Icelandic Beauty Export

Anita Briem Makes a 3-D Debut
By Cole Smithey

An example of the famed Icelandic fact that its women are stunningly beautiful, Anita Briem is also a stage-trained actress, perfectly at home on a green screen set for a big Hollywood action/adventure movie. In this visually outrageous three-man showcase, Briem plays Hannah, the Icelandic adventurer who will guide American scientist Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) and his flirty 13-year-old nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) to the destination of Jules Verne’s prototypical sci-fi novel. Hannah reminds Trevor that her $5000-dollar-an-hour fee keeps ticking even as they are attacked by giant flying prehistoric fish and chased by one very large dinosaur. Needless to say, Trevor gets every penny’s worth of value from Hannah’s levelheaded resolve and quick thinking. Briem plays the straightman heroine opposite two boyish males intent on pursuing a journey that they are direly incapable of accomplishing without Hannah’s guidance. Hannah is the adult in the equation, and Briem carries off the role with a maturity that grounds the wild spectacle of the first feature-length Digital 3-D movie. Anita Briem knows how to break out big. You get the picture.

CS: Are you worried that there might be a sudden upsurge of tourists in Iceland after the movie comes out?

AB: I try to show everybody Iceland all the time. My people are like, "Don’t tell everybody the secret. It’s so peaceful and beautiful here!" It’s incredible; I go home and drive across country, and go to my mom’s place and it’s dark with the Northern Lights, and I like to sit in some hot springs.

CS: As a native of Iceland, how did you feel it was depicted in the film?

AB: There’s a reason why Jules Verne chose the place where the glacier was, where we start to descend into the center of the earth. That area specifically has magical powers and people come to this place from all over the world. I actually think that’s true of all Iceland. I think it’s so special, apart from the water and air being so clean. It was a great joy for me to develop a strong female character in the spirit of an Icelandic woman. Icelandic women tend to be very strong and very independent, and I think that came in very handy. As Hannah, the mountain guide, I often found myself in these very dangerous situations. On one hand I have a geeky scientist and on the other a small child and they are both about to get us killed, so I have to intervene and save the day, regularly. I think that’s where the strong sense of the core Icelandic woman came in very handy.

CS: You have strong background of theatre training.

AB: I come from a theater background. I was in the National Theater of Iceland from age nine, and my parents are both musicians, so I grew up behind my dad’s drum kit on studio floors. So this, as my North American debut, was a real surprise to me and I fell in love with this genre. I started watching incredible movies like "Back to the Future," and the films of Tim Burton, and saw how magical the action adventure genre can be. But at the same time it doesn’t change for me, as an actor, the core of my character and how I structure and develop the character. You want to learn, and experience being taken aback by things. That’s the same as with every piece I do--whether it be in the Cherry Orchard or playing Jane Seymor in "Tudors" or Hannah in "Journey into the Center of the Earth." So it was a beautiful journey, pun intended, into the world of cinema, and of that genre specifically.

CS: Do you have other movies coming out?

AB: Yes, it’s been a crazy ride. I’m just about to go and film another movie, but my head space is very much in the world of cinema and living in Los Angeles. People ask me, "What is it like?" with a negative tone. But for me, I’m surrounded by the most talented and passionate people in the industry.

CS: What’s the new movie called?

AB: It’s called "The Storyteller." It’s with Wes Bentley, who is the writer to my illustrator. We create children’s books together. My character suffers from an extreme case of agoraphobia, so the family of Wes Bentley’s character starts to believe that I am a figment of his imagination. You know that there is something kind of magical.

CS: So the question is whether or not you’re really a figment of his imagination?

AB: Right.

CS: It sounds like a magical realist movie.

AB: Yes, I think that’s very well put.

CS: What was the most extraordinary thing about making "Journey"?

AB: "Journey to the Center of the Earth" was extraordinary because it was the first live action digital 3D movie in the history of cinema. You, as an audience get to be more immersed in a movie than you ever have been before. The movie is surrounding you creating extraordinary opportunities for both actors and directors. For an actor it’s incredible because you can create a relationship between the character and audience in a different, more intimate way.

CS: Any plans to do any stage?

AB: I love the theater; the theater sort of raised me. So I’m quite sure I will go back to the theater. Right now I’m sort of captured in the all-consuming, fantastical world of movies.

CS: Did you improvise any Icelandic quotes?

AB: I did. In the scene when they come knocking on my door, they told me just to just say something and the little demon inside me said "Oh what should I say?"

CS: What did you say?

AB: (Laughs) We have to maintain the mystery, we’ve only just met! But it was wonderful because I was involved in the process of this film in a peculiar way. I must have auditioned for this movie at least 25 times. This was a 4-month process. I have to check my sources on this but, I think I beat out Cameron Diaz’s record for how many times she auditioned for "The Mask," with how many times I auditioned for this movie. But that gave me the privilege of watching the script in development. So by the time I got the role and we started researching and developing and rehearsing, I had a real sense of what I wanted to do. I really wanted for her to be a strong female presence that is not your damsel in distress – quite the opposite. I’m in fact saving the day – a female character that is driving the action. I think this type of character is somewhat lacking in the family action adventure. I think it’s important for young girls to see a female presence that is in control of the action.

CS: Do you know of any of the actress that you were competing with?

AB: That’s funny because every single actress that I meet socially and randomly go, "I met for that role! I read for that role!" I don’t think I’ve met one that wasn’t involved in the project in some way or another.

CS: How was the experience working with such complicated special effects?

AB: When it comes to acting on green screen, it doesn’t really make all that much of a difference to me because how you interact with your environment or characters is always dictated by your imagination. So when you’re acting against a green screen, you have more of an opportunity to create your own world. So what was magical throughout this process was watching this movie come to life with the 3D.

CS: How was it working with Brendan Fraser?

AB: It was wonderful. He’s a sweetheart and a gentleman. He has a lot of experience in this field with action but in a lot of ways we were all learning at the same time because it really is a new visual medium altogether. So we were all kind of discovering this world together. It was wonderful.

CS: You mentioned that your character is such a strong female presence. What, or who was your inspiration for that?

AB: The Vikings, things like that. "No, don’t tell them that. It’s a family film!" (Laughs)

CS: So what you’re saying is that you’re here to conquer us.

AB: Yes (Laughs)

Kimberly Pierce Feels a Draft

The "Stop Loss" Interview
By Cole Smithey

The director of "Boys Don't Cry" (1999) studied English and Japanese lit at the University of Chicago before receiving an M.F.A. in film from Columbia, and you can see her thorough attention to detail in her films. After playing a wild goose chase over directing "Silent Star," for which Annette Bening, Hugh Jackman and Ben Kingsley had been cast, Kimberly Peirce pulled herself up by her bootstraps to make, as it turns out, one of the most insightful and poignent films about the Iraq war. Articulate, animated and intent on addressing every question with a full explanation, it's easy to see how Kimberly Pierce gets such powerful performances from her actors. She knows what she's talking about.

I sat down with Ms. Pierce at New York's Regency hotel to find out all I could about her latest film "Stop Loss," centered around the U.S. military's current backdoor-draft, responsible for forcing 81,000 soldiers back into war after multiple tours of duty. Squad leader Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), his best friend Sgt. Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum), and fellow soldier Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) return to their Brazos, Texas hometown after spending five blood-soaked years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Following a welcome home ceremony, where Brandon receives a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star from a U.S. Senator, he tries to help Steve and Tommy adjust to civilian life in spite of their violence riddled psyches. Brandon's own effort to reacclimate to home life is challenged when he is ordered, under the Stop-Loss policy, to return to Iraq. "With all due respect, F#*k the President," is Brandon's vehement reply to the Commanding Officer who ineffectively attempts to jail Brandon. What follows is an honest, patriotic soldier's desperate attempt to find a way out of a malicious bureaucratic booby trap.

I sat down with Ms. Pierce at New York's Regency hotel to find out all I could about how and why she made "Stop Loss."

CS: How did you plan the production and locations?

KP: I didn’t try to do anything super outrageous. We looked at shooting in Spain. We looked at shooting in Mexico, also shooting in Texas because that would’ve been much cheaper. They tried to get me to shoot at the Alamo set—which would not have worked. They always say [sarcastically], never say never until you try. And when it doesn’t work we don’t do it. But it was very fortunate that the studio spent the money, ‘cause it is an expense to go to Morocco. I wanted to shoot in an Islamist country. It was important to me always to get it as culturally accurate as possible. I learn things whenever I’m on a location. I go out and hang out with the people—I get to know kind of what the vibe is like so when I’m shooting I actually have a sense of it.

We made a choice to shoot in Marakesh because Marakesh is a city, and since we’re representing urban combat, we didn’t need a suburb, we needed a city. We also wanted it to feel very confined, so that was why we loved it when we found this community which has these buildings that have these narrow alleyways. We knew that was a great metaphor for what’s happening to the soldiers. They’re getting in deeper—the walls are closing in—they can’t get out. So that allowed us to bring the humvees in. We block off escape with the humvees, the guys come out. The stacking is very important. This is something that’s unique to this war. The soldiers form a unit together and they move in unison. The guy who’s second in command holds the first guy like a dog. He holds him by his collar. So you’ve got Channing, who plays Steve (number one), you’ve got Ryan (number two), but Ryan’s really in control. He controls the stack. "Go, go, go."

So you hear the guys. They have to hit each other with their bodies, that’s how they move. We had to make sure the walls were perfect because it allowed us a great stack. Then you end up going into to some of the houses. We had to block up most of the doors because otherwise the movie would’ve been ten hours of clearing houses, and you have to clear every open entranceway. So we clear a couple—block, block, block—we move on.

CS: Did you have any trouble obtaining access to filming in Marakesh?

KP: Well, the King is very supportive of filmmaking. They make a lot of money, and actually the people—from what I understand—have a better standard of living than most countries because of film revenues. "Black Hawk Down" was shot there. There’s a history of it. I think if we wanted to do something that was egregious they probably wouldn’t let us, but I was treading so lightly because the last thing I want to do is add one more image in the world of a violent America. So I was being very careful. I was trying to get to know the community a little bit and try to make it a little more gentle.

CS: How did you choreograph the ambush sequence?

So for the ambush, everything’s physical. What I’m doing is trying to figure out how much screen time it’s going to take from one point to another because I don’t want to have too many shots that I’m going to throw out in the editing room because I only have a certain amount of time and days to shoot. So for me it’s all about the economics of time and shooting.

I have four camera crews that I’m operating with, and that’s because it’s very expensive to blow things up. There’s a lot of clean-up time. You’ve got blood going off. You’ve got to clear the guns. You’ve got to have gun masters around to make sure that it’s safe. So I’ve got different crews handling guns, handling make-up, handling explosives. They all require resets.

Then you have to cut it into two. You have to cover each guy. So each guy gets a single. Then you’ve gotta get your doubles, then you’ve gotta get your scope. You need to know how big it is. You need to know that there’s somebody up top. You need to have shots looking down so you have a sense of foreboding. That’s where a lot of your angles come in. When an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) comes, that has to be shot totally separately. So that’s not main unit. Main unit is the actors. So, I’m working with the actors in four different camera angles to maximize. But then I have to go off this set and go do things exploding, stunt doubles exploding. And that’s very tricky because I have to make sure that everything that I shoot is going to cut in on that. And I’m watching four monitors the whole time that I’m doing this—which is an interesting skill because your brain has to look at all four, and you can’t replay it. You have 300 people waiting. So you have to learn to watch it very quickly, and just write down what worked and what didn’t work. It’s interesting learning how to direct in four spaces of your head at once.

CS: The scene when Ryan speaks truth to power and says, "Fuck the President," uses a different kind of violence. How did you develop that scene?

KP: It was a very delicate scene. It’s not a scene that I take lightly, and it’s a scene from a soldier’s point of view. I wanted to make sure that it was honest and accurate to them. What we didn’t want was a guy who suddenly became a political activist, who suddenly had an agenda, because that wouldn’t have been truthful to soldiers. So I interviewed a number of soldiers about that scene, and we were very clear in setting up the circumstances. It had to be a completely patriotic guy who signed up for what he considered all the right reasons—to protect his family, his home and his country. And he gets over there—and this is revealed in a scene in the car. He says, "It wasn’t about anything that we signed up for. Instead of being in a desert, instead of fighting the enemy that we thought we were fighting, we were in the bedrooms, the hallways, and in the kitchens. It was impossible to not kill innocent people and not have our men killed, and not have our men injured." So, what do we do, we fall back on the one thing that all soldiers can agree on; it’s about comradery; it’s just about survival.

So, that’s why you needed to see that opening battle scene. That’s why he wanted to come home. I’ve always had a sense that if it was World War II and his country needed him, this guy would go right back, but something didn’t seem right to him. He couldn’t protect his men. So he comes home and he thinks, "I’m going to put that behind me. I don’t even have to process this." What’s so interesting to me about Stop-Loss is it just maximizes all the problems that everybody’s been going through. So here’s a guy who feels he did everything right. "I’m a golden boy; I gave my country my life." And when the system does that to him, we wanted it to be a reactive moment. We wanted it to be a moment when he says something that he’s never said in his life and he never imagined saying. It comes out. It is a true expression of how he feels, but it’s not intellectualized because if we thought it was intellectualized it wouldn’t work. So he spurts it out, and that’s why you hang on him. He’s kind of not sure he said it. He doesn’t want to back down, but he’s really gotten himself into something, and he spends the rest of the journey catching up with his emotions. It was interesting. We needed it to be an irrational moment, so that’s one thing in terms of how I had to direct it.

He says, "Fuck the President," and then the commander says, "Fuck the President?" What was interesting about the commander saying "Fuck the President," in interviewing guys like this—a lot of them are in a position where they’re managers. They love the men. It kills them to see the men recycled and destroyed. We didn’t want it to be the political activist guy and an angry dumb commander. No, no, it was a sergeant who was coming to a rational and normal realization, and out of frustration saying this, and his commander, who doesn’t totally disagree with what he’s saying. That was a very delicate thing to get across. We were sort of looking at people like McCain in a way, for that commander. It was a very interesting thing that we had to get clear. You didn’t want it to turn into rhetoric or anything. It’s a very emotional scene of two men who are fundamentally agreeing that our men are being chewed up, and that’s the heartbreak, because he says, "I’ve lost more men than that." They’re both saying, losing men is killing me.

CS: Is your brother still in the war, and how has your family coped with him being in Iraq?

KP: My brother has gotten out. He would have been stop-lossed but he got out on a medical.

I come from a military family and was home when the war stories were going on, and we were playing the soldiers’ videos. My mother walked out of the room. She said, "I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to see it, and I don’t want to know the details." Because when her son was gone, my mother would call me crying, saying, "You will never know what fear is until you’ve had a child shot at in a combat zone. I often times don’t want to come home from work because I know that if I’m there—I have to be there in person for them to tell me that, God forbid, he’s dead or he’s injured."

That was profound. And she has such a distaste for the details of the combat stuff, and yet, maybe because I’m his sister, maybe because I’m younger, maybe because it’s fascinating to me—I could listen to it. That was why I knew we needed a scene where they were talking graphically about their experiences. When soldiers come back—it’s graphic; they’re in it. So I knew we needed a scene that was just as graphic as the way boys talk, but they were sort of tuned out and they were insensitive to what was going on around them. That’s why the father says, "Steve, pay attention to how you’re making the families feel." But I do feel we need those scenes more and more. We need the soldiers and the civilians. We need to be sharing these experiences. It’s all of our experiences.

They need to get it out. I’ve gone to 22 cities now with the movie, I’ve done Q&As at every single one—people stay and not only do they ask me questions and listen, they stand up and they tell their story. I’ve had vet after vet after vet in all of these screenings stand up and say, "Thank you," and share some incredibly emotional story. I’ve had Viet Nam vets come up to me and say, "Thank you, it took years for me to speak." One of them in San Jose said, "You know I lost my humanity. I’m only now getting it back slowly." They should be telling their stories, so I have this site stoplossmovie.comsoundoff. We give cameras to soldiers and their families. They make videos, we post them, and people write in about screenings all over the country. I believe deeply in the power of healing through storytelling.

CS: Did this movie come from any kind of grudge against the Bush administration?

KP: No, it came from having gone around the country. For example I went to Paris, Illinois where there was a homecoming of a thousand soldiers of the 1544^th. They’re a transportation unit that had the highest causality rate, and the highest number of combat hours. I found that odd. Why would a transportation unit have that? They’re not supposed to have that. They’re supposed to be transporting Generals. But they are commonly used to transport arms. So these kids are getting shot up. They haven’t had combat training, and that means they’re on the top of the gun turret and they’re firing machine guns to save themselves. I read amazing stories. They’re jumping out trying to save one another—clearly not what they signed up for.

So I went there to that town with my research partner Carolyn Reed, and we just videotaped the families. We went to the homecoming parade, which you could intercut with the homecoming parade in the movie. We learned about that. We talked to the military families. We talked to widows, sisters—people who had multiple generations in the military. It was near a base town. So, it became clear to me that if I was going to tell the fundamental story of this generation, most of the kids are coming from Middle America. Texas has the most base towns. I was reading story after story of kids getting killed from Texas. So I thought, let’s set it here. And then also, I really love Texas because it does convey a sort of emblematic Americana. I can have the homecoming parade there. If I had it in New York City, it wouldn’t be real. I can have the flag-waving, and it’s not mocking them; it really is what they do. I can have the fact that the father fought in Viet Nam, and the son fought; that’s typical. That isn’t typical here [New York]. Like, I was unusual among my friends that my brother was fighting.

I went to that dancehall two nights before we shot, and they were dancing Texas swing, and it was that band. It’s gun country. It’s car country. There were all of these really graphic, physical elements that I could bring to the fore—the boys fighting in the cemetery.

CS: Do you see any similarities between "Boys Don’t Cry" and "Stop-Loss"?

KP: They are both stories about masculinity. She’s trying to construct herself as a man to get love and acceptance. I think even if you’re a man you’ve always dealing with masculinity. I don’t think it just comes naturally. Men are also in a process of shaping their masculinity, and I feel like that’s a lot of what the boys in the movie are doing. There’s a lot of real deep connection among them. It’s a quest for identity. Ryan is coming to understand himself. When he says, "Fuck the President," he’s entering a new fold in his life of self-awareness.

CS: As a woman filmmaker, was there more pressure to make a great second film?

KP: There certainly is a commonality that a lot of the women directors who make it, make a first film that is very personal, very powerful, and they try to do that again. I see that among my friends Tamara Jenkins and Patty Jenkins. The quest to make something that’s emotionally moving, and on a scale that we’re trying to make it, is a struggle because you not only have to write a script that’s commercial and moving, then you’ve got to launch the whole thing.

I sold this as a green-lit script in November of 2005. That was considered really quick because I started writing it at the beginning of ’05—started researching it at the beginning of ’04. It takes a year to shoot. It takes a year to edit. It may be that we’re questing for emotionally moving material. You know I should have worked sooner. I think that that would have been great. I think that "Boys Don’t Cry" was the greatest gift of my life. I was in grad school at Columbia, fell in love with that character, and had a feature film way earlier than I ever expected, and had a Hollywood career. They offered me millions of dollars and lots of scripts. I would read them, and they didn’t have an emotional authenticity because they weren’t really being created by people who had a quest. They were ideas that people had had in the system. So, I had a hard time finding something in the system that spoke to me.

I ended up working on a screenplay that I did write—that is amazing, I think, and I got it cast with Ben Kingsley, Hugh Jackman, Evan Rachel Wood, and Annette Bening at the end of 2003, which wouldn’t have been too long. On the one-yard line, the studio ran the numbers; they said, "We would love to see the 30 million dollar version. We would like to pay for the 20 million dollar version." I lost some time there. But literally a week after, I picked up my video camera and said "You know what, screw it. I’m gonna pay for it and do it myself."

CS: Abbie Cornish is a unique actress. How did you arrive at casting her?

KP: She was my first choice. I had seen "Somersault" and I had seen "Candy." Phenomenal—and she was not available, which is a heartbreak when you know somebody’s right and you have to go cast. And you’re like ‘okay,’ and you make do. So I was interviewing all these great young actresses. They weren’t right, but I was trying to make it work, and all of sudden her agent said, "Abbie read the script. She loves it, she wants to audition, and she wants the part."

I would have hired her, but if she wants to audition, I love audition. So we flew her in and we just got to work more. We had an old-fashioned screen test in Texas. It was gorgeous. We fell in love with her.

She is really extraordinarily talented. There are some actors that are so charismatic, and whom from emotion rides over the face and over the eyes so well that you don’t have to give them a line and they can carry their own in a scene. That to me is what it’s all about. It’s amazing. Of course you can then direct them—give them action. But they’re essentially emoting every single second they’re on screen, and the other actors have to watch out because they absorb the energy of the scene.

CS: The term "Stop-Loss" is alien to most people.

KP: It's actually an economic term. Stop-Loss, to me, is so interesting because the soldiers are stop-lossed (at least 81,000), the families are stop-lossed. If you read my website, they’re all writing in saying, "My husband is stop-lossed. He’s not seen the birth of our child." "My nephew was stop-lossed. He got killed." So the families are stop-lossed, and in a way America is stop-lossed, because it means that you’re just recycling those resources that need to be utilized in a better way. Clearly, we need to figure out some solution. Only this war is stop-lossed, and only at this time, with these soldiers.

And I want to tell you one thing about Canada—why it’s really not viable right now. In Viet Nam, I think 50,000 people—that’s the conservative estimate—crossed the boarder and got citizenship. That was because you could go the boarder and get citizenship and walk right in. Now, you can only get citizenship by applying from the country that you’re from. I think we have 12,000 soldiers that are AWOL right now in America. Look up Harpers 2004—great article. So we have between 200 and 300 soldiers in Canada, but they won’t give them citizenship. They won’t give them refugee status, and they’re on the verge of deporting them or at least deciding whether they’re going to be deported.

The Scorsese/Stones Interview

Martin Scorsese Shines a Light on the Rolling Stones
The Scorsese/Stones Interview
By Cole Smithey

Martin Scorsese returns to the rock 'n' roll concert documentary genre that he helped develop in 1978 with "The Last Waltz," to capture an energized performance by The Rolling Stones at New York's Beacon Theater in the fall of 2006. Sparsely augmented with brief interview and performance clips, "Shine a Light" (the film's title was taken from the Stones' "Exile on Main Street" album) provides an incredibly intimate look at rock 'n' roll's greatest band performing a slew of timeless favorites and a few lesser known songs. Buddy Guy, Jack Black, and Christina Aguilera make memorable guest appearances on several songs, but it's Mick Jagger's famous athleticism that captures your imagination. Even in his '60s, Jagger never stops moving as he drives the band to the far reaches of sonic precision. The level of musical sophistication on display is divine, and Scorsese seals the enchanting event with a closing bit of camera virtuosity that puts it all in context.

On a cold Sunday at Manhattan's Palace Hotel, Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, and Charlie Watts joined a throng of anxious journalists so we could pepper them with questions. Needless to say, Marty and the Stones looked marvelous, laughed a lot, and cracked wise to everyone's delight.

Q: Marty, why was it important for you to make "Shine a Light" in a small venue in your native Manhattan.

Martin Scorsese: We discussed doing it at a bigger arena and I looked into that, and actually while I was doing it, I began to realize I think I'm better suited to try to capture the group on a small stage--more for the intimacy of the group and the way they play together. You see the band work together and work each song. I found that to be interesting and more than interesting, it's just a compulsion of mine. I love to be able to see that and be able to cut from one image to the other-movement--that sort of thing, but really about the intimacy of the group and how they work together.

For me it was literally the moments when you can see the band working together. All the songs--it's like a narrative, a story, and the whole sound of the band is like a character, one character in each song. With the grace of these wonderful cinematographers, headed by Bob Richardson, and people like Bob Ellsworth and Ellen Cass and Bob Toll and Leslie, who did "Lord of the Rings," Edgar Rollins-- they were like poets at times--knowing exactly when to move that camera to pick up a member of the band. We shot this in 35mm, not video, so we had 10-minute loads, and cameras were going down all the time, running out of film, so another camera would pick up where someone left off. That's why there were so many, to be able to pick up the slack. But the key was to find the moments between the members of the band and how they work together. It's like a machine, its own entity during each song.

Q: Keith, did you find anything special about the Beacon Theater?

Keith Richards: The Beacon Theater is special. It wraps around--especially if you're going to play there for more than one night--the room sort of wraps its arms around you, and every night it's warmer. It's a great feeling room, and also, this band didn't start off in stadiums (chuckles). 

Q: I understand this is going to be available both on regular screens and also on IMAX. I was wondering how that experience would be different for the fans.

Mick Jagger: It will be very larger (laughter). The funny thing really is that Marty, after looking at all the options, decided that he wanted to make this small, intimate movie and I said, "Well, the laugh is Marty that in the end it's going to be blown up to this huge IMAX thing, so the intimate moment is shown in IMAX." But it looks good in IMAX. We've got both formats, so we're happy with that.

Q: What vitamins do you take and what's your workout like to do this.

Mick Jagger: God! (laughter) You can forget about that.

Keith Richards: (If we tell you) you'll all be on it. (laughter)

Mick Jagger: No gym, no vitamins--just do it, just get out there and yeah…you get very pressurized in these situations. The thing I always find is that when it's a movie shoot, you really have to come up to the plate, and fortunately, we had two nights. As Keith was saying, it's good to play there more than one night and I agree with him, because the first night we played it was more like a rehearsal for us in a way. Because we played lots of small theaters in the past, we hadn't done it on this tour, so this was quite different to suddenly go into this small theater. By the second night, we knew how to sort of do it.

Keith Richards: But it was a turn on.

Mick Jagger: Yeah. (laughs)

Q: Marty, with the world of the MAFIA being featured in so many of your films, can you make some comparisons to working with the Stones? (laughter)

Martin Scorsese:  Uh, well, no. I don't think I can make any direct associations to it, but the music is something that reminds me of when I went to see "Three Penny Opera" back in 1959-1960, and how the music affected me and what that play said. The lyrics were so important to me, that particular play. I found I grew up in an area that was in a sense like the "Three Penny Opera," and I think at times the Rolling Stones' music had a similar effect on me. It dealt with aspects of the life that was growing up around me that I was associated with or saw or was experiencing and trying to make sense of. So it was tougher-it had an edge, beautiful and honest and brutal at times and powerful, and it's always stayed with me and become a well of inspiration to this day. As Mick said in Berlin. He said, "I want you to know that "Shine a Light" is the only film (of mine) that "Gimme Shelter" is not played in. (laughter) And when I use "Gimme Shelter" in a film, which I think is just as apropos of the world we're living in today, I don't remember that I used it before. I say, "Well, let's do that" and they say, "Well, Marty you did it before." And I go, "Well, it's alright." I keep forgetting, but it's something that the music has been very important to me over these years.

Q. Mick, which of Marty's films is your favorite?

Mick Jagger: "Kundun's" one of my favorites. (Scorsese laughs)
That's not a joke. (laughter) (to Martin) Did you do that one?

Martin Scorsese: I did do it, yes (laughter)

Mick Jagger: I love all of them. It's hard to choose your favorite. I love nearly all of Marty's movies and I can't wait for the next one.

Q: In your latest film "The Departed", "Gimme Shelter" has been in other films but you used "Let It Loose" which is a little bit more obscure song, one of my favorites from "Exile on Main Street." What made you pick that and for your future films will you pick more obscure songs?

Martin Scorsese: Well, for me, I think it's from "Exile" isn't it? "Exile on Main Street" is an album I like a lot, and that again is sort of in my DNA so to speak. It just came the way Jack Nicholson sat down next to Leonardo DiCaprio and said, "Do you know who I am?" The tone of that and the mood I found… I heard that sound from that song, and I played it against it. I tried a couple of other things afterwards, because invariably, you say "That's the first one; It works but it can't be that easy. Working on the first try can't be that way." So we tried some other songs, but we went back to "Let It Loose," and placed it just at the right moment in between the dialogue for the highlights of the song. It had the tone and the mood and the edge that the scene had- and what the characters were like really.

Q: Does Mick always pick the set list for you guys?

Keith Richards: Mick always comes up with the set list because he's got to sing them. Unless I say suddenly, "Mick, you've got ten songs in the same key" I don't interfere because the man's got to sing them.

Q: Who chose the documentary clips?

Martin Scorsese: Who chose the clips? Dave Tedeschi's the editor of the film, and we worked together almost 10 months. The music came together rather quickly in the cutting. That was very enjoyable. The hardest part was putting together the clips. I think Dave had over 400 hours of archival footage, and then he chose about 40 hours for me to see. And then we worked from that 40 hours and it was a matter of balancing--saying something but not saying too much and then saying nothing with it. That was the key, and balancing it so it wouldn't unbalance the music in the piece. To do a film of all archival footage I think would be a four-or five-hour documentary.

Mick Jagger: There were some moments when I thought the archival footage was going too long and I felt we were going off into another movie and not at a concert. Because it was really kind of riveting sometimes, those old movies, but then if it goes on too long you want to come back to the concert stage. Sometimes David left them a little bit on the long side, so in the end we ended up with what we had, which was good.
Q: Can you talk about your relationship with Buddy Guy?

Mick Jagger: We've done quite a few shows with Buddy Guy in the past. I think we've known him off and on for quite a long time. He's one of those continually wonderful blues performers.

Keith Richards: We met him through Muddy Waters, he goes back a long way.
Mick Jagger: I think the thing that Martin captured, the duet thing that we did with him, was really one of the high points of the movie for me.

Keith Richards: I didn't give him my guitar for nothing, man.

Mick Jagger: And I think all the guests, in slightly different ways, add to the movie. I like all the duets very much, they really all work. And they don't always work--those duets.

Q: I noticed Al Hazleton in a few of the shots. How impacted were you my earlier Stones films?

Martin Scorsese: Al sort of referenced the line of continuity with a number of wonderful films he made with the Rolling Stones. We went back to "Gimme Shelter" and Hal Ashby's "Let's Spend the Night Together" and the Godard.

Keith Richards: Don't forget "Cocksucker Blues."

Martin Scorsese: And "Cocksucker Blues." But in the Godard film you actually see the song "Sympathy for the Devil" come together in the recording studio, which is fascinating. This is a direct reference to the past films, yeah.

Michael Pitt Plays Haneke's Games

By Cole Smithey

Michael Pitt has been described as the Johnny Depp of his generation. He considers himself to be more of a musician than an actor; he frequently performs and records with his band Pagoda, and plans to tour sometime. But if the gifted and flawed list of film directors with whom Mr. Pitt has worked with is any indication, the young actor is carrying out a great second career. Since 2001 Michael Pitt has worked with directors John Cameron Mitchell ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch"), Larry Clark ("Bully"), Barbet Schroeder ("Murder by Numbers"), Asia Argento ("The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things"), Bernardo Bertolucci ("The Dreamers"), Gus Van Sant ("Last Days"), and most recently, the master of confrontational cinema, Michael Haneke ("Cache").

Auteur Michael Haneke (pronounced ‘hanakkuh’) has remade a shot-by-shot version his own controversial 1997 film "Funny Games," in which he effectively mocked American cinema’s love for violence by pushing the limits of cinematic sado-masochism with an excruciating thriller that sticks to a standard formula, albeit with a different kind of ending. In it, Pitt plays Paul, an American bourgeoisie serial killer disguised in white shorts, tennis shoes, shirt, and gloves. Paul and his friend Peter (played by Brady Corbett)—AKA Tom & Jerry--use the artifice of politeness to disorient a family of three that they take hostage at the family’s idyllic lakeside cottage. Naomi Watts and Tim Roth play the husband and wife that the tireless torture with a cruelty and brutality much more affecting than any of Hollywood’s violence porn.

I sat down at New York’s Regency Hotel with Michael Pitt to talk about working on "Funny Games."

Cole Smithey: How would you compare Michael Haneke's direction to other directors—what trait stood out for you?

Michael Pitt: Every director is different and they all have different styles. I've worked with directors who were very specific and they gave a lot of direction. The one thing about Michael that I think is interesting is that he really has a reason for everything he's asking you. If you challenge it, he is open for discussion but he has a clear idea of what he wants with reasons why. There are directors whose direction is high but can't back up what they are asking; then when you challenge it, they crumble.

CS: How did Haneke choose you for this role?

MP: I wasn't looking for a project. I wasn't interested in working in film at that time, but I had a friend who suggested I check it out. I made a phone call, and originally they said that they didn't want to do an audition because I didn't have dark hair. I thought that was fine. Then time passed and they had trouble finding someone. I had lunch with Michael, we did a work session, and then I got the part.

CS: Was he a difficult director?

MP: He was difficult but he's really smart, so I didn't feel that it was unjustified. I knew that going in though. That was something that would've been hell if I didn't know that that was the way that he was going to work. I could tell. Some directors are very free and some directors are very specific. It seemed like doing a play, [it was] the same kind of relationship with the director as when you do a play.

CS: Did you see the original film before you worked on this version?

MP: I saw it once.

CS: How did you prepare your character Paul?

MP: I didn't come up with a backstory, and I never analyzed why Paul was doing what he was doing. I wasn't sure I was going to do it that way and then I decided that based on what Michael Haneke was telling me, that I shouldn't analyze what I was doing. In a weird way, it really freed me.

CS: Did you rehearse before shooting?

MP: I rehearse all the time when I get a role.

CS: How was it working with both Tim Roth and Naomi Watts?

MP: I was really impressed with Naomi. She was a producer, and she was doing things that I wasn't really aware of. The way she was able to switch from handling problems to shoot a really difficult scene, I think is a real testament to her true ability. Tim helped me a lot when I had a problem. He would talk to me because Tim is also a director.

Tim was constantly very worried about making a film that would be perceived as just a violent film, and he was very concerned about people taking it the wrong way. I think that a lot of the battles that were happening on set were as a result of that. Tim definitely had the hardest role. That is by far the most difficult role to play because he's not strong and he's not attractive. As an actor, for me, that would be the most challenging role. Also in a way even if you succeeded, very few people would realize [it].

CS: What’s interesting about making a shot for shot remake?

MP: It's interesting because if you keep it shot by shot, then in a weird way you see what the actors bring that's different.

I hope that this will broaden Michael Haneke's audience because in America. I also think it's good that Michael did it, and it's not some American director doing it some other way. I think it's interesting that he did it.

CS: Why do you think he decided to remake it?

MP: I think he was approached and had this idea to make this film. What he's told me and what I sensed when I watched the original, it seemed like it was making a comment on a very American topic. That's what I felt. Then I found out that it was true and that's what he was intending. I think he's even gone as far to say that he wanted to shoot the original in English and in America, but he didn't have the money. If it's not in English, there's a very select few people who watch it.

He's getting to finish what he started and also I do think that he is thinking that possibly it could broaden his audience. If a young kid in America sees this film, and he likes it, I would be worried about this, but he would want to research the work of Michael Haneke, then hopefully he'll have the opportunity to see all of Michael's films.

I hope he gets some kind of gain from this. He deserves it.

CS: Are you concerned that some people in the audience that Haneke is trying to reach, might not get what the film is going for and might look at it at a very base level?

MP: I am a little worried that people will think it's cool. He [Haneke] makes a decision every time not to make it cool. Even when the woman is taking her clothes off, he makes the decision not to show certain things, so hopefully that will come through to the audience.

CS: The context of the film has changed since the first film. It is a movie about torture. Since the original, there is the rise of "torture porn." Was there any philosophical discussion with the cast about this new genre?

MP: It would be great if this came out in 1997, in English. Out of all his movies, to me, it's making an obvious statement about that type of filmmaking.

CS: Did you find it hard to break the fourth wall?

MP: I think I got better at it. The first time I don't think is as good as when we did it later in the film. I didn't know at first exactly how to do it. What I did later was instead of making a decision to break the fourth wall, I just played it as though it's already been broken. At any point, I could just turn to it. It seemed to work better.

CS: Do you find acting to be a little psychotic?

MP: It's a job. I think that it's important not to take it too seriously. It's all pretend. It's a strange job.

CS: How easy was this character to turn off at the end of the day?

MP: It wasn't a very long shoot and we did most of it at a studio in Brooklyn. For me it was great. I just got into the car and went to work. I needed to stay in the character. I told my girlfriend that, "I'm not here." I just stayed in this character for the month and half that we shot it and once we finished, I just left it.

CS: Did you have any nightmares while shooting?

MP: No, for me, it's pretend. I try to stay away from taking it too seriously. I think it's very dangerous for an actor to take it too seriously because I think it could really damage you if you do that.

CS: What are you working on next?

MP: I'm working on my music right now. I'm always trying to work on scripts. I'm pretty selective. Sometimes maybe too much because I'm broke [laughs].

Michael Haneke Gets the Last Laugh: The "Funny Games" Interview

Austrian writer/director Michael Haneke (pronounced ‘hanakkuh’) has remade his own controversial 1997 film, in which he effectively mocked American cinema’s love for violence by pushing the limits of cinematic sado-masochism with an excruciating thriller that sticks to a standard formula, albeit with a different kind of ending. Because the original movie was in German, it was not widely seen by its target audience--namely the callused American audiences that Haneke believed could benefit from having their blood-thirsty asses handed to them like never before. I loathed the original film when I saw it at the 1997 San Francisco Film Festival, but have reconsidered it over the years and come around to appreciating its brutal satire, unrelenting misery and, surprisingly, its restraint. The new version is every bit as painful to watch, even if executive producer/actress Naomi Watts doesn’t approach the soul-shattered performance of Susanne Lothar in the original. I think both versions of "Funny Games" equally represent the most indigestible and unsettling fictional film I’ve ever seen. To put it in the words of the director, "It’s a film you come to if you need to see it. If you don’t need this movie, you will walk out before it’s over."

I sat down with Michael Haneke and a translator at the Lowes Regency Hotel in Midtown Manhattan to talk about "Funny Games."

MH: If anything masochistic. To decide to film a movie again shot by shot, you must be masochistic to a certain degree because it is a much greater challenge. If you do an original film and you want to cut a scene out you do it. But when you do a shot by shot remake you don't have that option and every scene has to work again.

CS: Why did you make the decision to remake "Funny Games" shot by shot?

MH: I didn't have to add anything and if I was going to change anything I thought it would have been dishonorable. It became a gamble to myself whether I was able to do the exact same film under very different circumstances.

CS: I understand one of the main conditions you gave to English producers for the remake was to have Naomi Watts. Why her?

MH: I did the same with "The Piano Teacher." I would only do it if Isabelle Huppert takes the lead role. Naomi has the necessary vulnerability to do this role ideally. I had seen her movies and she was fantastic.

CS: What was your biggest casting challenge?

MH: I just wanted them to be good for the role. I was looking for someone that looked similar--one blond hair, one black hair--to the actors in the same movie, but then I realized it wasn't important. I think they are really good in their roles.

CS: Your age, your experience is different now than ten years ago. What has changed for you in those ten years as far as approaching this subject?

MH: If I had done the movie for the first time now, I would have cut it differently. But since I made the conscious decision of doing it shot by shot, that wasn't even an option. It is true that my experience is different, and I would like to have done some things in a different way now, but I couldn't. If you go with the principle, you should go with the principle. If I really saw the subject very differently than ten years ago, I would have done a different movie.

CS: Did you have to work differently with English actors?

MH: The main difference was the language, and that made it more difficult. In German. I'm more sensitized to the details, to the emotions. In English, I wouldn't detect as much nuance. So we had a dialect coach. But the process is slower.


CS: There is a kind of formalism in your compositions that connects to Polanski and to Kubrick. Who are the filmmakers that inspired you aesthetically?

MH: Of course I am a child of European culture. There are a number of great directors from which I learned, but there is nobody in particular I got inspired from.

CS: Do you consider yourself a confrontational filmmaker?

MH: Of course this film is a provocation. It is meant as a provocation, and of course all the rules that make the viewer go home happy are broken in my film. You cannot hurt animals, so what do I do? I kill the dog first. Then I do it with the boy. You’re not supposed to break the illusion of this being a film, so I make the actor talk to the audience. Provocation is the principle of the whole film. It is very ironic.

CS: Is there any true story that inspired you to make this movie?

MH: In my film "Benny’s Video," I depicted violence but I failed to say all that I had to say, so I wanted to continue the dialog and that's why I did "Funny Games." The irony is that after I shot "Funny Games," but it hadn't been released at all anywhere, there was a newspaper story about two boys in Spain who kidnapped a man in the street and tortured him to death. Both of them wore white gloves, and when they were asked in prison if they felt any remorse, one of the two wrote an essay saying "no." He quoted Nietzsche all the time, and said that the guy they killed was a third class individual who didn't deserve to live.

CS: This film is an experiment, are you planning to do another one?

MH: I consider all my films an experiment, at least in my mind. Caché is as much an experiment as "Funny Games."

CS: What is your next film about?

MH: It is going to be a very simple film--a historical film that happens before the first World War. It is about education in Germany that gave rise to the Nazis.

CS: Could you talk about the use of clashing music in "Funny Games"?

MH: This film is a parody of classical thrillers, just as theJohn Zorn piece is a parody of heavy metal [music]. In my movies I never use soundtrack; it is always part of the story. The John Zorn piece comes under the credits, but it is like saying, "Okay, now we are going to the thriller."