Brian Lichtenberg
Spring greenery at the Museum of Architecture and Design
Text + Photographs by Graham Kolbeins
From his reputation for elegant vulgarity — he somehow made hologram leggings a must-have fashion item — and the far-reaching spread of his previous work (which has been seen in the pages of Italian Vogue, and on the backs of admirers as diverse as M.I.A., Gwen Stefani and Nicole Richie), emerging young designer Brian Lichtenberg has amassed a tremendous amount of well-deserved cred. Rather than the humorless industry folk you might expect from a Fashion Week event, the crowd of devotees that convened upon the Museum of Architecture and Design for Lichtenberg’s Spring collection show was comprised of Los Angeles’ for-serious fashion hipsters — those kids you’ll find smoking imported cigarettes outside any given Silver Lake bar, who are always dressed to impress. If that type of person usually looks like they’ve gotten lost on the way to a fashion show, on Friday night they had finally found it.
In an inspired act of synergy, trendy jewelers Alex & Chloe — known for their charms in the shape of antlers, anchors and tree branches — were the hosts of Lichtenberg’s show. There was no linear runway. Instead, the chairs were arranged in an L-shape around the room and photographers were perched at each of the corners, waiting for the models to snake around in their direction. Fashionistas were scattered about, occasionally being corralled into the standing-room area behind the chairs, shifting their weight and keeping a look out for the girl with the tray of complimentary Ecstasy Energy Liqueur.
The first few ensembles all featured splashes of the same pastel pink, purple and teal floral print, instilling nostalgia for the type of family-restaurant impressionism that was so hot in early 90's corporate art. Leggings, hats, vests and visors (worn sideways, of course) were all made out of the same languid brush-stroked imagery, set against a calm black background. The subdued colors of a wintry forest characterized the next pieces — airy, flowing dresses the color of dead leaves, delicate leggings covered in lace, and gray longjohns scored with bold black lines.
Soon, however, vibrant shades of green ranging from earthy to neon began to infiltrate the collection. The neutrality of a tan top was shattered by sparkling green sequins, and a river of emerald flooded like spilled paint over a shimmering silver hoodie. It all recalled the photo that had been carefully chosen for the invitation to Friday night's show: a quiet, gray woodland scene being literally attacked by neon green, as a man dyes the stream water to trace the path of the river. Even the underwear followed the theme, as a male model showed off a pair of black briefs adorned with a two-toned green leaf.
One of the best accessory choices of the night had to be a pair of translucent green glasses that appeared to have come straight from a bygone vision of the future. Lichtenberg even brought a touch of brilliance to the classic black-and-white striped T-shirt, splicing together two different patterns in the same spilled paint bucket manner used on the previously mentioned hoodie. His women's swimsuit was a similarly creative one-piece which wound around the model's body like ivy wrapping around a tree. All in all, Lichtenberg's work has evolved with simple refinement this season, without forgetting the magical, playful qualities that brought everyone’s attention to this brilliant, young designer in the first place. m
Jeremy Scott
Spring/Summer '08 at Smashbox studios
Text + Photographs by Graham Kolbeins
Jeremy Scott, one of the fashion world’s brightest stars, has been releasing critically acclaimed, often comical, and always audacious garments under his namesake label for the last ten years. He’s designed costumes for Björk, Madonna, Fergie and Kanye (those Venetian-blind sunglasses, anyone?), and his outfits have been worn by everyone from Britney Spears to Asia Argento. Aside from wooing celebrities and fashion writers alike with his over-the-top designs, he’s even tried his hand at acting in Larry Clark’s Wassup Rockers. It was no surprise that the showing of his Spring/Summer 2008 collection at Smashbox Studios last week was a veritable fashion happening.
The bar was surrounded by famished fashionistas and women were lined up impatiently at the dressing room cross-section, where volunteers were being made up with the latest Smashbox products. Darlings of the independent film world Miranda July and Mike Mills showed up together, those bland girls from "The Hills" (and their scary editor at "Teen Vogue") were wandering around blankly, Cory Kennedy and Steve Aoki were schmoozing, and Mercedes-Benz (sponsors of L.A. Fashion Week) had placed two of their new hatchbacks on display inside the enormous tent. There was even a reporter from Telemundo broadcasting live. The excitement in the air was palpable, as everyone jockeyed to get the best view of the runway. Before long, the lights dimmed and blaring music signaled the beginning of the presentation.
Scott’s collections are usually based upon a deceptively simple theme: “Food Fight,” for instance, subverted the aesthetics of junk food marketing, and “Tut TV” drew inspiration from Hollywood caricatures of ancient Egypt. This season was no exception — the title of Scott’s latest collection is "Men at Work," and the first model out on the runway proved that Scott wasn't kidding around. The dress she wore was a loose-fitting gold robe, covered in actual-size black boot prints. Her make-up was smudged to look like she'd just been working under an engine, and to top it all off she was wearing a huge trash-can lid hat.
The hat was a staple of the collection, complimenting many of the looks. Other models donned silver construction worker hard-hats and earrings that looked like screws and wrenches. Following the boot-printed dress (Is this what Orwell meant when he said “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face — forever?” Did he realize it would make a really fun high-fashion ensemble?), there were several outfits in a tire-track print, including a wonderfully frilly one-piece bathing suit, and a few outfits with prints based on plumbing and steel motifs.
Scott's most playful garb came out at the end of the show: first, a dress comprised of three layers of billowing, black trash bags, and second — possibly the most well-received piece — was a silver strapless dress printed to look like a metal trash can, accompanied by a hard hat with a beautiful veil streaming behind; somehow, in the world of Jeremy Scott even garbage cans can be as pure as a wedding gown. m
Fire & Brimstone
Tony Kaye's return to Hollywood
By Jessica Gelt + Photograph by Armando Strada
Tony Kaye should have begun his career as a filmmaker in the ’70s, when auteurs were all the rage. Instead, the British-born director of landmark commercials and videos made his feature debut in 1998, with the controversial classic American History X — and promptly sabotaged his promising future in Hollywood by fighting vociferously for a version of the film that went against the ironclad wishes of backing studio new line. while he remains one of the most sought-after commercial directors working today, the critical acclaim surrounding his explosive new docu-mentary about abortion, Lake of Fire, indicates that he’s poised to reclaim his rightful place as a Hollywood visionary. Mean caught up with Kaye one recent early morning, when he took a break from filming a commercial in China for the 2008 Beijing olympics and got on the phone with us.
How did Lake of Fire come about? You started shooting it in 1991 — that’s ages ago, in show-biz time.
When I moved to the united states in 1991, I was looking to make socially conscious films and noticed that the issue of abortion was very big. I thought that there was a movie in that — possibly a great one. so I started to make a documentary, thinking I might spend as much as a couple of years on it… In my mind I haven’t really finished, but we’re finalizing a [distribution] deal with ThinkFilm now.
Why did you take so long to put it together?
I set out to make a film that was unbiased and enthusi-astically investigated both sides of the coin. But a film about everything on abortion is not going to take a couple of years...I don’t think a movie can be made in less than 15 years. I don’t think a book can be written in under 10 years. I’m talking about things that last. I mean no disrespect — the world is commerce, people have to work, people have to get paid, people have to eat and we have to bash certain things out... but [generally] it’s only the things that do take a considerable amount of time that last. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, you know — the greatest contemporary music album of the last 100 years — took 700 hours to record even before they started the mix.
What films do you think will truly last?
Citizen Kane is probably the only movie that I’ll return to over and over.
So producing works of lasting import and consequence takes time, but one has to do other things to survive in the interim. How do you feel about the commercial work you do?
All human beings are generally — I don’t know if “victim” is too harsh a word, but our lives are all pretty much laid out in accordance to our initial circumstances. Given where I was born and the family I was born into, my way into filmmaking had to come through advertising. I’ve tried to put as much integrity into it as I can. I had a big problem with American History X and I fell out with everybody [involved] because I thought there was a lot more work to do.
Did what happened with American History X damage you?
Well, yeah. I really successfully — totally — demolished the possibility of being allowed into any studio executive’s office to talk about directing a film for them.
If you could go back and do it again, would you do it the same way?
I’ve sort of been in a wilderness for the last seven or eight years, and you can learn a lot when you’re wandering through the wilderness; like Buddha did. I don’t think I’ve learned as much as [Buddha], but I’ve made use of what happened to me. I’ve gotten a unique education I wouldn’t necessarily have had if I had kept quiet. I’m working with New Line now on an anniversary DVD box, which is going to have the old American History X and my director’s cut.
That was the version of the film you were fight-ing for, right?
Not really. I was fighting for another version I created during the time when I was trying to serve everyone’s needs. My director’s cut was about 20 minutes shorter than what eventually came out. [The latter] was no different — all the major scenes are identical; it’s just that there’s other stuff in there that they cut in before I decided to go on “walkabout.”
Is all of that behind you now that you’ve built up steam with Lake of Fire?
Yes. The reviews have been kind of amazing. In February, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York put on a festival called The Greatest Documentaries Ever Made, and the New York film critics picked Lake of Fire as one of the films included in the lineup.
There’s a scene that shows a real abortion, with tiny baby legs and arms. How have people reacted to it?
That’s about as shocking as any motion picture can ever get; it’s illegal to film somebody being killed... there is no other existing film footage in the history of the world that is as shocking as that. Actually, I’m sure there must be something — but you’d have to look pretty hard.
That particular image will never leave me. It’s almost enough to change a pro-choicer’s mind.
I knew going into the process that [such an image] had to be there, because if I’m enthusiastically exploring the pro-life faction, I have to show their concerns. I have to say that when I filmed that and walked out afterward, I was in an altered state.
When you found Norma McCorvey, who was Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, were you stunned she was pro-life?
I guess I was. she’s such a lost soul! When she was collected to be Jane Roe, in a way that was a manipulation. She didn’t find out that somebody was working on a case and put herself forward; she was found. And she didn’t seek out Operation Rescue [the pro-life group she is now affiliated with]; they moved in next door to her. She didn’t suddenly wake up one morning and say, “I’m going over to the other side now.”
What are your thoughts about Christian fundamentalists and their influence on politics in America?
I have no understanding of politics and I have no understanding of religion, although I have my own spiritual understandings. I’m a filmmaker. I met these people because I showed up with a camera and a crew. To make an unbiased film about this [topic] was the only thing I could do anyway, because my position on the subject is that I don’t really know what’s right. I didn’t know much in the beginning — although I thought maybe I did — and at the end I was just as confused. But I think that’s okay; it’s a valid box to check. m
Heroes Of Our Times
Richard Shepard’s Party Of Hard-Drinking, Risk-Taking Existentialists
By Mya Stark
So you massacred a few thousand human beings, full-atrocity style. Hey, it was wartime, they were Muslims, and what with this being an inter-ethnic conflict and all, you thought raping and killing civilians in an attempt to rub an entire ethnic group out was kind of in keeping with the main theme of things. But one day the carefree fun of internecine fighting ends, and the United Nations those uptight mofos—indict you for genocide. You’re gonna be captured, tried, sent to jail for the rest of your days—maybe executed. The collective moral force of the world community brought right down squarely on your head: What a bummer for your summer, right?
Not if you’re the Fox, the war criminal on the lam given chase to in The Hunting Party, Richard (The Matador) Shepard’s gonzo new thriller. Or if you’re the real murderer, Radovan Karadzic, that the Fox is based on. Karadzic remains at large in Bosnia, writing and publishing his work, flouting all attempts of international authorities to bring him to justice. Yet—and this is the true part of the film’s story—a group of drunk, horny journalists (The Party’s Richard Gere, Terrence Howard and Jesse Eisenberg) were able to ferret out the fugitive over the course of one weekend. Puzzlingly, the CIA prevented them from capturing him.
Here at Mean we are well aware of the exact capabilities of drunk, horny journalists. For everyone else, this is a story that must be seen to be believed. And Richard Shepard takes you on a hell of a ride, in the spirit of the best American genre pictures, to show it to you. We discussed the film with Shepard several days before its September 7th opening:
There’s a certain classicism to your new film, as if you were saying to the audience, “Here's a fucking interesting story, I'm going to tell it, and you're going to watch it.” It reminded me of films from the ’40s, which had that kind of lean, muscular storytelling which doesn’t get bogged down in a lot of bullshit.
That was one of the things that made me pursue it. Not intentionally at first, but eventually, I kinda felt like this is a 1940s Warner Brothers movie on the second half of a double bill. Those John Huston-esque movies, they were adventure stories, but they had darkness and comedy. Because they weren't the prestige pictures of the studio, the B movies were edgier films. They’re the ones that have survived. I thought you could do this movie as a $90 million action movie, which I wasn't interested in—or you could do it as a very dramatic, Academy Award-winning thing—which I wasn't interested in either. I was interested in telling a true story and having the freedom to do it in a different way, to highlight the more comedic elements of the story. I wanted to mix genres: one second the film’s a thriller, one second it's a drama, and the whole time, hopefully, it’s an adventure that takes place in a foreign country and it's very exotic—all of that stuff that I like.
“The movies on the bottom half of the bill…” I love that description. It describes being under the radar, being a little less supervised, because you are doing stuff cheaper. The directors who worked that way were the ones able to infuse their movies with an existentialism that the permissible movies, the A pictures, aren't allowed to have.
We made this movie in Bosnia. We were off the radar. The people financing the movie were very interested in what we were doing, but they weren't around—they were back in New York or L.A. They allowed me to make the script that I wanted to make, because they weren't spending so much money. They figured, at the end of the day, “Alright, we've got Richard Gere, we've got Terrence Howard... Even if it doesn't work, we'll sell it on DVD. And if it does work, maybe it'll be something original.” That’s a good way to make a movie. It just gave us freedom. The actors didn't get paid a lot of money. They wanted to be there: We shot it down and dirty in 42 days, [using] hand-held [cameras] in Bosnia. We weren't spending $100 million on some studio programmer or some gigantic robot movie. Those movies have to appeal to everyone so they can make a billion dollars. We don’t have to make a billion dollars! I hope people go to the movie, but we don't have that pressure—so we could try things. Maybe some of them will work, maybe some of them won't, but hopefully the big picture will work.
…Which completely relates to the existentialism in this movie, which has a lot to do with risk, with being willing to put yourself in harm’s way! That’s what makes life cool.
Well, as Richard Gere says in the movie, “Putting your life in danger is actual living. The rest is television.” I believe that. I mean, you know that the days when you are having an adventure in your life in any capacity are the days you tend to remember, as opposed to a perfectly nice Thursday where nothing much happens. I think that at the end of your life you look back on those adventures. This movie is about war journalists: They do live life on the edge and they're very serious about what they cover, but sometimes finding the next bar is just as important as following the story. I wanted to capture that; that kind of energy. Certainly making movies is an exciting way to live a life, too, and [making] this one was an adventure. What was appealing to the actors was the idea that it was real. This war happened just 12 years ago, and we were shooting in the place it happened in. The bullet holes you see on the wall are not art-directed, that's the real deal. [When we filmed there] Bosnia was still on the U.S. “Do Not Travel” list along with Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan. Even getting insurance to shoot the movie was difficult. I told Gere and Howard, “Guys, I don't want you to drop out a week before we shoot if you find out that Bosnia’s still on the U.S. ‘Do Not Travel There’ list.” I've been there; it's very interesting and somewhat safe. Remember—we're 20 minutes away from where these war criminals are hiding and they're not happy that we're making this movie.” But the cast understood what we were trying to do, and that risk and that adventure is part of what was fun about it. Also, we were all jazzed by the idea that—if there is a message to this movie, it is that this war criminal on the run, indicted for taking part in acts of genocide, is basically out there publishing books and plays, and he works more than I do. It’s ridiculous, and it's an embarrassment to the U.N. and to the world that we can’t catch him. So that also gave us some motivation.
What you’re saying draws back to the theme of the movie again, which is maybe that our government very much wants us to be afraid of stuff. They try to make us afraid, to see how far we’ll go in giving up our own rights, how willing we are to take away other peoples’ rights and lives in exchange for the promise of “security” and release from fear. It can be a political act if we just refuse to live our lives being scared of things.
I think you're right. One of the things I learned is that I'm no longer willing to just accept the company line. After September 11th, I certainly believed people wanted to catch Osama bin Laden, and I had to believe them on that. But a lot of the country also believed that we were going into the war in Iraq for a good reason. It turned out that wasn't true, and now, six years down the line, we still haven't found Osama. We need to start asking questions when we as a society say that we are against genocide, yet a guy indicted for acts of genocide is on the run in country the size of Kentucky. He’s basically eating at restaurants you would go to if you visited [Bosnia] and being seen on a regular basis. Yet he’s not caught. What does that tell us about world we live in? My movie tries to be many things: Hopefully it’s an adventure, but, if at the end you are left with a little bit of bile in your mouth about what's going on with our politicians, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, either. m
Mean Mavrix
Back To The Sun Source
Danny Boyle Looks For A Sign In Space
By Sorina Diaconescu + Photograph by Kim Kulish
In July of 1969, when the Apollo 11 mission shot towards the Moon and successfully deposited the first human beings on its crater-pockmarked surface, Danny Boyle was 13. Living in his parents’ Manchester home he was also, like most teens, chiefly obsessed with his favorite records—that is to say, not exactly vibrating to the poetry and symbolism of man’s conquest of outer space. “I know the lunar landing was a big deal for the world, but it wasn’t that big of a deal for me,” the 58-year-old director says now, punning gently on first-ever moonwalker Neil Armstrong’s ad-lib “One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”
Yet in his newest film Sunshine, this spry original of British cinema gives the topic an inspired interpretation. Landing in stateside theaters mid-summer, Boyle’s space-exploration thriller restores to the screen a retro impulse to imbue science fiction with metaphysics. While it doesn’t claim to have as ambitious a purchase on the matter as the works of the genre’s founding fathers, Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky, Sunshine is thoughtful, thoroughly entertaining and indicative of yet another evolutionary step in Boyle’s career.
The British-Irish director grew up in a devoutly Catholic home and was, he says, destined to become a priest. It wasn’t until his early 40s that he broke into the collective consciousness with his frenetic 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting. An ode to youth, recklessness and the chemical pursuit of happiness, the film remains a decade-defining pop culture landmark and perhaps Boyle’s best-known accomplishment. The ones that followed—notably 28 Days Later and Millions—proved that he can also comfortably flit from the grit of a post-Apocalyptic zombie thriller to the magical realism of a contemporary fairy tale in his trademark witty, energetic, often-surreal style.
When Mean recently reached Boyle at his London home base, the father of three revealed that he was readying himself for a trip to the neighborhood outpost of Blockbuster with two of his children and inquired, “Have you got any suggestions for what we should rent?” He spoke to us about his filmmaking creed, his sources of inspiration and the impact of his religious education on his movies.
Since you brought up your children, I must ask: How do they rate your work?
The young ones are 16 and 18 and my eldest one us traveling in America at the moment. It’s interesting watching how their taste narrows as they get older—it gets more specific. They’re loyal and charitable, thank God! They can watch anything, but what they actually consume willingly and delightfully is much narrower.
Should I take that to mean that they love watching Trainspotting rather than Millions?
That’s true! They’ll catch up with Millions when they have kids themselves.
In America Sunshine was released in theaters on July 20th, the anniversary of the Moon landing. Do you have any memories of watching the TV broadcast of this historical event?
I remember the black and white footage, but I don’t have an absolute, definite recollection of watching it at the time. It probably happened during prime time in America, which would have been the middle of the night [in Britain] and past my bedtime. I’ll ask my dad about this, actually… I think I saw it then, but I also think it’s possible I saw it later as well.
Did you share in the excitement about space exploration that was part of the revolutionary élan that defined much of the ’60s?
Oh, I did! When you say you’re a Star Trek fan today, it means something very different than back then. I mean I was a pre-Star Trek movies fan, back when it was a TV series. I was obsessed with it. But my real baptism as a science-fiction fan occurred when I became acquainted with the more serious side of it—seeing the first Alien movie when it came out. That really did it for me! And later seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I actually saw after the first Alien film. I missed it for some reason when it first came out and was in my late 20s by the time I saw it.
Those are the sci-fi movies I gravitate towards. I’m not a big Star Wars fan. I can appreciate the genius of it, but… I’m always astonished that dignified men turn into giggling children when they talk about Star Wars and quote lines from the films and talk about the toys they’ve got in the original wrapping and all this sort of stuff. I don’t get that at all.
Were Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Stalker among the movies that inspired your interest the space exploration/thriller genre?
Oh yeah! I love Stalker, but Solaris is my own personal favorite. Shallow Grave, the first proper film I made, went to the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. The screening happened on a Saturday night and it was great. Then I got up on Sunday morning and wandered around for films to see, and I walked into Solaris, which was being shown in the original Russian with Spanish subtitles. I don’t really speak Spanish, let alone Russian, but I sat there and I was absolutely mesmerized by it. I can remember whole chunks of it. That was my introduction to Tarkovsky.
When I was getting Sunshine ready, I read the Stanislaw Lem book that Solaris is based on, and if you haven’t read it, you should. You read and think, “The ’60s must have just been extraordinary!” The breadth and the daring of the writing in Lem’s book is astonishing. There is very little like that now; it’s not fashionable at all. People explore this topic outlandishly, but Lem's idea that a planet can read your mind makes so much sense. It’s not just an outrageous idea; it makes sense, organically. I recommend this book highly. You can see why Solaris is a great movie: As is often the case, it’s the writing that makes the movie.
I must tread carefully now, because it would be a shame to give away any crucial plot points in Sunshine. [Ed. note: Spolier alert!] I will reveal here that the story unfolds in an unspecified future when the sun has begun to cool off. Consequently, the Earth is plunged into an ice age that threatens to end life as we know it, which is why a team of astronaut earthlings is dispatched to fly straight into the sun and reignite its core by delivering the most powerful nuclear payload imaginable. Alas—as our space travelers journey towards the sun, they inevitably encounter something that transcends the laws of astrophysics. As such, I ask: [Ed. note: Major spoiler alert!] What motivated your creative decision to depict the spaceship crew's encounter with an anthropomorphic form of divinity—or God, if you will? This type of rendezvous is implied in Kubrick's and Tarkovsky’s works, but the visual specifics are intentionally kept vague and metaphorical.
There are two motivations here. The first one is—it’s irresistible. When you say this is a journey into the source of all life—which is a fact, we are a bit of exploded star kept alive by this other star—there's the additional connotation of a spiritual journey. And indeed, the whole basis of the mission—this is all back story that doesn’t really get spelled out in the film—is that they have selected hyper-critical, atheistic astronauts to go on a mission like this because they would know that otherwise the psychological load would be almost unbearable.
Any human being would know that if it were possible to get to the sun, it wouldn’t just be a question of physics; there’d be a spiritual dimension to it as well.
The second motivation is that, unlike Solaris, we try to make mainstream films that are interesting. We’re not trying to make art films that have a restrictive, festival-based audience. That means you have to illustrate. You can’t make 2001 or Solaris now. The velocity of our lives means our entertainment is at a much higher tempo and speed and rhythm, and you have to drive a message home and illustrate it.
CERN [the European Council for Nuclear Research] are momentarily engaged in proving the existence of a subatomic particle they have dubbed “the God particle.” Becoming acquainted with the most advanced contemporary theories in physics inevitably stirs the mind to the beautiful realization that science and religion, these two longtime enemies, do meet after all. While you and [Sunshine screenwriter] Alex Garland were working on the script, you did actually consult with some physicists on the plausibility of the events that drive the plot? For instance, is it plausible true that one could reactivate a star by nuking its core?
Theoretically, a lot of things are possible. An interesting by-product of doing the film was the question of scale. With everything you learn about the sun, you can feel your brain pulse a bit; you sense our [collective] inability to take on this question of the sun's scale. I guess it’s the same as the tiniest mites trying to take on our human scale! So the film is outlandish in that respect. But what we were trying to show, in the last few minutes of the film, was that [the astronauts] brought man’s most terrifying and brilliant achievement—the nuclear bomb—to the sun, which is, if you like, God’s or nature's bomb. We tried to show that man is sort of sandwiched between them, which is where we sort of are at the moment, and who knows how it will go for us, really? We tried to make the beginning of the film really realistically based, almost possible. It’s not possible to fly up to the surface of the sun and touch it, but who knows what’s possible? Almost anything goes. Our science advisor was very clear about admitting that.
I know that you’ve shot on DV before. How do you feel about this transformation of cinema as a medium underfoot right now, which has filmmakers like David Lynch and Robert Rodriguez saying they will never shoot on film again because they are enamored with the limitless possibilities of digital? Do you feel that way yourself? And how much digital trickery was there involved in Sunshine?
This is an interesting question. I’m a big fan of digital: 28 Days Later was one of the first mainstream movies shot on it. We kind of made a breakthrough with it, because up until then, it was thought a mainstream audience wouldn’t tolerate the lack of quality sometimes implied in using digital versus film stock. So I’m a big fan, and I intend to use it again on the next film I’m making. But on this film, partly because of the cultural history and the people who had gone before us--the films that we were talking about earlier--and partly because of the range we needed, we decided to use celluloid. We used anamorphic lenses and we shot widescreen. I instinctively felt that to capture something of such beauty that it almost brings you to tears, I had to use celluloid. Celluloid almost has a connection with the Renaissance… It links us to older art-making traditions. And if you’re going to do something this beautiful, you have to use it. Plus, at the moment, we are programmed to still believe the trick of celluloid, light on the plastic skin of the film. We believe that is the starting point, the line of truth…
You always seem to favor surrealist touches or magical realism in the way you tell stories on film. How important are dreams to you when you think of a project and storyboard it in your head? Do you find a lot of inspiration in dreams?
I don’t remember any night ones at all; they all happen in the daytime for me, strangely enough. I read about David Lynch and other people who keep a notebook by their bed and scribble stuff down when they wake up. I’m asleep very peacefully. There is nothing going on! But in the daytime, it’s kind of endless. And what you refer to as “surrealist touches,” I call “risk.” You have to risk things in film.
I come from a British background, and our fallback is realism. Always. Absolute realism. Yet I think you have to risk it. You don’t always succeed, but I think you should always risk. I’ll never shy away from a risk. …There’s a scene in Trainspotting where [the protagonist] goes down the toilet, and it’s sort of become famous. But I remember people saying at the time, “That’s never going to work. We should cut that!” And I remember thinking, “No.” I’ve used this risk technique elsewhere a lot less successfully, but it still hasn’t changed my philosophy, which is—you should risk everything sometimes for this moment where you just ask people to step forward with you and go into a slightly different, heightened landscape. If you stay in realism, people will plop through realism with you, because it’s just like life, in a way. It's acceptable. It’s fine. But that’s not enough. You have to play that risk moment that could take them beyond; into something else.
Where does the inspiration for such risk moments come from?
It comes from everywhere. My house is literally groaning… it's weighed down with photography books. It's my worst, most awful vice: I buy books of photography. I adore photography more than anything—apart from music. And I find in it a huge source of help in getting to think visually about a film.
I always try to create a scrapbook that becomes a sort of Bible of the film that people can refer to and contribute to. It’s not an exclusive thing. It’s not like me saying, “This is how it has to be.” I particularly ask heads of departments—the designer and the cinematographer, etc.—to contribute ideas to it as well.
What are some of your favorite fine art photographs?
I am the proud possessor of a couple of Sebastião Salgado’s. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of money on Sebastião Salgado prints. I love that work. I love [Henri] Cartier-Bresson. There’s a lot of modern stuff I like as well.
You shot Sunshine in England, correct?
It was shot in the East End of London—in a very similar way, actually, to 2001. Kubrick’s trick that not a lot of people acknowledge is that he worked with a tiny crew. He had virtually nobody working on the movie… and he knew that Warner Bros. would just let him do his thing, because the costs weren’t enormous. Thus he could just keep going and experimenting. And he was at the absolute boundaries of what was possible back then. We likewise shot Sunshine in a little studio in East London, not one of the big studios. We kept control of the film; we kept the costs down. We worked quietly, trying to achieve what we wanted. That’s a big bit of advice I always give to people, “If you can do it, just head off and make your film privately.” You can’t make it completely privately these days, because there always has to be an Internet campaign running alongside the film to raise the profile and all that kind of stuff. The problem with the Internet campaigns is that the film has to exist before it ever has a profile on the Internet. You just never know what it’s going to be like…
You have a good track record for spotting young actors who go on to have great careers. I’m thinking, of course, of Ewan McGregor and Cillian Murphy…
…You say it in a kind of mock-modest way, that you’re just shining light on talent, but that is one of your jobs as a director: To spot talent and make it feel really confident so you get the best out of it. Although you’re in charge of the film, you know on some level that if you want the film to appeal to ordinary people—which kind of the background I come from—then you have to try and either work with big stars, or in my case, for the most part, try to discover people who can become as mesmerizing and as captivating as a big star is.
Is there going to be a sequel to Trainspotting?
We’ve got a very, very strong idea for it—looking at those characters again when they hit middle age. When you first saw them they were hedonists—abusing and taking their bodies to the absolute limit of what they can tolerate. What gives our idea legs is that we’re going to wait until the [original] actors are in their 40s and middle-aged themselves, and the people who loved the film will have encountered that mark as well in their own lives. We want to do the sequel with all the same actors again, but it will depend on how they all feel about it when they will have hit middle age. They still basically look the same as they did when we made the film! They take great care of themselves, you see—
They’d have you believe that they’re wild, wild men, but actually, I always say they’re tucked up in bed at 10 o’clock at night with a moisturizer on.
Were you raised Catholic?
Yeah. I had a very strict Catholic education at a Christian brotherhood school called the Salesian School. And I was destined to be a priest. It was the ambition of my mother, who was a very simple Irish Catholic woman. She did not want me to be a famous film director, nor to go to university, nor to do any of those things. She wanted me to be a priest. Sadly I let her down, as you have to sometimes.
Did she see any of your films?
No. She died 20 years ago before I made films. I didn’t start making movies until I was almost 40. I couldn’t get into the film industry. I worked in theater first of all, and then in television… made some lovely little films for television, and eventually got into film. My mum saw some things I did on telly, but wasn’t that interested in them, to be honest. She wouldn’t mind me saying that.
That’s a bit sad, because I am convinced that she would have loved your work. What mother could watch Millions and not be moved by it?
Millions is dedicated to my mum and dad and it’s based particularly on my mum, very much so. My dad, on the other hand, is very interested in my work. He’s an 86-year-old working-class guy. He used to be a physical laborer and worked since he was 14, shoveling coal and doing all sorts of jobs like that. Big drinking kind of man! Anyway, he sees all the films I make and says the same thing after each one: “Well, son, it was good, but it wasn’t as good as Shallow Grave.” He even said it after Millions. And I said, “Dad! That was dedicated to you! You must have liked it more than Shallow Grave?!” And he said, “Well, not really.”
Circling back to Sunshine: Would you say that Catholic imagery and ritual—the spectacle of the Catholic Mass and the devotional aspects of being brought up in a devoutly Catholic environment—also influenced the look and themes of this film?
I always like to point out that [Sunshine writer] Alex Garland is a confident atheist. I’m an atheist, but not quite such a confident one. Whether faith has to do with the indelible mark that your education and upbringing and culture leaves during your first formative, 10-12 years, or whether it’s something tangible that we might get a view of or a sight of… That’s the eternal question for me.
At the end of this film, [protagonist] Kappa sees something, and it doesn’t just add up to a physics equation. It cannot just be explained by mathematics. What it is? Who knows! But that’s where I come from, really. That’s why I like to achieve in all my films, even if some of them are savage. I hope they have a kind of optimistic life force in them, something compelling, so you leave the cinema not thinking, “Yes, there is a God,” but, “Wow, here I am! I’m alive! There’s plenty to do and get on with.”
And that’s all you can possibly want. You want people to come out of the theater and feel a rush to the heart. m
"You want people to come out of the theater and feel a rush to the heart… That's all you can possibly want."
Third Time’s A Charm For James Lavelle’s Collabo/Project
By Lily Moayeri + Photograph by Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones
Sounds of animals and children are momentarily drowning out James Lavelle, the mastermind behind the changeable outfit known as UNKLE. Lavelle, 33, is spending time with his 9-year-old daughter Lyla Blue at a wildlife park in the Somerset area of the English countryside.
For the multi-tasking DJ, remix and electronica artist, balancing out all the numerous things he likes to accomplish is a perpetual problem. Right now, he’s promoting UNKLE’s third long-player, War Stories. He’s also working to establish a newly minted fashion/record label, Surrender All—the replacement for his longstanding, now defunct tastemaker Mo’ Wax imprint. On top of it all, he needs to give his little girl due attention during their exploratory encounter with the wild beasts.
“Whatever I do, there are people complaining,” he says. “I never seem to please everybody. I’m pretty used to it.”
Lavelle is bracing himself for criticisms of War Stories. The album signifies a change in UNKLE’s sound: There’s more rock in it, and live elements are given more prominent play. Chris Goss, noted producer for Queens Of The Stone Age, was heavily involved, making Lavelle’s one-time association with DJ Shadow under the UNKLE aegis seem a distant memory. War Stories was recorded in Joshua Tree, and boasts guest appearances from, among others, Massive Attack’s 3D, the Cult’s Ian Astbury and Queens’ Josh Homme and Autolux.
“As an UNKLE record, it’s my most defined,” Lavelle notes. “It’s the most cohesive. On past records there were always elements I still cringe about. On this one, I don’t. Maybe time will change things—I haven’t listened to the last two records for a very long time.”
Although the first UNKLE collaboration with DJ Shadow, Psyence Fiction, was released in 1998, most music lovers still regard it mainly as a Shadow project. In fact, UNKLE is Lavelle’s brainchild; a creative project he’s been nurturing since he was 18. He remains hyper-aware that he’s been subconsciously fighting the perception that the outfit is DJ Shadow’s baby for the last decade.
“In retrospect, that whole process [for Psyence Fiction] was pretty worthless,” he says. “You come up with a project. You come up with all the ideas. You put everybody together. You find all the musicians. You sit in the studio. You work on ideas. And in the end, everybody thinks it’s [the handiwork of this other] person. It’s a lot to carry around for a long time. This time I feel free of that. On the second album [Never, Never, Land], certain people involved and I didn’t see eye to eye. It became quite a difficult record. I felt I lost a lot of control at times. On this record, I don’t.”
That’s not to say that everything came up roses on his most recent release. Lavelle and his current UNKLE co-conspirator, Richard File, have a temperamental relationship at best. But at least Lavelle doesn’t feel “bullied.” (“Try working with Shadow,” he says.) He no longer feels like someone’s breathing down his neck. Because of that’s he’s been a lot happier—so much so that he even sings on one of the standout War Stories tracks, “Hold My Hand,” and does an admirable job of it, too.
“I have no desire to be in a testosterone-fueled environment anymore,” Lavelle adds. “Studio recording is quite an intense “boys with toys” scene. Making records is a very aggressive process and I’m over it. I need balance and a more loving environment in the studio. [UNKLE co-conspirator File] is very feminine. He’s very open. He’s a very loving man, like a Big Buddha. He brings that feeling into what we’re doing. And [producer Goss] is very open, a very mellow character, too. He opened me to things I needed in my life at the time.”
As for what Lavelle needs in his life in the present moment… Well, his daughter believes he needs a sequined purple teddy bear, which she has just won by playing one of those claw-activated toy-dispenser machines. She’s stubbornly trying to pry him away from his cell phone and distract him from his interview duties. She succeeds and he walks off with her—having at last completely pleased at least one person in his life. m
“Whatever I do, there are people complaining. I never seem to please everybody. I’m pretty used to it.”
Campaigning for Gore
Horror revivalist Eli Roth on the politics of slasher flicks
By Sten Layton & Jake Gaskill +
Photograph by Tim Palen
“Why?” is the foremost question any viewer undoubtedly has for neo-gore auteur Eli Roth after experiencing his much-bruited films Cabin Fever and Hostel.
In some instances, we imagine, it’s a mewling whimper—“Why?! Why did I have to see a girl’s optic nerve snipped clean and the gash spout a (perchance unrealistic yet ever so satisfying) rivulet of pus? And why did I have to watch the pus crawl down her charred face?”). More often, we bet, it’s a shriek of agony: “Christ! Why did you have to show me a close-up of a woman taking a razor to her disease-ridden leg?”) While witnessing Roth’s Thanksgiving trailer, sandwiched between the halves of the recent Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino opus Grindhouse, some spectators have been overheard muttering, “Why, in the name of all that is holy, just and sane, must I lay eyes on another human being stuffed, baked and served for Thanksgiving dinner?”
Questions of such nature are rhetorical. Roth’s brief, brutal body of work makes it abundantly clear that he’s a filmmaker on a mission to impress on his audiences as much cruelty, in as many creatively horrifying ways, as cinematically possible.
Like any significant artist, Roth promises to show you something you never thought you wanted to see. And admit it, all-too-willing Roth victims: deep down, you rabid jackals shiver with pleasure at every little bloody frame he slaps on the screen.
Roth’s psychological understanding of what collectively terrifies us sets his oeuvre apart from the swarms of unimaginative horror films that have spewed forth since he and others reinvigorated the genre several years ago. There’s no doubt that more lame spray-fests will emerge after the director’s latest effort, Hostel 2, begins to haunt theaters in June. Yet we predict that Roth’s rot will stand singularly scary among them.
Recently Mean plunged beneath the filmmaker’s disarming, fratboy-esque exterior to probe the darkness and dementia that ostensibly fuel his work. We discovered instead a man in command of encyclopedic arcana pertaining to horror sub-genres, thoroughly attuned to the state of affairs in the world and eager to draw connections between movies, politics and global culture.
When did you start watching horror?
I was 6 when I saw The Exorcist and I saw Alien at 8. If you missed them in the theaters, you’d never see them, because they didn’t run on television and there were no VCRs yet. But when I was 11, we got a VCR and I remember that the first movie we rented was A Clockwork Orange. Every weekend from then on, all I did was rent disgusting splatter movies, and specifically, slasher movies. Holiday slasher movies: Mother’s Day, My Bloody Valentine, April Fool’s Day, The Mutilator… Any movie that was in [noted horror mag] Fangoria, I would rent.
Wow, your parents must have been pretty liberal to allow you that.
Absolutely. My dad’s a psychiatrist and professor at the Harvard Medical School and my mother’s a painter.
What was the first Mario Bava film you ever saw?
Bloodbath. Also known as Twitch of the Death Nerve. The great thing about old Italian horror movies is that they all have different titles—they were purposely titled differently, to confuse people. Furthermore, US movies got released in Italy under different titles. For example, Dawn of the Dead was released in Italy as Zombi. So when Lucio Fulci made his own film, Zombi, they couldn’t call it Zombi, so they called it Zombi 2. But the title of that movie when it came to the U.S. was Zombie, also known as Zombie…The Dead Are Among Us. And right around that time, Umberto Lenzi made a movie that was released in the U.S. as City of the Walking Dead—also known as Nightmare City. It took me like 15 years to figure out which director did what movies and what the original titles were! The distributors wanted to trick people into thinking they were seeing the movie everyone was talking about; they purposely created confusion.
Twitch of the Death Nerve really is the movie that first established the slasher point-of-view. It got incorporated in Black Christmas, directed by Bob Clark, and then by John Carpenter in Halloween. But Mario Bava with Twitch of the Death Nerve was the first to establish that kind of style.
Your own film Cabin Fever uses a couple of such POV shots in the running-in-the-woods scene.
Yes, but those were definitely much more of the Sam Raimi POV-shot variety.
Your experimentation within the horror genre focuses on both realism and extraordinary situations. It doesn’t seem like your just emulate your heroes—Raimi & Co. What’s the main inspiration behind your style?
In the ’70s there was a great wave of horror films that were reality-based. You had films like Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last House on the Left, which were very much based in reality. But even films like Dawn of the Dead and Evil Dead would treat a fantastic situation very realistically, you know? Like, the situation itself was never a joke. And that’s what I love about those films and about ’70s horror films in general: that no matter how fantastic the situation, it was always treated like a real crisis. And it just so happens that the subject matter and the stories that I’ve told in my first couple of films are more reality-based.
Do you ever watch MSNBC’s "Dateline: To Catch a Predator" series with Chris Hansen?
I know of it but I’ve never seen it.
It’s a news magazine that profiles real-life pedophiles and Internet predators. How much does current news influence your writing?
I don’t get influenced by images on television as much as by things I’ve seen in real life. I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts—which was voted the safest town in the country. And you’d still hear stories of teachers who had sex with 6-year-old kids. The stuff that always terrified me was anything happening in real life. There was no monster that could ever scare me more than the monster that lives down the street.
So when I’m making a film, I really think about the things that scare me. I don’t think people are afraid of the Charlie Manson kind of psycho-killer. That’s sort of a thing of the past in America. The new most-feared killer is Dennis Rader, the BTK killer. It’s someone who coached Little League, someone who sat next to you in church. The very person people are afraid of is the person that’s never done anything yet, because you think, “When are they going to snap?” It’s a recent phenomenon: if someone is a little too perfect—a babysitter you trust or someone who stands next to you in church—people are suspicious of them.
With times being what they are, do you think it’s easier for you to horrify a contemporary audience?
It’s never easy to horrify an audience. You can be gross; that’s easy. But to genuinely scare and chill people is very difficult. I think the only way to really do it is to tune into the fear of the moment. Take Cabin Fever: when it came out, the whole SARS scare was in the air. Hostel had images of torture—at a time when all we hear about are soldiers getting kidnapped in Iraq and people being tortured in basements with power tools. I believe you have to have your finger on what is scary now in order for a movie to really connect with audiences… The key is to find a topic that is of the moment but relay it in a timeless way, so 30 years from now people will still identify common traits and patterns of human behavior in your film and will still be scared by it.” The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a reflection of the Manson family crimes, and it’s still scary today. George Romero felt that the country was cannibalizing itself and Dawn of the Dead was his metaphor for the US turning into one big shopping mall [devoured by] consumerism.
Would you say that Romero was much more political than you are?
No. There are equal amounts of politicizing in Romero’s films and my films. I’m just more subtle about it. I love Romero’s movies, but in Land of the Dead you know exactly what he’s talking about. It’s a very clear-cut commentary on class and society. Whereas my films—they are very much made for teenagers to go see on a Friday night, but if you watch them again and again, you realize there’s more going on than you had originally thought.
Name an absolutely obscure horror flick that really rocks your boat.
I’m a huge fan of To Be Twenty and Torso and also a film called Night Train Murders, directed by a guy named Aldo Lado. These are basically films that have been overlooked. They’re lesser known and they’re not really widely released—although there’s going to be a Torso reissue coming out. Sergio Martino did Torso, which is a masterpiece. It’s brilliance! It was actually out in ’73, before The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yet again—the original title was The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence but when Joseph Brenner, the US distributor, bought it, he called it Torso. Fernando Di Leo directed To Be Twenty, which for the first 85 minutes is basically this funny sex comedy… And in the last five minutes the main character is brutally raped and murdered in a horrible way—it’s the most violent, disturbing, upsetting ending I’ve ever seen in a movie. When the film was released in theaters, there were practically riots and every single print had to be pulled and cut to have a happy ending.
Let’s talk about the trailer for Thanksgiving. The blogs are going crazy over it and the fan response has been incredible.
Thanksgiving is really was a film that Jeff Rendell—a friend of mine from childhood—and I have been dreaming of making. I just could never believe that holiday had been missed. I feel like torture is really in vogue right now—the Saw-type movies—but I still miss the early ’80s holiday slasher movie, you know? And because the [recent] Black Christmas remake was terrible, I had to wipe away the taste of that. It was just an insult: it was embarrassing and it sucked and it was everything that’s wrong with movies today.
The idea of making a trailer for a non-existent movie is great!
I’m actually going to make a whole movie of fake trailers and call it Trailer Trash. I’ve already got Edgar Wright, Quentin, Robert, RZA from Wu-Tang Clan on board. Elvis Mitchell’s going to do a fucking blacksploitation trailer.
The film critic Elvis Mitchell?!
Oh yeah. Oh yeah! He fucking knows his shit. Here’s the plan: I’m going to direct most of it, but I will have my friends come in and contribute segments. It’s going to be like Borat or Jackass—except all fake trailers. Why the fuck not? The trailer always strings the best parts of a movie anyway. Thanksgiving was the first time I’ve really made a movie with no rules and no constraints. There wasn’t one person who gave me a single note on anything. I did exactly what I wanted; I cast who I wanted; I completely ran the production myself. [Tarantino and Rodriguez] were like, “Go do whatever you want”—and I did. The result is that I’ve gotten the best response out of anything I’ve ever done. Which shows that left to my own devices, I do my best work.
Hostel, and now, Hostel 2: Have you ever actually stayed in a hostel?
Yes. I was an exchange student in France at 18. I traveled around a lot while I lived there. And when I turned 17 I went to Russia, and that was a trip that changed my life.
How so?
I’d been to Egypt and Israel, but the trip to Russia and the trip to France represented the first time I became absorbed in other cultures. I spent almost two and a half weeks in Russia and just over a month in France, and really got to meet kids of my own age and got a perspective on how other people see us as Americans and how fortunate we are with what we have. And when I returned to Newton, Massachusetts, I just couldn’t stand it. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible! I just felt that everyone was so obsessed with getting a new car and making money and getting good SAT scores. I couldn’t relate to any of them. I felt like an alien.
Who’s the ultimate contemporary real-life villain for you?
Dick Cheney, I think. People who are power hungry—just greedy and greedy for it. I really think people like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have totally lost their way. And this is not about being a Republican or a Democrat. I would say the same thing if they were Democrats; I really would. They really repeated Vietnam—people are dying in Iraq, they’re coming back really fucked-up and damaged, and there’s no process of integrating them back into society. They feel abandoned by their government. It’s really horrible. And for what? For what?
Are there any subtle references to what’s going on overseas in Hostel 2?
Oh yeah! The guys doing the killing in Hostel 2 justify their behavior by looking at areas of chaos around the world, anarchy areas like Chad or New Orleans 2005. They would argue that as soon as there are no laws, people go right to raping and killing. There is no intermediate step: once the lights are out, once the power’s gone and no one is looking, people turn into animals. And [my characters] totally justify themselves by saying, “We’re just getting back to what we truly are. This is the nature of man and we’re just in touch with that. We’re not sick; we’re the normal ones.”
Everybody, I think, had this theory that if everything ever fell apart, you know, the police and the fire department would protect us. But New Orleans proved that if things are really bad, those in charge, who are also human, get scared and quit. It proved that there’s no backup plan—and that’s a terrifying thought. New Orleans is still a mess; Iraq is still a mess. You really feel now that no one in charge has any sort of solid plan to take care of people.
Any specific narrative points that evolve the original Hostel premise in Hostel 2?
It’s about the commoditization of human beings. We expand on that theme: the idea that ultimately, to some, money is worth more than life. And on the idea of violence as a sexual act—having power over another person and getting off on that. It’s the ultimate taboo.
Lastly: is there any way we can get a realistic, Bush Administration-centric neo-horror classic out of you?
E: You already got two of them. I always say that a big part of the success of Hostel was the trifecta of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They’re the reason people are terrified and want to scream. m
“A big part of the success of Hostel was the trifecta of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They’re the reason people are terrified and want to scream.”
Life With Zoe
Going with the flow of randomness
By Sorina Diaconescu + Photograph by Zoe Cassavetes
You know that feeling when you find yourself in the thick of your 30s and suddenly pause to take a look back and around at your friends and the thought “Everybody’s a hyphen!” just occurs to you? Well, a lot of us are hyphens—writer-Ph.D student, waitress-aspiring playwright, Arctic explorer-filmmaker in the making—and nobody more so than Zoe Cassavetes.
The stations of her journey so far have included acting (“I sucked!”), muse-ing for designer/friends Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui, posing in fashion print ads (“It was fun and good money”), doing grunt work as a production assistant and consulting on matters of style and design for the posh Mercer Hotel in New York. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, Cassavetes became a director.
She’s one of three siblings born to Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes, the mercurial actress/filmmaker pair who, beginning at the tail of the ’50s, when Hollywood was cranking out mawkish romances and the thrill of Method acting had ossified into empty formalism, collaborated on several path-clearing movies that established the blueprint for today’s indie filmmakers. Coming up in her parents’ home, where pictures were perpetually written, rehearsed and improvised, little Zoe could not but watch and learn.
She first directed commercials, then videos, and recently, a full-fledged feature, which she also wrote. Her debut, Broken English, comes out in theaters this summer. It’s a bittersweet romantic comedy veined with a generational sense of malaise—an observant little film attuned to the travails of single men and women looking for…something in their big city. Parker Posey is radiant as protagonist Nora Wilder, a neurotic New Yorker with a cushy, humdrum job; a vague, unresolved sadness and a nagging lack of boyfriend. When she randomly meets and falls in love with a visiting Frenchman (Melvil Poupaud), her life forks into a journey of self-discovery to Paris.
In both style and tenor, Broken English brings to mind the oeuvre of Sofia Coppola—a best friend of Cassavetes’ since they were both teens. They are quite different in interview demeanor (Sofia: soft-spoken, elliptical, evasive; Zoe: loud, funny, ebullient) but their work is similarly feminine and delicate, gliding inward from the surface of things toward glimpses of authenticity, of real emotion. When they met in the early ’90s, they bonded on the spot. They rolled together for the rest of the decade as they concurrently dabbled in fashion, collaborated on a Comedy Central proto-reality TV show ("Hi Octane"), skipped around L.A., Paris and New York surrounded by charming, bohemian, creative friends—and tried to find themselves in the gigantic shadows of their parents.
When Mean recently caught up with Cassavetes, she was eager to talk about her film and newfound career path, her own adventures in singledom and her recipe for a perfect lazy summer day in Paris.
In the final scene of Broken English, the two protagonists, who’d met by chance in New York, are once again reunited by chance in a Parisian bistro. The encounter gives absolutely no indication if their transatlantic romance would work out or not. I watched the film at an advance screening and a man sitting next to me turned around while the credits rolled and said, “I wish there was a second reel. I’m dying to see what happens next.” Let’s pretend you didn’t write and direct this film. What do you think happens next to Parker Posey’s character and her French lover?
I don’t know if I could detach myself from it, because I lived it for so long. I purposefully wanted the story have an open ending, because in life you just can’t possibly predict what’s gonna happen to you. I certainly have no control over what seems to happen to me! As a viewer, you can choose what you would like to happen at the end: maybe you want to believe that they’re gonna be together forever. Or that it doesn’t work out and she goes off but then comes back to him. Or that maybe she stays with him and they travel through the rest of the world together... I just like the idea of an interactive ending. It drives me crazy when things are tied up in a neat little bow. I’m happy to, you know, push the viewer to think.
Relationships in general—not just transatlantic ones—are so fragile, so hard to maintain. What do you think makes them last?
God, I don’t know! Everybody’s looking for love, but I find that there’s so much weird societal pressure to be with someone. Watching movies and TV shows, the message is always, “It’s so easy! Why don’t you have that?” It’s such a common strain on men and women of a certain age—they want to be accepted in society and believe that in order to achieve that, they need to have romantic love. But the more pressure you put on yourself to pursue it, the further you get away from the real truth of finding. I was just looking back at old journals from 10 years ago and at the time I kept writing, “Why can’t I meet anybody? What is wrong with me?” And then one day, about two weeks before I met my boyfriend—currently my fiancé, actually—I had just finished my script for the film and I was like, “You know what? I don’t need anyone. I have a job. I have tons of friends. I like my life, I love my apartment, everything’s fine.” And then of course, after that, I met him. He’s French and we met in New York.
I love it when life imitates art. In this case, it also looks like someone, somewhere was trying to teach you a lesson.
Exactly. And I’m glad I learned it. But having a relationship is a lot of work. Most people don’t understand like how much honesty and communication and all that stuff it takes. A lot of people aren’t right for you. Or maybe they’re the right person for you for only a month or only a year. Do I believe in one true love? Probably not. I’ve liked a couple of guys very strongly in my life.
I thought it was lovely that your film is based on the idea of the random magical encounter. Do you believe in that? Have you had such encounters that changed your life?
I like the idea randomness as opposed to fate. To believe that life is predestined is crazy because, it’s like, the most complicated thing ever. I generally think life is putting opportunities out there for you all the time, and if you want to take them, you do. I like the thought of going with the flow of randomness, instead of just closing yourself into a box. I remember the times when I was like looking for a boyfriend and thought, “I can’t find one because my name is Zoe and I’m encased in glass. How do I get out?”
What’s special to you about a relationship in which you’re discovering a person but at the same time, through them, you’re discovering a new culture or a new setting?
I definitely wanted the guy in my film to be foreign. And because I’d spent so much time in France and wanted to shoot there, I was like, “Oh, he’s gonna be French.” I personally find that Europeans are so much more direct about their emotions. They’re like, “I like you and I want to go out with you! Do you want to move in together?” and you’re like, “Uh, what?!” I mean—I’ve gone out with guys in New York for five months without being able to tell if they really like me. So I wanted to show this fear that almost all Americans have when it comes to relationships; the neurosis of, “Am I the right person for you? Are you the right person for me?” A French guy would be more openly romantic from the get-go—even if he’s totally bullshitting you.
Would it have worked with a German guy?
I think so. It would have been a different movie, though. You know, there was a great Barbet Schroeder movie called More. You should see it, it’s great. It’s a totally crazy drug movie but it’s also about a German guy who’s kind of a scam artist and who goes to France and meets this English or American girl, can’t remember exactly which it is, and becomes obsessed with her. So I guess a German guy could totally get into it too.
The Broken English shoot was very much a familial affair: your mother, Gena Rowlands, makes an appearance as Posey’s mom in the film, as does Peter Bogdanovich, who’s a longtime family friend, I gather. What did they bring to your script? Were you surprised by how they interpreted their parts?
You’re such a control freak when you’re writing your movie—you have such an idea of what it should be, what it should sound like, how every line should be delivered. My mom was amazing to work with because you know, she’s my mom but she’s also a stunning, experienced actress. When we got the money to make the film, she called me up and asked me, “Do you want to talk about my part?” So, you know we did a few adjustments and I think she helped me take her character to a very human level. And after that, she said, “Well, do you want to talk about the rest of the script?” And I’m like, “Hold on, let me get a pen!” I ended up with about 20 additional pages of notes.
I was lucky to have such a great group of actors on my side. Parker and Drea [de Matteo] brought a lot to the script, and Melvil, too—especially him. I was writing what seemed to me almost cheesy lines for his character, thinking, “Is this gonna work?” But when I sat down with him and we read the script I realized that he’s such a brilliant actor that it’s totally gonna work! He’s very cute and sweet and romantic but he’s not really like his character in real life; yet he really got it. That was the most important thing—that everyone got their role and knew how to relate to it in real life.
I have to say that Parker’s character is most like me although there’s a little bit of me in every character. I was so tickled to watch my actors bring something of themselves to their parts spontaneously—even if it was just a gesture or an eye movement, those little important things. Because I tried to be an actor and I just sucked so bad. Believe me, if I didn’t, I’d be an actress.
What character traits and artistic virtues you think you’ve inherited from your parents?
They were so passionate about what they did and stubborn about the way they were going to do it and honest about it. But they also had a great time at it. No one was ever miserable working with them. They shot a lot of movies in my house and I got to sometimes make food for and take care of, like, the 10 million people that were always in my house. My father had the most energy out of anyone I’ve ever met in my life.
Even as a kid, I could see that this was a very special person who knew exactly what he wanted and was willing to fight to death to get it. I don’t care if you make a $1 movie or a $100 million movie, you’re going to have issues and problems to overcome. But if you can make it fun and great too, then it’s such a pleasure to do it—even if it’s really hard.
It was also nice to see the teamwork between my parents and the trust between them. I mean, being an artist is certainly not a job everyone should do. Yet being around them, I just couldn’t help thinking that I wanted to recreate that for myself somehow.
On a lighter note: we’re running a special summer fashion report in this issue and I have a fashion-related question for you: Do you have an outfit that you love and hang on to mainly because it’s tied to a specific memory?
…I guess maybe this skirt that I wore the night I met my fiancé. Every time I look at it in the closet I’m like, “Oh! That’s what I was wearing.” When I was a kid I was so lucky because my grandmother would make me these outrageous costumes that I just wore as regular clothes all the time. Like, gold lamé dresses with fake pearls on them and things like that. And capes! I don’t have them anymore, which is unfortunate. I have no idea where they went.
What are your favorite labels?
They change all the time. I love APC, Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui. These designers ended up being my friends too, so maybe there’s an emotional attachment in that too, although the clothes themselves are good and I like to wear them. I always say that I like clothes but I hate fashion.
Yet you were a part of that world. You did some print ads for Donna Karan in your 20s and walked the runways for various other designers.
Yeah, I did that. It was kind of fun. And it was good money; I can’t lie. But fashion was such a different thing 15 years ago. Now you have to have this bag and you have to have these shoes in order to be accepted within the ranks of the fashionable. It’s gone completely out of control. Whenever someone asks me now, “What’s the one thing you can’t live without?” I have to say, “I guess it’s jeans.” I want to get out of the jeans, but I can’t.
…Especially if you’re going to continue being a working director.
Believe me, I’ve tried to be slightly stylish on the set, but it wasn’t working. I was back to, “Gimme jeans! Gimme sneakers, jeans and a T-shirt.”
You and Sofia Coppola are longtime friends and now both working filmmakers. Would you say that you two approach directing differently?
Absolutely! The way Sofia makes films—it’s a totally different style and mentality than mine. When we first met, I could never hear a thing she was saying. I was like, “What!? What!? Huh!?”
She’s very soft spoken.
She’s loud now! But I loved visiting her in Tokyo when she made Lost in Translation. I was so impressed by her complete command of the set. For being such a quiet, private person, she really does get the respect of her cast and crew. It was nice to see that you didn’t have to be in complete hysterics to make a movie. That’s one of the main things I like about her as a filmmaker—that she really knows what she wants and she’s very direct, but she does it in exactly the way of her personality.
And she’s so supportive of me; we’re just really supportive of each other. She’s like my family: my sister, my brother and I are all filmmakers, and we’ve never been jealous of each other. It’s more like, “Let’s play the casting game!” We all know how hard it is to make a film, no matter what.
You once said, “Nobody looked cooler smoking than my dad.” Why does smoking look so good on film?
Maybe it’s just the way the light catches it; I don’t know. I grew up watching tons of old movies from ’30s and ’40s, and they were always smoking then.
Are you still smoking?
Well, I’m a big quitter. I quit all the time. But I started smoking again when I made my film and haven’t quite stopped yet. I do believe in banning it in some public places, although now there’s such hysteria over it. …You know, I was walking down the street in New York the other day smoking, and passed a woman with a little kid. And the kid said, “Look mommy, she’s smoking!” And I thought, “You’re going to smoke one day too. Wait until you see how fun this is!”
What are you doing this summer?
I’m just working on a couple of commercial projects. I’m trying to start writing again, which is always frightening. I’m also going back to Paris in the summer and getting married there in September. It’s like, talk about a production! It’s like making a film. Otherwise I’m just going to be in Paris and hanging out. Sofia is there now and she’s got a baby. So we’re going to play with baby.
How would you spend a perfect lazy Sunday in Paris?
Well… I can’t sleep anywhere really in the world, but in Paris, I’m able to sleep for 14 hours a night, which is the best thing ever. I have great friends there, and I like to cook. Just walking around Paris is such a great inspiration… it’s something so special. I love New York, don’t get me wrong; it’s one of my favorite places in the world. But I just like that Paris is a little more relaxed and the communication between people is easier. You can sit down in a café and be there all day if you wanted to, listening to music and drinking coffee. There are also so many parks and bridges where you can go and sit and think about anything. And Paris has the best public displays of affection of any city I’ve ever been to. It’s okay to just feel things there…
…Maybe even allow yourself to be a little melancholy.
Oh yeah! Believe me, that’s not a problem for me. m
“Being an artist is certainly not a job everyone should do.”
