Wednesday 5 March 2008
Monday 3 March 2008
JIM JARMUSCH
At a time when gimmicky, action-driven blockbusters ruled Hollywood, Jim Jarmusch spearheaded a boom in independent cinema by making low-budget films focused on intimacy, character, and new takes on classical narratives. His minimal form, peculiar pacing, wry humor, and blank affect have since been adopted by directors including Sofia Coppola, Hal Hartley, Richard Linklater, and Tsai Ming-liang. Juan A. Suárez identifies and describes an abundance of aesthetic influences on Jarmusch such as punk, Structural film, classic street photography, hip-hop, beat literature and art, and the New York pop vanguard of the late 1970s while analyzing the director's work from three mutually implicated perspectives: in relation to independent filmmaking from the 1980s to the present; as a form of cultural production that appropriates existing icons, genres, and motifs; and as an instance of postmodern politics.
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/44pzk8zs9780252032011.html
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/44pzk8zs9780252032011.html
NIGHT ON EARTH Emma Simmonds
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
—Carl Jung
I’m sorry I sound calm. I assure you I’m hysterical.
—Victoria Snelling (Gena Rowlands), Night on Earth
Get into the car/ We’ll be the passenger/ We’ll ride through the city tonight/ See the city’s ripped insides/ We’ll see the bright and hollow sky/
We’ll see the stars that shine so bright/ The sky was made for us tonight
—Iggy Pop, from The Passenger
Five cab rides, five cities, and one night on Earth. The simplicity of the film’s premise belies the exuberance and profundity of Jarmusch’s portmanteau, and the logistical difficulties of this technically ambitious, globally located, multi-lingual shoot. A stream of recognizable international faces (each part written specifically with that actor in mind) become our focus; shot head-on as passengers and drivers.
Despite the containment the sense of outside space is pivotal; these are stories born of their cities, specific to their culture and complementing their locations, whilst betraying a common humanity and universal humor which transcends language barriers and binds them. The use of rhyming shots and recurring references lends it further consistency.
Each of the chosen cities was assigned its own color-code. In the film’s, almost exhaustingly informative, technical commentary director of photography Frederick Elmes and location sound mixer Drew Kunin describe how lighting rigs were attached to the cars with colored gels illuminating the participants through the windows.
Characteristically for Jarmusch, action takes a backseat with the brilliantly conceived set-up contriving to make this so. Each episode is set almost entirely within its cab. In an interview included on this DVD entitled Alice: Magazine Europeen, Jarmusch describes the appeal of filming this common, fleeting yet spatially-intimate relationship where nothing is invested; there is no past and crucially no future giving one, in theory, total conversational freedom.
It begins in LA with Corky (Winona Ryder) as our unconventional cab driver. Diminutive, with a gawky tomboyish manner, she prodigiously smokes and noisily masticates gum as she curiously probes and proffers her wisdom to glamorous casting agent Victoria Snelling (Gena Rowlands, in her first role after her husband director John Cassavetes’ death). Dressed ostentatiously in a yin-yang effect dress Victoria seems, initially at least, every bit the Hollywood power-player who’s constantly interrupted by the incessant ringing of her mobile phone. Sitting aloft a phone directory to facilitate her view over the wheel, Corky is distinctly unimpressed by her fare’s vocation. It paints a fascinating picture of the two-sides of Los Angeles that co-exist; the humdrum and the sparkle, with the film’s allegiance weighed heavily on the side of the former.
After the relatively sedate, reflective opener it bursts into full vibrant bloom with the second segment set in New York. Giancarlo Esposito, as the delightfully monikered YoYo, turns in a warm, infectiously energetic performance. We find him, appropriately enough, bouncing up and down on the side of a busy road desperately trying to hail a cab. As they zip past, the racial prejudice YoYo is experiencing is not explicitly mentioned but heavily implied. Incidentally the sequence was filmed for real with genuine NY cabs leaving the mixed-race (African American/Italian) actor out in the cold. To add insult to injury, when a taxi does stop for YoYo and he announces his destination as Brooklyn, the driver immediately, and with a cartoonish pedal-to-the-metal ferocity, speeds off again. The mixture of humor and pathos is both distinctly of the city and a portrayal of bigotry recognizable to a wider audience.
Finally, a car jerks and lurches toward him and thus we are introduced to YoYo’s ‘saviour’ Helmut Grokenberger (the wonderful Armin Mueller-Stahl) an ex-clown and woefully incompetent novice taxi-driver. The encounter is based on an actual incident (disclosed in the audio Q&A which complements the film) where Jarmusch found himself being driven by a man with a pitiful mastery of his automatic vehicle, and eventually persuaded him to hand over the wheel. And so YoYo finds himself in the driving seat, with Helmut imitating his “ten to two” style beside him.
Helmut has a poignancy, which transcends his limited English. Speaking of money he remarks, “I need it. It’s not important for me…I’m a clown.” The two men are joined briefly on their journey by serial screen motor mouth Rosie Perez as YoYo’s sister-in-law Angela. Helmut is gently amused by the pair’s frenzied and often profane bickering and is enamored with Angela’s beauty, bidding her a romantic “Goodbye to you, Angela” as she exits the car. Ultimately the coupling of the sad East German clown, alone in a daunting city, and the streetwise kind-hearted YoYo makes for a fascinating learning curve for both.
The Parisian episode begins with an unnamed driver (played by Isaach De Bankolé), unfortunately lumbered with two incredibly rude, shady, African businessmen. They mercilessly taunt him by observing, “We’re not from the same jungle are we?” When they manage to extract that he hails from the Ivory Coast they cruelly make the infamous French joke that as an Ivorien il voit rien, “he can’t see a thing”. Eventually he dumps them in an obscure locale and fate plays him an ironic card when he picks up his next customer, a blind lady, played by iconic French actress Béatrice Dalle.
The commentary reveals that, rather than opt for white contacts, the idiosyncratic Dalle remarkably spent the duration with her eyes rolled back into her head, to give the effect of loss of vision. Although blind, as Bernard Eisenschitz, editor of Cinéma, remarks, she is a “seer” and the short journey proves something of an education to the driver. Dismissive of the significance attached to the color of a person’s skin, since she herself has no conception of it, Dalles’ character (again unnamed) is self-possessed, defensive and, as the punch line to the sequence reveals, equipped with a devilish sense of humor.
Jarmusch changes pace dramatically when the location shifts to the narrow back streets of Rome. The divisive Italian actor Roberto Benigni is in his element performing, with abreathtaking gusto, bravura, and semi-improvised, comic monologue. As “Gino” (the name a group of prostitutes assign him, he is credited merely as “Driver”) he recklessly rattles along the dimly lit cobbled streets entertaining himself with selection of quotes, songs and assorted ramblings.
Stopping to pick up a priest who he insists on referring to as “Bishop”, he takes the unsuspecting clergyman on the ride of his life, hilariously regaling his captive audience with bizarre sexual confessions relating to a pumpkin, a sheep and his brother’s wife. Predominantly a broad parody of the Italians’ perceived ‘romantic’ nature and the contrastingly staunch and prudish religious influences that pervade; it also features a repeated visual gag featuring a couple brazenly making love in the street.
The final episode is set in a wintry Helsinki with Mika (Matti Pellonpää) transporting a trio of drunkards to their rest. The most inebriated of the three spends almost the entire duration asleep, after experiencing what the others describe as the “worst day of his life”. Mika, whose handlebar moustache enhances his already dour expression, trumps the unfortunate gentleman’s tale of woe with his own story, which recounts the loss of his child.
The two passengers who remain conscious are greatly saddened by what they hear, eventually conceding, rather fickly, that their friend really hasn’t had it that hard by comparison and they abandon the poor man to his own inadequate devices. Finnish film historian Peter Von Bagh, in an article included in the film’s accompanying booklet, describes how Jarmusch (who himself astonishingly speaks no Finnish) “shows us things that no Finnish film has ever thought of, and yet, by a strange intuition, he almost provides a synthesis of the sense of Finnish film and its history”.
Night on Earth consists of a pleasingly varied collection of tales yet each is infused with the director’s own brand of subtle affection, offbeat musings and wit. The characters are both imaginatively and believably drawn, brought to life by the stellar cast. Insightful articles and a detailed commentary appositely accompany this DVD release, with contributions from Jarmusch himself in the lengthy Q&A, where he responds to letters from fans, and short interview. Something of a cult gem, this is a worthy piece in Jarmusch’s impressive portfolio.
—Carl Jung
I’m sorry I sound calm. I assure you I’m hysterical.
—Victoria Snelling (Gena Rowlands), Night on Earth
Get into the car/ We’ll be the passenger/ We’ll ride through the city tonight/ See the city’s ripped insides/ We’ll see the bright and hollow sky/
We’ll see the stars that shine so bright/ The sky was made for us tonight
—Iggy Pop, from The Passenger
Five cab rides, five cities, and one night on Earth. The simplicity of the film’s premise belies the exuberance and profundity of Jarmusch’s portmanteau, and the logistical difficulties of this technically ambitious, globally located, multi-lingual shoot. A stream of recognizable international faces (each part written specifically with that actor in mind) become our focus; shot head-on as passengers and drivers.
Despite the containment the sense of outside space is pivotal; these are stories born of their cities, specific to their culture and complementing their locations, whilst betraying a common humanity and universal humor which transcends language barriers and binds them. The use of rhyming shots and recurring references lends it further consistency.
Each of the chosen cities was assigned its own color-code. In the film’s, almost exhaustingly informative, technical commentary director of photography Frederick Elmes and location sound mixer Drew Kunin describe how lighting rigs were attached to the cars with colored gels illuminating the participants through the windows.
Characteristically for Jarmusch, action takes a backseat with the brilliantly conceived set-up contriving to make this so. Each episode is set almost entirely within its cab. In an interview included on this DVD entitled Alice: Magazine Europeen, Jarmusch describes the appeal of filming this common, fleeting yet spatially-intimate relationship where nothing is invested; there is no past and crucially no future giving one, in theory, total conversational freedom.
It begins in LA with Corky (Winona Ryder) as our unconventional cab driver. Diminutive, with a gawky tomboyish manner, she prodigiously smokes and noisily masticates gum as she curiously probes and proffers her wisdom to glamorous casting agent Victoria Snelling (Gena Rowlands, in her first role after her husband director John Cassavetes’ death). Dressed ostentatiously in a yin-yang effect dress Victoria seems, initially at least, every bit the Hollywood power-player who’s constantly interrupted by the incessant ringing of her mobile phone. Sitting aloft a phone directory to facilitate her view over the wheel, Corky is distinctly unimpressed by her fare’s vocation. It paints a fascinating picture of the two-sides of Los Angeles that co-exist; the humdrum and the sparkle, with the film’s allegiance weighed heavily on the side of the former.
After the relatively sedate, reflective opener it bursts into full vibrant bloom with the second segment set in New York. Giancarlo Esposito, as the delightfully monikered YoYo, turns in a warm, infectiously energetic performance. We find him, appropriately enough, bouncing up and down on the side of a busy road desperately trying to hail a cab. As they zip past, the racial prejudice YoYo is experiencing is not explicitly mentioned but heavily implied. Incidentally the sequence was filmed for real with genuine NY cabs leaving the mixed-race (African American/Italian) actor out in the cold. To add insult to injury, when a taxi does stop for YoYo and he announces his destination as Brooklyn, the driver immediately, and with a cartoonish pedal-to-the-metal ferocity, speeds off again. The mixture of humor and pathos is both distinctly of the city and a portrayal of bigotry recognizable to a wider audience.
Finally, a car jerks and lurches toward him and thus we are introduced to YoYo’s ‘saviour’ Helmut Grokenberger (the wonderful Armin Mueller-Stahl) an ex-clown and woefully incompetent novice taxi-driver. The encounter is based on an actual incident (disclosed in the audio Q&A which complements the film) where Jarmusch found himself being driven by a man with a pitiful mastery of his automatic vehicle, and eventually persuaded him to hand over the wheel. And so YoYo finds himself in the driving seat, with Helmut imitating his “ten to two” style beside him.
Helmut has a poignancy, which transcends his limited English. Speaking of money he remarks, “I need it. It’s not important for me…I’m a clown.” The two men are joined briefly on their journey by serial screen motor mouth Rosie Perez as YoYo’s sister-in-law Angela. Helmut is gently amused by the pair’s frenzied and often profane bickering and is enamored with Angela’s beauty, bidding her a romantic “Goodbye to you, Angela” as she exits the car. Ultimately the coupling of the sad East German clown, alone in a daunting city, and the streetwise kind-hearted YoYo makes for a fascinating learning curve for both.
The Parisian episode begins with an unnamed driver (played by Isaach De Bankolé), unfortunately lumbered with two incredibly rude, shady, African businessmen. They mercilessly taunt him by observing, “We’re not from the same jungle are we?” When they manage to extract that he hails from the Ivory Coast they cruelly make the infamous French joke that as an Ivorien il voit rien, “he can’t see a thing”. Eventually he dumps them in an obscure locale and fate plays him an ironic card when he picks up his next customer, a blind lady, played by iconic French actress Béatrice Dalle.
The commentary reveals that, rather than opt for white contacts, the idiosyncratic Dalle remarkably spent the duration with her eyes rolled back into her head, to give the effect of loss of vision. Although blind, as Bernard Eisenschitz, editor of Cinéma, remarks, she is a “seer” and the short journey proves something of an education to the driver. Dismissive of the significance attached to the color of a person’s skin, since she herself has no conception of it, Dalles’ character (again unnamed) is self-possessed, defensive and, as the punch line to the sequence reveals, equipped with a devilish sense of humor.
Jarmusch changes pace dramatically when the location shifts to the narrow back streets of Rome. The divisive Italian actor Roberto Benigni is in his element performing, with abreathtaking gusto, bravura, and semi-improvised, comic monologue. As “Gino” (the name a group of prostitutes assign him, he is credited merely as “Driver”) he recklessly rattles along the dimly lit cobbled streets entertaining himself with selection of quotes, songs and assorted ramblings.
Stopping to pick up a priest who he insists on referring to as “Bishop”, he takes the unsuspecting clergyman on the ride of his life, hilariously regaling his captive audience with bizarre sexual confessions relating to a pumpkin, a sheep and his brother’s wife. Predominantly a broad parody of the Italians’ perceived ‘romantic’ nature and the contrastingly staunch and prudish religious influences that pervade; it also features a repeated visual gag featuring a couple brazenly making love in the street.
The final episode is set in a wintry Helsinki with Mika (Matti Pellonpää) transporting a trio of drunkards to their rest. The most inebriated of the three spends almost the entire duration asleep, after experiencing what the others describe as the “worst day of his life”. Mika, whose handlebar moustache enhances his already dour expression, trumps the unfortunate gentleman’s tale of woe with his own story, which recounts the loss of his child.
The two passengers who remain conscious are greatly saddened by what they hear, eventually conceding, rather fickly, that their friend really hasn’t had it that hard by comparison and they abandon the poor man to his own inadequate devices. Finnish film historian Peter Von Bagh, in an article included in the film’s accompanying booklet, describes how Jarmusch (who himself astonishingly speaks no Finnish) “shows us things that no Finnish film has ever thought of, and yet, by a strange intuition, he almost provides a synthesis of the sense of Finnish film and its history”.
Night on Earth consists of a pleasingly varied collection of tales yet each is infused with the director’s own brand of subtle affection, offbeat musings and wit. The characters are both imaginatively and believably drawn, brought to life by the stellar cast. Insightful articles and a detailed commentary appositely accompany this DVD release, with contributions from Jarmusch himself in the lengthy Q&A, where he responds to letters from fans, and short interview. Something of a cult gem, this is a worthy piece in Jarmusch’s impressive portfolio.
night on earth Passing Through Twilight by Thom Andersen
All of which is to say that, whenever a movie with a cabdriver as the protagonist comes along, I’m there. Night on Earth was a special treat: five cabdrivers, in five different cities. It can also be characterized as five encounters, five moral tales, five city portraits. Of course, the first episode, set in Los Angeles, is closest to my heart, and I can write about it with the most authority, but first some more general thoughts on Jim Jarmusch’s work.
I have a special fondness for some Jarmusch films that are generally counted among his minor works: Night on Earth, and also Ghost Dog and Coffee and Cigarettes (how could I not love a movie that begins and ends with the two best versions of “Louie, Louie,” the original, by Richard Berry, and Iggy Pop’s cover?). I prefer them to Dead Man, his most recent film to receive serious critical attention. After his first few films, it seems that critics, and maybe even some ordinary fans, started to take Jarmusch films for granted, in the same way that an older generation of critics and fans took Howard Hawks films for granted. The pleasures they offered were evident, but predictable. With Hawks, critics have come to value these pleasures more highly and to appreciate the variations he worked on recurring themes. Maybe Jarmusch’s day will come also.
Both Hawks and Jarmusch create a special complicity among their actors and a sense of conviviality that passes across the screen so that we in the audience may come to regard them as friends rather than as performers enacting a role. Jarmusch seems to have a real fondness for actors, equaled among his contemporaries only by Quentin Tarantino, and this feeling elicits a special grace in their performances. I could make a long list of actors who have never been better than in a Jarmusch film. It would include not only Tom Waits (hopelessly hammy under Robert Altman’s direction), Henry Silva, Roberto Benigni, and Jessica Lange, but even Bill Murray (in Coffee and Cigarettes), Johnny Depp, and the always reliable Forest Whitaker. After seeing Stranger Than Paradise, I was convinced that John Lurie, Eszter Balint, and Richard Edson would become big movie stars. Lurie and Edson have been good in bit parts since, but they never found another director who appreciated them enough.
I can’t claim that Winona Ryder and Gena Rowlands have never been better than in the Los Angeles episode of Night on Earth, but they do create a feeling of camaraderie that is strong and affecting. Ryder’s unflappable tomboy cabdriver Corky is a fantasy, I suppose, but at least it is a generous fantasy, full of life and respect for human possibilities. She reminds me of Cagney’s cabdriver in Taxi! She has the same bravado and professional pride. When her passenger, casting agent Victoria Snelling (Rowlands), offers a request or a reproach, she answers with the good-natured refrain “Sure, Mom” or “Okay, Mom,” echoing Cagney’s repeated response to his wife’s nagging, “All right, Ma.” Victoria is impeccably mannered and coolly professional. We can gather from her side of the frequent cell phone calls she makes and receives that she is successful, but also stressed-out and dissatisfied. Corky notices the vulnerabilities in Victoria, but she doesn’t allow herself to feel superior; instead, she uses the knowledge to create a bond between them. In the end, she teaches Victoria a small lesson, but we may wonder how long Victoria will remember it.
Interspersed with this encounter between Corky and Victoria, there is a portrait of Los Angeles at dusk. Jarmusch’s portrait is certainly not literalist, but it is evocative, and it has aged much better than the hysterically pessimistic visions of the city prevalent in the early 1990s. As in The Replacement Killers, the downtown railway station fills in for the airport. A taxi ride from the airport to “Beverly Circle” would as a rule proceed north on the San Diego Freeway (now the most congested, despised freeway in Los Angeles), then east on Sunset Boulevard, and through the residential quarters of upper Beverly Hills, which have a spooky, funereal quietude at night (I wouldn’t live there if they paid me to). Visually, it wouldn’t be very interesting, and it wouldn’t reveal much of the city. Instead, Corky takes what we call here “surface streets,” and the sights glimpsed in passing are not to be found on any direct route from the airport to Beverly Hills, with one or two exceptions.
Jarmusch concentrates on structures that some might call seedy but are actually just ordinary. He values a takeout stand as much as a landmark (another virtue he shares with Tarantino). The only landmarks in Night on Earth are the Great Western Forum, in Inglewood (then a sports arena, now a megachurch), and the statue of Rocky and Bullwinkle on the Sunset Strip (still standing today). There are also some iconic images, such as a car under a tarp that recalls a famous photograph from The Americans, by Robert Frank, taken in Long Beach. Frank’s car was flanked by two small palm trees, and Jarmusch concentrates on these transplants, which always look a bit scraggly in his movie (as palm trees often do outside of Beverly Hills).
Most of the shots come from around Hollywood, with an emphasis on its poorer, eastern end. I recognized a Pioneer Chicken stand on Western, near Sunset (since demolished), and a minimall at Sunset and Harvard (its stores are now all Armenian businesses). Things change, things stay the same. If you rephotographed most of his locations today, they would be changed beyond recognition. But every shot could be almost exactly duplicated somewhere else in the city. And maybe that used-car lot that could be anywhere is still there and still under the same ownership. Auto dealerships are now our most enduring institutions.
With some justice, Philippe Garnier lamented the disposability of Los Angeles architecture; he called it an "architecture of amnesia." He noted, “Intersections change so fast that remembering how they used to be has almost become a civic duty.” Yet as Eric Hobsbawm noted in his autobiography Interesting Times, American cities, Los Angeles included, have changed less radically in the past fifty years than European cities. And perhaps Los Angeles has changed less than any other U.S. city. Because it was first for so many years—it built the first freeway system, the first airport for jet airliners, the first midcentury-modern baseball stadium, the first shoddy neoclassical cultural palaces—it is in many ways the oldest U.S. city. Jarmusch knows New York better, but he values what is ancient in each of the cities he portrays.
Thom Andersen teaches in the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts. He directed and produced Los Angeles Plays Itself, a video essay about the city of Los Angeles and the movies.
http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=401&eid=553§ion=essay&page=1
night on earth JIM JARMUSCH INTERVIEW
GA: How did you decide on the cities to use in Night on Earth?
JJ: To be honest I had written a script for another film, but was not able to make it due to things that were very frustrating, and I felt somewhat betrayed due to certain circumstances, so I thought to hell with that then, I'll just write something else real fast. I wrote Night on Earth in about eight days and what I was thinking was, "there's friends I'd like to work with and friends I'd like to see and I'm just going to write something that will get me to work with them and see them," which included Roberto Benigni, Isaach de Bankolé, all the actors in the Finnish section, and Gena Rowlands. The cities were really based on what actors I wanted to work with, or people I wanted to see. It wasn't very calculating, it was just, "I've got to do something" because I was very frustrated by this other project that didn't work out.
GA: But each episode is coloured by the culture in which it is set. With the Finnish, you have the moroseness, with the Italian influence you not only have the influence of the Catholic church, but very broad Italian comedy, in New York you have the cultural mix and the aggression. Was that calculated or did that just come naturally?
JJ: That comes as soon as you decide, "I want to work with these actors in Finland", then my impressions of Helsinki or Finland or their culture certainly filter in, and that is the atmosphere that I'm thinking of while writing. I love cities, they are almost like lovers. I'm attracted to many cities I've been in, often cities other people don't like at all. I like Detroit and Gary, Indiana, cities other people would avoid like the plague. The cities become characters even though they're enclosed in a cab, the atmosphere, the colour, the quality of light in each city is very different and has a different effect on the people who live there and on your emotions when you are there.
GA: Those things do come over, but as you say, shooting virtually within a cab all the time - you get shots looking out of the cab and establishing shots of the cities - it must have been a very difficult film to make given all those constraints you set yourself.
JJ: That was ridiculous. I wrote the film really fast and I was saying to myself, "This will be something real easy to do and I can do it fast" and then I stepped back in pre-production, realising, "Oh man, this is in four different countries in five different cities all inside of cars." Shooting in a car is really, really difficult and anyone who has made a film in a car interior will tell you, "Don't ever do that again."
I had people locked into the cars because there was a speed-rail built on the outside of the car to put the lighting rigs on, and if they had to get out and use the bathroom, it was a big nightmare. We had to roll the windows down and put sandwiches in for them just to keep them alive at times. (Laughter) It's really not fun shooting in a car.
At one point in Helsinki, we were towing a car, a rig broke and the car with the actors in was stopped on the line of the streetcar and a streetcar was coming. And my Finnish actors are, (puts on Finnish accent) "What the bloody hell, are we going to die here in a jam?" on the walkie-talkie. We had to run and get these guys to stop the train. But just physically shooting in a car is really, really hard.
Fred Elms, the director of photography in some of the shots when we were towing the car, we had taken away the engine out of the engine cavity and mounted the engine in there and he was riding on the car, operating, sometimes holding a diopter - which allows you to have two different focus areas in the frame - and it was 14 degrees below zero. It was really cold and we were out all night and [it was] really not an easy film to make. I was deluded when I said, "This'll be easy, little stories, a few characters." It was hell.
We were stopped in Italy because we drove by the American embassy in a car that looked like some sort of gun mount and we were held there by the police for a long time, asking for our passports. Of course, our passports were all in the hotel, so we each had to tell a young Italian person working on the film, "Okay, there's a shelf in the closet, it's got a green bag, it's not in the green bag, but underneath that is a red bag, if you open that… Five hours later the guy comes back (puts on Italian accent), "I have ze passports!"
It was really insane and we were shooting over a holiday and we told this Italian guy, "please make photocopies of this schedule". He came back about nine hours later and had copied them by hand. (Laughter) And I said, "Why?" and he said, (puts on Italian accent) "Because there was no photocopy place to make, its all closed, it's a holiday, now I copy for you the schedule." (Laughter) Lots of absurd things like that going on; and then Fred Elmes is very interested in using silks over the lens for different light diffusion in each city, and he uses very expensive lingerie. In Paris, he'd see a lingerie shop and he'd rush in there and he'd be saying, "Could I see more of these stockings please?" which got a little bit embarrassing. "Jim, do you think that this is nice?"(Laughter) French girls waiting on us looking around thinking, "strange Americans…"
GA: Was it difficult working in different languages?
JJ: It's not, surprisingly. I can understand Italian somewhat, French I can understand very well and Finnish I don't understand at all, but I wrote the dialogue and I worked with the actors in advance and with a translator. The actors spoke English in Finland and we were able to discuss the nuances of their translation to make sure it was the right way; for example, working-class guys would speak, and I'd already worked with Japanese actors in Mystery Train. It sounds funny, but it is not difficult at all.
When I came back from Japan, I came back with a load of videotapes of Japanese films that I couldn't find in the States that, of course, had no subtitles. If you watch an Ozu film not subtitled, believe me you understand what the characters are feeling. Nick Ray also compared acting to piano playing and he said, "The dialogue is just the left hand, the melody is in the eyes." Language is very important, but it is not necessarily the primary way of knowing what someone is feeling. Actors are expressing a lot of things through many tiny things, not just the language, so that was not a problem at all for me.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/Guardian_NFT/interview/0,4479,110606,00.html#b
JJ: To be honest I had written a script for another film, but was not able to make it due to things that were very frustrating, and I felt somewhat betrayed due to certain circumstances, so I thought to hell with that then, I'll just write something else real fast. I wrote Night on Earth in about eight days and what I was thinking was, "there's friends I'd like to work with and friends I'd like to see and I'm just going to write something that will get me to work with them and see them," which included Roberto Benigni, Isaach de Bankolé, all the actors in the Finnish section, and Gena Rowlands. The cities were really based on what actors I wanted to work with, or people I wanted to see. It wasn't very calculating, it was just, "I've got to do something" because I was very frustrated by this other project that didn't work out.
GA: But each episode is coloured by the culture in which it is set. With the Finnish, you have the moroseness, with the Italian influence you not only have the influence of the Catholic church, but very broad Italian comedy, in New York you have the cultural mix and the aggression. Was that calculated or did that just come naturally?
JJ: That comes as soon as you decide, "I want to work with these actors in Finland", then my impressions of Helsinki or Finland or their culture certainly filter in, and that is the atmosphere that I'm thinking of while writing. I love cities, they are almost like lovers. I'm attracted to many cities I've been in, often cities other people don't like at all. I like Detroit and Gary, Indiana, cities other people would avoid like the plague. The cities become characters even though they're enclosed in a cab, the atmosphere, the colour, the quality of light in each city is very different and has a different effect on the people who live there and on your emotions when you are there.
GA: Those things do come over, but as you say, shooting virtually within a cab all the time - you get shots looking out of the cab and establishing shots of the cities - it must have been a very difficult film to make given all those constraints you set yourself.
JJ: That was ridiculous. I wrote the film really fast and I was saying to myself, "This will be something real easy to do and I can do it fast" and then I stepped back in pre-production, realising, "Oh man, this is in four different countries in five different cities all inside of cars." Shooting in a car is really, really difficult and anyone who has made a film in a car interior will tell you, "Don't ever do that again."
I had people locked into the cars because there was a speed-rail built on the outside of the car to put the lighting rigs on, and if they had to get out and use the bathroom, it was a big nightmare. We had to roll the windows down and put sandwiches in for them just to keep them alive at times. (Laughter) It's really not fun shooting in a car.
At one point in Helsinki, we were towing a car, a rig broke and the car with the actors in was stopped on the line of the streetcar and a streetcar was coming. And my Finnish actors are, (puts on Finnish accent) "What the bloody hell, are we going to die here in a jam?" on the walkie-talkie. We had to run and get these guys to stop the train. But just physically shooting in a car is really, really hard.
Fred Elms, the director of photography in some of the shots when we were towing the car, we had taken away the engine out of the engine cavity and mounted the engine in there and he was riding on the car, operating, sometimes holding a diopter - which allows you to have two different focus areas in the frame - and it was 14 degrees below zero. It was really cold and we were out all night and [it was] really not an easy film to make. I was deluded when I said, "This'll be easy, little stories, a few characters." It was hell.
We were stopped in Italy because we drove by the American embassy in a car that looked like some sort of gun mount and we were held there by the police for a long time, asking for our passports. Of course, our passports were all in the hotel, so we each had to tell a young Italian person working on the film, "Okay, there's a shelf in the closet, it's got a green bag, it's not in the green bag, but underneath that is a red bag, if you open that… Five hours later the guy comes back (puts on Italian accent), "I have ze passports!"
It was really insane and we were shooting over a holiday and we told this Italian guy, "please make photocopies of this schedule". He came back about nine hours later and had copied them by hand. (Laughter) And I said, "Why?" and he said, (puts on Italian accent) "Because there was no photocopy place to make, its all closed, it's a holiday, now I copy for you the schedule." (Laughter) Lots of absurd things like that going on; and then Fred Elmes is very interested in using silks over the lens for different light diffusion in each city, and he uses very expensive lingerie. In Paris, he'd see a lingerie shop and he'd rush in there and he'd be saying, "Could I see more of these stockings please?" which got a little bit embarrassing. "Jim, do you think that this is nice?"(Laughter) French girls waiting on us looking around thinking, "strange Americans…"
GA: Was it difficult working in different languages?
JJ: It's not, surprisingly. I can understand Italian somewhat, French I can understand very well and Finnish I don't understand at all, but I wrote the dialogue and I worked with the actors in advance and with a translator. The actors spoke English in Finland and we were able to discuss the nuances of their translation to make sure it was the right way; for example, working-class guys would speak, and I'd already worked with Japanese actors in Mystery Train. It sounds funny, but it is not difficult at all.
When I came back from Japan, I came back with a load of videotapes of Japanese films that I couldn't find in the States that, of course, had no subtitles. If you watch an Ozu film not subtitled, believe me you understand what the characters are feeling. Nick Ray also compared acting to piano playing and he said, "The dialogue is just the left hand, the melody is in the eyes." Language is very important, but it is not necessarily the primary way of knowing what someone is feeling. Actors are expressing a lot of things through many tiny things, not just the language, so that was not a problem at all for me.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/Guardian_NFT/interview/0,4479,110606,00.html#b
night on earth alfred hitchcock
Roberto Benigni's character occasionally hums the opening theme of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', among other tunes.
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