Interview Miloš Forman, Barbican Centre, London, 22nd March 2001
Paradoxes of being an outsider
both in the East and the West
In October 2019, the 12th edition of the Dokuarts festival in Berlin, under the theme of ‘Nuances Now’, had its regular inclusion of biographical documentaries. One of them was a recently completed documentary of an extensive interview with legendary Czech director Miloš Forman. When news broke of Miloš Forman’s death in April 2018, film historian Robert Fischer started to edit a feature-length film from the material of an interview he conducted with the legendary director in New York in 2000. The resulting near two-hour documentary biopic was titled Life As It Is: Miloš Forman on Miloš Forman (2018). Before Dokuarts, the documentary played first in Munich (Filmfest München) and Prague in 2018, Mannheim-Heidelberg in 2019, then later at the EPOS Art Film Festival Tel Aviv in 2020.
The backstory to this documentary goes all the way back to 2000, the year of the interview. As with the full-length version, a 30-minute version of this interview documentary, titled Miloš Forman: Film Is Truth, opened at Filmfest München for the Miloš Forman retrospective in 2000, with Forman present in the audience.
The following year, in 2001, at the opening of the first UK Milos Forman retrospective season at The Barbican in London, Forman was again present and available for interview before the screening of a BBC Omnibus Documentary and the re-release of his third feature film The Firemen’s Ball (1967), the last he made in his native Czechoslovakia before moving to Hollywood following the aftermath of the Prague Spring. Claiming beforehand that he was not the most comfortable interviewee, Forman was in fact happy to open up about his film career. He also demonstrated that he is a gifted storyteller and humanitarian with a reserved sense of humour, as well as a keen contemporary witness.
This 2001 interview has never before been presented in its entirety and is an exclusive special contribution to the landmark 45th edition of Camera Lucida.
Camera Lucida: The Firemen's Ball is the centrepiece of this season. Can you remember back to the time it was released and its reception in Czechoslovakia?
Miloš Forman: As a matter of fact we started to work with Ivan Passer and Jaroslav Papoušek, as I did for practically all my Czech films, and things did not go well. We thought it was the destruction of the big city Prague and so we moved to a small tiny city (Vrchlabí) in the mountains and things did not go well there, either. However, there was a local firemen's ball taking place, so I thought it would be fun to go to it and we could not believe what we were seeing, just like in the finished film itself. So the next day we started to write about the firemen's ball. We were lucky because the subject is not your favourite (typical) kind of subject, particularly regardING censors in a Communist country. But because of the success of A Blonde in Love (1965) in the U.S., Carlo Ponti decided to co-produce the film and so I thought ‘Wow!’, so now we can properly make the film because they will protect us. It was peanuts, like 65,000 Dollars, but that was enough for us to have material for cover and the film stock. Also we were careful with the script, we had to change a couple of things here and there, but the film was finished. It was screened, so I was told, I was not there of course, that the censors took the film and showed it to the highest echelon of Czech politicians, including the first secretary of the party, Antonín Novotný, and I was told that when the film was finished he climbed the walls. So I thought that the producer would protect me, but he in fact hated it and asked for his money back, and unfortunately it was written in the contract that he had the right to ask for his money back and that was not funny because, I got an official letter that I would be sued for sabotaging the socialist economy and in those times it represented a spell in prison. Fortunately I had the chance to show the film to Francois Truffaut and Claude Berri in Paris, and they bought the film and this reimbursed our budget, and I was off the hook. Then, the film was released very briefly during the Czech era. It played for about three weeks in the theatres and then the Russian tanks came to Prague and then the film was officially banned, officially banned forever. Which was, of course, for the next 21 years.
Camera Lucida: Though you have been a very successful director, this is your first retrospective in the UK. What are your feelings on this?
Miloš Forman: Oh, it is a great feeling, it is wonderful that people are curious to see the work. It is great and I like that.
Camera Lucida: Is there something particularly significant about bringing your Czech films and your western films together in one program?
Miloš Forman: Well, I can't judge whether it is interesting for the audience to see these films transplanted from one place to another, and being made from two different places.
Camera Lucida: Well, you are certainly seen as something of an outsider in both countries?
Miloš Forman: Well, I certainly feel like an outsider in both now. I am forgetting my Czech and I am still not learning English, so very soon I will just be making noises (Laughs).
Camera Lucida: Do you think it helps being an outsider in any way?
Miloš Forman: People tell me that it does help but I am not really aware of it. They say that the outside eye can see things the inside eye overlooks very often. I am not really aware of it but people say that, so maybe there is something true to it.
Camera Lucida: Do you ever wonder what path your career would have taken had you stayed in Czechoslovakia, considering that your American films were arguably more mainstream?
Miloš Forman: Well my Czech films were commercial in Czechoslovakia. As ridiculous as it is to go and try to make American style movies in Czech cinema, just as ridiculous as it is to go to America and try to make Czech style movies in America. It just doesn't work that way. You have to adapt. Some people adapt better than others.
Camera Lucida: Is there something you are working on at the moment, because people are very keen to know after Man on the Moon (1999)?
Miloš Forman: I really don't know. I am flirting with a couple of projects but nothing is at the stage where I can talk about it.
Camera Lucida: Not even the de Goya?
Miloš Forman: No that was a bit premature in the news. Nothing is yet on paper so there is nothing of which I can talk about it (Forman would make the film Goya’s Ghosts, which was released in 2006 and would be his final completed film).
Camera Lucida: Do you have the same hunger, though, to make more films?
Miloš Forman: Yes, but it's really more and more difficult to find a "dish" which you crave for. The older you get the more difficult it is to get excited about something and spend two years of your life on it.
Camera Lucida: How do you compare that, say, with Woody Allen who makes a film every year? Since 1981, I think you have made about five films. Do you find the film-making process more and more difficult or are you more selective about what you want to do?
Miloš Forman: It depends as you can't really generalise. It's a case of who is behind the film and where is the money. Certain individuals will decide how much money they give you and how much influence they want to exercise, and behind that door I don't see any difference from before in this regard.
Camera Lucida: Can I just draw attention to a documentary I saw last year when you said The Beatles helped bring about the end of Communism. Was that The Beatles in particular or are you talking about popular culture in general?
Miloš Forman: In a very specific way because their music arrived through the airwaves, because we couldn't buy their records or anything like that, and it was just an absolute revelation for our generation, it was absolutely fabulous, for everybody, for every young person. Suddenly, the Communist ideologues were telling us this was the most decadent thing; apes escaping from the jungle, polluting, and this just totally estranged a whole generation. I thought: ‘I love these songs, the lyrics, the music, so what are they (The Communists) telling me?’ These ideologues made strangers of very young people and this caused a resentment of the official ideology. It's the most important activity in the world: What is the meaning of life? It's important that we talk about it for our survival, and so we are talking about it.
