Page 35 - Fujifilm Exposure_41 Happy-Go-Lucky_ok

thinking in images
Imagine a film co-starring Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin. Now enter the bizarre lookalike world of Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely.
Filmed on an island in Panama, Scotland and Paris, Mister Lonely is described by its young cinematographer Marcel Zyskind as “an exis- tential tragi-comedy about finding yourself or finding
somewhere else”. In the story, written (with his brother Avi) and directed by Harmony Korine (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy), “Marilyn Monroe meets Michael Jackson in Paris and brings him to Scotland where she’s married to Charlie Chaplin and they have Shirley Temple together,” laughs Zyskind.
Confused? It’s all about imperson- ators. Denis Lavant plays a wannabe Chaplin, Samantha Morton is Monroe and Diego Luna does Jackson. The cast also includes a James Dean, Madonna, Abraham Lincoln, The Three Stooges, The Pope (James Fox) and even The Queen of England (Anita Pallenberg).
The real David Blaine is in the film “for about 10 seconds” and there’s also an appearance - suitably in the Central American jungle - by maverick filmmaker Werner Herzog.”
“It’s very interesting and very bizarre,” notes Zyskind, best known for his work with Michael Winterbottom (In This World, The Road To Guantanamo, A Mighty Heart, Genova), “and I’m very proud of the film.”
So how did Korine dream it all up?
“I basically started thinking in terms of images that really have noth- ing to do with anything. Just simple images. I started dreaming about nuns flying, nuns falling out of airplanes, praying the whole way down and sur-
viving. Then I started to fixate upon other specific images and characters.
“One of them was the idea of a Michael Jackson impersonator walking the streets of Paris. I had these differ- ent images and they really didn’t have anything to do with one another. But I knew that there was something in there I was trying to get out, a unified idea, but I wasn’t sure how to say it.
“It wasn’t my intention to make a movie about Madonna or Marilyn Monroe or Michael Jackson. I wanted to make a movie about the obsessive nature of people who impersonate oth- ers, living as icons in a communal set- ting. I wasn’t so much interested in the people they were impersonating, but more the character underneath.
“What type of human being looks at a celebrity icon and not only admires them like fans, but takes it a big step further? For them, it’s not enough to just enjoy the celebrities they admire or love what they do. They take a decision: ‘I am going to live through that person. I am going to take that character’s identity into my own self and somehow sustain a living by pretending to be that person at dif- ferent functions, like retirement homes or car shows.’
“I ended up shooting Mister Lonely in Panama, Scotland and France. In the
script, it was a nondescript jungle somewhere in Latin America. Because my parents live in Panama, I thought it made sense to shoot there. We went down there and got help from my par- ents and their friends. These locations are really beautiful.
“Originally the commune part was written for Iceland, but when we went to Iceland I realized there weren’t very many trees and it was very flat and so I was limited in the way I could shoot. I felt I needed trees. I found this castle in the highlands of Scotland, near a fishing village named Plockton. Paris, of course, is Paris, which I wrote specifically into the script because I lived there for a while.”
Korine says he was particularly keen to work with Zyskind on the film. “He is very young and very special, and has not studied at all. He works in an intuitive way - he feels things first. This is the way I like to shoot, from the inside out. He has an innate under- standing of composition and move- ment. I think he’s one of the very best.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Mister Lonely was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8573, Reala 500D 8592, Super F-64D 8522 and 16mm ETERNA 250D 8663
“For the night-time scenes, the ETERNA 500T was perfect.”
THE DP VIEW
MARCEL ZYSKIND
armony was going for a very clean look and tried to be as grainless as possible. The Reala 500D is a beautiful stock but I couldn’t use it for
all the night-time scenes. For those, the ETERNA 500T was perfect.
I think the film’s going to be a visu- al feast. It was certainly a great film to be part of. We used dolly tracks, zoom, 35mm - things that I don’t tend to do everyday with, say, Michael [Winterbottom].
It was shot in a much more tra- ditional way, and for references we looked at films like Hud and The Misfits. I don’t want to use the same stocks all the time and I really loved Fujifilm. ■
H
Photo main: Samantha Morton as Monroe; top: Diego Luna as Michael Jackson; above l-r: Morton and Luna; Denis Lavant as Charlie Chaplin with director Korine; a scene from Mister Lonely
Fujifilm Motion Picture • The Magazine • Exposure • 33