Jim Jarmusch Interview in The Reykjavik Grapvine

via grapevine.is

Jim Jarmusch on...
This year's guest of honour shares his thoughts on film and reality
3.10.2010 Words by Wiebke Wolter
Photos by
“I'm not an analytical person and I don't really analyse what my films mean or what their intention is. I'm intuitive,” says Jim Jarmusch, icon of independent filmmaking. His films are independent in multiple ways: On one hand Jarmusch finances his movies indpendently, and on the other hand he doesn't tell a story on screen in in the traditional Hollywood way.

His early films from the Eighties, like 'Stranger Then Paradise' or 'Down By Law', follow male outsiders drifting around. These films, called “plotless” by some critics, requite the spectator to focus carefully because they are told a story in a slower rhythm, neglecting the well known Hollywood causation principle along with the concept of a hero achieving his goal. His later work, like 'Coffee & Cigarettes', 'Broken Flowers' and his latest film 'The Limits Of Control', is more abstract, working with repeating motifs and focussing more on individual scenes than on a comprehensible storyline.

Jim Jarmusch, who received the Creative Excellence Award at this year's RIFF, attended a double feature screening of his films 'Down By Law' and 'The Limits Of Control' and shared his thoughts with the audience. Jarmusch spent over one and a half hours telling us about his movies, the process of filmmaking and reality in general. The Grapevine was there and collected some of his thoughts for you.

… The process of filmmaking

“I consider my job to be a kind of receptor of things that move me. When I am working on a film idea I take quite a long time to collect disparate things, that I don't know quite know how they go together yet. I usually have some some actors that I would like to imagine to become certain characters in a kind of imagined world of a film. I start gathering these things. And then something tells me, it is time now to connect the dots, than I write a script based on the collection of these things. I don't even write the script always in continuity, I might write scene 56 and then scene 3, I'm not always sure how it goes together. I write really fast, because the script is just a starting map. Then I get my cast together, I get some more ideas and change some things. Then I look at other locations, and get more ideas. After shooting, the final draft is the editing. I try to be open to different possibilities that might suggest themselves. When I'm done making the film and having presented it, I never look at it again.”

… Limits of Control: Reality and consciousness

“Limits of Control for me is about the fact that each one of us has our own consciousness and it is the most valuable thing we have, it is our own. You can be influenced, people will try to tell you what is reality. I grew up with authority figures in school, police men even my father telling me things similar to what the character of Bill Murray says to the lone man in the end of the film: `You just don't understand how the real world works´. And I heard that so many times. But the real world is mine to interpret. I don't like to be told what is real. (…) I think it should be a sin or even a criminal thing for anyone to tell other people `what I believe is right and therefore you have to believe in the same thing´. (…) I really respect their consciousness and everyone has very different experiences, they accumulate and form you own kind of consciousness. It is a very valuable thing, ones particular perspective of what ever the world is.”

… How to understand his films

“A poet, I think it was E. E. Cummings said `You can understand the poem without knowing what it means´ [`Don't try to understand it, let it try to understand you.´ E.E. Cummings]. That is very important to me, because you can feel things from a painting, a film, from music without necessarily knowing exactly what it means, which essentially is less important than understanding it on another level, which may not be rational or logical.”

After chatting with the audience, Jarmusch went downtown where he continued chatting with people at Kaffibarinn, Bakkus and Boston.

The Great Acting Blog: "Commitment"

 

 

“If you want someone to serve the film, you don't want too much bullshit. You want someone who's committed, who's going to show up on time, who's gonna be in your corner. When you need someone, I'm the guy.”

 

The above is a quote from Mark Ruffalo in a recent interview which piqued my interest, and I was all set to write a panegyric about how Ruffalo was one of the great underrated American actors, before I decided to think a little bit more deeply about what he was saying.

 

Ruffalo here, is really telling us he is a committed actor, because all the points he makes are simply different examples of what a committed actor does. He has created a list of selling points, good reasons why you should hire him. I confess, however, that I was a little shocked by this, for many of those qualities listed, in my opinion, should be standard practice, not special features. I'm not knocking Ruffalo, I admire the guy, and I'm glad he celebrates these qualities, but I think all actors should be committed actors.

 

Commitment means the exclusion of all other possibilities, when you make a commitment you cut away all other options, total commitment implies a lack of concern for anything else except reaching your goal.

 

And the goal of the actor's work is to communicate the play* to the audience, and this communication is what the actor is committing to. And the first expression of this commitment is time-keeping. Not only turning up to work on time, but turning up 15 minutes early. To keep time well requires self-discipline, focus, strength of mind, and a healthy respect for life generally. Nobody ever won an Oscar for timekeeping though, it is as unglamourous as learning lines, but no less important. I learn all of my lines by the first day of rehearsal. I didn't used to, I used to learn them as I went along in rehearsal. But now I memorize them by the first day, and not because I'm a smart-alec or want to be competitive, but because I can function better: I am freer to play the scene in different ways, and play it fully, I am less self-conscious and more adventurous in my choices. Before I can confidently remember my lines, there is a tendency to lean on the script, like crutches. There is no magic recipe for learning them either, it's just a question of knuckling down with a bit of good old fashioned hard work: relentless repetition in other words. I cannot act until I can do the lines habitually, never searching for them, and this allows me to act at full tilt, in the moment. When I first started out, I, laughably, only used to half learn my lines, believing that my searching for the correct line made my performance somehow truer, more “real”. Nonsense, it had the reverse effect, often leading me to anticipate my next line because I was scared I would forget it as I hadn't learned it properly.

 

If the actor is not committed to serving the play, then what is he doing? Oftentimes, one finds actors in the company who would prefer to play politics, and seek power over their colleagues as oppose to simply doing the work at hand. Typical behaviour of this kind of actor includes: speaking with the director as though they were best mates, treating their colleagues like second class citizens, alternating between wanting people to kiss their ass and hold their hand, and always acting first to serve their vanity. They see the production as little more than a mechanism for expressing how “special” they are. This kind of actor is not interested in the play, much less the audience. And perhaps that is what Ruffalo meant by “bullshit”.

 

So the committed actor then, understands that the production as a whole is greater than himself, and strives to “serve the film”. The committed actor not only shows up to work early and knows his lines cold, but supports the production and it's director. He prepares properly, and is able to rise above petty politicking or disturbances. He shows respect, loyalty and courtesy towards his colleagues (and patience when the same is not forthcoming). The committed actor never complains, and cherishes the privileged work he does.

 

Commitment to work is a fundamental tenet if one is to become an artist.

 

 

I use the word “play” as a catch all phrase to include: film, television, radio, web, mobile device, and all other performance platforms.

 

NB – I highly recommend Ruffalo's performance in Kenneth Loneragan's “You Can Count On Me”, Laura Linney is also very good, and a wonderful script allows for some good old fashioned dramatic acting.

 

Recommendation: Les Bonnes Femmes

Director: Claude Chabrol

Producer: Robert Hakim, Raymond Hakim

Cast: Bernardette Lafont, Stéphane Audran, Clothilde Joano, Lucile Saint-Simon, Claude Berri, Mario David full cast

Duration: 102 minutes

Les Bonnes Femmes (1960)

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Guilt, complicity, bourgeois aspirations and murder: Chabrol's fourth feature clearly illuminates his abiding interests, even as it achieves a dazzling formal complexity in its arrangement of a series of events charting the dreams of a better life entertained by four Parisian shopgirls desperate to escape the daily monotony of their existence. One longs for success in the music halls, one the staid security of marriage, another a good time and little else; and the last, seeking romance, is the most vulnerable... At once a detailed portrait of Parisian life and an ironic, witty study of human foibles, the film remains emotionally affecting thanks to Chabrol's unsentimental compassion for his subjects.

 

The Great Acting Blog: "My Own Good Opinion"

When I started out as an actor, I accepted any part in any production that came my way. I didn't think too deeply about the production or who was producing it or the quality of the work or what it might accomplish, I was simply thrilled to be given a chance to exercise my craft and dived in, and tried to do the best I could. When my first agent offered to take me on, I bit her hand off without any thought for what she could offer me, which, as it turned out, amounted to little more than a few commercial castings and a vague promise about a bit part in Dream Team (which never materialized), and after I hadn't heard from her for two years I decided to delete her contact details from my CV, understanding her silence as a signal that she no longer wanted to continue our professional relationship. It was simply the opportunity to gain experience I was taking, rightly or wrongly, and I did learn.

However, there came a point in my career when I needed to take greater responsibility. I felt that I was not fulfilling my potential. I certainly wasn't the actor I wanted to be and I sensed there was a lot more to come from me but I didn't know how to tap into it. I decided to break away from my old habits, and set about defining my aesthetic, and practicing it rigorously. I researched acting technique, a process which began with Michael Chekhov and ended with David Mamet, and Practical Aesthetics.

I then realized I needed to test my ideas in a performance situation, and I wanted a stern test at that, so I wrote a one-man play, The Call, which was structured around a telephone conversation, and the audience only heard the character's side of it. I directed myself in the play, and one of the reasons I did so, was that I wanted an unfettered view of my work, all of the thinking and analysing and articulating would be mine, I could get a true picture. The play, and my performance were generally well received, but I knew within myself I wasn't quite there. Next I decided to write, produce, direct and act in a short film, and I intended it to be my "statement of acting". And again this worked to an extent but I still wasn't convinced, possibly because it did not provide me with a stern enough test as an actor.

My second play, Certain Things, was a full three act tragi-comedy, about a man who suspects his fiancee of having an affair with the lodger, and this time there was a cast of five. It took me six months to write the play, and I cast myself in the lead role and directed the other actors. What is important here, is that I used exactly the same technique to write the play, act in the play, and direct the other actors in the play, exactly the same technique. I will not pretend this production was not an enormous challenge, which required a huge effort, but it answered many of the questions I had about myself as an artist. It was a life changing experience. My performance in the play was closer to what I wanted, and showed me I was on the right track.

I am not a writer or a director, and I have no ambitions to be either. I wrote and directed those scriptes as a "non-writer" and as a "non-director", my primary motivation was to explore and develope my aesthetic to the point where I could articulate it and practice it simply and precisely. And in the process I became an independent artist, requiring no eye, but seeking my own good opinion of my work.

Recommendation: The White Ribbon

A masterclass in film language from Haneke. The acting is superb: simple, direct, true, eschewing trivial behaviourism and only including that which is essential to tell the story. Here's what Philip French had to say.

The White Ribbon

Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or winner offers a spellbinding tale of bigotry and brutality in a pre-Great War rural German community, says Philip French (Sunday 15 November 200 9)

Numerous novelists, dramatists and film-makers have been attracted to the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the First World War to give their work a touch of nostalgia, irony or historical resonance.

1. The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band)
2. Production year: 2009
3. Countries: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Rest of the world
4. Cert (UK): 15
5. Runtime: 143 mins
6. Directors: Michael Haneke
7. Cast: Burghart Klaussner, Christian Friedel, Josef Bierbichler, Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur
8. More on this film

JB Priestley, whose life had been transformed by his experiences on the Western Front, was among the earliest with his 1934 play Eden End, set in 1912 Yorkshire. Isabel Colegate's novel The Shooting Party (filmed by Alan Bridges in 1984) takes place at a grand country house in 1913. István Szabó's movie Colonel Redl cuts straight from its eponymous antihero's death to the Austro-Hungarian army going into battle, though it was as early as 1916 that the Austrian wit Karl Kraus launched one of the last century's greatest cliches by having a newsboy enter a Viennese cafe shouting: "Extra! Extra! Archduke Ferdinand assassinated in Sarajevo!"

Austrian film-maker Michael Haneke uses this historical setting in his masterly The White Ribbon, winner of this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes. It isn't, however, until more than two hours into his picture that its timespan is revealed as being from the early summer of 1913 to August the following year. The neat, north German Protestant village has a timeless quality that, with the absence of motor cars, gas and electricity and the reliance on horse-drawn transport and rather primitive bicycles, suggests a feudal community at any time in the late 19th or early 20th century.

At the top of the pile is the Baron, owner of the land and principal employer. Attached to his estate is a burly Steward, and the chief figures in the village are the stern Lutheran Pastor, the Doctor and the 31-year-old Schoolteacher, who is insecure, immature and the only unmarried one among them. Everyone else works on the land and one thinks of them all as archetypes, capitalised as representatives of their social positions. The film's narrator, actually that familiar figure "the unreliable narrator", is the Schoolteacher. From his infirm voice, we infer he's looking back on the events from old age and thus endowing them with special significance, though this is not spelled out.

The Schoolteacher interweaves two narrative threads. One is personal, lyrical and nostalgic: he has fallen in love with the shy new nanny caring for the Baron's three children. The other, dominant, thread is a series of apparent accidents and atrocities that occurs in the village, beginning with the Doctor being seriously injured when his horse is tripped by a wire strung between two trees near his house. It continues with a farmer's wife falling to her death through rotten floorboards at a sawmill owned by the Baron. Then the cabbages on the Baron's land are destroyed with a scythe, there are two brutal abductions, a barn is burnt, a caged bird spiked by a pair of scissors and so on. Only in a couple of cases do we see what happens and who the perpetrators are.

As with Haneke's Code Unknown and Hidden, an air of mystery hangs over the movie and isn't explicitly resolved. It's never, however, less than lucid. Revenge is one possible motive and the children, who move around together in a conspiratorial manner rather like the blond children in British horror flick Village of the Damned, are involved in some way. Indeed, one of them claims to have dreams that foresee the atrocities but the visiting police can't decide whether she's overheard some plotting, is mentally disturbed or has psychic powers.

The White Ribbon is a spellbinding movie, as exciting as a thriller, which, indeed, it resembles. Among other things, it's about an unjust social system yoked to a repressive society that is morally and physically disintegrating, though no one's prepared to confront it. The Baron tyrannises his young Italian wife as if it were his right, until she rebels against a world "blighted by malice, envy and brutality".

In the name of his narrow religion, the Pastor thrashes and humiliates his children, forcing the two older ones to wear the eponymous white ribbons of purity to keep them aware of their sinfulness (the girl's pride, the boy's masturbation). The Steward, craven servant of the Baron, behaves violently towards his sons. The Doctor's transgressive conduct involves his daughter and the midwife. Yet despite all this, Haneke's cool movie never lacks conviction or edges into melodrama.

The picture is shot in a harsh, elegant monochrome and resembles Carl Dreyer's Days of Wrath and The Word, both set in a similarly austere northern European Lutheran communities. But the picture it most reminds me of is Fassbinder's elegant black-and-white Effi Briest, a faithful adaptation of Theodor Fontane's classic 1895 German novel about the subjugation of a young woman by her aristocratic husband.

Another work that comes to mind is Spring Awakening, Frank Wedekind's sensational play about sexual suppression in pre-First World War Germany. Wedekind's subtitle, "A Children's Tragedy", is echoed by Haneke's "A German Children's Story".

In an interview in Sight & Sound magazine, Haneke mentions his admiration for Fontane and he also refers to another influence, the great photographer August Sander who in 1910 from his base in Cologne set about producing a taxonomy of German faces and archetypes that he called "People of the 20th Century". He began with farm workers as they're closest to nature. The riveting faces in Haneke's film have an uncanny resemblance to Sander's.

The final long-held shot is an unforgettable tableau of the villagers gathered in a small, bare church just after the outbreak of war, a portrait of a nation on the point of history. Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" is being played on the organ, and the camera is viewing the congregation from the position of the altar, as if God himself is observing and interrogating his creations.

The Exhilaration Of Creation

 

 

This week I watched Down Terrace, a brilliant film a about a crime family who live in a nondescript terraced house in order to masque their ill-gotten gains, and who spend most of the film receiving visitors there in an effort to find out who “grassed” on them for a previous, unspecified crime. It's a highly unusual picture and could be described as a slice-of-life crossed with a film noir.

 

It's the kind of film where one experiences the joy of recognition: we see ourselves in the characters, we recognize their behaviour and little verbal exchanges, their humour and their resentments are ours too, there's a truth to it. The acting is universally excellent, however I was especially taken by the performance of Robert Hill (playing Bob, the head of the family) and in particular his silent work where we simply see a thought flash across his face. It's subtle, it's animated, it rings absolutely true, it's detailed without descending into a fussy and irritating “naturalism”. His rhythm is superb, as when he is polishing some wine glasses during an argument with his son, and delivers the line “stand the fuck back man, or I'll stick these glasses in your face”, with the precision timing of a punchline. I had never heard of Robert Hill, or seen his face, I wondered if he was one of those exquisite stage actors who had simply refused to do screen work until now. I knew that to get the performances this good they would have had to rehearse rigorously over a period of time, for it is the paradox of acting that only thorough extensive preparation can true spontaneity in performance come. But then I thought about the low-budget nature of the film, and my hunch was that Robert Hill's performance had been produced by the alchemy of the non-actor, and that this was his debut. However, after a little research, I discovered that not only was he a non-actor, but Robin Hill (who plays his son Carl in the movie), is infact Robert Hill's son in real life, and further, the house used in the film, was actually the Hill's family residence. Here's a quote from director Ben Wheatley, taken from the Timeout review:

 

“You wouldn't be able to get that kind of reality from actors unless you rehearsed the absolute living shit out of them for months. That awkwardness only comes from real relationships.”

 

I confess that at first I was a little disappointed they hadn't been through the arduous grind* that comes with the application of craft. Robert Hill's performance was the continuation in a long line of non-actors making brilliant debuts. In these instances, the non-actor is cast in the role because there is something special in their persona which matches the character, and the results are often brilliant. However, it is also true that the non-actor is often good only for the one role, and tends to disappear afterward, or if they do continue, they rarely enjoy the glory of their first performance subsequently.

 

Over the years, the actor is forced to contend with the technical and psychological challenges brought forth by being consistly placed in new situations; there are the myriad directors each with their own method of working (for example, some like to improvise from scratch, while others insist on working from a locked text) , then there are the endless varieties of script, countless auditions, difficult colleagues, wrong turnings, dead ends, and disappointments. The true test is whether the actor can not only survive, but make himself strong enough to flourish and produce work worthy of the audiences' time and money. A one-off great performance will not see you through.

 

If the actor is to proceed then, he must find a technique which makes sense to him, and which has been proven to stand-up under intense pressure. The actor who does not possess this, will not be able to bare criticism, and will feel very uncomfortable accepting a compliment, because he doesn't know what he's doing. This actor will forever be seeking everyone elses good opinion of his work but not his own, and when a good opinion is not forthcoming, this actor will feel worthless. This actor cannot enjoy his work, and his life is not his own.

 

Once the actor has defined and practiced a concrete aesthetic, then, and only then, can the actor begin to liberate all that he has to offer, and experience the exhilaration brought about by an act of true creation.

 

*Vince Lombardi Snr said he never met a good man who didn't love the grind.

Drifting Clouds Recommendation: Down Terrace

via youtube.com

I really love this film, it's intense and has a bone dry humour. A sort of film noir crossed with a slice-o-life, it made me think of Harold Pinter who wrote about "the weasel under the cocktail cabinet".

Here's the Timeout review:

Director: Ben Wheatley

Cast: Julia Deakin, Michael Smiley, Tony Way, Robin Hill
Rated: 15
Duration: 89 mins
UK Release: Jul 30 201

Ben Wheatley made his excellent British gangster film 'Down Terrace' with no government funding. Could this be a template for the future?
In all the furore this week about the impending demise of the UK Film Council, it’s easy to forget that it won’t necessarily spell the death knell for independent British cinema. This country has a great and growing tradition of home made, DIY cinema, as evidenced this week by the release of ‘Down Terrace’, a self-funded, Brighton-based black comedy which uses the basic template for many a gangland epic – a family of crimelords try to work out which of their shady compatriots shopped them to the narcs – to spin out a magnificently grim, witty and involving story of suburban angst, familial strife and bloody violence.

Director Ben Wheatley and his co-writer Robin Hill are TV veterans, having worked on the likes of Armando Ianucci’s ‘Time Trumpet’ and Johnny Vegas sitcom ‘Ideal’ which, with its claustrophobic, dope-addled atmosphere must’ve been the perfect practice for their first feature, ‘Down Terrace’. ‘We’d done interviews with local drug dealers and ne’er-do-wells,’ Wheatley tells me. ‘Rob and I had written a whole script. But we looked at it and we thought, “it’s good but it’s been done before and done better.” So we came up with this idea of a crime film where you don’t see the actual crimes, so you don’t have to deal with all those clichés, but you still get all this interesting psychology, the drama that comes with the crime genre.’

For the film’s cast, Wheatley called on friends and people he’d met working in TV. Co-writer Hill plays the lead role of browbeaten, unbalanced son Karl, while his dad Robert Hill, a first-time actor, is remarkable as ’60s casualty-turned-drug kingpin Bill. ‘Bob’s a sensitive, open guy, and in retrospect it wasn’t a surprise, but it was pretty insane to have done it,’ Wheatley laughs. ‘It was very weird because we shot the film in their house, so you could feel all of those psychic scars. You wouldn’t be able to get that kind of reality from actors unless you rehearsed the absolute living shit out of them for months. That awkwardness only comes from real relationships.’

One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is how it constructs a world completely without morality, a brutal suburban landscape almost but not quite like the real world. ‘One of the key ideas was that there was this family who make their own rules,’ Wheatley agrees. ‘They were an island. But they were also a nation state who could declare war on people, the way Blair did. They believe they’re right and that’s all that matters. They feel regret for the people they’ve killed. They feel sympathy towards them. And I just don’t see that in drama usually. It’s always very black and white, but that doesn’t reflect what life’s like. You can be laughing and crying, laughing and crying all day long. Life is much more staccato than the movies would have us believe.’

The use of a single location – a ramshackle suburban home – also leaves the film feeling very claustrophobic and intense. ‘I’d been reading about Mafia Dons who live in Sicily in shacks. They’re the most powerful people but they dress like tramps because they don’t want anyone to know who they are. That’s why the characters in the film live in a house that they can’t even decorate in case anyone notices. They think they’ve lived this hidden, secret life, controlling everything, but actually it’s all starting to unravel.’

The film is also unique in the way it portrays its criminal characters as complex, multi-layered but also very confused and mistake-prone individuals. ‘Reactions in America often consisted of people going, “the characters are criminals, but they talk in this uniquely erudite way…” Well, they’re just people. There’s intelligent road sweepers and there are really stupid QCs. It was weird for them that the characters are more interested in talking about music than they are in talking about crime. But people are rounded, aren’t they? It’s only dramatically constructed characters that aren’t. Think of a movie character, say a cop on the edge. Maybe the cop is into accordions! You never know, do you?’

But the most interesting thing about ‘Down Terrace’ is that Wheatley and Hill didn’t wait for corporate or government funding, they just went ahead and made the film their own way, with their own equipment and their own money, calling in favours as they went. ‘I’ve always been a bit wary of regional film funds and trying to raise money that way. I think if I had sent ‘Down Terrace’ in as a script and asked for funding, that would’ve been a very long and bumpy road. And the thing that makes me happy is that I know that whatever happens I can always just go back and make another one with my own money.’

That won’t be an issue in the immediate future: Wheatley and Hill have already received funding from Warp Films and Film4 to produce their first ‘professional’ feature, ‘Kill List’, a horror film to be shot in Sheffield. ‘What ‘Down Terrace’ is to crime, this is to horror,’ Wheatley enthuses. ‘It’s deconstructing it a bit, it’s very realistic, then spirals off. I thought: If I’m going to do a horror film, it’s got to be really nasty!’

So while the closure of the Film Council may be a blow to many, it’s good to know there are still filmmakers like Wheatley making backyard features for discerning audiences. ‘The film industry seemed absolutely impenetrable from the outside, looking in,’ he remembers. ‘But we shot this in eight days, documentary style. There were no compromises. We just worked with what we had. The technology’s here, now. You’ve just got to make your own films.’

Recommendation: Down Terrace

Is this the future of British cinema?

Ben Wheatley made his excellent British gangster film 'Down Terrace' with no government funding. Could this be a template for the future?

In all the furore this week about the impending demise of the UK Film Council, it’s easy to forget that it won’t necessarily spell the death knell for independent British cinema. This country has a great and growing tradition of home made, DIY cinema, as evidenced this week by the release of ‘Down Terrace’, a self-funded, Brighton-based black comedy which uses the basic template for many a gangland epic – a family of crimelords try to work out which of their shady compatriots shopped them to the narcs – to spin out a magnificently grim, witty and involving story of suburban angst, familial strife and bloody violence.

Director Ben Wheatley and his co-writer Robin Hill are TV veterans, having worked on the likes of Armando Ianucci’s ‘Time Trumpet’ and Johnny Vegas sitcom ‘Ideal’ which, with its claustrophobic, dope-addled atmosphere must’ve been the perfect practice for their first feature, ‘Down Terrace’. ‘We’d done interviews with local drug dealers and ne’er-do-wells,’ Wheatley tells me. ‘Rob and I had written a whole script.  But we looked at it and we thought, “it’s good but it’s been done before and done better.” So we came up with this idea of a crime film where you don’t see the actual crimes, so you don’t have to deal with all those clichés, but you still get all this interesting psychology, the drama that comes with the crime genre.’

For the film’s cast, Wheatley called on friends and people he’d met working in TV. Co-writer Hill plays the lead role of browbeaten, unbalanced son Karl, while his dad Robert Hill, a first-time actor, is remarkable as ’60s casualty-turned-drug kingpin Bill. ‘Bob’s a sensitive, open guy, and in retrospect it wasn’t a surprise, but it was pretty insane to have done it,’ Wheatley laughs. ‘It was very weird because we shot the film in their house, so you could feel all of those psychic scars. You wouldn’t be able to get that kind of reality from actors unless you rehearsed the absolute living shit out of them for months. That awkwardness only comes from real relationships.’

One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is how it constructs a world completely without morality, a brutal suburban landscape almost but not quite like the real world. ‘One of the key ideas was that there was this family who make their own rules,’ Wheatley agrees. ‘They were an island. But they were also a nation state who could declare war on people, the way Blair did.  They believe they’re right and that’s all that matters. They feel regret for the people they’ve killed. They feel sympathy towards them. And I just don’t see that in drama usually.  It’s always very black and white, but that doesn’t reflect what life’s like.  You can be laughing and crying, laughing and crying all day long. Life is much more staccato than the movies would have us believe.’

The use of a single location – a ramshackle suburban home – also leaves the film feeling very claustrophobic and intense. ‘I’d been reading about Mafia Dons who live in Sicily in shacks. They’re the most powerful people but they dress like tramps because they don’t want anyone to know who they are. That’s why the characters in the film live in a house that they can’t even decorate in case anyone notices. They think they’ve lived this hidden, secret life, controlling everything, but actually it’s all starting to unravel.’

The film is also unique in the way it portrays its criminal characters as complex, multi-layered but also very confused and mistake-prone individuals. ‘Reactions in America often consisted of people going, “the characters are criminals, but they talk in this uniquely erudite way…” Well, they’re just people. There’s intelligent road sweepers and there are really stupid QCs. It was weird for them that the characters are more interested in talking about music than they are in talking about crime. But people are rounded, aren’t they?  It’s only dramatically constructed characters that aren’t. Think of a movie character, say a cop on the edge. Maybe the cop is into accordions! You never know, do you?’

But the most interesting thing about ‘Down Terrace’ is that Wheatley and Hill didn’t wait for corporate or government funding, they just went ahead and made the film their own way, with their own equipment and their own money, calling in favours as they went.  ‘I’ve always been a bit wary of regional film funds and trying to raise money that way. I think if I had sent ‘Down Terrace’ in as a script and asked for funding, that would’ve been a very long and bumpy road. And the thing that makes me happy is that I know that whatever happens I can always just go back and make another one with my own money.’

That won’t be an issue in the immediate future: Wheatley and Hill have already received funding from Warp Films and Film4 to produce their first ‘professional’ feature, ‘Kill List’, a horror film to be shot in Sheffield. ‘What ‘Down Terrace’ is to crime, this is to horror,’ Wheatley enthuses. ‘It’s deconstructing it a bit, it’s very realistic, then spirals off.  I thought: If I’m going to do a horror film, it’s got to be really nasty!’

So while the closure of the Film Council may be a blow to many, it’s good to know there are still filmmakers like Wheatley making backyard features for discerning audiences. ‘The film industry seemed absolutely impenetrable from the outside, looking in,’ he remembers. ‘But we shot this in eight days, documentary style. There were no compromises. We just worked with what we had. The technology’s here, now. You’ve just got to make your own films.

via timeout.com

I really love this film, i really got inside my head. It's a sort of film noir crossed a slice-o-life, and made me think a little of Harold Pinter who wrote about "the weasel under the cocktail cabinet".

The Great Acting Blog: "Mr Hurt"

 

 

Recently, and by coincidence, I have seen three of John Hurt's major performances: As Krapp in the film version of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, as icy hitman Braddock in Stephen Frear's 80s film noir The Hit, and as the bigotted Old Man Peanut in 44 Inch Chest, released this year. Hurt has long been a favourite of mine, going back to my childhood, and one of the few actors who can get me to watch a film simply because he's in it. Infact, a quick glance over Hurt's CV reveals an actor who, through the excellence of his work, has elevated many films which would have been utterly mediocre without his presence: there was his Winston Smith in the film of Orwell's 1984, John Merrick in The Elephant Man, the repressed homosexual intellectual in Love & Death On Long Island, and then others include Midnight Express, 10 Rillington Place, The Oxford Murders, Scandal, Champions....well....you catch my drift.* However, it's Hurt's performance in 44 Inch Chest which has compelled me to examine the nature of his talent.

 

Hurt plays Old Man Peanut, a viscous misogynist old git, who at one point urges Ray Winstone's character to “stone” his wife as punishment for her infidelity. All through the film Old Man Peanut metes out bullying abuse and seems to hate all mankind. But Hurt's brilliance is to take a character which should have been utterly repulsive and render him utterly compelling. I found myself longing for the film to cut back to Hurt whenever he was offscreen, I wanted to see what he was going to do next. He takes this supporting character and almost steals the film (admittedly Hurt gets to deliver some wonderful lines like: “the man said PRIDE you facking pilchard!!”), and Hurt does this through his commitment to performing the actions of the character as fully as he can. And his commitment is total. He gives everything he's got, employing the full force of his personality, and with a total disregard for his own well being. What we see is the work of a supremely skilled actor, who's performance comes from the heart. And so it is Hurt's generosity we respond to, generous with his personality and generous with his talent.

Present in Hurt's performance is not only the literal struggle of the character in the scene, but also Hurt's own artistic struggle, we see him, before our very eyes, wrestling with the questions brought forth by the demands of craft. And this struggle too, is compelling. Finally, one cannot tell the difference between the man himself and his work, they are as one. He is the embodiment of truth. John Hurt is an example of the actor as artist.**

 

 

*Please note – I have only listed those films where Hurt's performance in them, in my opinion, saves the film from mediocrity, and that includes 44 Inch Chest, but excludes Krapps Last Tape and The Hit, which are excellent films and Hurt is excellent in them (I'd also recommend Dead Man, The Limits Of Control and The Proposition). There are, however, other films, not listed in this post, which Hurt was unable to save.

 

**And I have not even mentioned Hurt's famous and fabulous gravel – pit speaking voice, surely an inspiration to all actors to work daily on their voices, and an advert generally for the beauty and art of the human voice, much maligned and underrated in the 21^st century.

Drifting Clouds Blog: The Hit

Check this superb film noir where John Hurt plays one of my favourite onscreen icecool hitmen.

The Hit (1984)

Director: Stephen Frears

 

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From Time Out Film Guide

After ten years meditating on his new life down in Spain, supergrass Willie Parker (Stamp) is rudely awakened by some visitors - two hit men come to take him back to Paris to settle a few scores. But Willie is a changed man, completely unfazed by the imminence of death, and it is the killers whose nerves are stretched on the long road back to 'the hit'. Frears returned here to the big screen thirteen years after Gumshoe and a retreat to the stunting effect of TV; the wide, sunlit plains of Spain seem to have broadened his horizons, allowed a flexing of cinematic muscle, and inspired him to something both exciting and lofty. Hurt is in good vicious form as the shaded hit man; Stamp once more wears a smile like a halo; and the prospect of approaching death is handled without too much metaphysical puffing and blowing. All in all, a very palpable hit.