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A SENSE OF DIRECTION
A SENSE OF DIRECTION
ROBERT ALTMAN
After more than 30 films – including M.A.S.H, Nashville, The Player and Short Cuts, Hollywood maverick Robert Altman has finally made his first British feature at 76. A period mur- der mystery, Gosford Park has all the usual Altmanesque hallmarks – a huge ensemble cast, a plethora of exception- ally talented actors and the trademark overlapping dialogue –
none of which he is will- ing to take credit for.
Q The subject matter of Gosford Park is a film about 30s life in middle-class England, what interested you about that?
A Well, my partner Bob Balaban came and said, “Can’t we develop some movie?” And I was constantly searching for some genre that I haven’t done before and I had never done a 10 Little Indians/country house/Shooting Party murder mystery. And we just went from there and it grew.
Q It’s a genre that can sometimes lend itself to sub-Merchant Ivory cliché. Was that a worry?
A I like the Merchant Ivory films and I think they’re terrifically done. I think those guys are really great filmmakers. But I didn’t have them in mind. I didn’t have anything in mind apart from Ten Little Indians meets Rules Of The Game. In my mind I had Renoir more in mind than anybody else.
Q Much of your work involves large, ensemble casts...
A Well I’ve done that before.
Q In this film the actors are by and
large well known. In some of your earli- er films you used generally unknown casts. Does it make a difference?
A Unknown in Britain maybe. But certainly Carol Burnett and all those people in A Wedding, which is very similar in size and shape to this film, were unknown here but they were known there.
Q Is it more difficult to work with more established actors in the context of an ensemble piece?
A No, that’s what you want. You want them to separate themselves from each
other. You don’t suppose that Maggie Smith comes up to Kristin Scott Thomas and I say ‘now play it this way.’ It’s none of my business how they play it. They’re the characters.
Q You allow your casts to take more of a part in the creative process than other directors?
A Absolutely, I don’t know about other directors. Apart from Alan Rudolph’s Trixie a couple of years ago I’ve never been on another director’s set. I know Spielberg to say hello to. I know Coppola to say goodbye to. But we don’t work together. We work with actors. I’ve never been an actor and I’ve never been a crew member, so I’ve no idea how other people do it.
Q So you continue on outside the Hollywood system?
A Well I’ve never been inside Hollywood. I mean they sell shoes and I make gloves, so we’re not in the same business. ■
JEAN PIERRE JEUNET
Together with partner Marc Caro, Jean Pierre Jeunet made cannibalism palatable in Delicatessen (1991) and creat- ed a world that would terrify even Terry Gilliam
in The City of Lost
Children (1995).
Two years later, he
slipped off to
Hollywood to
direct the behe-
moth that was
Alien:
Resurrection. Yet,
all this time, there
was one film brew-
ing in his mind:
Amelie, a feelgood
fantasy that would
bring together all
the stories he’d
written and heard over 25 years.
Q Who were your influences when you were starting your career as a writer and a director?
A We talked a lot about influences when we did Delicatessen but for Amelie, there was only one – a street writer whose name was Jacques Prevert who wrote Les Enfants
Du Paradis with Marcel Carne. I hate poetry except for Prevert. He lived in Montmartre and before the shooting of this film, I read all of his poems.
Q Where did the ideas [for Amelie] come from?
A I didn’t do any school. I
learned in cinema school. I had about
200 small stories [that] I want- ed to make into a film but it as very difficult to find a story, I could have made five or six movies so I was depressed that I couldn’t find the link. Then one morning, it was just in front of me. After the idea came to me, it was easy just to
write and shoot and edit. Almost all of the stories are true – like the suicidal goldfish escaping. The travelling gnomes are just a rumour, I’ve heard this all over the place. The story of the photo book [the collection of passport photos which Mathieu Kassovitz has in
the film] is real, my friend has one. I put all my ideas into this film.
Q Does critical acclaim matter toyouorisa good public response more important?
AWehad450 amazing cri- tiques and six bad ones. It’s a
very strange thing and I think it’s the same for every director and actor – even [if you get] one bad critique then you feel bad, and I hate myself for that. However, the public’s reaction was very good. I have received 600 or 700 letters and sometimes it’s amazing; last week I got a letter from a guy who said he wanted to kill himself and after see-
ing Amelie, he stopped and said no. Can you believe it? There are a lot of people who tell me that they do the same things as Amelie. One girl wrote and told me that she went out and described everything to a blind man like Amelie... ■
Additional reporting by Nick Cheek and Adam Smith
Events Extra
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Photos top left and inset: Robert Altman at a Script Factory Masterclass (Photo by Liane Henscher) and a scene from his period murder mystery Gosford Park; top right and inset: Jean Pierre Jeunet and Audrey Tautou in his latest feelgood fantasy Amelie