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Film Comment as well, right?
Yeah, all of these crazy things. And suddenly I have this dense writing resume and I'm getting a little burned out because I'm not a natural writer or anything. I'll write a piece and I have to rest in between. I did a piece yesterday for The Guardian and then today The Believer and then I'm not taking any other pieces for a while.
I try not to repeat myself you know. I've run out of the truth a long time ago as far as what I'm writing about. I mean what I told you about the kidnapping and stuff, that's all true. It appears in my book, which I've never read. The book looks handsome, but I can't vouch for the writing.
An article I read on your work mentioned a phrase I liked – the cheap, dreamy blur of Vaseline... You use a number of inexpensive but effective techniques to tell a story.
The shadow, the absence of light is completely free, actually, and very suggestive.
I try to paint the setup with as many shadows as possible. One of the things I learned early on was the less money I spent the more atmosphere I was creating.
So when the budgets increase I still have to remind myself of that, that I don’t want to abandon the style that was born of pretty poor soil. Turning my back on that would be tantamount to a bassist turning his back on his instrument.
I have to remember to forget all the time.
A huge part of where you’re from aesthetically is Winnipeg. If things go extremely well and you see your talent acknowledged on a wider scale, will you ever leave your home environs?
I might. I always thought I would and suddenly I’m in my forties. I think I might though, or at least shoot my next low budget picture, something like Cowards Bend the Knee, in another city, just to say I’ve done one.
You know, this was my Paris project, or my New York project or something like that. The province that I live in, Manitoba, has very aggressive support of the film business and they make it very hard for me to leave.
Understood. In Chicago we have a fairly deeply entrenched hatred of the Canadian film industry for what it does to us.
Oh, stealing pictures. Yeah, we shot a Chicago setting movie here this summer in Winnipeg, “Shall We Dance” with J Lo and Richard Gere. They spent a couple million dollars on a couple hundred foot of El and called it Chicago.
Rest assured though, nothing I’m doing up here has anythging to do with Chicago.
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Despite our inherent dislike of the Canadian film industry, you have a fairly rabid fan base here in Chicago...
Yeah, I think that’s because of Facets. I befriended some people there and they seem to have spread things through word of mouth over the years. It feels like it comes out of them.
I once on my way over to Europe had an hour layover, so I took that special subway you have...the El. And I took it to Facets and ran in for a while and they took me back to the airport and I flew on to London. It’s a great place.
I read that in the mid 90’s you really considered dropping out as a filmmaker.
Yeah, for a few years I just didn’t have any stories to tell. But then I started making some shorts and getting more excited about the style, strangely enough.
Even making a ballet version of Dracula, which I was forced to do out of hunger, I find myself thinking in terms of story. Human beings have always loved to listen to a story, whether it’s around a campfire or a TV or a big screen and they’ll always listen some way. I just needed to be reminded of that, so I won’t quit. I hope, I pray not.
With "Saddest Music..." being released by IFC, you're going to find yourself on far more screens than you've ever been on. How has that impacted you?
It’s affected me directly I think because I’ve started working at this a lot harder. I’ve decided to give this my best shot and to work as hard as I can to promote this film to put it into the position to be lucky, because a lot of great films haven’t always been lucky.
They have to be made in the right time and the right place so that they intersect with the zeitgeist just so. And right at the intersection of those two things is the consumer’s dollar and those things have to line up.
All you can do is make a movie as well as you can and work at the inexact science of promoting it and cooperating with interviewers as much as possible.
And then in two weeks time I get to take a big holiday. I’m really grateful to IFC for taking a stab at it and I’m really curious to see how it happens.
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Written by Richard Sharp
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005: Guy Maddin
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