Steven Soderbergh: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.


STEVEN SODERBERGH:
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the July 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.

Steven Soderbergh was born January 14, 1963 in Atlanta. Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he was still in high school when he enrolled in a film animation class at Louisiana State University, where his father was dean of the College of Education. Soon he began making film shorts with equipment he had borrowed from students at the university. After graduating high school early at 17, he decided to skip college and headed for Hollywood in a frustrated pursuit of a movie career. Back in Baton Rouge, he worked as a coin changer at an arcade and in his spare time made a humorous short called Rapid Eye Movement, about his Hollywood non-experience. Eventually, he landed a job at a video production house and enjoyed some success as the director of a music video for the rock group Yes, which was nominated for a Grammy. He began writing screenplays and directed a short called Winston, about sexual deception, which he later developed into his first feature Sex, Lies and Videotape, which was the hit of the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, winning the coveted Palm D'Or as Best Film, as well as the International Critics Prize and Best Actor for James Spader. It also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. Soderbergh followed this with Kafka in 1991, a surrealistic mystery/suspense film which combined fiction with elements of author Franz Kafka's life. He followed that with an adaptation of A.E. Hotchner's memoir King of the Hill in 1993, a heart-rending coming-of-age tale set in the depression-era midwest. Despite not fairing well at the box office, it remains one of the best-reviewed films of that year. 1995 brought The Underneath, Soderbergh's take on Raymond Chandler-esque mystery, set in present day Austin, Texas. 1997 saw two Soderbergh releases: Schizopolis, a low budget, experimental comedy in the spirit of Richard Lester and Buñuel, and Gray's Anatomy, a filmed version of Spalding Gray's comic monologue.

Soderbergh's latest is one of his best, and certainly his most commercial efforts yet. Out of Sight, from the novel by Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty), reunites Shorty screenwriter Scott Frank with the author and boasts an all-star cast featuring George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks and two huge stars (who will remain nameless) in very crucial cameo roles. Out of Sight is a treat for the brain, the eye, and the funnybone, a film which combines the best of 1970's American film grittiness and a 90's hipness that makes for one very refreshing celluloid cocktail. Universal opened the film wide on June 26. Odds are you'll want to check it out more than once. Steven Soderbergh sat down recently to discuss his latest film opus, as well as his past triumphs, tribulations and disappointments.

I'm a big Elmore Leonard fan and I thought you really captured his voice with Out of Sight, which isn't easy to do on film.
Steven Soderbergh: It's tricky. It's an odd tone. We had two things going for us: Scott Frank, who understands that tone, and we put together a cast that I made sure understood that tone.

Have you always been a fan of Leonard's work?
Yeah. I've read probably six or seven of his novels. I've seen almost all the movies that are based on his work. So I was very familiar with his work.

I was excited when I heard you were doing this film, because like Elmore Leonard's novels, most of your films have subject matters that seem very serious when you first hear about them, but they always seem to have undercurrents of humor. Even with Kafka, a writer whose work most people find to be completely bleak, but I've always found to be blackly hilarious, you seemed to find that same humor and absurdity.
I think Kafka's work is extremely funny in an absurdist way. With (the film), I think a lot of people took it much more seriously than we intended, dealing with that character and all, leaves you open to that. But we really saw it as a carnival ride.

The Underneath struck me as sort of an homage to a Raymond Chandler-type crime story, whereas Elmore Leonard definitely has a more modern take on the genre, more straightforward.
Well, ultimately (The Underneath) was kind of a mess. I didn't quite unlock it or figure it out. Some things about it are interesting, but others are...if there's a successful element to The Underneath it was finding a way to use color in the same way that noir films used to use black and white. That was the one part of the movie that worked. Everything else about the movie I can't defend. It was a failed experiment, but a good experiment to attempt. The results of that experiment were necessary in making (Out of Sight). They can't all be gems. It's a process.

I noticed you were very specific about the color palates in Out of Sight, depending on what city the scene took place in. Did you use a blue filter in most of it?
No. More often than not we shot with a half-85, which cools things off a bit. Then on some stuff we'd just pull the 85 completely, and let it go blue, then print it back. And what happens when you do that is there's a patina of coolness in the blacks. And that gives you a different feel than if you shot it with an 85 and then tried to tone it down, trying to get it to look like winter, for example. We did a lot of experiments, depending on how the light was that day. I love that look. It's very evocative. It's what I saw when I read it. It had that feel...It felt like a real 70's movie to me.

Another filmmaker that comes to mind when I watch a lot of your work is Antonioni, especially in your specific use of color.
I think a big problem with The Underneath was that I was in danger of becoming too much like Antonioni. I think he's terrific, but I think at some level, it's not an appropriate style for an American filmmaker because it runs so counter to our zeitgeist. I appreciate the rigor of that style of filmmaking, but what I felt Out of Sight needed was a combination of being that thorough, with a much more jagged energy and a much more rough style.

Out of Sight didn't feel "slick." I noticed you didn't use many dolly shots, did a lot of hand-held stuff, and a jarring editing style that was very effective.
Yeah, for this material I felt that if the movie smelled like Hollywood it would just fall apart.

You had a star-studded cast in this film right down to the smallest parts. How did you attract such a stellar group?
Well, Elmore Leonard's got a reputation for writing great parts, even great small parts. But in the case of the two cameos, we were really lucky. Both actors were intrigued by the idea of doing these small roles that were extremely important to the story in spite of their size, and also they did it as a favor. But, particularly in the last scene, if it weren't (this actor) it had to be someone who had an extremely powerful presence. Because you're talking about a guy who you have to establish in no time at all that he's "the dude." The break-out artist of all time, otherwise the last scene of the film wouldn't work--if that guy didn't have that power.

The other great thing was that everybody in the film underplayed, very naturalistic.
That's Leonard's style, too. The characters have no self-awareness at all, so if you cast an actor who comments on their performance while they're giving it, you're dead.

Talk to us about George Clooney, who I think is an incredibly underrated actor.
He absolutely is. He's in that weird spot, which I hope he won't be in much longer, where people are saying "He should be a movie star!" He makes four movies and they do okay, but they don't set the world on fire, and everybody blames him. I've always thought that the guy was ready to happen, and there was no question in my mind that this was that part for him.

How do you direct actors?
I try not to ask them how they like to work, I try to find out, and that's where rehearsals come in...I try to have a week to ten days of rehearsal, which is really for me, not for them. It's for me to watch them, and get a sense of how they like to be treated, how to communicate with them so that I don't have to figure it out on the set, where I'm not as patient. (All the actors) are different, so you have to treat them accordingly.

What sort of space do you like to rehearse in?
We just had an open space, sort of a holding room, over at Universal that was fairly good-sized. I'd bring in some props and tables and things, do a read-through for a while, then put it on its feet, do a little blocking.

Do you have a clear idea of how you're going do shoot beforehand? Do you storyboard at all?
No. Figuring out where to put the camera is usually the easy part. It's coming up with some way of staging the scene that's interesting, that's the hard part...the only thing I boarded on this movie, because we shot the whole sequence out of order, was I took stand-ins and moved them through the entire mansion sequence from beginning to end, and then with a still camera with a zoom lens, shot from every angle I could think of, then put those up on a big board. Every time we did a shot, I'd put a piece of red tape on that corresponding picture.

Hearing you talk, you seem to have a natural affinity for filmmaking. Did you always love movies growing up?
Oh yeah, I always loved movies, but I don't think...I think it's something I like to do and something I feel comfortable doing, but I don't think I have an innate ability for it. There's certain things I think I do well, but I see films by other people all the time where I say "Jesus Christ, I could never do that!" There are a lot films that just leave me in awe...Something like Titanic, you could put a gun to my head and say "Direct this." I'd say "Go ahead and pull the trigger," because I wouldn't know where to start. My mind just doesn't work that way. But, odds are that (James Cameron's) version of Sex, Lies...would be pretty strange. (laughs) But he's good at what he's good at. It takes a while to figure out what you're good at. Part of maturing I think is recognizing what you're good at and refining that and focusing on that, instead of spreading yourself out too thin and trying to be a jack-of-all-trades. And that takes a while to learn, because the ego part of you wants to say "I can play on anybody's court, anywhere, anytime." Instead of saying "Hey, you know what, I'm not very good on clay, I'm gonna stick to grass." And it's true.

Were your parents involved in the arts?
My dad was a college professor who drew a little bit, and he loved books, and he loved movies and he loved music. My mother when she was younger painted, but by the time I was growing up had stopped. It was certainly a household where I was encouraged to explore that stuff and supported endlessly by them.

Any siblings?
Yeah, I have three sisters and two brothers...I was the fifth.

You didn't go to a formal film school, so how did you develop yourself as a filmmaker?
Trial and error...I was hanging out with these LSU students when I was in high school who had access to some university film equipment and we were all sort of experimenting with this stuff. And some of the people I'm still working with. Paul Edford, my production sound mixer, was one of the members of that film class. It was a pretty unique group, all have gone on to do interesting things.

Did those early films that you all did get you attention early on?
Not really. They were just résumé pieces for me that I'd show to people for specific reasons.

I heard your first move to L.A. wasn't so pleasant.
Well, I came out here when I was 17, was here for a year and a half and I was getting some editing work for a TV show called Games People Play that got canceled. It was a dreadful show, but the segments that we got to do were interesting. They were filmed segments, which in the early 1980's was a new thing to do, shoot 16mm negative, transfer it to tape, and then post on tape. So, the show got canceled, I kept doing piddly jobs and figured, 'Well, I can starve a lot more comfortably back in Baton Rouge.' So I moved back, kept making shorts, kept writing and...writing is really what kept me going. I eventually wrote enough stuff to get an agent and get work, and with that money I financed a short film...and eventually did Sex, Lies.

How did you get the job for the Yes concert film?
I had been doing freelance work for Showtime and someone there recommended me to the band. They wanted to make a little "on the road" documentary, so I figured what the hell, I'll never see these people again, so I edited it into this sort of snarky, cheeky 30 minute film about life on the road with the band. They really responded to it, thought it was really fun. So they called me up and asked if I wanted to do the concert film. I said "Shit, yeah!" Here I was, 22, a pretty big thing to do...So I got an agent out of that and had been writing now non-stop for five years and had just started writing stuff that didn't completely suck.

How many did you have to write before they stopped completely sucking?
Probably one a year, from '80 to '85. Then in late '85, I wrote three back-to-back in like six months. I finally just crossed a line where something unlocked and I wrote these three...and that's when things started to open up. The first paying writing job I got was to re-write a one hour Disney TV movie that never got made.

Was there any one movie that really captured your imagination growing up and inspired you?
There were lots, tons. I'm editing a book of interviews right now that I did with Richard Lester. He was a huge influence, still is.

One of my favorite movies is Robin and Marian.
Great film. Look at this guy, talk about underrated and under-appreciated. He invents rock video with A Hard Day's Night and Help. The Knack, How I Won the War, Petulia which is a masterpiece, the Three Musketeers films which are hilarious and fun, Juggernaut, which is a great movie...Great filmmaker, with a wide range of films and genres.

I even liked Cuba, which got killed when it was released.
That's a fascinating movie. Flawed, but really the things that people disliked about it when it came out are what makes it interesting now, it's refusal to sort of play to the idea of a war-torn romance. An absolute refusal to be sentimental or easy about anything. Brooke Adams' character was really fascinating. Here's a woman who says "Look, I don't know what little fantasy you've got in your head, but don't play it out on me, because I'm not that." And this guy (Sean Connery) who wrestling with the fact that the kind of guy he is is obsolete now...It's a really interesting movie.

Why did Lester stop making films?
It was a combination of things triggered by the death of (actor) Roy Kinnear during the making of Return of the Musketeers. Lester was absolutely devastated by that and hasn't made a feature since. But he's an incredibly bright, kind, funny man. For my money, I wish he was still directing movies because I think he's still got movies in him.

So many great directors from that era that inspired your generation seemed to have just vanished. What happened do you think?
Well, as we know from reading the Peter Biskind book (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls), a lot of them just self-destructed. It was their own damn fault for the most part. Part of it was the business changing, but the lion's share of it was them. They just went out of their heads...I watched a lot of 70's films preparing for Out of Sight: all of William Friedkin's films, all the early Hal Ashby films. It was a great time.

Let's talk about King of the Hill, which reminded me of some of the best of Truffaut and Louis Malle.
They were definitely in our minds, especially The 400 Blows...Everything about that movie went flawlessly during the shooting. Then once it was done, everything went wrong. We finished the movie, took it to Cannes, got our heads handed to us. They fuckin' hated it. Hated it! Just a disaster. Not good long lead reviews, very mixed. Then we're coming out in August of that year on the heels of ten movies with children protagonists. Ten! Then the daily reviews come out and they're as good as I've ever gotten, but by then it was too late. It was a disaster.

I think it will be one of the films that you're remembered for.
It's the movie that people always bring up to me the most as their favorite of mine. As a classical piece of American narrative, that's about as good a film as I know how to make. But what happened afterward doesn't affect my memory of making the film, which was a great experience.

Let's go backwards and talk about Sex, Lies. Walk us through winning the Cannes Film Festival.
Well, the great thing about it is that it's a surprise. You don't take out ads to win the Palm D'Or. We screened very early in the festival, within the first couple of days, and notoriously that's not a good spot. But, the film went down well, we did our press, and then we went home, back to L.A. A couple people said that I might have a shot at the Camera D'Or, for best first film, and that they'd let me know. Then I got a call from Mike Watts, who was running Virgin at the time, and he said "I think you better get on a plane. I think you're gonna win the Camera D'Or and it's worth coming over for." So I got on a plane on Sunday, get off Monday afternoon and get handed the International Critics Prize, which I would've come back for anyway! So I thought, 'Wow, that's great.' They rush me into the ceremony. Then I see Spike Lee and say "What's going on?" And he says he didn't get anything for Do the Right Thing. I couldn't believe it. It's a great movie and should've won something. So we sit down, then James Spader wins for best actor. And nobody's there but me, so I run up and accept for him...Somebody grabs me as I walk offstage and says they need to get me back to my seat. Sits me down in my seat as Wim Wenders is speaking, I don't think in English, about the Palm D'Or winner, saying it's a film by a young filmmaker, this is all being translated for me...and I'm thinking okay, could it be Mystery Train, could it be Do the Right Thing...and he says "Sex, Lies and Videotape." And immediately it's like you leave your body and watch yourself trip and stumble over people as you go on-stage. And at that point, I know I stood at the podium and said "Well, I guess it's all downhill from here," and I have no idea what I said after that. It's all a complete blank. I know that I was taken and put on live French television immediately afterwards, next to Denys Arcand and Bertrand Blier, neither of whom looked very happy, and I gave this interview, got up in a daze and walked out of the building, and left the Palm D'Or under my seat! (laughs) And as I was walking out the door, somebody says to me "Uh, do you think you want to take the award with you?" (laughs) It's more amazing to me in retrospect than it was at the time. It was almost like someone hitting you with a wand and saying "You're John Lennon for three hours," with that kind of attention focused on you. Having been back to Cannes a couple times since and watching from the outside, I think 'Man, that must've been nuts!'

Many people credit Sex, Lies with jump-starting the independent film business in this country.
They key word there is 'business.' If Sex, Lies had made half a million bucks, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. It made money, and as we know if something makes money, people are suddenly interested. As far as its cultural impact, it comes down to just that: money.

Do you have any advice for first-time directors?
Don't wait for permission. There is a long list of reasons you can give yourself not to start: "I don't have enough money." "I have some but I need a little more." "I don't know anyone." There are gonna be so many people who will tell you 'no,' don't add yourself to that list. Whether you do it or not, nobody gives a shit. The only person who gives a shit at the end of the day is you, and you can't worry about how it will look, or anything, you've just gotta go. You've gotta go. The rest of what happens to you will rest on the film itself, which is how it should be. But I always tell people, people are their own worst enemy. We know that. They key is to remove yourself from the enemy list.

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Claude Lelouch: The Hollywood Interview

French director Claude Lelouch.


CLAUDE LELOUCH CREATES HIS ROMAN DE GARE
With his 49th film, the legendary French auteur weaves a delicious web of deceit, intrigue and romance.
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appears in the May issue of Venice Magazine.


French director Claude Lelouch was born October 30, 1937 in Paris. After some harrowing childhood experiences during WW II, Lelouch survived to become a rabid filmgoer as a child and teen, often skipping school to attend the cinema. He was billing himself as a "cinereporter" when he made his first short documentary films in the mid-1950s. In 1960, he formed Les Films 13 productions, where he produced over two hundred "scopiotones" -- short musical films designed for jukebox use, much like the "Soundies" produced in the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s.

Lelouch produced, directed, wrote and acted in his first feature, The Right of Man, in 1960. His first international hit in 1966, Un Homme et Une Femme -- aka A Man and a Woman -- captivated audiences with its warmth and simplicity. The film became a sensation, winning a Palm d'Or at Cannes, as well as a Grand Prix award and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Lelouch instantly became one of the most popular and influential directors in Europe. One of his most legendary films is the 1976 short Rendez-Vous, in which Lelouch mounted a camera on the front of his Ferarri 275 GTB and tore through the deserted Paris streets at dawn, ignoring all traffic signals, at speeds upwards of 140 km/hour, to his waiting wife. What resulted was one of the greatest sensory experiences ever captured on film, as well as a hefty fine for the director from the Paris authorities after it was screened! To watch Rendez-vous in its entirety, please click below:


Many of Lelouch's subsequent films dealt with the symbiotic relationship between sex and crime, or sex and politics, or crime and politics. Taking a more straightforward approach in his narrative than many of his contemporaries in the French Nouvelle Vague (Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle, et al), Lelouch has made 49 films under his Les Films 13 banner since 1960, and enjoyed commercial success with virtually all of them. His 49th film, and his 50th year as a filmmaker, is marked with Roman de Gare, a delicious blend of deceit, intrigue, romance and playful humor that has become a Lelouch signature. Starring veteran French stars Dominique Pinon and Fanny Ardant, as well as newcomer Audrey Dana, Roman de Gare arrives on U.S. screens April 25.

Claude Lelouch sat down with us poolside at a Beverly Hills hotel recently, along with interpreter Katherine Vallin, to discuss his amazing career and latest cinematic offering.

There are so many different layers to Roman de Gare, like three different films in one. In fact, I could see pieces of all your previous work interspersed throughout Roman de Gare.
Claude Lelouch: Yes, I think it is a film that is a result of 50 years of work. I tried to mix know-how with spontaneity. It’s a film about life with all its contradictions and a mixing of all genres. I am fascinating by the spectacle of life, and by the strength of lies, because I’m afraid the world is being led by lies, much more than the truth, especially now. A lie is a bit like a loan from the bank, and we see today the world of credit is collapsing. Soon the world of lies will collapse as well. Lies are for unhappy people. The truth is reserved for rich people. It’s a luxury. What would the most unhappy people in the world do without lies?

Dominique Pinon and Audrey Dana in Roman de Gare.

Have different parts of your life been based on lies?
Of course. When I started out as a filmmaker, I started out with a lie: I lied to myself that I had talent! (laughs) But what is great about lies is that they eventually bring us to the truth, which is what gives truth its power. So this film is about lies, and this particular love story is built upon lies. It’s stronger. If a couple tell the truth from the start, they don’t have much left to discover. (laughs) So I really wanted to do a little ode to lies. All the world’s religions are against lying, when in fact all artists are liars: that’s where you find creativity, imagination. And of course at the same time, I am fascinated by the truth, which is what I try to film. I want my actors to be truthful. So that’s the very interesting paradox. When I try to say that we live in a very chaotic world, I mean to say that’s what makes the world so fascinating to me: all the things that escape me, all the things I cannot control. The other thing I try to get across in my films is that the most important thing in life is the present. For example, if I take you to see a movie, and I tell you we’re going to miss the first ten minutes, and that we’re going to leave ten minutes before the end, you’re never going to see another movie with me. But life is like that! We arrive in a film that’s already started, and we will have to leave before the end! So we have to be content with the time we have, with the sequence we’re seeing. We never know where we come from or where we’re going. It’s much better to just be there for the moment. So that’s why I talk about love in all my films, because as soon as he or she is in love, a human being becomes much more interesting. The love story in Roman de Gare was built upon all these lies. It’s like all the couples who met during wartime were much stronger as couples that met during a vacation. The other thing about Roman de Gare that appealed to me is that it’s a film about appearances. We live in a world that puts far too much emphasis on one’s physical appearance, and so does the cinema.

Yes, in particular American cinema.
Absolutely. Since the beginning of cinema, it appears beautiful people are the focus of everyone’s interest, when in fact it is the other people who are far more interesting. In Roman de Gare the protagonist (played by Dominique Pinon) has a terrible physique and is not a handsome man in the conventional sense. And I show that one can love him, too.

Yes, but most of the male leads in your films have never been conventionally handsome, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Jean-Paul Belmondo certainly aren’t handsome the way Paul Newman or Brad Pitt are, although all your women are always very beautiful.
Yes, but Belmondo and Trintignant are much more handsome than Pignon is. (laughs) In fact, one day I would like to do a love story between two people who are very ugly. Love is inside, not outside.

Do you know the play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune by Terrence McNally?
No, I’m not familiar with it.

It was made into a film by Garry Marshall starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer as “plain” people who fall in love. Neither of them could ever be mistaken for “plain,” but on stage it was played by Kathy Bates and Kenneth Welsh, both of whom are very “plain” looking, and that’s what his play was about.
Ah, but in Hollywood they did it with beautiful people! (laughs)

Maybe you should do a French version, the way the playwright intended it!
Not a bad idea. Maybe I will! (laughs)

Earlier you mentioned people falling in love during war. Your early formative years were spent in Nazi-occupied Paris. How did this color your perception of the world?
I think maybe it allowed me to appreciate things a little better than somebody else. With my mother, we actually escaped death during the war very tightly. So after that you feel you live on borrowed time.

You’re Jewish?
Yes. So the Gestapo was actually looking for us during the war. We had fake papers. My father was Jewish, and my mother was Catholic. She converted to Judaism, so she had Jewish papers.

Where did you hide?
We had to move practically every week, all over France, in all directions.

I recently interviewed Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, who is a contemporary of yours, and survived Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. He says when he closes his eyes, he sees burning buildings and dead bodies. It’s amazing to me how you’ve remained such an optimist when people like Verhoeven and Roman Polanski have such a dark view of the world due to their wartime experiences.
First of all I have been blessed with no memory. If I had memory I would probably be falling out with everybody. I’m in love with life. I love life. Every morning I’m amazed to see the sun coming up, and that is what I try to transmit in my films. While of course I am not fooled by the fact that everything isn’t complicated before it becomes simple. At the same time, it is because of this contradiction that the show of life is so fantastic. There is nothing more fertile than this chaos. Everything comes from there. It is just like at the beginning of time, when the world in which we live was created by earthquakes and eruptions and various cataclysms. The world in which we live fascinates me more and more. I have no idea how far we’re going to go. Whoever wrote the script for the world’s story is the greatest scenarist of all time! (laughs) There are now six billion actors on Earth, and they all feel like they are the principal character in the story.

Shakespeare had the most famous quote about that: “All the world’s a play…”
Yes, exactly. He, too, was fascinated by the spectacle and the contradictions. The beauty, and the horror, together. It’s amazing.

I think what you’ve touched on is what I view as the most important part of being an adult, and that is having the ability to hold onto your idealism, even after you’ve lost your innocence.
Absolutely. But I have been 18 all my life. (laughs)

Lelouch, circa early 1960s, lines up a shot.

Yes, you have the romantic optimism of a very, very young man.
Because for me, the most beautiful years of your life are the ones you haven’t yet lived. And for the past 70 years, each year I live is more interesting than the last one. I try to put that in my films, as well.

I’ve spent the last week getting reacquainted with your films. They all share this wonderful sweetness, even after you’ve shown incredible darkness in many of them, they usually end on a very sweet, optimistic note.
It’s because the human being is the greatest invention of this world. It’s one that isn’t perfect yet, and needs some major work, but it’s possible. Yet the time we’re living in is far less cruel than the time I lived in when I was a child. For the past 70 years, I find things are getting a little better, and I have been witness to it. Older people try to tell young people that it’s not as good as it used to be, but it’s simply not true. It’s much better now. It’s more complicated, but it’s also more fascinating. The game is more fascinating. Life is a game. The problem of this game is that you have to fight, and watch the cheaters, and there are more and more cheaters.

Let’s talk about your background. What did your father do for a living?
He was a shopkeeper. He made cushions for furniture, so I was raised in a craftsman family. On the side, he was an amateur filmmaker. So in 1937, my father had a very small camera that he used to film my birth. So the first film I ever saw, was me on the screen! (laughs)

So instead of a rattle, your father put a camera in your hand as a baby.
Yes, exactly. My earliest memories are of my father filming me and my sister, who was born ten years later.

When did you know you were a filmmaker?
Right away. My father met my mother inside a movie theater, during a showing of Top Hat, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. 30 years later, they are the ones who presented me with my Best Foreign Film Oscar for A Man and a Woman. Isn’t that amazing? When my mother was pregnant with me, for nine months every day she went to the movies! So I heard all those films in the womb! And during the war, my mother was hiding me inside movie theaters. When I was ten, my father gave me his old camera, and I started to make films from ten years old.

Do you still have that camera?
Oh yes, it’s in my office, a small Kodak.

Was there one film you saw as a boy that really cemented your love of film?
There were many, but Snow White was the primary one. It was the first film that really marked me, and traumatized me, when she died. After that, I realized the power of film. I didn’t go to school. I went to the movies every day. I got kicked out of every school for playing hooky at the movies! (laughs)

Did you ever run into Truffaut? Apparently that’s what he did, as well.
I think we probably hung out in the same theaters.

Do you consider yourself to have been part of the so-called Nouvelle Vague, or “French New Wave”?
Not at all. Actually, I should say I owe a lot to the Nouvelle Vague, because they showed me everything I didn’t want to do.

Such as?
I don’t like pretentious films. (laughs) It was too pretentious for me.

That’s one reason your films really don’t date: they’re very straightforward, and not pretentious at all.
Thank you. I’ve tried to make them that way.

One thing you were a pioneer in was mixing different film stocks: black & white with color, 35mm with 16mm and super 8. You did this to great effect in A Man and a Woman, and Lindsay Anderson did the same thing with different stocks three years later in If…
You know the primary reason I used both color and black & white in A Man and a Woman? I was running out of money! (laughs) And black & white was cheaper.

That’s exactly why Lindsay Anderson shot If…that way! And for years, all these pretentious critics were debating the symbolism of it!
(laughs) Yes! And they did the same thing with A Man and Woman! It wasn’t symbolic. It was financial! But that’s one example of how problems and constraints often breed your greatest creative decisions.

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee in A Man and a Woman (1966).

A Man and a Woman was your seventh film, and was made during a very difficult time in your life.
Yes, it was the final chance I was giving myself as a filmmaker, because all of my previous films were flops. If it hadn’t succeeded, I probably would have stopped making films.

And done what instead?
I probably would have started making films again a few years later! (laughs)

In the States we have a television show called Inside the Actors Studio. The actress Shelley Winters was one of the first guests on the program. Miss Winters had a theory about how artists are created. She said “There are those of us, when we’re babies, a fairy flies over our cribs and sprinkles dust over us, and says ‘Now you will be an artist, and now you’re fucked!’”
(laughs) Oh my God, yes! It’s so true. And do you know something? I’ve never really known any actors who are completely happy people.

I’d say it applies to any creative person I’ve ever met. None of us are completely happy people. I think part of the creative process is feeling dissatisfied with things, don’t you?
No, not necessarily. I’m happy, I think, but I’m also not an actor! Acting is very, very hard. A hard life.

Speaking of, let’s talk about some of the actors you’ve worked with, starting with Jean-Louis Trintignant.
I think Jean-Louis is the actor who taught me how to direct actors. We really brought each other a lot. He changed his method of acting while working with me, and I began to truly understand what directing actors was all about, working with him. I think the relationship between a director and actor is the same relationship as in a love story between two people. One cannot direct an actor if you do not love him or her. And he cannot be good if he or she does not love you in turn. We can give only when we are truly in love. It’s the result of great generosity. One is generous only when one is loved. So I think I’ve lived this kind of love story with all of my actors, men as well as women, especially with the women! (laughs)

You also got to work with the late, great Jacques Brel.
It’s interesting, I hired Jacques Brel for L’Adventure c’est l’adventure because Trintignant passed on the part. When I worked with him the first day, I told him that I was going to tell him the story of the film we were about to do. He stopped me and said “I don’t care. The only thing I want is to look at you shooting for eight weeks, because one day I will make films, and in order to so I’ll spy on you during this one.” And he became my best friend. I think he is the man who taught me the most. In the dictionary if we had to give the definition of the word “man,” we’d put Jacques Brel’s picture beside it. This is the man who looked most like a man I’ve ever met, both within and without. He understood everything.

Singer/songwriter/actor Jacques Brel.

That came through in his music.
Yes, precisely.

James Caan in Another Man, Another Chance (1977).

You did a film in the U.S., a western shot in Arizona, called Another Man, Another Chance. What was the experience of making a film in the States like?
That’s a great memory. I thought I was going to learn English, but alas…(laughs) I was lucky to be able to do a film in the States as though I was in Europe. I had no restrictions. I had the final cut. I had the best of both worlds. I felt that since I wasn’t fluent in English, it limited me a bit with the dialogue and everything, it was a bit of a constraint. It’s a film that mixed my love of love stories, and my love of westerns. And I think James Caan is terrific in it. I think he could have been one of the greatest American actors. He was a dream actor to work with.

Let’s talk about what I feel is your greatest film, Les Miserables, an epic masterpiece which I think can stand up against anything done by David Lean. What inspired you to re-think Victor Hugo’s classic, and set it during WW II?
The story of Les Miserables is a timeless one. Since the dawn of time, there have always been miserable people. The characters in Victor Hugo’s novels are people you meet every day. In this story, you have all the archetypes you keep running into. More importantly, this is a story my mother told me when I was a child. During the war we were on a train together one night. It was discovered that our papers were forgeries. The Gestapo made us get off the train, and we were about to be sent off to the camps. In the corridor, my mother took off her watch, and gave it to the officer who arrested us. This man let us go. So we got back on the train, and my mother fell apart and cried and she made a remark “What a Thenardier,” who is a character in Les Miserables. So I asked her, ‘What is a Thenardier?’ So for the first time, she told me the story of Les Miserables on the train. So all my life, I had this story in my head. Then I read the book again several times, and I realized that it’s the same story today. It can be set in any period of time.

A poster for Lelouch's Les Miserables (1995).

You really should make your own Au Revoir Les Enfants about your experiences during the war.
If I have time.

Tell us about Jean-Paul Belmondo.
I think he was the most important French actor after WW II. After Jean Gabin, it was Belmondo. So I’m very proud to have made three films with him. I think he’s a mix of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, both of whom could do anything.

Actor Philippe Leotard.

You mentioned the character of Thenardier, who was played by a terrific actor named Philippe Leotard who, like Jacques Brel, also left us far too soon.
He was a bit like Jacques Brel, actually: also a great singer, a great actor, and I loved him very much. But unfortunately he had a problem with alcohol, and was somewhat remote. I don’t think he ever watched the films he did. He was very tired at the end, because of his lifestyle.

Actress Fanny Ardant in Roman de Gare.

Roman de Gare features the great French actress Fanny Ardant as one of the two female leads. Tell us about her.
I cast her because she’s an icon in France, and is a woman who is a symbol of womanhood, both the weakness and the power contained therein. When you talk with Fanny, it’s amazing to see what an amazing physical presence she has, yet at the same time she’s like a little baby. It’s this mix of strength and naïvetee. But I liked working with her very much. I actually knew Fanny before Truffaut (Ardant is Francois Truffaut’s widow) did, because she was in Les Uns et les Autres.

She’s always reminded me of Anouk Aimee, actually.
That’s very interesting you should say that: if Fanny hadn’t been available, I would have offered the part to Anouk!

Audrey Dana, your other female lead, is a real find. This is her first film.
I think she’s the most gifted actress working today in France. She was so great in this, I’m giving her the lead in my next film.

What is your next film about?
It’s a big epic, which starts in 1900 and goes to the present day. It’s very musical, and it’s about five love stories of one woman, between 1940-1960. The English translation of the title is Those Loves, but it doesn’t sound as good in English as it does in French! (laughs)

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