TH E T FIlm H Danny Boyle on Apocalypse Now E Rebel Without a Cause “If you love films and care about filmmakers, you’ll have a hard time putting this book down. These lively Kevin Smith on inspired John Woo to conversations reveal just how much one generation F Slacker F I l m comb his hair and talk I of filmmakers influences the next—and how a single l John Waters on like James Dean. movie can change the course of a young person’s life and career.” m The Wizard of Oz —leonard maltin, author of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide For Richard linklater, Richard Linklater on T H AT T Raging Bull “something was simmering “A great and provocative read. Elder begins with a in me, but Raging Bull simple question and leads a wide variety of film- H Peter Bogdanovich on makers down all sorts of unexpected paths. Why do brought it to a boil.” A Citizen Kane we respond so passionately, even irrationally, to the movies that change our lives? The wonderful thing T John Woo on CH A NgE D Apocalypse Now introduced about being a critic or a lifelong movie lover is that Rebel Without a Cause life changes all the time in relation to the spells being C Danny Boyle to “the pure cast on the screen. Elder’s book honors that alchemic John Landis on H visceral power of cinema.” relationship many times over. It’s addictive.” The 7th Voyage of Sinbad —michael Phillips, film critic, Chicago Tribune A Atom Egoyan on m y A single line from The “If, as John Huston once said, movies are the reign- N Persona Wizard of Oz—“Who ing art form of the last hundred years, then Robert K. g Richard Kelly on would have thought a Elder’s idea of asking thirty directors to talk about Brazil the movie that most influenced their careers is a E good little girl like you bonanza for film buffs and a wonderful recommen- D Kimberly Peirce on could destroy my beautiful l I F E dation to all who love movies. Elder has done us all The Godfather wickedness?”—inspired a favor: read this book, then go see for yourself why these movies made the cut!” m John Waters’s life, he says. Michel Gondry on —lawrence grobel, author of The Art of the Interview Le voyage en ballon “I sometimes say it to y myself before I go to sleep, and many more Robert K. Elder is a film columnist and a regional editor 30 l like a prayer.” of AOL’s Patch.com in Chicago. His work has appeared I in the New York Times, MSNBC.com, Salon.com, Time F DIRECTORS Out Chicago, and elsewhere. For more than a decade, he Robert K. Elder E served as a staff writer at the Chicago Tribune. His other books include Last Words of the Executed and John Woo: ON Interviews. Visit his website at www.robertkelder.com. E l An A Cappella Book d THEIR $16.95 (CAN $18.95) e r ISBN 978-1-55652-825-5 51695 EPIPHANIES IN THE 9 781556 528255 DARK THE FIlm THAT CHANgED my lIFE 30 Robert K. Elder DIRECTORS ON THEIR EPIPHANIES IN THE DARK Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Elder, Robert K. The film that changed my life : 30 directors on their epiphanies in the dark / Robert K. Elder. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-55652-825-5 1. Motion pictures. 2. Motion picture producers and directors—Interviews. I. Title. PN1995.E5585 2011 791.43'75—dc22 2010038581 Cover and interior design: Visible Logic, Inc. © 2011 by Robert K. Elder All rights reserved Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated 814 North Franklin Street Chicago, Illinois 60610 ISBN 978-1-55652-825-5 Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 To my mom, Tina, who weathered the storm of insomnia-driven movie marathons—and even sat down to watch a few films with me (though she never developed a taste for Monty Python). Thanks for the love and support. Contents Introduction … vi 1 Edgar Wright An American Werewolf in London … 1 2 Rian Johnson Annie Hall … 13 3 Danny Boyle Apocalypse Now … 25 4 Bill Condon Bonnie and Clyde … 39 5 Richard Kelly Brazil … 47 6 Peter Bogdanovich Citizen Kane … 55 7 John Dahl A Clockwork Orange … 64 8 Henry Jaglom 8½ … 74 9 Brian Herzlinger E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial … 82 10 Alex Gibney The Exterminating Angel … 94 11 Kimberly Peirce The Godfather … 104 12 Steve James Harlan County U.S.A. … 110 13 Austin Chick Kings of the Road … 123 14 Guy Maddin L’âge d’or … 132 15 Michel Gondry Le voyage en ballon … 145 16 Michael Polish Once Upon a Time in America … 152 17 Arthur Hiller Open City … 160 18 Pete Docter Paper Moon … 167 19 Atom Egoyan Persona … 175 20 Gurinder Chadha Purab aur Pachhim and It’s a Wonderful Life … 188 21 Richard Linklater Raging Bull … 195 22 Jay Duplass Raising Arizona … 202 23 John Woo Rebel Without a Cause and Mean Streets … 210 24 John Landis The 7th Voyage of Sinbad … 222 25 Kevin Smith Slacker … 232 26 Chris Miller Sleeper … 241 27 Neil LaBute The Soft Skin … 245 28 George A. Romero The Tales of Hoffmann … 259 29 Frank Oz Touch of Evil … 265 30 John Waters The Wizard of Oz … 278 Acknowledgments … 284 Index … 286 Introduction Movies are personal touchstones. They provide soundtracks and wallpaper for our memories, and sometimes they become part of our own histories. For these directors, the films in this book are much more. They provided a spark that illuminated the rest of their lives. They inspired whole careers and, as the book title suggests, changed lives. What made this project so entertaining wasn’t just talking about film— although I, like most cinema lovers, can do that endlessly. The best parts of these interviews are not just about the movies themselves but also about the impact they had on each director’s life. For instance, John Woo’s story of how Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets almost made him a Catholic. Or how Kevin Smith was convinced, convinced that no other movie but Slacker could have made him a director. In these many conversations, I found not one but two directors who told me about their adolescent quest to find brief cinematic nudity on arts channels—only to have their lives transformed by the movies Persona and L’ âge d’or (hint: both directors are Canadian). Still other interviews took unexpected turns—including Michel Gondry’s thoughts about death and how he’d like to die, given that his cinematic hero was killed while working on a film. There are great stories of directors meeting their heroes, as in Kimberly Peirce’s tale of meeting Francis Ford Coppola, and these connections turn- ing into enduring friendships. We hear of Michael Polish loving Once Upon a Time in America so much that he later hired one of the film’s stars—James Woods—to star in his own masterpiece. Throughout this project, I was able to gather directors from across the cinematic landscape. Oscar-winners include Danny Boyle, animator Peter Docter, and documentarian Alex Gibney. I’ve also tried to reach across genres and generations, with conversations with veteran filmmakers such as Arthur Hiller and Peter Bogdanovich, and relative newcomers such as Brian Herzlinger and Jay Duplass. Some were long-winded, others pithy, but almost everyone wanted to keep talking about their love of the films that shaped them. Only two filmmakers refused to stick with one movie. You (and the table of contents) know who you are. vi Introduction vii I learned as much about these directors by their choice of films as I did from their own work. Perhaps John Landis says it best: “It’s extremely impor- tant to know . . . that how you appreciate a movie has everything to do with your life experience at the moment when you see it, how you see it, and where you see it.” He continues, “People who see 2001 on DVD, on an eighteen-inch TV, letterboxed or not, that movie is not going to have the impact it did when you saw it in a Cinerama theater in 70mm. It’s just not, it’s a different expe- rience . . . but that space station set to ‘Blue Danube’ is still one of the most powerful images ever. And it’s just, how old were you when you saw it? Where were you? How did you see it? Movies are subjective.” And that’s why we keep coming back. Movies are not just movies, they are mirrors of ourselves, our society, and our dreams—even if we’re not quite ready for them. They make us laugh, cry, ponder our humanity, and escape from it entirely. And, for a few, movies make them want to go out and make more movies. A Brief P.S. Almost every director asked me this question, so here’s the answer: The film that changed my life—that made me want to write about film— was Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Specifically, it was the scene in which an undercover cop learns how to be an undercover cop. Spoiler alert: It’s Tim Roth. His character learns a cover story—in this case, the story of a marijuana deal. We see him learning the story, scene by scene, practicing it over time. Then, he tells the story with increasing detail and finesse to gangsters he’s infiltrating. In the next beat, Tarantino puts his char- acter in the story he’s telling. We see him walk into a bathroom with a bag of weed to find himself in the company of policemen and their drug-sniffing dog. And the dog starts barking. And then our hero, the undercover cop, begins talking inside the story he’s telling—shaping the details of the story as he’s in the bathroom, a drug dog barking at him and his black bag of marijuana. It’s an amazing sequence, a piece of virtuosic directing—not a story within a story, but a single story told by a character learning the story, tell- ing it and then—knowing it so well—living that lie. viii Introduction For me, a seventeen-year-old high school student, it was the first time I was overwhelmed by cinema, when the form did something unexpected, literary. In this instance, Tarantino’s sleight-of-hand storytelling could only be done with the medium of film. Moreover, it was the first time I felt the presence of the director, a full-on personality and force of style imposed on the movie. Tarantino’s DNA was on each frame of celluloid. That, in a way, is the fix I’m constantly chasing—to find the directors inside their work. To hear and see and feel that personality connect with an audience. Even if that audience is just me. When you find it, it takes the wind out of you. 1 Edgar Wright An American Werewolf in London Edgar Wright was probably a little too young to see John Landis’s An Ameri- can Werewolf in London, even when he attempted to watch it on TV with his family. Even before he saw the film, he was enamored with it, particularly by images in fan magazines. American Werewolf was a forbidden fruit made sweeter by Wright’s ado- lescent pursuit to see it. But once he did, the impact was lasting. Compare it with Wright’s own zombie-horror romantic comedy, Shaun of the Dead, and it’s easy to see the inspiration, the attitude, the humor, and the humanity shared by both films. Here, the director talks about Landis’s masterpiece, a well-executed update of the horror-comedy formula. “It can probably never be repli- cated—nor should it,” Wright says. Edgar Wright, selected filmography: A Fistful of Fingers (1995) Shaun of the Dead (2004) Hot Fuzz (2007) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) An American Werewolf in London 1981 Directed by John Landis Starring David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, Jenny Agutter, and Frank Oz 1
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