposed" (1983) put
it.
PK: Dom Perignon.
JT: Dom Perignon absolutely, that's right. Only the best. My
liver was speaking to me. And when I went to a liver specialist, the same guy
that got Blake Edwards off alcohol, in fact Blake Edwards killed him in three
movies as a punishment for making him stop drinking. He's the guy that is
washed up on "S.O.B.," washed up on the shore, and he's blown up in "Victor/Victoria."
Herb Tanney. Herb
Tammy said to me, "can you cut down to one or two glasses of champagne a day?"
And I said I couldn't cut down to one or two bottles a day. And he said "well
then you gotta quit." And I never had another drink after that. He said "otherwise
you'll have cirrhosis or cancer within a year, it's not a prediction it's a
guarantee." So I stopped. Cigarettes, I was five packs a day, I stopped in one
day because I couldn't inhale anymore. I was choking and gagging and I thought
"ok, I won't quit but what I'll do is wait until I can inhale again." And four days later I thought, "I think I
might be able to inhale without gagging" and I put the cigarette in my fingers
and I thought "and then what'll happen,
I'll gag four days from now." So I just stopped and that was it.
PK: It's like the scene where the guy with the laryngectomy,
or whatever it is, is smoking through the hole in his neck.
JT: Yes, that's right. Yeah.
PK: What about gambling?
JT: Gambling, I don't feel the same confidence in saying
that I am out of it, because gambling comes back and jumps in every now and
then and when it jumps in it's in. So I don't feel the freedom from gambling. Cigarettes
and alcohol are dead, gone and finished. Unless I knew I had x number of weeks
or months to live and then I would drink again just for fun because I figure
I'm gonna die anyway why not get back into champagne. Cigarettes have no appeal
at all, drugs no appeal at all. But gambling's a tough one, because you know
you win a few bets and you say "who's the idiot who tried to talk me out of
this habit, look how easy it is." And then you're broke all of a sudden and you
say "who allowed me to get back into this demented idiocy," but it's too late
because you've been wiped out, which takes a day or two when you're really
doing it addictively.
PK: Any tips on who to bet on?
JT I've been wrong on most of the games, but I will give you
one insight I've had. One of the executive producers and co-financers of "Tyson"
is Carmelo Anthony, and he hasn't told me this, but I think the Nuggets are
gonna be a surprise team in the playoffs this year. I think the combination of
him and Chauncey Billups and their overall cast is, I'm not saying they're
going all the way, but I'm saying they're not gonna fold in the playoffs this
year.
PK: So it's a long shot.
JT: Yeah.
PK: This extremism is something that is a common bond
between you and Mike Tyson. When did you decide that this kind of movie would
be something that you wanted to pursue?
JT: I was shooting [in "Black and White"], not the famous
scene where Downey hits on Mike and then Mike smacks him and chokes him and
slams him on the ground and then Brooke Shields hits on him and discombobulates
him, but after that in the gym he's talking about being strip searched and
humiliated by prison guards to Power of Wu-Tang Clan who was asking advice on
whether to murder Allen Houston's character who was about to rat on him and
have him put in jail. And Mike says both "yes you should kill him and no you
shouldn't." He contradicts himself. And the way he talks meditatively and with
a kind of Whitman-esque, paradoxical, double direction inconsistency, I thought
"this Mike Tyson could be stretched into a very fascinating portrait." At the
end of shooting that day I said "why don't we do a whole movie of that sort?"
Then he said "whenever you're ready, I'm ready." Well I don't think he was
totally ready then, because he was very fragmented in terms of time, behavior.
And I probably wasn't ready or I would have been pushing it more. But then a
couple years ago my mother died, and after a couple of months I knew that I
wasn't gonna hang around too much longer unless I anchored myself to something,
because I was doing too many things that were courting extinction. And I felt
that I had to start shooting something right away or I would be gone.
PK: What sort of things were you doing?
JT: Well, swimming out in the ocean, without intending to
put myself in jeopardy, swimming out without looking back for maybe twenty
minutes and then looking back and realizing that there was an undertow, huge
waves, and if that I was gonna get back it would be because I got lucky and a
wave took me in. And I mean I'm too suspicious of the power of the unconscious
because of my experience in psychoanalysis to doubt its existence. Therefore,
even though I wasn't consciously swimming out to find out what it's like not to
exist, I was suspicious that my unconscious was taking me there. So certainly
anyone watching me would have said "I don't care what he says, he's swimming straight
out for twenty minutes and never looked back, what did he think was gonna
happen?" So I thought, "well what movie can I make now?" First of all it means
I have to finance it myself, because otherwise I'm gonna have to run around
looking for money and that is never fast or easy. Two, it has to be something
that I can put together quickly, just structurally. So I thought. why not do
the Tyson movie now? Literally at that moment he crashed. He got physically
crashed in a car in Phoenix,
and he got arrested for drug possession and he was put in rehab and I thought
‘now's the time for him to do it because he will be meditative, verbal, relaxed
and eager to talk. So I called him and said "are you ready now?" He said ‘yeah,
if you can get me out, you know, for the days you wanna shoot'. So that was
worked out pretty quickly. I put the money up right away. Two weeks later we
were shooting. And then I had to edit for a year, so that's how the movie
evolved.
PK: You don't appear at all, and it seems like you appear in
almost all your movies, and certainly are present in "Jim: The Author's
Self-Centered Memoir of the Great Jim Brown" [ written in 1971 after a year
spent having orgies with NFL great and Hollywood star Jim Brown].
JT: Yeah. That's coming out again by the way in a week. No,
I thought about making it a movie about the two of us, that actually was for
two days my plan to shoot both of us together. And then I thought that'll be
interesting, it'll be funny, but I will
never get down to the nerve of truth about either of us if I do it that way. I
could do either of us alone and get there, but not both of us. And since the
world at this moment seems to be more intrigued and aware of Mike Tyson than
James Toback I decided to give them what they wanted and go for him and not mix
it, make a self-portrait presented by me so that it's as though I'm handing the
world a Gauguin of Gauguin, a self-portrait. That's really what it became. And
I decided to go to the other extreme, not only not be in the movie, not only
not be on camera, not only have my voice not heard, but not even have an
appearance on the set so that I was not in Mike's eye line and what I said was
minimal to the point of non-existence. I would give a phrase and then let the
two cameras roll for, since we were using high def cameras so there was no mag
to run out and just keep going and going. Let it just go. Don't worry about
long silences, in fact look for long
silences. One of the things I was hoping, and all of those great shots of his
face which are so expressive came from long gaps between his answers or his
remarks. I would say something, he would respond, he'd be silent for three or
four minutes, he'd say a few more words, I'd wait, he'd look around, he would
think we'd stopped, then he'd get back on track, all the time watching him,
then he'd say something else. This was the tone from the beginning, in fact
that great moment early in the film when he says that he would never let
himself be bullied again and humiliated again physically, he stops, the camera
continues and he starts slightly hyperventilating. Then it's more than slight
hyperventilation and he starts to get a kind of pre-asthmatic breathing
mechanism going and then says ‘because if anyone did' and then he barely can
get his words out and says ‘I can't even say it'. And the camera continues
running. And then finally says "because if he did I would fucking kill him."
And at that moment as his voice gets quieter and quieter, it's almost inaudible
but the crescendo of emotion is radical, you feel he would like someone to be
there at that moment who would try to bully him so that he would have a reason
to kill him.
April 28, 2009
Yesterday I saw two films about critics.
The first, Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience," is ostensibly about a high-priced Manhattan call girl (played by Sasha Grey, a real life porn actress). To promote her business the woman agrees to meet with an "erotic connoiseur" (played by Glenn Kenny, a real life film critic, in a creepily hilarious break-out performance) who arranges to sample her wares for free in exchange for a rave review on his web site -- I guess it's kind of a Rotten Tomatoes for the sex industry. [SPOILER] It turns out he doesn't keep his end of the bargain.
So, what do you think Soderbergh is saying about film critics?
Later, that evening, I saw "Phoenix" film critic Gerald Peary's "For the Love of Movies" at its New England premiere as part of the Independent Film Festival of Boston. It's a long in the making (8 years) labor of love -- he made it with his wife Amy Geller -- that attempts to tell the story of the past, present and future (if there is one) of the critical profession. The finished work is informative, insightful, sometimes funny (Harlan Jacobson has only two lines, but they alone are worth the price of admission) but more often grim and elegiacal. Maybe the dark tone settled in for me with the opening image: Harry Knowles. He's the founder and chief voice of the fanboy review websight "Ain't it Cool News." Because of his huge influence Knowles has been courted by studios, flown to special screenings, wined and dined. In short, he gets freebies like the critic in "The Girlfriend Experience," but unlike in that film, he comes through with gushing reviews ready-made for the studios' promotional and a marketing departments.
So who is the real prostitute in that situation? In the real world, not many "critics" would refuse to provide satisfaction in such a transaction and risk earning the studio's disfavor. I think in his movie Soderbergh might have gotten things backwards.
April 27, 2009
Here's two more that didn't make the cut:
Aliens Among Us:
Did I mention that if you punch "Lou Dobbs" and "Antichrist" into Google you get 19,000 hits?
He just might want to take note of the fact that aliens -- extraterrestrial for the most part
and most likely illegal -- are in Hollywood right now taking jobs away from
earthling movie premises. Among those upcoming are "District 9", the animated "Battle for Terra," "Planet 51" and maybe J.J. Abrams new Star Trek prequel (I don't think Mr. Spock's ancestors arrived on the Mayflower). And maybe we
can include James Cameron's highly anticipated and supposedly mind altering "Avatar" in the category, which
according to this New York Times story,
might also alienate us from our own experience.
Toy Stories R Us:
In the great tradition of Bratz (2007)
and the first Transformers movie two more films adapted from toys will be opening this summer. Michael Bay will follow up with "Transformers:
Revenge of the Fallen" Stephen Sommers's
"GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra
." I'm still waiting for them to make movies of
my favorite toys when I was growing up -- yo-yo, Silly Putty and stick.
April 24, 2009
Maybe the newspaper movie, which I mentioned a few postings back
as a "Dead End Trends," has got some life in it after all. I've been reminded
that there is indeed a third film that falls into that category in addition to
"State of Play"
and "The Soloist" -- Rod Lurie's "Nothing But the Truth"
-- thus fulfilling the hallowed "rule of
three" that distinguishes a meaningless "trend" from a meaningless coincidence. Plus, other
pundits have pontificated on the matter, including Marshall Fine in his blog "Hollywood and Fine" and Patrick Goldstein's story
in his column "The Big Picture" in the
L.A. Times. Does this mean that, since the trend lives, maybe newspapers will
also? (Answer: no).
Meanwhile, some other ephemeral trends have come and gone. But
maybe they, too, will find a second life.
Lost and Found Worlds:
These are films in which someone discovers a passage to a new or
lost world, often a world inhabited by extinct beasts, dinosaurs and out of work print journalists. Among those are this summer's Pixar
animated "Up" and "Land of the Lost," a
big screen adaptation of the old TV show. I could also include some shows set
in prehistoric times like the animated sequel Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and the
Jack Black, Michael Cera caveman comedy, "Year One." The message? Maybe they're just trying
to get us used to the idea of our own world becoming lost, as is the case in the following trend.
(Dead) Ends of the World:
This is really more a perennial genre than a current trend, but we have
been seeing more of them lately. They include the sequel "Terminator Salvation,"
Roland Emmerich's "2012" and "Citizen Game,"
which sounds like "The Matrix" by way of "Rollerball" I'm tempted also to include "Angels & Demons," Ron Howard's follow up to his adaptation of
Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," and which, if faithful to the book, should involve not just the Antichrist but also Antimatter.
Speaking of which, I was wondering how Barack Obama was doing in terms of hits when his name is paired with the word "Antichrist." As you might recall when I checked this last year on August 28 before the election it was 501,000 hits. After being in office for about 100 days it has, predictably, more than doubled to 1,100,000. His opponent John McCain, also predictabl, has dropped from 425,000 to 184,000. (My own count, ominously, has increased to 145). I bring this up in part because the two candidates' now resolved conflict between youth and age (Obama winning the election and the Antichrist vote) might be reflected in the following trend:
Doddering mentor/dumb young kid:
:
In this trend, old age and youth reconcile their differences as an accomplished geezer takes a shine to a green youngster (male,
usually, except for Woody Allen's film) and shows him (or her, with Woody) the ropes (and more besides, again with Woody). For reasons I can't quite fathom, in most of these movies the
codger is
a magician, an obvious example being the Dumbledore/Harry connection in the newest frachise entry "Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince" Then there are also the not so great "The Great Buck Howard" and Michael Caine as a crapulous retired prestidigitator
geezer in "Is Anybody There?" In the non-magician category there's the old guy teaching the young guy how to prepare the dead in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar-winner "Departures," the desperate
sounding Woody Allen movie, "Whatever Works" and, once again,
"Up,"where the magic is all computer generated.
