Interview with Guy Maddin

My interview with director Guy Maddin, whose film Brand Upon the Brain! just came out on DVD from Criterion, is up today at the PopMatters web site. It has to rank up there with the strangest interviews I've ever done.

In the City of Sylvia

The Gene Siskel Film Center's annual European Union festival is ending, and, alas, I managed to see only a few of this year's films. One of them was the remarkable In the City of Sylvia (En la Ciudad de Sylvia) by Spanish director José Luis Guerín. This profound film is about voyeurism, but not the Peeping Tom variety of voyeurism that drove the plots of films such as Rear Window and A Short Film About Love. Rather, this is the sort of voyeurism that happens in plain sight, strangers watching and studying one another's faces in streets and cafés. Is that a universal game? I know it's one I play all the time – looking over at people in a bar or restaurant and wondering what their stories are, wondering what sort of relationships they have with each other. Sylvia captures the mindset of watching strangers with a natural sense of realism and some subtle humor.

The entire film is little more than a depiction of a nameless young man with a sketchpad (Xavier Lafitte) looking around Strasbourg for a woman named Sylvia whom he met once in a bar six years earlier. After spending a long time watching the various "elles" at a café, surreptitiously sketching their faces, he fixates on one particular woman (Pilar López de Ayala), believing she is Sylvia. As she gets up to leave the café, the man follows. A long chase unfolds, with the man awkwardly hesitating about approaching the woman but persistently walking behind her. In a very understated way, the chase becomes dramatic and suspenseful. Finally, almost an hour into the film, comes the first scene with any real dialogue lasting more than a few lines.

Although the humor in Sylvia is never as brash as anything Jacques Tati did, the film did remind me of Tati's films occasionally, especially Tati's Playtime. In addition to its visual gags and a wonderful sense of the camera as a subjective viewpoint, Sylvia features subtle layers of sound. Overhead conversations, mostly in French, drift by, almost always on the periphery of the main character's hearing.

In the City of Sylvia is one of those rare films in which little seems to be happening, and yet so much is happening under the surface. It's a provocative exploration of the way people view the world around them.

The Siskel Center's EU fest also included a companion film by Guerín, Some Photos in the City of Sylvia, but classifying it as a film may be too generous. It's a collection of still photos Guerín took in Strasbourg and other cities, when he was apparently going through a real-life situation similar to the one depicted in his movie, searching for a woman he'd met long ago – in this case, 22 years ago. Guerín sure seems to enjoy photographing women from behind as he follows them down European streets (assuming that the protagonist, if you can call it that in this minimalist piece of work, is actually Guerín). Some Photos is completely silent, with Guerín's words occasionally flashing on the screen, and so it seems more like a slide show than a movie – more like an extra feature that would belong on the eventual DVD of In the City of Sylvia. Even as a DVD extra, it would benefit from some sound or actual narration. It may be worth seeing as a sort of sketch for the actual movie that Guerín made, but the way it has been assembled is simply too plain.

Best films of 2007

1. THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson) - I waited until this movie opened in Chicago Jan. 4 before I finished my 2007 list, and I'm glad I did. (Arguably, if you go by Chicago release dates, this one should be saved for the 2008 list, but I'm sticking it under 2007 since it qualifies for the Oscars.) As historical epics go, this film is remarkably spare and focused. It could have been one of those sweeping sagas - how the oil industry changed the country - but instead it's chamber drama about one greedy, self-centered and driven man. Daniel-Day Lewis' performance is simply amazing (as so many of his performances have been). Much of the time, his character is putting on a show for the people around him, and the film makes wonderful use of this oil man's speeches, finding a peculiar kind of poetry in these sales pitches. Lewis does allow us some glimpses behind his mask, but he never reveals that much about why he became the way he is. Too much of that sort of psychoanalysis might have lessened this film. It's quite a while before the first line of dialogue is spoken, and those opening scenes are a masterful example of what is essentially silent cinema. I've liked all of Anderson's previous films to one extent or another (I need to see them again to arrive at a more thoughtful analysis), but this is his strongest work yet. It bears little resemblance to Anderson's earlier movies until the final scenes fall into a slow, building intensity that reminded me of the unusual pacing in Punch Drunk Love. The new film is more than a little reminiscent of Erich Von Streheim's classic Greed, and the sharp orchestral score by Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead kept putting me in the mind of Stanley Kubrick - a feeling that was reinforced by the devastating final shot.

2. LIGHTS IN THE DUSK (Aki Kaurismaki) - This film barely received any distribution or critical notice, but I found it to be one of the best yet from one of my favorite directors, Finland's Aki Kaurismaki, a master of minimalism. Kaurismaki tells this sad little story with brilliant cinematography, smart editing and a wicked sense of black humor. It's another new film that reminds me of the great silent films - in this case, the work of Charlie Chaplin. (See my earlier review of Lights in the Dusk.)

3. BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (Guy Maddin) - Winnipeg's Maddin continues to be one of the weirdest filmmakers in the world with his latest fever dream, which came to Chicago this year with a full orchestra, sound-effects crew and narration by Crispin Glover. I also saw the film without the spectacle, in a print featuring narration by Isabella Rosselini. It works in either version, though like all of Maddin's films, this one will baffle a lot of people. The rapid editing style succeeds in simulating the way memories and visions flick in and out of the brain (in an interview, Maddin told me this was his intention). Strangely enough, the movie shares some common elements with The Orphanage, though their cinematic styles are completely different. Both films are about characters returning to haunted orphanages where they grew up, with a mystical lighthouse located nearby. Brand Upon the Brain! comes much closer to presenting the cinematic equivalent of dementia.

4. SILENT LIGHT (Carlos Reydagas) - Set in a Mennonite community in Mexico (where a German dialect is spoken rather than Spanish), this film is breathtakingly beautiful and heart-rending. The plot takes an odd, seemingly mystical turn that I'm still grappling with. Silent Light played at the Chicago International Film Festival.

5. ZODIAC (David Fincher) - With his earlier film Seven, Fincher was part of the somewhat sickening movement I call serial-killer chic. I liked that film and some of the other movies about serial killers, including Silence of the Lambs, but after a while it started to feel like the genre was fetishizing some aspects of these disturbing murderers. Fincher subverted the genre with Zodiac, which might have seemed anti-climatic for people expecting another Seven. It does something that few films based on real crime stories have ever done: Rather than boiling down a complicate true story to a few stock elements, it shows the story of the Zodiac Killer as an unknowable mystery that obsesses various people, especially a newspaper cartoonist, over a long stretch of time. Zodiac feels real and authentic, and in spite of the lack of a dramatic conclusion, it also manages to be quite absorbing.

6. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Joel and Ethan Coen) - I haven't read Cormac McCarthy's novel (yet), so I can't say how it compares, but this is a terrific thriller with a creepy, almost nihilistic attitude. The ending threw some people, but I found it fitting.

7. THE DARJEELING LIMITED (Wes Anderson) - Anderson's quirkiness makes him an easy target for some critics, but I thought he was in top form this time. The panning camera shots, editing and colorful shots of India are fabulous filmmaking, and the characters are pretty compelling beneath all those quirks. Anderson's movies are a bit like kabuki, and you have to accept that the surface won't seem completely real. Darjeeling teeters between being a spiritual journey and a satire making fun of spiritual journeys, but that teetering makes for an entertaining and eloquent film.


8. ONCE (John Carney) - Simplicity is one of this film's winning qualities. It often feels like a documentary, and Carney wisely lets some of the musical scenes unfold in real time. Few other movies have so vividly captured that connection people find by making music together.

9. 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS (Christian Munigu) - Another film that seems real enough to be a documentary. This Romanian movie about a woman arranging an abortion for a friend is not easy viewing, but it is compelling and moving. Its realism reminded me of the earlier Romanian film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu as well as the films of Belgium's Dardennes Brothers. It showed at the Chicago International Film Festival.

10. THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (Julian Schnabel) - The opening scenes - shot from the point of view of a paralyzed man waking up in a hospital - are marvelous filmmaking using handheld camera, blurry and shallow-focus shots. It's the sort of movie that might come off as experimental except for the fact that Schnabel keeps the narrative clear. After that opening, the movie broadens out to include shots from other perspectives, but it always feels like a uniquely cinematic experience. And without resorting to cheap inspirational fare, the story makes you think about what it means to be alive.

SPECIAL ASTERISK LISTING - There's one 2006 movie that did not come to Chicago until 2007, and would place high on this list if I counted it as a 2007 film:
THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

MY NEXT TEN
11. Two Days in Paris (Julie Delpy)
12. The Savages (Tamara Jenkins)
13. Abel Raises Cain (Jenny Abel and Jeff Hockett)
14. Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy)
15. No End in Sight (Charles Ferguson)
16. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon)
17. All the Invisible Things (Jakob W. Erwa)
18. Away From Her (Sarah Polley)
19. The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)
20. Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach)

RUNNERS-UP:
Inland Empire (David Lynch)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
You, the Living (Roy Anderson)
Offside (Jafar Panahi)
Control (Anton Corbijn)
Juno (Jason Reitman)
Sicko (Michael Moore)
The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton)
I'm Not There (Todd Haynes)
Half Moon (Bahman Ghobadi)
This is England (Shane Meadows)
The Man From London (Bela Tarr)
Opium: Diary of a Madwoman (Janos Szasz)
Ploy (Pen-Ek Ratanarung)

Tortoise does Nosferatu

Dissonant, atonal and avant-garde music shows up occasionally in one cramped corner of mainstream pop culture: horror and science-fiction film soundtracks. It sounds like scary stuff to most ears, making it the perfect accompaniment to looming vampires or psychosis. And so it seems fitting that the instrumental group Tortoise attracted a large audience Oct. 12 by performing a live soundtrack to silent horror classic Nosferatu at Chicago’s Orchestral Hall. Tortoise’s music – once famously called “post-rock” before everyone gave up on figuring out what that label meant – has never been that abrasive, but it hasn’t exactly been mainstream, either. Under normal circumstances, Tortoise wouldn’t be expected to fill thousands of seats at a venerated temple of classical music (home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), but the lure of free admission and a spooky movie pulled in a diverse crowd.

The 90-minute suite that Tortoise’s members composed for the German vampire movie had a true symphonic sweep, with subtly overlapping movements and recurring themes. Like the best silent-film music, it enhanced the experience of watching the film without overwhelming it. Although Nosferatu, directed by F.W. Murnau in 1922, is not all that suspenseful, it is still a genuinely creepy film, thanks in large part to the spectral appearance of Max Schreck as the vampire. Tortoise’s churning, subterranean sounds were a perfect match for the film’s undead title character. Some of the musical motifs came straight out of the horror-movie composer’s manual – foghorn-like blasts and skittering violin shrieks (simulated violins, that is) – but most of it was quite original.

The less frightening scenes were dominated by a bright and somewhat stately melody on the marimba and synthesizer, while Tortoise kept the audience’s pulse racing with insistent guitar chords during the more dramatic action sequences. Sampled bits of human voice and animal sounds surfaced in the mix, sometimes synching up with the action on the screen. But in one of the most striking moments, Tortoise used sounds resembling the chirping and fluttering of birds in an indoor scene that had nothing to do with birds. It may not have made any logical sense, but it created an appropriately surreal mood. Most impressive of all was Tortoise’s ability to fade out one theme while another one emerged. The members of Tortoise have said they may reuse the music they developed for the Nosferatu performance. It should lay a strong foundation for future recordings.

Chicago Film Fest

Some thoughts on movies I saw at the recent Chicago International Film Festival:

All the Invisible Things (Heile Welt) – This Austrian film was a real find, a total surprise for me. I hadn’t read any reviews of it. The only reason I went was my interest in Austria and the fact that it was playing at a time when I didn’t have anything else to do. Filmed in Graz (a city I have visited a couple of times, and where I have some cousins), All the Invisible Things is a low-budget, documentary-like drama with overlapping plots and chronologies. It starts off some young nihilist thugs on the run (and at this point in the film, I was thinking it was well-made but almost too depressing to stomach), and then shifts to other stories involving other characters, including some parents of the teens in the first part of the movie. Like Pulp Fiction, The Killing, Exotica, Memento or Amores Perros, it doesn’t reveal how all of the plots connect until the end, but it avoids feeling gimmicky. There’s no resolution at the end, just a deep sense of tragedy. The director, Jakob W. Erwa, was present for the screening, which was, unfortunately, sparsely attended. He’s only 26, I think, and he came across as a modest and creative young man. He talked about starting out with a short film, largely improvised by the young actors, and then developing it into a feature film by wondering about the other stories behind the story. I hope Erwa gets U.S. distribution for this film and continues directing; he shows a ton of promise.

Control – The photography in this Ian Curtis biopic is absolutely beautiful. That’s not surprising, given that the director is an acclaimed rock-music photographer, Anton Corbijn. Many of the shots in this black-and-white movie have a shallow depth of field, creating a three-dimensional feeling. I also liked the way the film is edited, with a spare, poetic sense of storytelling. I’m no expert on Joy Division or the Manchester music scene, so I’ll leave it up to others to say how authentic Control is, but it felt real to me. The acting performances are strong, the music sounds excellent, and the movie doesn’t stoop to using any cheap psychobabble explanations for why Curtis killed himself.

Essanay shorts – Earlier this year, I wrote a feature story for Chicago magazine about the history of the Essanay studio, which operated in Chicago between 1907 and 1917. It’s hard to see the films that Essanay made here during those years – the few surviving films are mostly in archives, not readily available for viewing – so it was exciting to get a chance to watch some at this year’s festival. The program included An Awful Skate, A Case of Seltzer, The Misjudged Mr. Hartley, When Soul Meets Soul, Dreamy Dud Resolves Not to Smoke (an odd little animated film), From the Submerged and His New Job (the only film Charlie Chaplin made in Chicago, and the only one you can find on DVD). They’re not great films, but they are of great historical interest, and they made for fascinating viewing.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (4 Luni, 3 Saptamani si 2 Zile) – This Romanian film about an abortion feels almost like a documentary. Directed by Cristian Munigu, it reminded me of the movies by Belgium’s Dardennes brothers – a drama about marginal people that’s so painfully realistic it seems like voyeurism to watch. The film uses a lot of long, unbroken takes, including one remarkable and uncomfortable scene at a crowded dinner table.

Hard-Hearted (Kremen) – I did not plan to see this film. I went to see The Banishment, but the print of that movie had not yet arrived, so the festival showed Hard-Hearted instead, saying, “It’s another film from Russia.” While Hard-Hearted has its moments, I found the film’s central character too annoying to spend even 82 minutes with. At the halfway point, I thought that the movie seemed to be headed toward a violent Taxi Driver-like conclusion. Man, how right I was. Hard-Hearted ends with a climax almost exactly like the one in Taxi Driver, but it’s a pale imitation.

The Man From London (A Londini Férfi) – For me, the most dispiriting part of this year’s film festival was waiting 45 minutes for a CTA el to get me to the theater for the new film by Bela Tarr. Even though I’d left home earlier than usual, I showed up at the theater 15 minutes late, walked into a packed theater and ended up sitting in the front row, craning my neck up at a huge screen. From what I hear, I did not miss much plot exposition, but I still feel like I have to give this film an incomplete grade because of the way I experienced it. Like Tarr’s other films (Werckmeister Harmonies is one of my favorites of the last decade), this one is filled with glacially slow tracking shots and an occasionally opaque plot. It’s also deeply beautiful and mysterious, with a surprising performance by the always great Tilda Swinton – in Hungarian! Based on a Georges Simenon novel, it feels like a film noir as seen by a whale swimming just offshore. Tarr’s films are not easily digested, but I will definitely see this again as soon as I get a chance.

Opium: Diary of a Madwoman (Ópium: Egy Elmebeteg Naplója) – This Hungarian film by János Szász includes some difficult viewing. I wouldn’t readily watch it again, but it was an intense and memorable experience. The provocative sex scenes are troubling and discomforting, but also very sensuous.

Ploy – The few films I’ve seen from Thailand have an odd combination of the mundane and the fantastic. In this movie by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, the setting – a hotel – is downright generic. The drama that unfolds in this place has some ominous undertones, and Ploy gradually takes surreal turns, with disturbing dreams and a whole subplot that may or may not have happened. In the end, I found it to be an effective exploration of that eternal theme, the difficulty of human connections.

Silent Light (Stellet Licht) – I didn’t know much about this film before walking into it, other than the fact that it was made in Mexico. And so, when the characters on the screen starting talking in a language other than Spanish – it sounded to me like German and I could understand bits and pieces, and it turned out to be the north German dialect Plattdeutsch – I was disoriented. Carlos Reygadas’ film is set within the isolated modern-day community of German Mennonites in the Chihuahua area of northern Mexico. The film begins with one of the most beautiful shots I’ve seen in a long time, a starry night sky that becomes the silhouette of trees and then a sunrise, with the camera slowly tracking into a field. It feels like time-lapse photography. The story is filled with a similar sense of stillness and slow motion, feeling at times like a Terrence Malick film. The plot is about as basic as they come: A married man is having an affair. Given the fact that these characters are religiously devout Mennonites, the adultery becomes a deep struggle over faith and morality. Without spoiling the ending, I’ll say that something unexpected happens. A miracle? A deus ex machina? It’s peculiar but it feels honest because of the poetic and deliberate way it happens. And then the film ends with a shot mirroring that opening sequence. Silent Light is quite simply magnificent.

You, the Living (Du Levande) – Roy Andersson is the director of a wonderfully surreal film from a few years back, Songs From the Second Floor, and now he’s back with You, the Living, which feels like a continuation of the previous film. One of the recurring visual gigs (or existentialist black-humor bits) from the first film was this unending traffic jam on a Swedish street, with the motorists trapped in an eternal hell of congestion. Well, in You, the Living, there’s yet another traffic jam. Or is it the same one from the first movie, still going on? There’s also a bit in the new movie in which a musician annoys his downstairs neighbor by practicing on the tuba. Could that be a reference to the title of the earlier film – a song from the second floor? The vignettes in You, the Living are only vaguely connected. They do not all tie together in the end in a nice, neat package, but that was just fine with me.

Lights in the Dusk

Lights in the Dusk quietly came and went here in Chicago last month, playing one week at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Nevertheless, I still feel the need to proclaim the glories of this film, one of my favorites of 2007 so far. The latest gem from one of the best directors working today, Aki Kaurismäki of Finland, Lights in the Dusk did not receive the same sort of attention as Kaurismäki's previous film, The Man Without a Past, which felt like a breakthrough of sorts for him. While it certainly did not turn Kaurismäki into a household name outside of Finland, it at least received decent distribution at well-known art theaters in the U.S. And it was one of Kaurismäki's best.

In Chicago, at least, the critics gave Lights in the Dusk a more mixed reception. It's true that it lacks the immediate accessibility of Man Without a Past. The humor is even drier and more restrained than Kaurismäki's typical deadpan comedy. But, as a Kaurismäki connoisseur (if I may call myself that), the drastically underplayed humor and seemingly flat emotions made me appreciate Lights in the Dusk all the more. That's what Kaurismäki is all about. The closest equivalent to his films in the U.S. are those of Jim Jarmusch. Both of these directors remind me of the great French filmmaker Robert Bresson, who used a similar cinematic vocabulary. There's great beauty in the way Bresson, Kaurismäki and Jarmusch cut from one shot to another in their films. The editing moves with a rhythm and logic that is both compelling and amusing. (It's worth noting that Kaurismäki edited Lights as well as writing, directing and producing.)

Bresson was also a pioneer in instructing his non-professional actors to read their lines without any emotion, and in doing so, he paradoxically created a Rohrshach test of a viewing experience for audiences that is actually quite emotional. I see the same thing in Kaurismäki's work. The things that don't happen, the things that aren't said, the things we don't see are often just as important as what is taking place on the screen. It's the way the camera lingers on the faces. Or the way the camera stays in one room while the actors go outside and then come back. (There's a classic scene like this in Lights in the Dusk, in which the main character gets beaten up off-screen. We know exactly what happens but we see none of it, just the setup and the aftermath.)

Lights in the Dusk is supposedly the third film in Kaurismäki's "Loser Trilogy," following The Man Without a Past and another neglected movie little seen here, Drifting Clouds. That's an amusing conceit, and it's true that all of these films depict people who might be thought of as "losers." But that's also true of just about every other movie Kaurismäki has ever made. I'm not sure that these three truly stand out as a trilogy distinct from his other work. Lights stars Janne Hyytiainen (don't you love those Finnish names?) as Koiskinen, an introverted guy with a job a night watchman who gets duped into allowing a robbery to happen. He is lured into the scheme by a beautiful woman, who is reluctantly being used herself as a tool of some Russian mobsters. Meanwhile, Koiskinen is blithely ignoring the woman at the food stand who clearly has feelings for him.

Like many of the characters in Kaurismäki films, Koiskinen shows about as much emotional range as a block of wood, and I assume this could frustrate some viewers, but I feel like Kaurismäki somehow allows us to peer into his characters' souls without resorting to conventional means. This security guard in Lights strikes me as a male counterpart to the socially inept female protagonist in one of Kaurismäki's greatest films, Match Factory Girl. Another clear influence on Kaurismäki's work are the silent films of the "Great Stoneface" Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Kaurismäki even compares his latest hero to Chaplin's Tramp in the press release for Lights.

One of Kaurismäki's recurring themes is the difficulty of human communication, which he shows with a peculiarly Finnish brand of shyness and diffidence. Koiskinen amusingly sums up the attitude with one of his lines: "I know how to rock and roll. I just don't feel like it." Kaurismäki's films almost always have a bleak side, and Lights is no exception, but it is one of the Kaurismäki films that ends with at least a slender ray of hope.

While I have always adored the look of Kaurismäki's films, the striking compositions, colors and feeling of depth struck me anew. A great deal of the credit must go to cinematographer Timo Salminen, though I'm certain Kaurismäki plays a big role in the look of his films. It appears to me that Salminen and Kaurismäki are making very calculated use of lighting, creating scenes with an odd, alluring combination of realism and surrealism. So beautiful. And that's part of the reason these films should be seen on a big screen. Alas, if you do get a chance to see Lights in the Dusk, I suspect it will be on DVD. It will still be well worth watching, even on a small screen.

Here's Strand's trailer for the American release of Lights in the Dusk ... but also check out the superior German trailer, which uses much less dialogue and emphasizes the film's silent, awkward moments – although it's unfortunate that the few spoken lines are dubbed into German.

David Lynch at the Music Box

(Photo by Vlada Lazerien from Flicker.)
Sitting in a big, red chair in front of the Music Box Theatre’s old red curtains, David Lynch raised one of his hands in a fluttering motion. Those fingers kept twitching as he spoke, answering audience questions after a screening of his new film, “Inland Empire.” The movie is pure Lynch – a three-hour hallucination that perfectly illustrates the dictionary definition of phantasmagoria: “a rapidly changing series of things seen or imagined, as the figures or events of a dream.” After a somewhat coherent first hour, resembling Lynch’s previous film “Mulholland Dream,” the new film disintegrates into one long nightmare. It’s brilliant in many ways, though it’ll tax the patience of some viewers. Just think of it as a restless night of dreams in which you forget where you are and even who you are. And don’t try too hard to figure out what it all means.

Before the film, Lynch introduced musician Daniel Knox, who played an improvisation on the theater’s organ. And then Lynch unfolded a sheet of paper and recited a verse from the Aitareya Upanishad: “We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.” After the film, Lynch took a seat and answered questions from his fans. The following is a nearly complete transcript, omitting some of the audience compliments and niceties.

Q: I was wondering why you didn’t work with Angela Badalamenti on this…?

A: I love Angelo Badalamenti like a brother, and I’ve worked with him on many things. It just didn’t happen that I worked with him on this one. He lives in New Jersey, and I live in Los Angeles. Like I always say, if he lived next door to me, it would have been a different thing.

Q: The sound design was fantastic as always… I was hoping you could share your thoughts on sound design.

A: In cinema, there’s many elements rolling along together in time. And so you try to get every element to feel correct based on the idea. And sound … has to marry with the picture, so … the more abstract sound effects and the music all have to work in marriage with the picture. … It’s an experiment based on the feel of the idea.

Q: What inspires you to create what you film?

A: Ideas. Ideas are the thing that drives the boat. And you’re going along, like I always say, and you don’t have an idea, and you don’t have an idea, and then, “Bingo!” There’s an idea. I get a lot of ideas. But sometimes we get an idea that we fall in love with, even if it’s just a fragment of the whole thing. And I fall in love with them because I love the idea, and I love what cinema can do with that idea. And that’s it. And if you get one idea like that and you focus on that, other ideas come swimming along and join it, and the thing emerges.

Q: In your past films, there have been some amazing, colorful cameo appearances, from Henry Rollins in “Lost Highway” to Billy Ray Cyrus in “Mulholland Drive.” I was wondering if you could comment on how these cameos come to, and what is the inspiration behind them?

A: The rule is you try to get the right person for the part. And following that, I see still photos, I work with a woman named Johanna Ray whom I love as the casting director – I work from still photos and then pick out the people that look like they might work, and then meet the people and talk to them. Billy Ray Cyrus, he came in for another, completely different role, and he was videotaped him by Johanna. I’m looking at this videotape and he’s completely wrong for the role he came in for, but I see that he can play Gene the pool man.

Q: Could you share the experience of Richard Pryor in “Lost Highway”?

A: Richard Pryor, we all love Richard Pryor. I don’t know where that came about. I’m so happy that his name came up or somehow I got the idea that he could play the owner of the garage. He was in a wheelchair at that time, but so sharp – unbelievable. You’d just turn him loose and he would riff forever. And so funny. Really great working with Richard Pryor.

Q: I’ve read that you’re optimistic about people, yet many of the characters in your films fail… ?

A: I’m optimistic, for sure. But you know, ideas come for stories and scenes… So a lot of times, there are characters that are failing pretty miserably and others that are doing OK, in a world of contrast, which is a story.

Q: I was wondering if you could talk about the work of Laura Dern.

A: Laura Dern started this whole thing. I was out in front of my house one day, and I look up and I see Laura Dern walking down the sidewalk toward me. She says, “Oh, hello, David,” and I said, “Oh, hello, Laura.” And she said, “I’m your new neighbor.” I hadn’t seen her for a while, and I said, “I’m so happy to hear this, Laura.” She said, “We should do something together again.” And I said, “Yes, we should. Maybe I’ll write something.” That’s sort of what started it. I just thought about her and started writing something. She kind of brought something out. I always say there’s the Laura Dern that lives in Los Angeles, but within her are any number of roles. She can play anything. It’s pretty incredible. I love her like family. And that one meeting started “Inland Empire.”

Q: Laura Dern delivered an excellent performance in this film, and I’m quite surprised she didn’t receive an Academy Award nomination … Do you think it’s a possibility that the Academy voters didn’t see this film?

A: Do I think it’s a possibility that they didn’t see it?

Q: Yeah.

A: Yes. It’s a big possibility. … We were a hair late supplying screeners, but we did supply screeners. I don’t know. You know, sometimes the Academy surprises and gives awards to who we think really deserves it. Other times, they surprise us in the other direction. It’s just, like they say, the way it goes.

Q: You both deserve to be on the red carpet on Feb. 25.

A: You’re a sweetheart.

Q: You were on the Alex Jones show a little while again and you had some questions about the official story of 9/11, and I was wondering if you could comment on that.

A: No. You know, we’re here to talk about “Inland Empire.” But there are many mysteries in life, and that 9/11 is one of them.

Q: Where’s the cow?

A: The cow is in California.

Q: Couldn’t make the trip?

A: It’s hard to travel with a cow.

Q: Were you influenced at all by the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski? I noticed there were a lot of scenes set in Poland.

A: No, I wasn’t.

Q: In an interview about your book, you were talking about fear…

A: Fear is part of negativity. There’s fear – there’s all kinds of words: Anxiety. Depression. Sorrow. Corruption. Violence. Crime. There’s any number of words that make up negativity. With the ability, which we humans have, to dive within, and experience this ocean of pure consciousness, the source of thought, the base of mind, also the base of matter, one giant ocean of pure, vibrant bliss consciousness – if we experience that, that experience enlightens it and we grow in this bliss consciousness. We grow in creativity and intelligence and dynamic peace, energy and power. It’s all right there within us. A side effect of growing in consciousness is negativity begins to recede. They say negativity is just like darkness. And then you say, “Well, let’s look at darkness.” And you see that darkness is nothing. It’s just the absence of something. So when the sun comes up, that light, automatically, without the sun trying, removes darkness. Just like that. This light of unity, this light of pure consciousness, rising up, and negativity begins to recede. It’s a real thing. It’s a real thing. And negativity starts to lift. And so much freedom, so much more flow of creativity comes, from learning a technique that – there are many forms of meditation, but if you are interested in lifting negativity in yourself or lifting negativity in the world, look into this beautiful thing within every human being. Unbounded. Infinite. Eternal. Immortal. Vibrant. Bliss consciousness. It’s there for everybody.

Q: Do you like George Romero?

A: I love George Romero.

Q: My question is a little bit random. What’s your favorite animal and why?

A: Well, you all saw “Inland Empire,” so maybe rabbits. Rabbits are pretty happy.

Q: Thanks.

A: You bet.

Q: I don’t have an arts background. I’m a scientist, but I’ve always appreciated your work.

A: That’s very beautiful. Arts people enjoy science, and sometimes scientists enjoy art.

Q: I read somewhere that a Biblical verse inspired certain parts of the film.

A: No, no, no. That’s “Eraserhead.” In “Eraserhead,” I was maybe two-thirds of the way through, and I hadn’t finished it. The thing was sort of there, but I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know what it meant for me. All the parts seemed correct, but overall, I didn’t know what it meant. I was just yearning to know what these ideas were adding up to. And that’s when I got out this Bible and just starting going through it. And lo and behold, there was a sentence, that I said, “That’s it. That’s exactly what this is.” And I closed the thing, and off I went.

Q: With “Mulholland Drive,” you said you had a moment when you didn’t see the ending at first.

A: Yes.

Q: Was there a moment like that in this film?

A: Yes. The analogy is if you are in one room and picture a man in another room, and he’s got a completed puzzle, but he’s popping one piece of puzzle into your room. And that’s the way it is with all things in the beginning – just getting pieces of the thing. And the more pieces you get, maybe sometime along the way, you start seeing something. And then it goes more rapidly from there. It just goes like that on all of them.

Q: Could you talk a little bit about your decision to use digital instead of film on this movie? Was it economic or were there aesthetic reasons, and once you started shooting with digital, did it change the way you went about making the film?

A: Digital. I started making some digital experiments for my Web site with this Sony PD150 camera, which I thought at first was a toy. I kind of liked working with it. It’s easy to work with and you see what you’re getting, and you can go to work and edit it right away. Very beautiful. And I started getting ideas for a scene, after that meeting with Laura. And I started writing the scenes and then shooting them. Getting the idea, writing it and shooting it with the Sony PD150. Not with the idea knowing that it was going toward a feature. So it was a strange way of working. Once more and more of the story started evolving, I saw that it was going to be a feature, but stuck with the Sony PD150, because I didn’t want to change horses in the middle of the stream. We did tests upresing that image and going to film. Although it’s not the quality of film, it has to me its own look, a beautiful look. And every little difference of the medium, it starts talking to you. Ideas seem to come to merit to a certain field that digital was giving. The thing about it, is it’s a small camera. Automatic focus. Forty-minute takes. You see what you get. You’re in a scene with 35mm with a big Panavision camera and a big dolly, and you’re in the scene and nine minutes if the magic is just starting to happen, you have to stop and reload. If you want to turn around, it’s like giant, heavy weight. Huge amount of loss of time. Relighting. So heavy, the lights for film. This is a dream. You go into a scene, you can go deeper and deeper and deeper. Me and the actress go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, no interruptions. And maybe a magical thing can happen that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Digital is the thing. And it’s getting better every day. Film is, as I say, sinking into the La Brea Tar Pits.

Q: The title of the film, “Inland Empire,” also refers to a geographic region in northern Idaho and Washington. I understand you spent some time there when you were a child. Did that affect the way you made the film, and is that just a coincidence with the title?

A: I’ll tell you the story. I was walking to Laura, and this was after we’d gone down the road a little ways. And she said her husband – Ben Harper is her husband – grew up in the Inland Empire, which is an area they call east of L.A. And she went on to talk about where it was and all this, but my mind stopped on this word “Inland Empire.” Even though I’d heard it before, now I’m hearing it afresh. And I stop her, and I say, “That’s the title of this film: ‘Inland Empire.’” And it felt correct. Two weeks later, my brother is cleaning the basement of my parents’ log cabin in Montana and finds an old scrapbook, opens it and sees that it’s my scrapbook from when I was five years old, living in Spokane, Washington. He wraps the scrapbook up and sends it to me. I open it up. And the first picture is an aerial view of Spokane, Washington, and underneath it says, “Inland Empire.” So I had a very good feeling that it was the right title of this film.
(Photo by Joseph Voves from Flickr.)