FILM JE PRÁCA AKO KAŽDÁ INÁ...

Poďakovanie:
Sylvain Despretz
mrvertigo (aka Rasťo Steranka)
lucmik (aka Lucia Miklášová)
mAREK (aka Marek Szold)

Interview in English

You have said that you never  studied at any kind of art school.  I´d like to ask, what was the reason why you have decided to work in movie business?

I don´t know. I like movies.

What kind of movies? Do you remember the one movie that made you decide? The movie that made you go »I want to make a movie like this«?

Yes and I try to figure out which was the absolute first one. I remember in fact 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, the Richard Fleischer movie with James Mason and Kirk Douglas. I saw that one when I was a kid and that blew me away. I remember looking at the submarine, and the colours and the textures! And I just said »WOW! This is big! This is very big!« So I was in love with that movie. And there was no video at that time, you had to go back to the movies. After that I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and I got blown away. The same thing. I was sitting in the theatre at noon on Wednesday, we didn´t have school and I stayed till 8 o´clock that night just watching the movie over and over. So I started thinking this is pretty good. And then I saw the movie Jaws. And I knew there´s something in Jaws. There´s a shot on a beach, where Roy Scheider´s sitting in a chair and he´s looking at the people bathing. And I was young, so I couldn´t tell what was going on. I knew that something was wrong but I couldn´t tell what it was. But I knew there was a trick. I knew there was something but I couldn´t understand that. And that drove me crazy because I thought this is different from what I have seen before. So I was really curious about this thing. And I was trying to figure it out and I didn´t know. So at that moment I thought »OK, I got to figure it out!« So then I figured it out and then I became really interested. Then I got a movie camera. I was like 9 years old, I got a Super 8 movie camera and I started making little movies. So that was it. I did a twenty minute remake of King Kong with little animated King Kong, electric trains...(laugh)

So that´s why you would like to see Peter Jackson´s King Kong...

Yes, probably.

Why do you like to work on storyboards?

I don´t. (laugh)

So you just do it for money?

Yes, I work on it because it was the only way to get into movies and to get work with people like Kubrick and Ridley Scott and things like that. It´s a high price to pay but it’s worth it. I just wanted to learn how directors work and in order to do that I had to get my foot through the door. And the only way I knew how to do that is to go and work by giving the directors something that they wanted. So I used my drawings to spend a few years working with directors I like, to see them work, to figure out how they do what they do.

Probably you´re thinking about making your own movie in the future?

Yes.

And what would be it like? Would it be an animated feature?

No. It would be a movie with a mysterious component  in it, maybe. Something a little bit intriguing, a bit of drama. It would be something about dreams. There wouldn´t be big special effects.

Would you make your own storyboards?

I probably will have to, at least for the financial part of it just to be able to raise some money. I mean there´s no point getting somebody else to do it. I can do it.

Well if you´ll be a director you´ll be busy doing a lots of other things...

Well that´s true. The advantage of getting other people to do your storyboard is that they might have ideas that you might not have.

What´s it like when there are a lot of people working on a storyboards for the same movie?

I think it doesn´t work very well for me. I find, when you have too many artists working it has no style. But it gets much better to work with one or two and have a very distinctive style. And maybe you can do one artist per theme so the things are getting mixed up. But for me personally I think it´s better when there´s fewer people. When there´s too many you usually assign that there´s no time to work with anybody individually. Everybody does kind of what they want. So I think it´s better to work with very few.

How much time it takes you to make a storyboard?

It depends. It depends on the director. If the director really understands the process he knows, that you need a lot of time. But it´s a big fight to get a lot of time because nobody wants to pay for it, nobody wants to budget it. When you get a producer who gets on board of a film, he´s concerned about his salary and the salary of his people in the production office. When somebody says: »We need to get two storyboard artists. it´s like »Now? We´re writing a script.« »Yes, but we need to start working right now.« »No. I´m not paying for two storyboard guys. I have a crew to pay for and we need to do location scouts in three countries and I won´t pay salary to two storyboard people«. So the director says: »Well, I need to start thinking about it.« »Well, you think about it in a couple of months when you have a new script.« So at that point the director says »OK, I´ll pay for it out of my own pocket.« Maybe. Some people do that. David Fincher worked on storyboards for over a year and he pays for it from his pocket because nobody else was going to pay for it. But that´s a certain kind of director. David Fincher is very sophisticated visually. So he does it because he has no choice, he needs it. He has to do it.

You said that it might be done to raise the money...

Sometimes. Usually you don´t make the whole storyboard to raise the money but you do some images. Because people need to look. A lot of people feel that if you come at them with a really good visual presentation...It´s very strange but psychologically they feel comforted by the fact that the work has been done. And if it looks good they get the sense that: »OK. I don´t understand what this is but they seem to know.« This is how Wachowski brothers got money for Matrix. Nobody could understand their script, nobody. But they were so convincing when you got them in the room with their drawings and their bullet-time, you just look at all the stuff. And this is where most of the guys at Warner Brothers said: »We´ve no idea what this is about. Just give them the money and get them out.« And that´s how they made their film. Because the story was incomprehensible but it showed these people have vision. They had something. Whatever they were doing, they had something. So it does help. But not with every kind of film. Some movies don´t need the money to be raised. Some movies already have the money when you get into the production.

Maybe when it´s a film about the characters...

It depends. I think there´s a lot of films about characters which would be better films if they were designed a little bit. But it´s for some reason when you do a film that has great script and great characters, people think it´s not necessary to do anything else. So  they´re kind of stale with it. I think there´s few directors that worked with great scripts, with great designs and great visuals. And I think Kubrick was one of them. He´s a guy who´s a master director, a master screenwriter, a master director of actors. He didn´t take one thing out to favor another. He just worked everything. There´s a very few directors like him.

So was the cooperation with Stanley Kubrick most favourite for you?

No, because it was very short. I worked for four days. I was excited because of who he was and because he was older, he was like 70 years old. So you knew that the person´s not going to last very much longer.

What kind of cooperation it was then?

Very short. I did just a few drawings. I was working on another film, so I was moonlighting. I was hiding in my hotel room, doing drawings for Kubrick while working on The Avengers. (Laugh) And the art director on The Avengers told me that if I wanted to get hire I just might go to change films  but somebody let me know politely that you couldn´t do that in England. You couldn´t quit your film to go work with a better director. (Laugh)

What was the most interesting cooperation with a director in your career?

I worked with Ridley (Scott – note of the author) more than anybody and he´s the one that I know the most. So for me it´s probably with him. Because he has a shorthand with me, like I know what he wants. If he does a film, it´s like a system. It´s very easy.

So it´s the director who chooses you?

Yes, the director. He has to decide if he wants to hire you or not.

You´re working for an agency or something?

For a while, when you begin and you have no experience, yes. But as soon as you get a little bit of reputation it doesn´t work like that anymore. People will look at your work on a DVD or in a book and they´ll say: »Can we get this guy?« And they call you through somebody or through a friend or somebody who knows you who says: »Hey, somebody´s looking for you!« So you pick up the phone, you call and they say: »Oh, wait a minute, I´ll put him on.« Then you get a guy on the phone and he says: »Hey, are you free on Tuesday? I need to have a meeting.« So you get in and he says »Well he have this great film with no money.« You know, the usual stuff.

How was the day when Ridley called you?

It was complicated because I knew him already before, I worked for him. I had met him several times on different projects. But that day I got hired on a movie that never got made. I was miserable. I was working on Superman, Tim Burton´s movie and I went to the restaurant where there were a couple of my friends and he was there. So I said: »Hi!« and he said »Hi! What are you doing?« and I said »I´m on Superman« and he started laughing and I said »Yes, whatever.” “Do you want to stop in our offices later? « So I came by and I got job the same night. So I quit the other. I was very happy. But I´d already met him before.

So what´s the criteria you use when deciding to work on a certain project and not another? It´s like when Ridley Scott calls you, you´re going to work with him?

Yes, because who´s going to say no?

And what criteria you use when somebody else calls you?

How badly do I need a job.

So it´s just about that...

Well, yes... Because otherwise I got funnier things to keep me busy. I´m not sitting around at home thinking: »G., you know I´m really bored and I need somebody to tell me what to do now.« I´m writing scripts, I have writing partners in England and in America, I have life. I have home, you know, things I do, I play music, I´ve lots of hobbies. I´m never bored. I haven´t been bored in twenty years. But I´ve got to make a living. So I can last so long and then I´m out of money so I have to take a job. And so the first person who calls me and says: »We´ve got a job.« I say »OK.« I mean it sounds silly but that´s how I pay the bills. If there´s other criteria, then it´s money, sure. I mean...This happened to me recently. I was asked to work on a movie in Canada. And I really didn´t want to go to Vancouver for three or four months and I said that I´m not really interested unless it´s a lot of money.

Who was the director?

It was the Zucker brothers who did Scary Movie (Scary Movie 3 directed by David Zucker – note of the author). So you get that call and you don´t want to do it. And I´ve said it´s not enough money. So they called back and asked how much money is enough money. I told them an astronomical amount so they screamed into the phone and then they said OK. So I went to Canada. And that´s how it works. And I did it because by doing this I actually raise my price because we have a precedence in the business, whatever is your price on a movie, the next movie has got to match. So it´s very good when you do this because your salary goes up. So that´s a very good criteria. And I´m glad I did it, because it was a horrible job. It was a pain in the ass.

And which was the film?

Scary Movie 4 or something...But..If I would take a little money for that I would have been really upset. I would have thought: »What am I doing? This is crazy.« I felt miserable but at least I´was getting paid. You know...So it´s like any job. But you have to do these things. Everybody does that. Everybody takes the filling jobs waiting for the big ones...

And now a completely different question. What kind of movies do you like?

Well, OK, I could name you my favorite movies of the last five, six, seven years. Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive...I saw a movie couple of days before which I loved called Skeleton Key. Beautiful, perfect film. Well, have you seen it?

No...

It´s a haunted house movie. It´s one of the best movies I´ve seen. It´s so extraordinary...And I like old movies from the 70s, good cop-bad cop movies like French Connection. I love William Friedkin. I Love The Exorcist, it´s one of my favorite movies. I love another Friedkin´s movie called Sorcerer with Roy Scheider. This is a remake of Wages of Fear. But in recent movies I like insane, crazy movies that take place today. Movies about identity and...You know...

Did you like Darren Arronofsky´s Requiem For a Dream?

No...

Why?

I don´t know. I thought it was confused, it just didn´t make a lot of sense to me. But, you know, I didn´t think it was bad, it was beautifully shot but it didn´t touch me. But typically, that´s the kind of movie I would like. I just didn´t relate to the story. I didn´t think it worked very well. But that´s just me, you know. It´s a movie that´s very respected. But the subject of drug addiction is not something that I relate to easily. The same thing I think about movies about drunks and this is the same thing to me. I don´t connect somehow...

Which movie did you like most here, at the Bratislava festival?

Personally, I like the Mongolian film called The Cave of the Yellow Dog. And I liked it just because of the magic. It was such beautiful, enchanting. It put me into state when I thought WOW. And plus I learned the story behind it afterwards, that the family in the movie is a real family. They´re not actors. They´re acting, but this is the real family. And the director is woman who is Mongolian, she´s married to a German man and she shoots movies in Mongolia using the locals. Because she knows them. She gets them to created situations. That´s probably the movie I liked the most. We saw a lot of stuff, good and bad but this one was really...

Voiceover: Sorry, but the car´s here..

The car´s here? OK. Do you have enough?

I think so...

Yes? We can do one more question.

It´s enough for me. So, thanks a lot for the interview.

You´re welcome.

Goodbye.

Bye.