Lucidno
| It was in order to have our right to exist as directors, because we weren't authorized then. Now everyone thinks that directors are like God. Even if you say to a fellow director, "You're better as a scriptwriter," he feels puzzled, as though being a screenwriter is inferior. But I don't think that. I think I'm not a very good screenwriter who can be a good director.
JR: Have you had any exposure to the Rocky Horror Picture Show cult? JLG: No. JR: It's a teenage cult that sees this one movie hundreds of times, participating directly in a kind of ritual. What intrigues me is the way the audience uses the film as a means of communication — not the film itself communicating, but an audience communicating through a film. JLG: It's like certain images of traveling. Maybe I say that because I've been traveling a lot over the years. People like to think of themselves as stations or terminals, not as trains or planes between airports. I like to think of myself as an airplane, not an airport. JR: So that people should use you to get certain places and then get off? JLG: Yes. I'll work much more on that in my next film. Maybe, if it has to be in a research picture, it'll be a study, and I'll take the best of that and use it in a real feature. Because it shouldn't be put into a picture as I've done it here — I quite agree with that. There aren't more changes of rhythm in the picture, that's why they're bad. Even silent pictures had tremendous changes of speed, and were never shown at the same speed they were shot. Today in any current picture the actors speak at the same speed that they speak on TV, where there is no risk. Images come just because of the spoken words: He has to say that, she has to say that, they have to say that. So they don't look at what they're shooting anymore, and they don't listen to the sound. They just listen to the words and see if they correspond to the written words. There's much more story in a piece of music by John Coltrane or Patti Smith than in most films now. They lack a picture sometimes, but they're doing a kind of screenwriting without a screen, without writing. And there's much more than in regular movies. The way they work with sophisticated equipment -– I mean, maybe the camera, lab, and editing table are sophisticated, but in the in-between is so conservative! The way they make records is much more bold than the way they shoot movies. They record at night when they feel like it. They do it in pieces, they do it again, they make changes –- they discover from listening what's to be done. But in movies, the written script is obeyed like a law. It's becoming stronger and stronger, because the pictures have changed into school now. JR: How did you work with Gabriel Yared, the composer of the score forEvery Man for Himself? JLG: Unfortunately only after shooting, instead of at the same time or before. Next time — since I know him now, and the experience was new to me -– it'll be done better. And I'm trying to put pictures on a year's schedule, working from time to time rather than continuously. |
I'm trying to work with some of the actors who know me now, maybe once again with Isabelle and with musicians — so we can set up a session and then meet again, say, a month later. The aim is to build the music together. I mean, Patti Smith and her piano player are working together more closely than I work with my cinematographer.
*** I'm thinking of the emphasis on music in Every Man for Himself, an American Zoetrope release "composed" by Godard (as the credits indicate). By now, we've pulled up at Air Canada, and Godard invites me into the terminal to see him off on his plane for Toronto. I ask him how he likes Poto and Cabengo, made by his erstwhile collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin. Very much, he says, adding that he and Gorin had both been very nervous about whether he would or not. He was particularly struck by a use of stop-frames paralleling his own, which he said neither of them discussed in advance. He gets to see fewer films than he likes because of his small-town base, halfway between Lausanne and Geneva. He likes two recent AndrzejWajda films a great deal: Man of Marble and one about divorce whose title escapes him — with a final scene like Kramer vs. Kramer, he says with a grin, but done the way that a real director would do it. We speak briefly about Tati's Playtime ("It's a good movie"), as well as Tati's illness and bankruptcy. I ask Godard about the scene he wanted Tati to appear in. While Paul Godard stands in front of a cinema showing City Lights, a man steps out, protesting, "There's no more sound here!" JR: Why did you include that detail? JLG: I don't know. I don't like what I call empty shots, that are there just for screenwriting reasons. I think the sound is always awful in theaters, and the projectionist's job is awful because they aren't paid well. And I worked very carefully on the sound in this movie. If there isn't something in the shot, you have to bring it. I can't imagine how a lot of moviemakers are doing shots just to explain something in the story. No painter would ever paint an image, no musicians would ever record a sound, for such a reason. I'll never show someone crossing a street so you'll understand he's going from one place to another. I'll do it if I like the street, or because of the light, or because of something. If not, I won't do it, I'll cut it. Jonathan Rosenbaum |
