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Interview
wth Wim by J.A.: Mel Gibson recently described Million Dollar Hotel as "more boring than a dog's arse": what's your response? Was he a difficult man to direct? W.W.: On the contrary, Mel was a pleasure to work with. Easy, disciplined, no ego problems. And he had to work very hard! I just had 3 weeks with him to shoot the entire part. "Skinner" was a difficult character, extremely hard to pin down, half Super-Cop, half King of Freaks, half just a simple guy. Mel is great in the part, I think. He brought out every facet of Skinner. Apparently, we have a different taste, though. Well, MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL is definitely not the action film that Melıs dog might be used to. Itıs essentially a very tender love story. A movie without any genocidal tendencies, if thatıs what the term "boring" was referring to. To tell you the truth: Iım quite happy to live and work in the boring parallel universe to Melıs "exciting" one. If you want to put it this way: His dog bites. Mine is friendly. J.A.:What was your reaction when Bono approached you with the story? Were you familar with the Streets Have No Name clip? How would you describe your relationship? Is he a good collaborator? W.W.:Bono and I knew each other quite well, but so much better now after the 7 years we spent together on the MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL. Over that long stretch, Bono never let me down. He was always available to help, to talk to, to listen and to give advice. In another life, Bono could be a great film producer. Or a great politician. Or anything else. He is truly gifted in many areas. You know, Bono was the father of this project, he came up with the idea of it. Iım only the foster father, so to speak, even if in between I have adopted the baby full-heartedly. When Bono showed it to me first, he used a very smart approach. He didnıt say: "Hey, Wim, Iıve got a script here, and I would like you to direct it." I probably would have said "No!" right away. Instead, Bono said: "Wim, Iıve got this movie project here and I need your advice. Weıre not sure whether it should be produced out of Hollywood, or out of Europe. Whether itıs a studio film or if it should be done independently. Should it be done on location, or could it be shot on stage? Should we find an American director or a European one? Could you read it and tell me what you think?" You donıt want to give a good friend short change, so I read the script attentively and took lots of notes. It was a first draft, and as such had a few problems, needed trimming, needed to concentrate more on its protagonists etc. But I LOVED those characters at first sight, and that crazy hotel. After a couple of weeks, I saw Bono again, together with Nicholas Klein, the writer, and unloaded all my notes on them, on every aspect of a possible production. I even had a list of directors I was going to suggest. But we never got to that point. Bonoıs scheme had worked: I was hooked. J.A.:It's much more than a soundtrack that Bono and co have put together: was the goal to produce something that stands alone and yet works perfectly with the images as well? W.W.:The main goal was to produce a soundtrack in which, FOR ONCE, score and songs would not belong to different spheres. We wanted all the music to come from the same source. So the "Million Dollar Lobby Band" that Bono and Hal Willner put together was responsible for developing the entire range of music for the film, from the jazzy and moody parts of the score to the Spanish Punk version of "Anarchy in the USA". I think that was a unique approach and thatıs why you can listen to the CD almost like to a concept album. J.A.:How did you react when you first heard their music? Was it the type of score you had in mind for the film? W.W.:We talked a lot about the score while we were working on the script. It was impossible to be working with Bono and not thinking about the music beforehand. And we did produce exactly the music we had in mind. Our model was the score that Miles Davis had done for Louis Malleıs "Elevator to the Gallows". Not as music, but as procedure. Legend has it that Miles improvised the entire score in front of the screen. Thatıs more or less the way we went about it, too. The band improvised, developed, refined and performed all the music with the film playing on a huge monitor in the recording studio. It took us three weeks, three very exciting weeks in U2ıs studio in Dublin. I was there with them. Recording the music is the most fun part of the entire filmmaking process. I wouldnıt want to miss that, for the proverbial dogıs arse sake. |
J.A.:Was it difficult to find the perfect location for shooting? What were the crucial requirements? W.W.:The location existed from the first page of the script on. The "Rosslyn Million Dollar Hotel" on 5th and Main in Downtown Los Angeles was the very inspiration for the film. Bono discovered it, when they shot "Where the Streets Have no Name" and was utterly impressed. And so was I, when I first entered the hotel, and especially when I first stood on the roof. This is a hell of a place. J.A.:There's a dream-like quality to the entire film: was that a goal? W.W.:Yeah. Our story is basically a fairy-tale. Itıs "Sleeping Beauty". We placed it into a very rough surrounding, and the dream-like quality youıre referring to is the result of that constant walk on a tightrope between our fable and its impossible setting. J.A.:During your time in the US have you encountered the type of social fringe-dwellers that makes up Million Dollar Hotel's cast? Can you recall how it affected you? W.W.:Nowhere else in the world you encounter so many eccentric people like in California. You start taking them for granted. In the long run it changes your perception of "normality". Some of the real people inside the Million Dollar Hotel certainly were wilder and crazier and more far out than any of our fictional characters. J.A.:This is film number 20 for you: does film-making get easier as your career progresses? W.W.:I wish it would. Instead, it is getting more complicated. Not that Iım complaining. I think it is an exciting time to be making movies in, just on the threshold to the greatest transition in the history of films, comparable only to the switch from the silents to the talkies. Iım talking about the full-scale digital filmmaking that is ahead. J.A.:Do you think it's an advantageous situation to be able to comment on America as an outsider, a foreigner? What would Million Dollar Hotel tell an outsider about America? W.W.:I guess an outsider has a privileged view of things, in any country and any society. I hope MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL shows an aspect of America and of Los Angeles that remains in the dark too often: The enormous discrepancy between the rich and the poor, the ever growing gap between the privileged and the outsiders of the American dream. Around the Million Dollar Hotel, there is no class-less society, there is a cast system. Only our hero, the innocent child-like Tom Tom, sees in all those losers and broken people the men and women they would like to be. In his eyes the outcasts have a chance to take part in the American dream and live the lives they were excluded from. You could say that MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL is a dreamerıs utopian vision of America, where really everybody is equal to everybody else. Only our dreamer is a fool. J.A.:A frequent criticism is that your storylines are frail but your images are luminous: how do you respond to this? W.W.:By nodding and agreeing sort of reluctantly. I donıt know what it is: I love stories, but I guess I love even more the reality of whatever world Iım exploring in a movie. And in life, stories are never that easy and that coherent as in movies. J.A.:What happens next for you and Road Movies? W.W.:Road Movies has merged with the biggest post-production facility in Germany, DAS WERK, and that new company has gone public a year ago. Road Movies is still an independent production, but has grown a lot. This year weıre involved in 15 international productions. W.W.:My own next project is a film that I am writing at the moment with Sam Shepard. After PARIS, TEXAS the two of us shied away from another collaboration. That experience was almost too good to be true, and we didnıt want to ruin a good thing by trying to repeat it. But now, 16 years later, nothing can stop us to write another road movie/family saga. I want to shoot it next spring, somewhere between Montana and the Mexican border. |
