Is “Lux Aeterna” the funny one?
Yeah [laughs].
I had some questions about the quotes that flash on screen in “Lux Aeterna”–
They’re all very pretentious. Those quotes are like pretentious quotes from directors that I admire. People can be extremely inventive, right, and still be pretentious. Politicians are always pretentious. But um, it was also like making fun out of the art of making. Before being a filmmaker, humans are humans, so yeah.
Per “Lux Aeterna,” what are your thoughts on toying with actors in order to get a reaction out of them, or fostering tense environments on set to get a mood, etc? And how does that play into creating a good work environment?
As a director who’s managing the group, you choose your crew in an instinctive, irrational way to make sure that they don’t bring their egos to the set in the wrong way. Still, everybody has an ego. So, the art of a good director is how to get the best out of people’s egos so they create something good with you altogether. But I’ve seen many situations of people just screaming at other people, like in the army, but mostly those situations happen in the TV industry or the commercials industry. When you attend the shooting of a commercial, people are so hateful. And they say, “I’m paying you!” They’re evil, evil people.
The only bad experience I had on a set was with some clients who proposed to me to do a commercial. And then, they were so annoying that I started insulting them in front of the producers. Then half of the crew was like, “Yeah! Yeah! Shit on them!” Like the whole crew was against the clients and the clients were against us. But yeah, it was because I was proposed to do a commercial for the French ministry of health about AIDS. So there was one subject with gay people, and another subject – short film – with a girl getting into a party with straight men– no, it was a man…a man getting into a gay club and having a condom because you don’t know who’s infected in this bar. Then, there was another guy getting into a party, like a straight boy getting into a party, and there were all these girls kissing him, and it says you should better put a condom on because you don’t know which girl is probably infected with [trails off].
And then, they say, “Oh, well in the African community in France, there is a lot of AIDS.” They say, “Well, it’s a black guy getting into an Afro-French club.” I had done a casting of clubs and there were some very fun ones, and they were in the African community in France. And then at the very last moment, we were shooting, and the client said, “People are going to think these are Black Americans because they’re dressed like the western way. They should be dressed in African clothes!” And I say, “C’mon! In Paris, in Black clubs they all dress up in a sexy, fun way. I’m not going to put the traditional outfits of Africans on them! C’mon, don’t be racist.” And they say, “No! But the French audience has to understand that they are African, that they are not Black Americans!” I think, “C’mon, is this a joke?” And then I say, “Hey, please! I don’t know if you’re racist or not, but I can only tell you don’t know shit about the Black community in this country, so leave me alone. I’m Gaspar Noé, I’m not going to put my name on a piece of crap!”
And then it was funny, because the whole process of doing the commercial became like a total war between me and the client. And then the stupidity went so far that, actually, the woman who was insisting upon it finally got fired from the ministry of health. And finally, they also paid for the commercial. But they never released it, and they re-shot another one with another director.
But that one day, it really felt like just doing this commercial in which everybody is screaming at everybody. And there was an art director for the agency who was totally stoned who was on the sofa saying, “No, this cannot happen! This cannot happen!” And he was, like, totally useless. And when I filmed “Lux Aeterna,” I was thinking of that day of shooting. That was crazy.
What was shooting “Lux Aeterna” like? Was it a good, collaborative environment?
Yeah, yeah, yeah! Actually, we shot it in a film studio that was closing down.
How many days did it take?
We shot the movie in five days. We shot it out of a three-line synopsis. And it all happened because [producer] Anthony Vaccarello – the art director, the artistic boss of the Saint Laurent brand – proposed to me to do a short film using clothes from their brand. And the only other condition was to use icons that they work with, you know, to put their clothes on. It could’ve been Catherine Deneuve, who works with them. It could’ve been some guys. But also, in the list of like ten persons he proposed to me, there were Beatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg. And I said, “Oh yeah, I would really like to work with them, because I like their movies.” I had met Beatrice Dalle once and I thought she was the funniest woman on this planet. When she starts talking, she talks like a butcher. Her vocabulary is so, so funny in French that, of course, if I do a movie with the two of them, I’ll just do a movie that they would enjoy.
So, Beatrice Dalle, from the moment I proposition her – “Okay, I’ll be in the movie!” She didn’t care that there were just three nights. But Charlotte Gainsbourg, she was more worried. Not because of my reputation, but she had seen “Irreversible,” she had seen “Love,” and she said, “What the fuck does he want me to do?” And I say, “No, don’t worry! Come over!” And she said, “No, no, but [trails off into laughs].” At a point, I thought I would lose her, but she took a plane from New York, she arrived on the days, and she really – I didn’t ask her to scream at the end! She started screaming – and the same for Beatrice – but once the energy is there and the camera starts shooting, magic happens on the set. And then, of course, you keep the good takes and if there’s anything that’s not working, you cut it in the editing process.
Can you talk about why you decided to use split screen for both films, as different as they are?
Actually, I didn’t expect to use split screen on the first one. I thought it could be fun, but “Lux Aeterna,” I thought I would shoot it like “Climax” with long master takes. But the shooting of the movie started so quickly that I was totally unprepared. And so on the first day of shooting we shot like a five, six minute scene, but it wasn’t good. So the same night I said, “Well, I have four days left. Let’s shoot all the rest with two cameras or three cameras,” if you include the camera of the guy who’s doing the filmmaking. And then I’ll edit the movie, or over-edit, and probably have some parts with split screen. And I discovered a lot of footage in the editing room that I had not shot, that my camera assistant had shot. I told people, “Please film things and bring them to the editing room,” so there was a lot of footage I was not responsible for. Then also, in the process of editing, I added all these excerpts of old movies. And the movie that I thought would be 10-15 minutes long became a 52-minute movie. And if I had not edited in split screen – like chronologically, putting all the images one after the other – it would’ve been a feature film. But no, I wanted the movie to stay as it is: 52 minutes long.
And then, a year and a half later, my other producers proposed to me to do a movie with 2-3 characters during confinement inside one single location. I had been carrying this idea of doing a movie about dementia since my mother had dementia and died eight years ago. And I say, “Well, I have one idea. It’s about a couple, and the woman has dementia.” And because I got used to shooting with two frames inside the frame – and I had also done another short fashion film for Saint Laurent that you can find on the net called “Summer of ‘21,” that was the last two movies I had done that were not features before doing this feature – I thought, “Yeah, I should probably start again with the split screen, so using two cameras. And in this case, it will probably work even better because it’s about two people who are living the same life under the same roof but who are totally disconnected from each other.” Well, not totally, but partially disconnected. And so, I started shooting the movie with two cameras, and then when I saw the footage in the editing room the next day, I say, “Well, yes, I’m right. Let’s try to keep it for the whole movie.” And at the very end of the movie, on the last day, we had the idea to add a prologue to the movie. And I say, “Well, for the prologue, probably for that scene we’ll shoot it with one camera and not two.” So we shot the prologue on the last day of shooting, and when we shot that prologue, I had already done the scene with Dario, saying, “Oh, life’s a dream within a dream,” when he’s talking with his friend. So I say, “Oh, you remember that line of Edgar Allen Poe that you say in the movie? You’re gonna re-say it at the very beginning of the movie.” You know, because it’s a good synopsis for the film.
What was it like directing Dario Argento?
I did not direct him. He directed himself [laughs]. I operated one of the two cameras and then I edited the best moments of his performance. And also, I didn’t give him any lines to learn. He’s not an actor. He’s extremely charismatic. He can introduce a movie for one hour on stage and people are applauding. But for sure, he wouldn’t be good for remembering lines in a theatrical way. So I told him, “Hey, let’s invent your character together. Trust me.” And I think also he said yes and trusted me because we’ve been friends for 30 years. So, there’s something, like, very familiar between me and him that made him be so confident on the set.
Do you think blockbuster filmmaking or major studio filmmaking is contributing to the–
They’re boring, they’re boring. I never, ever go to see an American blockbuster in cinemas in France, but I try to catch up when I take a plane. But also, the good thing about all those Marvel movies is you can [fast forward] through them to see, and bleh! [Throws hands up]. They’re becoming so boring.
Look, I really enjoyed “Joker,” and I really enjoyed “[Star Trek:] First Contact,” for example. But mostly all these superhero movies are so, so boring. A degradation for humankind. Not degrading for women or for men, whatever. Nowadays, they’re fighting so hard not to be sexist, but it’s just like, they’re long, and the dialogue is so heavy-handed, and the performances are as heavy-handed as the dialogue so that not even good actors can say the stupid quotes that they have to repeat in front of the camera. No, please. The blockbusters of the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s were so much more fun. The whole Hollywood culture is turning into…ugh. Even eating at McDonald’s is much sexier than watching a Hollywood movie.
