RSS
Home
Pop life: French director Jean-Jacques Beineix and the re-birth (and death) of pop
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
No diva here. . . (Photo: Marvin Miranda)
Pop is dead.
It went into cardiac arrest on June 25, 2009 and will never recover. But as frantic attempts to resuscitate it were taking place, a pop re-birth of sorts was flickering in a darkened movie theatre a couple of miles away. After a 23 year slumber, French director Jean-Jacques Beineix's Betty Blue (37°2 le matin,1986) resurfaces on our shores as though it were the electrically-charged undead: a pop thriller from a distinctive decade past. Godard's famous quote about the only two things you need to make a movie, "a girl and a gun" (a gun making an appearance at some point in the movie) are the only two things you need to know about Betty Blue, especially for the uninitiated.
Beginning Friday, July 3, Betty Blue will be playing at the Nuart for a one week engagement in a 1991 "Director's Cut" version, which extends the movie by a whole hour, allowing it to breath, like a vintage finally uncorked, waiting to be savored in all its '80s splendor. As if that weren't enough of a cause célèbre, those film lovers at the American Cinematheque are hosting a Beineix retrospective that runs from July 2-8 and unearths many of the director's films previously unseen in the U.S. including Assigné à résidence (1997), the short documentary that inspired The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (2007). From now up until December, Cinema Libre Studio will be releasing six of Beinex's films on DVD, culminating in a box set available on December 1.
On a beautiful Santa Monica morning, Mr. Beineix was gracious enough to meet with me to talk about such icons of pop culture as Michael, Elvis, Jerry, Kubrick, Yves, Hollywood, and, of course, his two glorious contributions, Diva (1981) and Betty Blue.
It was the morning after pop music died.
Marvin Miranda: So, you were saying, 1977 was the first time you were here in America.
Jean-Jacques Beineix: Yeah. Strangely, I had arrived here. Exactly here. We were running on the beach and swimming in the ocean. I remember. It was August.
MM: That was a very important year in terms of American culture in general, but especially in terms of American cinema.
JJB: But in terms of also something else. Elvis Presley died.
MM: That's right. So I can't help but ask since I doubt I'll be speaking to any other French auteur today: Do you think Michael Jackson's death will have as much of an impact on the French culture as it does on American culture?
JJB: Are you kidding? Well, he was a world-wide star. He'll be on the headlines of every newspaper, every talk show in France, Germany, etc. It's like Elvis, but very different. They both influenced the culture of the time, they had their followers and both died a little bit the same way. They are the portraits of the price you pay for celebrity. When you see the films of this young boy: charming, nice looking. . . slowly becoming a monster.
MM: You could be talking about Elvis.
JJB: Absolutely. And the same addiction with painkillers and medicine. Well, this is the story of Hollywood, in a way.
MM: It's also a very American story. But, having just said that, it's also, in a way, the story of your films. It's fitting we begin our conversation talking about Michael Jackson, The King of Pop, while comparing him to Elvis, The King of Rock and Roll. I was watching Betty Blue at a press screening yesterday while the world outside stood still, stunned. I hadn't seen it in about ten years and as I watched it critically I realized for the first time that underneath this very '80s sheen there is this very 1940s/'50s film noir-ish approach informed by the French New Wave of the '60s. It's the same sort of appreciation that Godard and Truffaut, and the Nouvelle Vague in general, had for film noir, but with a very '80s "pop" sensibility. The same is true, I think, of your first full-length film, Diva.
JJB: That's true. I admit that. It's being a witness of the times you live in. Obviously, you can play with the genre, but in the meantime, it also deals with its encounter with technology. Diva is talking about artists and their relation with technology at the time, especially when it came to piracy, reproduction, taping, and the endlessly copying of your work. It was a very modern approach. Look at the devices we have at this table. We have a recorder, an iphone, and a digital camera no bigger than your recorder. Diva was dealing with that sort of technology and it was also the encounter between pop music and opera, the classical with the new. While at the same time, there's nothing new under the sun, the only thing that is new is the people that are watching. Generations. The beach behind you hasn't changed. We've changed. I'm making films using the material I see through my window, but I've changed. So you try to combine what's eternal, which is love, hate, passion, greed with the new tools and the new tools give you a new opportunity to break the way you tell stories. And that's what's interesting.
MM: Why a Director's Cut for Betty Blue?
JJB: Because it was the movie that I primarily edited. In fact, this long version is the real version and the short version that was originally released I released on purpose. I was producing the movie and had the final cut. I decided that because of Moon in the Gutter (1983), which a lot of people now say is my best picture, but at that time, critics claimed that it was a piece of junk and I was probably wounded by that; I decided I had to be careful and needed to do something different, not make a three-hour movie, it would have been crazy after Moon in the Gutter. With Betty Blue, I needed to go toward the action, to serve the action, to be more focused, so I did the film in a way where all the secondary plots, the secondary parts, were put aside in order to follow the main story. It was very efficient and it was an immediate success. And then I said, "Okay, we've made enough money, so we can take part of the money we made, re-edit the picture with this footage that had been edited but not mixed. That's how it goes for a guy who is his own producer.
MM: Did you realize that Diva would have such an impact on French cinema in the '80s, serving as a catalyst for directors like Luc Besson, Leos Carax, and Caro & Jeunet?
JJB: I had no idea. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to talk about things that were there and that people didn't talk about in movies. I was surprised that the same stories could be told without the imagery. Our world is a world of images, publicity, advertisement. We sell, while at the same time we're being used and art is a product that is included in the milieu. So, I wanted to show that. I thought we had to get away from the naturalism of the cinema, where films had to look like reality, so I wanted to repaint the reality, like artists in painting or in music. It had been done with music. Cinema is an art of the senses, but it's slow. It's behind. I tried to catch the gap between our world and what could be done with it when making films.
MM: But while you were trying to repaint your world, Truffaut and Godard were still making important films.
JJB: That's true but they were very classical.
MM: But what was that like, creating something new while the old guard was still doing their thing?
JJB: I remember Truffaut watching Diva. I saw him coming out of the theater, with his white scarf. He liked the movie. Helen Scott, who was his assistant, told me. But what's funny is that Truffaut was like an older brother since I was very much influenced by the Nouvelle Vague, but also by people like Antonioni because of his use of colors. Orson Welles, by the way he would distort the sets, the use of angles, and the way he would use long sequence shots. So, I put all of that together and I made a movie as well as I could. I never learned the cinema at school. I was a cinema lover, cinema buff, and I learned at the Cinematheque [Francaise]. I watched a lot of films and, suddenly, I got into it and wanted to talk about the world and to have fun with it, to combine things. Film noir offers a structure that is recognized all over the world. So the idea was to use that and to keep some of the frame, but instead, you make it blue, you change the pace, the characters used to be like this, but now you introduce new characters who are related to the world. Nowadays, I would do a movie with a guy who works in the stock market. Or someone who's a nerd. Who was Jules the postman [from Diva]? He was a nerd. He lived in a house full of posters and was pirating and compiling hundreds of tapes. He was ahead of his time, but now we would make the same movie with the kid using computers. He would be a hacker.
MM: You mention Welles, but were there any American directors at the time who were also an influence, especially since it was an interesting period in American cinema with Spielberg and the birth of the '80s blockbuster?
JJB: We watched all those films, but I must say that the man for whom I had great love and reverence was Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick is my master in terms of style, in terms of changing all the time, the topics of his movies. Every film was a new experience, a new opportunity to comment on the world. The use of aesthetics, music, the camera, actors. It was all brilliant. Brilliant.
MM: At its heart, Betty Blue is very much like a French homage to the American crime thriller, much like A bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960), for example. An actual film noir like Gun Crazy (1950) also comes to mind, in that Betty Blue is about two characters who, granted, are not going around killing people like in Gun Crazy, but who, like in that film, are definitely living a very tumultuous relationship. Those two stories are more about the dynamic of the two lovers. Whether you want to call it Gun Crazy or Betty Blue it's the same story. I know it's based on a novel by Philippe Djian, but besides that, what else intrigued you enough to want to make this story?
JJB: Because it reminds me of a detective novel book. When Betty arrives in Zorg's life, she's like the femme fatale. She's exactly that. Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Dashiell Hammett, etc., all those writers know that the minute a girl like that comes in, she's trouble. It's an impossible love. Amour fou. It was a great opportunity because, again, everything looked like real life. They live on the beach, they're normal people, there is no car chase, there is no murder, there are no gangsters, but in the meantime it is like a detective novel because you do not know what's going to happen the next second and you're just thrilled by the experience. It's also related to our lives because I've met a lot of people who've told me, "I've known a Betty Blue."
MM: I've known a Betty Blue or two.
[Laughs]
JJB: But it's made in a way that makes it look casual, but it's not.
MM: Can you talk about your experience as assistant director for some of the French masters, like Claude Berri, René Clément, and Claude Zidi? How did that experience influence your filmmaking?
JJB: They were people who allowed me to be what I am now. I didn't necessarily learn from their styles, but I learned something else. They were very different from each other, but from them I learned what it was to be a director. What it is to wake up in the morning and have a crew waiting for you. I learned what it was to be with a camera and actors, placing them and transforming what is a written piece into a piece of film. I learned the physiology of directing, how lonesome it is. I was their confidant, their assistant, driving them in the light of the morning. I was knocking at their doors. I knew their secrets. It taught me the relation with actors, the nice things and the dark things. All the directors I've worked with, I learned how they were doing things, and slowly I could figure out that, "This, I would do differently. This I wouldn't do. Why is he doing that? I would do this." Slowly I could figure out who I was as a director. None of those directors influenced me in the way that Kubrick did stylistically. They all had their own ways of making films, but it was more about the discipline, more about the way they lived, the way they were directors and how the crew reacted to them when they were doing something. So, I learned the crew. I learned the relation with the photographer. I learned the relation with the special effects guy, with the gophers, with the teamsters. Things you never learn in school because you cannot. So, I learned the hard way, getting kicked in my ass many times. I had to fight. And also, I fought for them, serving them as much as possible, trying to fulfill what they were expecting, sometimes trying to go beyond what they wanted.
MM: You also worked as an assistant director to Jerry Lewis in The Day the Clown Cried (1972). What was that experience like?
JJB: It was great! You have to know that in France there is a cult for Jerry Lewis. It was like with our own Louis de Funes, who was really enjoyed by a lot of kids, but whose movies all the critics thought were crap because they thought he was simply mimicking. But slowly now, the critics have accepted him. Well, Jerry Lewis had the same problem and I didn't know it until I came here because they asked me, "Who do you like?" and I said, "Jerry Lewis."
"What?! That jerk?"
[Laughs]
But for me, he made me really laugh when I was a kid. I enjoyed his films. He was inventive, not only as a comedian, but as a filmmaker. He was doing things that very few people did. He was bold and believe me, this guy knew his job. So, when I was on the set, realizing that he was one of my great childhood heroes, it felt like a dream had come true. One day I was sitting in a theater watching him with Dean Martin and then, all of a sudden, I'm working with him! And I discovered a man who knew the lens, who knew frame, who knew the camera, who knew actors, and who was given a real show on a set. And he influenced me very much because I discovered a guy who took care of all the props, lights, the framing. I frame, I write my scripts, I produce my films, I'm like an orchestra. I control everything, but not just for the sake of controlling. Probably, it has some neurotic roots, but at the same time, it's because I think that's what a director is. You have to be involved in everything.
MM: Kubrick was.
JJB: Exactly.
MM: Have you seen The Day the Clown Cried?
JJB: No, no. I knew there were production problems and the film was locked and still is, I don't know. I don't even know if the film has been completed.
MM: From what I know, it hasn't. I think it only exists in a very rough cut. Apparently no one has ever seen it, except maybe one or two people. But did you get a sense of what you were making with Jerry Lewis because the story is a little out there?
JJB: It's the story of a clown who ends up in a concentration camp. It reminds me of the Italian film, Life is Beautiful (1997).
MM: The clown ends up in accompanying children to their deaths.
JJB: I think that Jerry was very obsessed by it. It was a serious matter for him. To me, it looked like a man who was working hard on it.
MM: Speaking of famous actors, what was it like directing Yves Montand in his last film, IP5?
JJB: Great! I must say, I was a little bit puzzled and reluctant to work with stars because I knew very well from this long experience that I had as an assistant director. But to my surprise, he was one of the most cooperative actors I've had, willing to do anything. He knew his job he knew his lines, he was ready. Very professional and ready to give. He was 72 and working opposite two young kids, both graffiti artists in the movie. It was the impossible encounter of those two generations and they discover each other. It's a love story between those two kids and this old man. And Montand, who knew the job so well, after a shot, he would come to me and say, "They got the scene. People won't see me."
[Laughs]
He knew it very well. He cooperated so much so his death was terrible. But you have to know he died the very last day, after he had completed the last re-take shot. Professional to the end.
MM: He also strikes me as someone who was open to new talent.
JJB: Absolutely! I wish all great stars could behave his way, taking risks, daring. He was ready to work with the new generation. I think that if he had not died, we would have done another film together. I was very sad when he died.
MM: With the release of a new box set of films that have not been previously released here in the U.S., what would you like American audiences to experience about your work that you think they may have not been able to experience with movies like Diva and Betty Blue?
JJB: That there is something which relates all these films together. That altogether, these films are a body of work that is consistent. I also wish that they could understand why I didn't make a movie here even when I was offered many, many films many, many times.
MM: What were you offered?
JJB: The movie Jeunet made, Alien: Resurrection (1997). I didn't want to do that. Evita (1996) with Madonna. The remake of Gloria (1999) with Sharon Stone. I was offered a remake of the Blue Angel (1930). Year of the Gun (1991), American Psycho (2000). Witness (1985). Sylvester Stallone offered me Driven (2001). I was green lit The Avengers (1998) with Sean Connery. My salary had been discussed by ICM.
MM: So then, it begs the question: why not make a film in Hollywood?
JJB: The few materials I liked they didn't want. But with the things they offered I always had the feeling that they would not let me do what I wanted and I'm no good when I'm not allowed. Otherwise, they can take anybody. Look at who's doing the good films here. You have two solutions, it's not ten: Either it's a "director movie" or it's a "producer movie." So, a producer's movie has to be made by a producer, so they become "directors." In a way, the director is nobody. There's no director. And the other way, is having a director. With James Cameron, it's a "James Cameron Picture." With Steven Spielberg, it's a "Steven Spielberg Picture." But people ask you to come here, they pay your ticket, they pay for your nice accommodations, and then you ask them, "Why did you bring me here?"
"Oh, because we love Betty Blue. We love Diva. But now, would you consider doing a torpedo movie in the same way as Diva?"
"Yeah, but then, Diva, I made it my way, against the producer's will, otherwise, it would not have ever been what it is."
MM: Oh, this was in France where they were asking you to do this?
JJB: Yeah, the relation between producers and directors is the same all over the world. And was the same during the time of Leonardo da Vinci.
MM: The guy who pays wants to put his family in the picture.
[Laughs]
JJB: Yes: "This is not my wife."
"Yeah, it's your wife. It's the way I picture her!"
[Laughs]
But I still miss that I couldn't play with this big game, this big apparatus you can have here with the Hollywood system. It's like you know you're good at driving cars, you want to be in the Formula One, but sometimes it's enough to ride a bicycle in the track here.
"The Moon in the Gutter: An in-person tribute to Jean-Jacques Beineix" is hosted by the American Cinematheque at The Egyptian Theatre, July 2-8. A Q&A with Beineix will follow the feature film on July 2 and 5.
Betty Blue will play at The Nuart, July 3-9. Q&A with Beineix on July 3 and 4 following the 8pm shows.
For more info: visit The American Cinematheque, The Nuart, Cinema Libre Studio, and the Betty Blue official website.
Related Articles:
Comments
.jpg)
