Where do you see independent film now as compared to where it was a few years ago? Recently we have had success with Juno and Little Miss Sunshine, but those are really more like Hollywood independent films.
ML: There are independent films and then there are independent films. I would say a film like Trees Lounge by Steve Buscemi, that’s an independent film. You can sit that in a film festival with a lot of films from overseas and it would sit very comfortably. Juno, as you say, it’s independent within a Hollywood context, and it’s a Hollywood film in its ethos.
But I don’t really want to get into that discussion, because independent means a lot of things beyond the circumstances of the actual production. It’s to do with the context of a film, its culture and its roots and its currency and meaning in terms of the society it comes out of. I am personally committed to films that are not only independent, but are hopefully universal in their appeal and meaning and are entertaining as well. I am in the entertainment business.
ML: I think it’s stupid personally. Actually I was in a Q&A the other day and somebody said, “Would I consider making this film 3-D?” The answer is, “No.” But, if you came to me and said, “Let’s make a film in 3-D,” then I would set about thinking about how to make a film in 3-D and make it earn its keep. But film, like painting, is a two-dimensional medium and that’s the joy of it, that it captures the world and it doesn’t need to be in 3-D. For what purpose does it need to be in 3-D?! Why?! To what end?! What is the point of that? It’s ridiculous.
It is actually, and could only be said by somebody, no disrespect to him, but who is completely preoccupied with commerce and possibly with trying to be original for the sake of it or something. But actually the great thing about the movie camera is it is a wonderful, wonderful creative device which you can point at the world and capture it and make this distillation and do whatever you want with it.
The world is 3-D, but film is 2-D and completely three-dimensional. I talk endlessly, when I talk about my work, about creating a three-dimensional world and then filming it, but for it to be actually three-dimensional is totally irrelevant. If you take that idea to its logical conclusion you would say, “Well, the problem with color is it doesn’t actually look exactly like the real color.” Of course it bloody well doesn’t!
We shot Happy-Go-Lucky with this wonderful new stock from Fuji called Vivid, which is primary colors, which gives it this extra brightly bold sense of color. It doesn’t stop you believing the world is real out there, because you see the real world and it’s the real world as reported by us, in this distilled artistic way. But if you actually carry the thing about 3-D to its logical conclusion you would say, “The problem with this film stock is that the world doesn’t look like that.” But you’ll never get a film stock that actually, actually, actually looks like the world actually, actually looks because you won’t.
So instead of embracing the medium for its strengths and limitations you get sidetracked by this red herring. It’s like saying in the future all movies will be IMAX movies. It would be very exciting to make an IMAX movie, but what is the point of that?
Particularly, I would say, at a point in the history of the movies, when in fact new technology affords us all kinds of very exciting possibilities with the kind of filmmaking that is healthily available to everybody and is able to be hands on and people get out there and capture the world, the idea to be lumbered with the complexity of three-dimensional, it’s pointless to the extreme.
Is that the disconnect between Hollywood and say “independent” films and European filmmakers? D you see your work as a director as an art form, as a job intent on making money or a combination of the two?
ML: Of course it’s an art form, but the point is, you only offer two choices, but neither of those things is the main reason. I, like probably most people in Hollywood, do it because I am a compulsive entertainer, and have been since I was born. I’ve been a compulsive storyteller since I was born. I’ve been drawing and making up plays when I was like five, six, seven — it’s a thing I do compulsively. I’m a joke teller. It’s a thing you do by compulsion. Then, if you are motivated or lucky enough to get to do it, it’s great to get paid for it because you’ve got to live. It’s about communicating with people, it’s about showbiz, it’s about sharing and it’s about trying to give people joy in what you create. It’s about all those things.
Of course it’s art, but I don’t think about the art separately, like an ivory tower thing, but sure I’m a very cultural person. I know about art of all kinds — literature, paintings and music — you name it and I’m pretty knowledgeable about world cinema and the history of the movies going back to the 1896, of course I am. So yeah, I’m an artist, sure I am, but it’s not just about that. It’s all these things.
So the disconnect, which you are talking about, it’s a disconnect from a real, total passion for what film is really all about. Jeffrey Katzenberg might deny that and disagree with me or he can be offended by me saying that, but I don’t really think that he thinks in the future all films will be 3-D. I can’t believe he does think that. I can see that it’s an attractive sort of commercial idea, but it’s not even realistic in terms of the undoubted proliferation of all kinds of ways people will make films, how films will be disseminated and how people will experience films in the decades to come.
Happy-Go-Lucky is in theaters now, you can get more information on the film right here. I have also done a rather lengthy write-up regarding the film and some of the critical reactions Leigh and I talk about in the beginning of this interview right here and if you are at all interested in seeing the film I recommend you give it a read, it will give you a couple of perspectives to look at before going into the film. I think it will make your experience watching the film a little more enlightening.
