AVC: Is that part of the purpose of this film, to try and reinvent the language a little bit? What sort of experience do you want people to have with the movie?
FFC: I want them to enjoy it as a Twilight Zone, to take it as the story I read and enjoyed and hopefully they're going to enjoy as the unusual fable of what happens to this man and his long-lost love. I've tried to make it as I know how to in terms of what it looks like, and how the story is unveiled. If it doesn't fit quite into your idea of what a movie is supposed to be, I'd ask that you give it the benefit of the doubt and see if later on you find it more rewarding. That's happened many times in my career, when the film comes out and people say, "This is crazy, this is a jumble, I don't understand it," and then they become classics 30 years later. I'm not going to say that it's going to happen to this time around, but very often unusual films don't get public acceptance right away. I mean, if you think back to the year Apocalypse Now came out, do you remember what won the Oscar that year?
AVC: 1979? Kramer vs. Kramer?
FFC: Right. So how many people are seeing Kramer vs. Kramer on their DVDs now?
AVC: Not many.
FFC: That's the point. Sometimes something a little unusual doesn't quit fit in right away.
AVC: It seems like what you're talking about happened with One From the Heart as well. You unveiled that film again recently, and seemed to find a much more receptive audience.
FFC: Well, One From the Heart did have flaws. If you ask me what I would do differently in my life, there is only one thing I would do different—which is pretty good—and that was that three weeks before we shot that movie, I should not have given in to my cinematographer, who didn't want to shoot with 16 cameras, and do it like live television. My idea was that there could be something like live cinema, where you get the cast and the musical numbers and everything and say, "Okay, kids. We're going on. 5-4-3-2-1." And do the whole performance, and then look at the finished movie. Maybe do it a couple of times, and take the best version. But my photographer chickened out and came to me and said, "I can do it so much better. Blah, blah, blah." And that was the one decision that I regret, because it may not have been a better film, but I sure would have enjoyed doing it.
AVC: After shooting movies with studio money for such a long time, what sort of adjustments did you have to make to pull off this film on a limited budget overseas?
FFC: Well, there was a lot of money that we saved by virtue of having no completion bond, no bankers, and no legal complexities that cost money. Lots of what the studio requires you to do to conform with their system actually cost the production, I would guess, 20% of what the budget is. Not to mention, if you look at how many producers are listed on the average movie today, just imagine what the plane fares cost if everybody visits the set once, and what the hotel rooms must cost. So basically, what I learned being my own financier was that you can make film much more economically.
AVC: Did the fact that this film was self-financed ever play on your conscience? What kind of pressure does that put on a movie, when you know that it's coming out of your coffers and not someone else's?
FFC: Well, I had been through that before, many times, except with much bigger budgets. On Apocalypse Now, the budget went over $35 million dollars, and I was on the hook for the whole thing. One From The Heart was $28 million, and I ate it. I paid the bank back, even though it took me ten years, from age 40 to 50, making a film every year to pay the bank back. This budget was under $15 million, and I am much richer now than I was then. So it's immaterial to me. Money is there to make your dreams come true. There's no other purpose for money.
AVC: You were talking about studio filmmaking. Recently, a substantial amount of studio money has been put behind big, idiosyncratic productions like There Will Be Blood, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Do you feel like the culture in Hollywood is changing in any way? Is there money out there for directors with ambition like there was?
FFC: I don't know. I wonder if the money for those pictures is really coming from the studios. A lot of that money is independent money, and the studios are just partnered with it. Of course, with Jesse James, that movie had the support of arguably the biggest actor in the world. So, you're going to do a western on Jesse James, you have Brad Pitt and a young Casey Affleck. It's so subsidized by the elements, and a lot of money isn't studio money. As for the Daniel Day-Lewis movie, I'm not sure who financed it. But finance isn't always the same as the studios. The studios will accept an outside financier if they reduce the risk. It's sort of like UA releasing Apocalypse Now, though I had all the risk. So I don't know if those really are studio pics. I know that studios really do not want risk.
AVC: Maybe then the question that I am asking is if there is more loose money out there.
FFC: There is a lot of loose money out there. Of course, less since there has been this credit crunch. There are a lot of wealthy people who would love the honor of being associated with a successful movie. The problem is that the distribution network is where the bottleneck is. If you've got a Brad Pitt picture, odds are that it will be distributed. But so many of these talented younger or eccentric filmmakers really struggle, and don't get a release. Period. And they're sweating other forms of how they can release the film. So the issue is really that there is a lot of talent out there, and a lot of money out there, I believe. But what is starting to dry up is distribution. There are too many pictures being made and distributed, coming out every week, each one flooding out the other.
AVC: Have there been opportunities over the last 10 years that you passed up, or have you been that devoted to cracking Megalopolis?
FFC: I'm a monomaniac. When I was working on Megalopolis, I pretty much only wanted to do that, and when I'm offered a studio picture, I can look at it and take a few phone calls, but I'm either too old or too wealthy to put up with that. I don't really want to do that anymore. Also, I'm offered projects where there are five directors I can think of who can do it as good, or better, than me. I want to make movies that only I can make. Youth Without Youth, maybe I'm crazy, but I am the only one who would make that movie. It would not be a movie if I had not existed. I was offered Thirteen Days, and I had some wacky ideas about how to do it. But they didn't want wacky ideas. And in the end, the guy [director Roger Donaldson] did it fine. I want to make movies with the same attitude as if I were going to fall in love with something. And if I don't, there isn't enough money on earth to pay me to do it.
AVC: Are you any closer to getting Megalopolis finished?
FFC: I'm not working on it. I've abandoned it.
AVC: You're on Tetro now?
FFC: I am about to start it very soon, like January.
AVC: What is that about?
FFC: It's an original screenplay. It's very different than Youth Without Youth. It's a very personal story, sort of my Tennesee Williams story where I'm trying to reach back to the younger person that I was and things I saw. It's not autobiographical, but it deals with issues of family and several generations—uncles and fathers and nephews and nieces, all of whom are artists and the pros and the cons of that.
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