Arabian Sights Film Festival 2011

The Cinema Lounge

Adam's Rib Pays Tribute to Film Critic and DCFS Friend Joe Barber

Director Emilio Estevez, Actor Martin Sheen and Producer David Alexian Discuss The Way

By Annette Graham, DC Film Society Member

A screening of The Way was held on October 1 at the American Film Institute's Silver Theater. Present were producer David Alexanian, actor Martin Sheen and director Emilio Estevez. George Greenia, Professor at the College of William and Mary, moderated.

The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage route from the French Pyrenees across northern Spain to Santiago, a distance of about 500 miles. Christian pilgrims have been traveling this route for centuries and modern-day pilgrims have continued the tradition. In The Way, Martin Sheen stars as a grief-stricken father whose son (Emilio Estevez) has died at the beginning of his pilgrimage. While completing the journey his son had started, the father meets up with several fellow pilgrims played by Deborah Kara Unger, James Nesbitt and Yorick van Wageningen.

Martin Sheen: Has anyone here done the Camino? (a number of people had and were applauded). Did we get it right? (Yes).

George Greenia: There's an early scene where you lose the backpack in the water. What is the backstory to that and how did you set that scene up?
Emilio Estevez: First of all, it was difficult to write. This whole film was a collaboration. Martin and I had a series of conversations as we developed the screenplay. I live 200 yards down the street [from him]. It made me very accessible while I was writing it for my father to walk over and say "I have an idea." And the next day, "I have another idea." One of those days in particular, he said, "I have an idea. The backpack falls off my back and into the river." He begins to enact the whole scene: "I swim out heroically and grab the bag and pull it to shore." The next day he comes over and says, "I got another idea." I said okay and steel myself for it. And he said, "When we get to Burgos, my backpack is stolen by a gypsy boy." And he starts enacting it again. "And I run after him heroically and I run this way and I run down back alleys and I chase him and the boy gets away with the backpack." I'm standing there and say, "Okay, so now at 70 years old you want to be an action star?" (audience laughs). But the actual shooting of it was interesting. We decided that this is going to be a sequence in the film and we put it in the script in an organic way. We found a location. We went out on a Sunday prior to Monday's shooting. I was with my father and my mom. And we looked at the river and it was just below the knee. So he said, "That's cool, I can handle that, no worries." What he didn't know was that David had arranged for the dam upstream to release water the next morning. So when we came back, they actually did that and now it was chest high. And my father gets to the location that Monday and he's looking at the river and he's pretty grim-faced and says, "Whose idea was this anyway?" (audience laughs)
David Alexanian: We had a stunt man, but unfortunately he was terrified of the river. Martin was only supposed to run up to the bush and then we were going to cut to the other guy swimming. When you see him holding on to those branches in the middle of the river, that was it; because after that there was another waterfall.
Martin Sheen: In fairness there were a couple of guys somewhere down the river with a rope. I never saw them but I was told. (everyone laughs).
George Greenia: How many takes did that require?
Martin Sheen: I went in twice.

Question: Thank you for the wonderful treatment of the Roma [gypsy] people.
Emilio Estevez: That was important to us; I wanted to lift the community up. When we were scouting locations I chose that location in Burgos and the Spanish crew said, "The gypsies would never live here." I said, "Well, in this movie they did." They said, "They would never put the bonfire here." I said, "In this movie they will." "They would never return the backpack." I said, "They're going to here." I just thought it was a way to change the stereotypes. We have a responsibility in film to send positive uplifting messages. If we don't use the medium in that form, then what are we doing?
Martin Sheen: There's a great deal of prejudice going on. So we wanted to address that.

Question: What impact do you hope this film will have on people with faith and people who have no faith? Does this this journey in any way mirror your own spiritual journeys?
Martin Sheen: Emilio wrote the script and directed and he fashioned the scenario where he wanted people of all faith and no faith or people who are searching for some faith to be invited on the Camino. And that's a reflection of the Camino itself. There are as many different aspirations along the Camino as there are pilgrims doing it. For my own part, I think all of us are searching for a transcendent experience whether we're conscious of it or not. I think we're all looking for an effort to unite the will of the spirit to the work of the flesh. Pilgrimage allows us to do that outside of our comfort zone. So we come into conflict and come up against a lot of things we may not believe or may not be comfortable with. But it all transcends in our humanity. Pilgrimage says you must carry all the things that you've accumulated, both exterior and interior, and you have to go on this way. You don't have to go to Rome, or Israel or Compostela or Mecca; the pilgrimage is within your own heart. It's a day to day journey. The more we focus on living an honest life, the more we begin to dispose of the stuff that we've accumulated, both exterior and interior. That's the real focus of community. That to me is really the fundamental effort of a spiritual journey.

Question: Were all the locations on the Camino? While you were shooting, did you run into pilgrims doing the Camino?
David Alexanian: We never walked the Camino per se. But we wanted to celebrate the Camino and show the diversity of the landscape. Once you spend time up there, it's really hard to say no to a location. We went seven or eight times back and forth on the Camino, finding locations, several weeks and months before we actually started filming. We were warned against filming when we did. We filmed in September and that's the rainy season. They said it's not going to rain every other day, it's going to rain every day and you guys are crazy to make a film that is mostly is going to be shot in the exterior. And it rained twice. That was one of the miracles we had. It rained twice and those were both days we had scheduled interiors. So those are all locations and we even filmed some of the California scenes in Spain, to be honest.
Martin Sheen: Every pilgrim that you see that is not speaking is a true pilgrim--pardon that expression.
David Alexanian: The really important point to make, however is we were very concerned about being low impact and we didn't want to affect those pilgrims that were on a journey. It wasn't a Hollywood production in any way. There weren't buses and cars and chairs. We behaved like pilgrims. We had a sound man who had all of his equipment in a backpack. People didn't notice us. If a pilgrim wanted to be in the film, we asked them and if they didn't we were respectful of their journey.
Emilio Estevez: We were really low impact and we shot in sequence. So we started in September 21 in St. Jean-Pied-de-Port and we finished 39 days later in Santiago. We shot in super-16, we had a crew of under 50. They were very nimble and all of them were in great shape. We reckon we walked about 350 to 400 kilometers of the journey. So we were qualified to get the Compostela.

Question: What challenges did you face in portraying such a sad journey?
Martin Sheen: Luckily I had never lost a child--a parent's worst nightmare--so I had to go into a place where all artists have to go to conjure up feelings that are similar. But [Emilio] composed the symphony so that it was stretched out, the healing took a long period of time and a lot of people to happen. So he had to rein me in because I wanted to sprinkle tears with the ashes every time we stopped. But he said, "No, that's for the audience. You as an actor have to take them only so far. And we have to have a lot of humor along the way so that people aren't a washcloth by the end." So that's to his genius as a writer and director. He gave me the first violin but he had to assure me that there was going to be some brass and some crescendos along the way that did not include sadness. Basically, the film is about healing and while we all have to take the journey alone, we cannot do it without community. And I think that is a very strong theme in the picture. By the end, this guy became really the father to those other three knuckleheads that he could never to this knucklehead.
Emilio Estevez: We always looked at this movie from the beginning as a road movie. It pays homage to Homer, it pays homage to the Canterbury Tales, it pays homage to the Wizard of Oz. We invite you to put a backpack on and join us. Be the fifth Beatle.

George Greenia: The movie is obviously not a downer, it has plenty of humor in it. Was it difficult to write that humor in? It's so well integrated; it's remarkable.
Emilio Estevez: Not for me. There were wonderful moments that happened along the way. There were wonderful happy accidents. One of the first was in St. Jean, the scene when Martin's character begins the journey--he walks out of the hotel and says, "Here we go." He was meant to simply be in that scene alone. Those of you who have been to St. Jean know that there is a morning train and an evening train. The evening train came in as we were shooting that scene. And 40 pilgrims got off the train and began to walk through the shot. And I said, "Stop! Do you guys want to be in a movie?" And they said, "Yes!" We had release forms in various languages; they all signed and agreed to be a part of it. I said, "I think there's a joke here. I think there's a way to incorporate you guys in the joke. Will you play along?" And they said they would. So that was the first sight gag in the movie. And then moments like the pintxos-tapas scene. The Spanish are wonderful and particularly when you get something wrong in Spain they don't want to just tell you once, they want to tell you how wrong you are and they want to keep telling you how wrong you are. (audience laughs) It's so funny. He was a wonderful Basque actor from the area and we said, "Just explain it to him like he's a five year old." That was not scripted. He just let it run. We were howling off camera because the guy was just so funny.
George Greenia: The film has already screened in Spain and the Spanish loved that scene. They thought that pedantic explanation of the difference between tapas and pintxos was just right on. It brought the house down in Spain.
Martin Sheen: I never quite understood it.

Question: Your four characters were very secular. Spiritual but secular. Are people who make the pilgrimage very religious? Is there interaction between the very religious and the secular and how does that affect them?
Emilio Estevez: Those of you who have been on the Camino know that if you are in a hostel or an albergue, believers and non-believers will be sleeping six inches apart in the next bunk or literally right next to you or on the floor. We ran into believers, non-believers, outdoor adventurers. We ran into people of all faiths out there. It was my intention to have some measure of conversion for each of the characters. So if they had started out being devout, especially Martin's character.... That was one of the heated discussion we had in the development of the script. I said, "You know Pop, Tom's going to be a lapsed Catholic." And there was a long silence.
Martin Sheen: Outrageous!
Emilio Estevez: I said that it's important that he is struggling with his faith. We would see a conversion by the end of the film. The first scene with his parish priest who asks him to pray with him--and he says, "What for?" He's at that bottom; he's hopeless at that point. So that was important for me. For the character of Jack, I wanted him to be cynical, I wanted him to have some issues with the church because of the conflicts in Northern Ireland. For Joost, the guy least likely to fall to his knees and be humble before god, the guy that we would least expect a complete conversion by the end of the film, that makes it all the more powerful--for me. That was really the intention, to have a place to go for all these characters.
David Alexanian: The film is also an intent to celebrate what we all have in common rather than highlight our differences, which many films in Hollywood tend to do. I think that echoes the Camino and if you spend time there there are plenty of non-believers, there are plenty of people who might just be doing it for sport, people who maybe just lost a job or just got out of a relationship, as well as devout Catholics. The location at Roncesvalles says it all. Martin on Day 1 is there with 600 strangers. You figure out pretty quickly that you had better get along otherwise you're not going to make it the rest of the way.

Question: Why did you not subtitle the tapas-pintxos scene?
Emilio Estevez: I had an experience on a picture I directed a few years ago called Bobby. There were some Spanish speaking characters in the film. The studio said I should put titles under words even like "gracias." As a person who speaks a bit of Spanish, I was offended by that. So on this film, I said no subtitles, except for the joke--when Angela Molina says, "In your dreams, dog" which I thought needed some translation for the joke to work. But other than that, there are plenty of Spanish speaking people in America and I felt we should probably give them credit.
Martin Sheen: In the scene with the gypsies--father and son: the father assumes that we don't speak Spanish so he can talk to his son in public and make a point that he has to apologize, that there's a lot at stake and don't try to get out of this. It had to be done in Spanish so that it stayed within their culture. But we certainly get what he is saying, what he wants the boy to do.

Question: At what point in your life did you reach the end of the road to self discovery and find self fulfillment and true happiness?
Martin Sheen: Every day is an occasion for thanksgiving and praise, honestly. I returned to my own faith in 1981 but I had been gone during a very critical time, during Vatican II, so I was unaware of all the changes that had happened. Particularly the celebration of nonviolence and the option for the poor which was a reflection of liberation theology and Vatican II. So I was very happy to come back. I opted for that myself. I knew that I had to become involved in social justice issues if I was to be a Catholic. The last 30 years have been the most difficult by far because of that but equally the happiest. I couldn't see it any other way. I've often said that Mother Teresa drove me back to Catholicism but Father Daniel Berrigan keeps me there. If you know who he is you know what I mean.

Question: What are the thoughts behind the brief scene where we see the three penitentes?
Emilio Estevez: That was written as a much longer scene; Jack was trying to interview them but they would have nothing to do with him. They're in a trance and praying the rosary. That was in the four hour version (audience laughs). We had to trim the film down considerably--under two hours to make it palatable. So that was one of the scenes that had to go. You see many of the penitentes during the semana santa. In the US there is an order of penitentes in New Mexico. I've spent time in New Mexico and used to see them on the road, especially during Holy Week going on pilgrimage to Chimayo. I thought it was an interesting visual to keep in the film.
Martin Sheen: We really wanted to include the penitentes visually because people do see them along the road. They are part of the ancient aspect of the Camino which goes back a very very long way to the Middle Ages. Our characters were really stunned to see them, because all of us came from the west and aren't used to such a public exhibition of penace and flagellation.
Emilio Estevez: Also cut was a discussion of fanaticism that I thought was important. Maybe in the DVD we'll see that.

Question: How did you come up with the personalities of the three characters that accompany Tom?
Emilio Estevez: They came out of my life. Deborah Unger is a good friend of David's and now a good friend of all of us. She came into my life when I was writing the screenplay and we began a dialogue and I began to write the role for her. And of course I wrote the character of Tom for Martin because it was always my intention to cast him, even though he tried to talk me out of it a couple of times. But he always was going to be our "Dorothy." He was the one for whom we create this emotional tornado in his life. It picks him up in California and deposits him in Spain where he would meet the other three and off to see the Wizard they would go. That's the way I designed it. He would meet the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man. She [Deborah Unger] of course has an enormous hole in her heart and is looking for love and looking for a way to fill it up again, having made this horrible choice. Jack, Jimmy's character, has writer's block, so in fact he is our scarecrow looking for a brain. And then Yorick is our Cowardly Lion. He comes out of a real guy that I know. But Yorick brought a whole other dimension to that role. The casting of Yorick is interesting. We were about eight days from starting principal photography in St. Jean. Dave and I were in a hotel lobby in Madrid and we didn't have a Joost and we were sweating. A couple of well-known actors had passed, and David said to me finally, "I found five guys on the internet, pick one." He handed me the list. I said, "This guy, no, this guy maybe, this guy is kind of interesting. Let's fly him in if he is available." We got on the phone with the agents and they said we will meet in Madrid, he will be there tomorrow, because he was doing a project in another part of Europe. So the next day comes along and we're waiting, it's four o'clock, it's five o'clock, no Yorick. We got a frantic call from the agents. "We're so sorry, but he's gone to Barcelona and not Madrid." So we said, "No problem, we'll hold off on going to St. Jean. We'll wait until he can get here." Next day rolls around, and finally Yorick shows up. He said, "I'm sorry I'm late, sorry for the confusion. But it wasn't all a complete loss. I had the most wonderful lamb dish." (everyone laughs). David and I looked at each other and I said, "I think we have our Joost." He brought his big lovable self to the role.

The Way opens in DC on October 7.

Martha Marcy May Marlene: Q&A with Producers Antonio Campos and Josh Mond

By Annette Graham, DC Film Society Member

Martha Marcy May Marlene stars Elizabeth Olsen as a young woman who escapes from a cult and tries to return to a normal life. Director Sean Durkin and actress Elizabeth Olsen were scheduled to attend a screening of Martha Marcy May Marlene but were not able to come due to the earthquake that day. Two of the producers (Antonio Campos and Josh Mond) had arrived earlier and took questions from the audience. The screening took place on August 23 at AMC's Georgetown Theater; DC Film Society Director Michael Kyrioglou moderated the discussion.

Michael Kyrioglou: We are fortunate that someone from the film was able to be here.
Antonio Campos: We came to surprise Sean. A year ago tomorow is the first day of principal photography on Martha.
Michael Kyrioglou: They were going to sit in the back of the theater and ambush the director. What was the outrageous question you were going to ask?
Antonio Campos: We were going to come in with fake beards on top of our real beards and say we heard the producers had made this film and then run down and give them a hug.

Michael Kyrioglou: What was the idea behind this story?
Josh Mond: We are three directors who rotate as producers for each other and we were shooting Antonio's first film. The first movie we ever did was Antonio's feature Afterschool (2008). Sean and I were producing that together and then as soon as we were done with Tony's film, Sean wanted to do something about cults. Antonio gave him a book.
Antonio Campos: I gave him Helter Skelter for his birthday. That started him down that whole path. Early on he became obsessed with the idea of missing persons. He would send me links to websites of images of missing persons, photos and he was really haunted by them. The nugget in Helter Skelter which triggers the imagination was a small passage about a girl who ran away from the Manson family for a few weeks and was tracked down by Charles Manson. He gave her twenty bucks at a little diner and said, "Go on your way." And three weeks later she was gone. No one could track her down. And so the idea was what happens in those three weeks. That was the impetus for the story in a lot of ways. There was a mutual friend of ours who had actually been in a cult and Sean spent a lot of time with her and started talking with her about her experiences, and that on top of the other research he had done culminated in the film.

Michael Kyrioglou: How common are these smaller Manson-like family situations?
Josh Mond: When we were at Sundance, at a couple of screenings people came up us and told us that they had been in a cult or a family member had been in a cult. It was very common especially in Utah. Sean is a genuine caring person and was the perfect person to do something like this. But it is definitely very prevalent and this is very scary. People get caught up in these little groups, a guru, a little commune that forms. No one uses the word cult in describing it. In the film you never hear that word. Because when you are there you are part of something and eventually you either do or don't realize that what you were part of would be defined as a cult. But in the film it's just a group of people that get together who seem like drifters who found a group of common friends.
Antonio Campos: Like us filmmakers.

Michael Kyrioglou: There was a short film mentioned.
Josh Mond: When Sean was doing the script, we decided to make a short for $400 to experiment, which was a kind of precursor to this. [Mary Last Seen, 2010]. It's about how the girl gets there. We were fortunate that it went to Sundance and then Cannes. It'll be on the DVD.
Antonio Campos: Brady Corbet who is in the film is alsoin the short. It's him bringing a girl up to the same farm. The girl goes with a guy she just met, thinking they are going to a cool farm, getting there, and being separated from him and at the last moment realizing there was something the guy didn't tell her about.

Question: How you decided on the camera style?
Josh Mond: As a group we are all very supportive of each other and we all have very distinctive approaches and styles to filmmaking that we use or that come to us as we are making the film. Just because we are in a group doesn't mean we all make the same kind of movies.
Antonio Campos: Just because we're in a cult.
Josh Mond: So my approach to filmmaking is very different from Sean's although we do have very similar aesthetic opinions at times. But ultimately I think Sean is a filmmaker who wants to get lost in the story. I remember during editing there was some decisions he made where he was going against keeping a shot a certain length because he thought it was drawing too much attention to the filmmaking. And in Afterschool you were often aware of the filmmaking and of the camera to give that voyeristic quality to the film. Sean very purposefully and rightfully so wanted you to get lost in the mystery of the film. There are times when dramatically the long shots and the long wide takes are the right choices for the film and for the story and the characters and the performances and other times he used the editing to create tension and capture everyone's reaction or perspective.

Question: What does the ending mean?
Antonio Campos: We like open-ended endings. As an audience, does that mystery satisfy you or does it really frustrate you and make you say, "I really wanted to know what happens?" But I believe those endings do tell you--if you follow the story enough and know exactly what's happening in the story--it doesn't wrap it up with a nice pretty bow. You can figure out what is going to happens next.
Josh Mond: I don't think you can figure out what happens in Martha next. Everyone interprets it differently. It's one or two things. It sparks conversation between friends.
Antonio Campos: I like those endings.
Michael Kyrioglou: We aren't getting full details, we don't know the full explanation. We are observing everything.
Antonio Campos: We had alternate endings. And this is the right ending for the film. It makes sense with what the film is.
Josh Mond: You respect the audience, don't treat them like idiots. When people spell things out for you it's annoying. We aren't all that retarded. That's why Fox Searchlight is so amazing in releasing the movie, taking a risk on a movie that is not spelling things out for you. Whether you like it or not, at the same time he is respecting you by not spelling everything out.

Michael Kyrioglou: How much collaboration was involved in writing the script and was the cast involved?
Josh Mond: I read about 50 drafts of the script. There was a lot of discussion beforehand. The script took about a year and a half to develop, so there was a long gestation period. It all came together after Sean got time at the Sundance lab, but it had been changing over the course of a year and a half. In general we are all very collaborative. We spend so much time developing the crew that we work with, that there's a really strong sense of trust between us; we respect the opinions of people we work with and that's why we work with them. We also have competence in what we do, that if someone makes suggestion that isn't in line with what we really feel in our gut we can say no. There is a strong sense of collaboration in all projects we do.
Antonio Campos: But Sean's the boss. We work for the director. We kill ourselves for no money because we believe in the project and we love the person we are making it for. But at the end of the day it's their decision. We are there to help and think about it for them.
Josh Mond: There's no money and there's no time but that's why we spend so much time beforehand so that we know every detail about the story. Then when we go in we can take advantage of the little time and money we do have. You have to know the difference between opinions and what is right for the film.

Question: You were doing a little audience research by asking about ending. Sometimes endings are changed based on the responses of audiences. Have you or will you ever do that?
Antonio Campos: No. When Fox bought the movie at Sundance that was the deal. They didn't want to change it. They didn't change our movie or touch the movie. We finished shooting the movie September 24, 2010 and we were locked two months later going to Sundance. That's pretty fast shooting on 35; that's a fast process. They respected us and they respected the movie. They didn't change it and they had no right to change it. What we've started to do is we show it to a small group of filmmakers, our friends, to get an outside opinion--eight people just this one time and that's it. If we worked in studios it's different; we don't have that power any more. But for our first and second films that's how it works. We do what we want to do. Sorry if that sounded pretentious.
Josh Mond: After the sale there were small details that Sean wanted to change, so there were really minor things that Sean tweaked.
Antonio Campos: Mostly sound things. As Josh said, there was no testing on the film. There was a focus group.

Michael Kyrioglou: You have your own company. Would it have been different to have a distributor versus going through the whole process of the film festival circuit?
Antonio Campos: Sean was at that Sundance lab until June 2010 and we were debating whether to make it a bigger movie with a bigger cast but we just wanted to make the movie. So while he was away I had three interns in my house every morning until night for a month prepping for the movie so when he came back we would be ready to go. He didn't have the money; I figured that out. We just went for it without having all the money in place. So while we were shooting, we were hustling to get more money. The reality is that the studio would have made him make decisions based on commerce. I have no experience working with the studio, just what I can gather from my own knowledge. Everything would have been discussed because more money is involved. When more money is involved, there are commerce decisions. Then the director has to compromise. You don't want to make your first movie with the studio because you won't be able to have the power the next time around. So yes, it would have been a disaster. Every film is made the way it's made. You can create hypotheticals and say this film would have been different if it was made under these circumstances or in this time as opposed to when it was made or with a different crew, or a different cast. Every time you cast a film or put a crew together or put a budget together, you are making certain decisions. The reality is whatever the film is, is what it is. We can create a hypothetical and say the film would have been different if we had done it with the studio and it may very well have been. If it was made in a different way maybe it would be different. But at the same time it could have been the same thing. You never know. At the end of the day you take the film for what it is. It was made with the people it was made with, the time it was made with, the money it was made with.

Martha Marcy May Marlene will open in DC on October 21.

The Mill and the Cross: Short Interview with Director Lech Majewski

By James McCaskill, DC Film Society Member

My interview with director Lech Majewski at the 2011 International Film Festival Rotterdam was arranged by their Press Desk.

The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski, Poland/Sweden, 2011). We have all seen the character filled paintings by 16th Century Flemmish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. His "The Way to Calvary," which now hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, is filled with 500 characters. Majewski and co-writer Francis Gibson take 12 characters from the painting and combine their stories along with Bruegel's painting. The Passion of Christ is interwoven with the oppression of the Flemish by the Spaniards. In my interview with the director, I asked how he had gotten involved with such a complicated project. "Michael Gibson, the world's expert on Bruegel saw my film Angelus in Paris and wrote a letter asking to meet. He gave me his book, Mill and Cross. I read the book and was fascinated by it. I told him I saw a feature film. He said, 'You must be crazy. Impossible.' I like impossible." This is a brilliant, highly intelligent film by a master.

The film is shot from Bruegel's point of view. In the opening sequence, Bruegel (played by Rutger Hauer) is in deep conversation with Nicholas Jonghelinck, his long time patron as the camera focuses on the huge canvas that becomes animated; the people move, the windmill turns, animals stroll. Bruegel's talent lies in his painting's details and this is no exception. The film is not set in the time of Christ but at the time of the Benelux countries' domination by Spain. This is not a Roman soldier taking Christ to the garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, but the Spanish military's determination to root out the Protestant religion from the Low Countries.

Majewski's film has three A-List stars: Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling and Michael York. When I asked Mr. Majewski how he got Michael York in his film he told me, "I had a photographic exhibit and Michael's wife, who is a photographer saw it and urged him to work with me. It was then easy to get him interested in this project."

And a project it is: lush landscapes, hordes of people going about their daily lives oblivious to the Crucifixtion, even God appears in the guise of the miller who resides in the windmill atop all the confusion below.

This is a film not to be missed by art lovers nor film lovers. This is an intriguing, if a bit too long, interpretation of one of the world's great paintings as reworked by a multi-talented master.

Shortly after screening at Rotterdam the film was screened at The Louvre in Paris.

The Mill and the Cross opens at Landmark's E Street Cinema on October 14.

Drive: Q&A with Director Nicolas Winding Refn

By Annette Graham, DC Film Society Member

Director Nicolas Winding Refn attended a screening of Drive on August 24 at Regal's Gallery Place Theater. This Q&A after the screening was moderated by Michael Kyrioglou, DC Film Society Director.

Michael Kyrioglou: I noticed in the press notes that you don't have a driver's license--you don't drive. Any comment?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I failed eight times. But I find speed very exhilarating on a sexual level. There's something very sexy about cars that was interesting to make a movie about. But I didn't have an interest IN cars, but I had an interest in terms of movement. And this movie is about a man who moves, and that's when he feels comfortable. When he stands still trouble comes to him.

Michael Kyrioglou: I think this movie is going to sell like crazy when it opens September 16. (enthusiastic audience applause). The visual and the aural style of this is fascinating and some of the music takes one back to the 1980s. What do you look for in sound and music collaboration and in visuals and lighting?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Musically, when I make a film, I try find a piece of music, because I don't do drugs anymore (everyone laughs). I make films based on what I would like to see. And music gives me some kind of thing that I would like to see, so I always try to find a film I make as a piece of music before I actually develop it because then when I find a piece of music, I use that when I am developing, writing or thinking about it. Even though this was based on James Sallis's great book, I still had to make it into the film that I would want to watch. I always wanted electronic music, because I thought it was interesting with an electronic score combined with the very macho world of stunt men. Electronic music would bear resemblance of early European pop from late 70s and early 80s which Americans didn't have to suffer through but we did in Europe (audience laughs). It was interesting to take that very feminine sound and combine it with the masculinity of the world the driver comes from. Visually I'm color blind so I can't see mid-colors. So everything has to be very contrasted for me to see it. It automatically ends up like that. Red always pops up.

Michael Kyrioglou: How collaborative is that process for you in music and photography?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Directing is really easy, it's just inspiring everyone else to give their best and then you can still be the dictator and say no. For example with the actors, I don't do storyboards or anything like that. I meet up with the actors and ask what they would like to do in a scene and they show me and I say okay try this or that and then you move it until they feel comfortable because essentially that's what people buy--they buy emotions. If the actors aren't comfortable they won't project the same emotions that we want. When they do something I can see and they can see then I just shoot it the way I would like to see it.

Question: How do you plan out the car chases?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Action is always worse if it changes through a movie. It had three car chases and each car chase has to be different from the other. The first one--I've never seen a chase where you're always outside the car--you're always inside the car. I didn't have a lot of money to make the movie, so I couldn't make the cars fly or flip as they do nowadays. The second one, you do your conventional coverage which was not really that exciting. But the sound of a car is very exhilarating. If I could use that--almost as if animals were fighting one another. For the end, I was hit by a car when I was 3 years old. And I always remember that fear of seeing something coming straight at me and the idea that the driver is like a shark that stalks. It's all about hitting and crashing into a car. I did a movie called Bronson where there were three fight scenes; you have to make them look different so there is a fully organic flow of how the character sees it and how he progresses through the story.

Question: Your first films were made in Europe. Are you more influenced by European filmmakers or American?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I guess it's a combination really. The character of an existentialistic action movie is very much rooted in a more European tradition. It wasn't until late 70's that certain American filmmakers made more existentialistic action movies. So it's very much a combination of the techniques of Hollywood but flavored with the more European sensibilitites. Which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
Michael Kyrioglou: Was that generally the influence on this film? What other directors, writers or artists that inspired you to be a filmmaker or writer?
Nicolas Winding Refn: The big inspiration for this movie was Pretty Woman. (audience laughs). I'm not kidding.

Question: How concerned are you with the marketing?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Marketing is more and more a part of a film's life because of the invention of the internet and how people have access to the things you do. I like it, I think it draws the audience into a mystique, a mystery that has to be unraveled upon itself. I think it's very much on the right track. But then you're the deciders.

Question: Are you planning to be more of a mainstay of American cinema, or will you be more a John Woo type?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I live in Copenhagen with my family because of the free health care (everyone laughs). I like Los Angeles, I like the mythology of Los Angeles. I'm doing a small movie called Only God Forgives. You do things you find interesting. Life is short; that's how I look upon it.

Question: How does an actor get on a director's radar?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I cast people not on tapes or auditions. I cast people purely on meetings. If they photograph well--because it is an image... they have to have a gift which you are born with--which is does the camera love you?

Michael Kyrioglou: The film is incredibly well cast with people from all genres. Were there people you specifically went after for parts?
Nicolas Winding Refn: The whole cast kind of offered themselves except Bryan Cranston I had to woo a little bit. Everyone else came to my house in LA and said, "Oh maestro, may I..." (audience laughs). Christina [Hendricks] was in, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks was a bit of a wild card. I wanted him in the film but I'd never met him, so he came to my house. He's famous for being a funny man but he was like a volcano of emotions. Knowing he'd never played a bad guy or killed anyone in a film before, it was a matter of time before he killed someone, so let's do it in a movie instead. (audience laughs).

Question: What kind of adversity do you face when you write and direct a movie? How do you deal with agents?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Rule #1, don't deal with them. Make your own movies your own way on your own terms. It's a lot more satisfying to make a movie the way you want to make it than any financial reward will ever give you. It's a little harder when you have a family and children, but then you can move to Denmark where it's all free. Otherwise I will always say just make your film your own way. When I was 24 I had dinner with Elia Kazan and asked him what advice he would he give a young filmmaker; I had just done my first movie. And he said, "My advice to you is--do it your own way." So that's all I can give you. If you want to survive in the film industry you have to learn to do two things. You have to learn to write and you have to learn about distribution. Writing means that no one gives you anything, you have to come up with your own ideas. I'm not a very good writer, I just do it out of necessity. Here I had a good collaborator with Hussein [Amini] who worked with me and put my thoughts down. And you have to know two things to survive in the film industry. You have to make a good movie and you have to make it cheap. Because the dollar is power. The cheaper you make it the more control you will have.

Question: As writer, what do you feel is the most important aspect of process--the words on the page or the image on the screen, or a combination of both?
Nicolas Winding Refn: It's a combination of course but in the end you are making a movie. It's about what you see--or actually about what you don't see. But it's what is there. Writing a play is very different--it's about what you hear. I will always say you have to choose visuals over dialogue. If you can't say an image, then don't play with the dialogue because that means it can't be said at all.

Question: Throughout the movie the driver is slow and methodical. Is that the actor or was that on purpose to contrast how fast he is at driving?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I always said to Ryan, just keep it all inside which automatically makes you slower in your movement. The idea is that once it's unleashed it's so unpredictable and becomes so much more frightening. The scariest person is always the small silent guy in the corner who never says anything, because it's unpredictable and that is much more interesting especially for a character like Driver who is essentially psychotic but he's also a human being.

Question: How does the process of collaborating with a writer work?
Nicolas Winding Refn: The film got born in a car. I had gone to Hollywood to make a movie with Harrison Ford called "The Dying of the Light" where Harrison Ford plays a CIA agent who dies at the end and I thought if I could kill Harrison Ford in the movie I would contribute to society. And so I was in LA spending time with Harrison, trying to kill him. It worked great in the beginning but then he went a little crazy and didn't want to die. So the movie wasn't going to work out for me. I was so fed up with Hollywood and had gotten into this development hell that most people get caught in. I was cursing and being very angry. Then I got a call out of nowhere asking if I would meet Ryan Gosling. Sure, why not--because Hollywood is all about meetings. I would come into Hollywood on four days at a time trips because I just had a new baby and couldn't stay for long periods of time. I had gotten the flu coming in and I was very very ill and had a very high fever. Guys, when they get fevers, get really weak; so I was at a terrible stage. I might as well utilize my time. I took these anti-flu drugs which basically made me high as a kite. I'm not talking morphine, I'm talking deep deep down heroin. I was so out of it. I went to the meeting at this restaurant; it was so bizarre because I couldn't look at him, I was aching so much. About an hour and a half or two two hours into dinner, I asked him could you please take me home. Why? I don't drive a car. Okay, I'll take you home--like a blind date gone terribly wrong. We got out of the restaurant and into the car; I'm so stoned and there was this awkward silence. Ryan turned on the radio to soft rock. You're driving in LA and I was frustrated, I'm emotional and I was very out of it. I turned off the song and realized my life is terrible, I'm not at home with my kids, I can't kill Harrison Ford, everything sucks. I start to cry. Tears falling down my cheeks, and I start to sing the song. So I'm crying and singing very loudly in the car, Ryan is petrified. How can he get me out of the car? At some point in this ride, I turned to him and look at him for the first time and he's a very handsome man. I screamed in his face, because I had turned the music so obnoxiously loud, that "I got it." I know what Drive is--it's about a man who drives around at night listening to pop music because that's his emotional relief. And Ryan look at me and just said, "I'm in." And that's how the film got created. That emotion was, how can I make a movie about that emotion?

Michael Kyrioglou: What do you people want to walk away with when they see this movie?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Oh, such a hell of a time.

Drive is currently playing in DC theaters.

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