Interview for Filmink Magazine
(Australia)
by Erin Free

1) Did you intentionally seek out a more "baroque" project after the doco "Buena Vista Social Club"?

"The Million Dollar Hotel" preceded "Buena Vista Social Club" by several years. It just took so long to get it off the ground that I had time to do Buena Vista in between. Which turned out to be lucky. Million Dollar Hotel profited a lot from the relaxed atmosphere of the Buena Vista shoot and....

.... from the good spirit of our Cuban heroes. Some of that joy and ease rubbed off on and survived the rough climate of Downtown Los Angeles. Million Dollar Hotel actually suffered much less from the usual tension and anxiety of a big movie. Thanks to Ibrahim, Ruben und Compay.

2) You seem to consistently make strong connections with musicians (Ry Cooder, Nick Cave, Madredeus, U2). What is it about that relationship that appeals to you?

There is no stronger partnership these days than between music and images. In a time when "the image" has become more and more relevant and arbitrary, and when we¹re surrounded by heaps of junk imagery, it¹s good to have allies. Filmmakers are still trying to tell stories through images, still try to transport beauty and truth, and nothing protects your story and your images better than music. Not just any music, of course. You have to find true allies, and you have cited some of mine above.
Rock¹n Roll is the other contemporary, direct, spontaneous, popular art form next to movies. They¹re related and they go well together. U2¹s show of "Zooropa" for instance was a great movie at the same time, and a comment about the future of the media that no film captured with that intensity.

3) What was your working relationship with Bono like on "Million Dollar Hotel"? How physically involved was he with the film?

Very. He was involved in the long scriptwriting process, over 6 years. I don¹t know how often he and Nicholas Klein and myself met, in Berlin, Dublin, Paris, Los Angeles. I kept him informed about all my casting choices and decisions, and Bono saw tapes of all the leading actors that I tested. And especially for Tom Tom and Eloise I saw every young actor and actress between L.A., New York and London. Bono was very involved in the casting process. He visited us a couple of times when we were shooting. As U2 had started recording their new album, Bono couldn¹t be with us all the time, as he would have wanted. And then Bono stayed involved in the editing process, watched and commented the entire evolution of the film¹s montage. You see, we had started the project as a threesome, Bono, Nicholas Klein and myself, and we very much saw it through as a creative triumvirate. I can only recommend it. Very often, just between a writer and a director, you don¹t know how to solve conflicts, and you can easily reach a dead end. The three of us worked out every problem together on the way. I never had a more supportive "think tank" to be able to call on at any moment.

4) You have assembled a uniformly unusual cast (Jeremy Davies, Milla Jovovich, Peter Stormare, Mel Gibson) for the film. How did you put it together?

By trying to find the best possible actor for each part. That goes for Mel, too. We didn¹t cast him because he was a star. The film didn¹t need a mega-star. But we needed a great actor to play Skinner.
I always believe that there has to be a certain necessity for a certain actor to play a part and nobody else. I don¹t like the feeling that another actor could have done the part just as well, that sort of random approach to casting that you sense quite often in commercial filmmaking. "Dixie" was a great example. For the part of the 5th Beatle I had in mind to find somebody who would have John Lennon¹s age now, an actor in his late Fifties. I didn¹t think of Peter Stormare for the part at all. Peter came in to read for something else, for the part of "Best", Skinner¹s assistant. But Peter had read the entire script, and he had spotted "Dixie". And he wanted to read for it, badly. So I let him. And afterwards I told him that I had an older man in mind. Not that he gave a bad reading, it was just not what I was looking for. He left, disappointed. A week later, Peter showed up at the casting office again. He wanted to read another time, and he insisted so much that I let him. This time he read the part in a beautiful Liverpoodlian accent, with a bit of Swedish every now and then. He wanted to play the part so much! And this time I understood what a hardcore Lennon fan Peter really was. But I stuck to my opinion that I needed a different actor. Again, Peter left, even more disappointed. I felt sad, too. I loved Peter and would have been happy to have him in the ensemble. I wanted to put together a real ensemble of actors for the hotel regulars, and I knew that Peter was such an actor who could become part of a family. Another week later, Peter showed up again. With a big laugh he came in announcing he wanted to read one more time. Well, I let him. This time the accent was impeccable. Peter had listened to Lennon tapes for a week. And he had come up with an argument that left me defenseless: That he, Peter, had just the age now that Lennon had when he was shot. And that nobody would ever imagine John Lennon any older than that. What could I do? I realized that Peter Stormare was the one actor who just had to play the part. And he proved it to me any day of the shoot. Along with Bud Cort, Amanda Plummer, Jimmy Smitts, Gloria Stuart. I could have gone on working with this ensemble forever. For the first time, I was suffering from withdrawal, when the shoot came to an end. I missed these actors so much. Not to mention Jeremy Davies and Milla Jovovich, the two lovers, with whom I had worked more intimately then with any actors before. Without exaggeration, I think I can say that I never had a better cast.

5) Do you find working in America, as compared to Europe for instance, more restrictive?

Not any more. In the Eighties, yes. I left America and went back to Europe, because we had to shoot PARIS, TEXAS like thieves in the night. It was really guerilla-filmmaking, and I realized that in order to continue doing what I knew best, I had to work in Europe. Since then, we have seen the arrival of the Independent Cinema, and everything has changed, even in Hollywood. Of course, union rules can still be restrictive, but that¹s the case in other countries as well. I love working in America now. At this very moment in time, as long as you stay in certain budgetary parameters, you can work very freely in America, just like in Europe or Australia. You lose that freedom if you need (or want) the kind of money that exceeds those parameters.

6) Mel Gibson has publicly stated that he is not happy with "Million Dollar Hotel". What was your working relationship like with him? Did you have any ideas about his feelings toward the film?

He was great to work with. Mel was disciplined, relaxed, easy. No ego problems, no Big Star behavior whatsoever. He worked hard, as we had to shoot the entire part of Skinner in 15 days. He was great as Skinner. I¹m very proud of this performance. After all, Skinner was the most difficult part in the script. I hope Mel will see that himself one day, how good he is in THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL. He never told me personally why he was disenchanted with the film. I read in the press, like everybody else, 9 months after the first release of the film at the Berlin Film Festival where we won a Silver Bear, that Mel thought the film was boring "like a dog¹s arse". Hey, is that an Aussie saying? Mel and I obviously have a very different taste, probably not only in movies, but also in joking.

7) Do you think that creative struggle can sometimes lead to a better film?

Sometimes, yes. But not necessarily. Sometimes you struggle a lot, and it¹s all for the birds. (Not for the dogs!) And sometimes a film that just went by like a breeze and that was a piece of cake to shoot turns out to be a masterpiece.

8) I have heard that you are working with Sam Shepard on a new project. Could you speak about that? What is your creative collaboration like with this extraordinary writer?

Sam and I met when I was casting "HAMMETT", a picture I had made for Francis Ford Coppola¹s Zoetrope Studios, 20 years ago. I knew Sam Shepard¹s plays and I was convinced he was the ideal man to become Dashiell Hammett. Sam had the looks, tall and slender, he had the elegance, he had just proved that he could act, in Terry Mallick¹s "DAYS OF HEAVEN", and Sam could actually type. That was an important asset in my book to play a writer. The studio didn¹t think so. After months and months of fighting for my idea, I finally had to give it up, or never get the movie made. But Sam and I knew that we were meant to work with each other one day. And that day came when we wrote PARIS, TEXAS together. I couldn¹t convince Sam to play the lead himself. He felt that after writing the character of "Travis", he couldn¹t possibly play it as well. Too close to this part, too self-consciousŠ I accepted that. The experience of PARIS, TEXAS was such, that we both shied away afterwards from attempting a second collaboration. You can only ruin a good thing by trying to repeat it. But now, 16 years later, nothing can stop us any more. We¹re writing a road movie together, an American family saga. Sam is one of the great contemporary writers. With an approach to writing that resembles my favorite approach to shooting. He can only write the script scene after scene, in chronological order. No jumping around, no inventing an ending before we have found the way there. No formula¹s, no preconceived notions about the characters, about dramaturgy. It¹s such a relief to know such a man and to even have the privilege to work with him.

9) Do you ever feel the weight of the reputation of your prior films (many of which are classics) when you move onto a new project?

I have always tried not to rely in any way on whatever I have done before. After PARIS, TEXAS I didn¹t want to make a second movie like that, which of course everyone expected. For me, every movie is a journey, a discovery, and as soon as you start relying on things you already know before you go on that trip, your "style", your "recipe" or your "thing", you¹re losing it. Yes, sometimes the weight is there, but my only attitude towards it is to disregard it.

10) In brief (I understand this is a pretty general question!), how do you feel about the kind of films coming out of Europe and America at the moment?

These days, it is getting more and more difficult, to categorize movies. Some films made in America lately could be called "European", by any of our own standards, and a lot of "European" films try to repeat and imitate "American" formulas. If anything, I still feel that European (and Asian) films have a better sense of place. We still make movies with a local color, stories that are specific to a certain culture and its past. American films still have a tendency to take place anywhere and to appeal to the largest possible denominator. Hey, they¹re very successful with that formula. On the other hand, I see a growing hunger of audiences worldwide to be fed with less generic food.

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