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Michael Haneke has taken a career against the norm with films that test the audiences' will and resolve. Ten years ago, the Austrian filmmaker gained notice as a filmmaker to watch with his brutal film FUNNY GAMES, about a pair of young, well dressed men who psychologically torture and murder a family. A decade later, Haneke has returned to the film, but has made a shot by shot remake with an English speaking cast including Oscar nominees Naomi Watts (who executive produced) and Tim Roth as the tortured family and Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet as the young thrillseekers. Seeking an audience he didn't gain the first time around, Haneke has raised a question of whether the same exact film can work twice, and also about how violence is viewed in today's culture. To promote FUNNY GAMES, Haneke sat down with a roundtable of reporters including the Crypt and then spoke with the Crypt exclusively about going back to form, working with an English cast, the challenges of shooting in New York, and more in this Colonel's Crypt exclusive.
ROUNDTABLE Did you have more of a sadistic experience shooting FUNNY GAMES this time around? MICHAEL HANEKE: If anything, masochistic. In order to decide to do a shot to shot remake, you have to be masochistic to some point because it is a much greater challenge. If you do an original film and you don’t like a scene you just cut it out, but if you do a shot for shot remake you don’t have that option. You have to make sure it succeeds. What do you think are the advantages of remaking FUNNY GAMES shot for shot? MH: I didn’t have to add anything and just to change it a little bit I thought would be dishonorable. If at all it became a gamble with myself on whether I was able to do the exact same film under the same circumstances. You said you’d do this on one condition when approached to do this remake in that you wanted Naomi Watts for the lead role. Why Naomi? MH: It was the same thing with my previous film THE PIANO TEACHER where I said I wouldn’t do it if Isabelle Huppert didn’t accept the lead role. As far as Naomi is concerned, I believe that she had the necessary vulnerability to do this role ideally. I saw two films from her, MULHOLLAND DRIVE and 21 GRAMS, and I thought she was fantastic. Since you’re doing shot for shot, you have a burden to find the right cast members who are able to do this. What was the challenge in that? MH: I just wanted the most ideal people for the role, and there are not many good actors like the ones hired for the film. First I was looking for someone similar for the first film with the killers, the black haired one and the blonde one, but in this they were both blonde but they (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) were both very good. What scene was your favorite to shoot and why? MH: It’s the same question if you’d ask me what film I liked making the most, and like a father, he likes all his children. Is there a way in which viewing this a second time that you saw something new. Has your impression changed? MH: If I did it again for the first time now, given I’m older, I would do maybe one or the other cut differently but I made the decision in principle to do a shot for shot remake there wasn’t an option but there would be some scenes I would’ve shot with different angles. If you go with a principle, you should adhere with the principle. And philosophically, did you see it differently looking at it again? MH: If I really saw it differently when I did the remake, I would’ve done another film. Did you have to work differently with the American actors in contrast to when you worked with the actors in the original film? MH: Language wise, my English is certainly much worse than my German so that impeded my work with them. Of course in German I’m much more sensitized to all the nuances in every respect, so let’s say from a language point of view, I understand the emotions, but in German if the accent isn’t quite right or the way it’s said is not quite right, I would jump in and say something. In English, I wouldn’t detect that so we had a dialogue coach so it’s not the same, it’s not as immediate. Is FUNNY GAMES a horror movie, a thriller? What genre would you classify this under? MH: That’s a good question. I leave the labeling of films up to the critics. What filmmakers or films inspired you to become a filmmaker yourself? MH: I’m a child of the European film culture. There are a number of great directors who I admire but there’s not really a single movie or director that inspired me directly. You said you made this film as a way of mocking the American cinema’s love of violence. You purposefully break rules of drama in your film. Do you consider this your most confrontational film? MH: Of course the film is a provocation. It’s meant as a provocation and all the rules that usually make the viewer go home happy and content are broken in the film. A rule is you don’t kill animals, the first thing I do is kill the dog. Same thing with the boy, you’re not supposed to break the allusion. It’s the principle of the whole film. Was there a real story that came your way that inspired you to write FUNNY GAMES? MH: It wasn’t influenced by any event or anything in particular. An ironic story I could tell you about it is when I did FUNNY GAMES and when it was finished but not released anywhere in Germany, there was a story in a German news magazine about two young men in Spain that had taken a man from the street and tortured him to death, and they wore white gloves. They were asked in prison if they felt any remorse and one of them wrote while in prison that he didn’t. He said that the man he killed was a second class individual and did not deserve to live. Being that this film is an experiment, do you see this film as a departure from your other films and if you have another experimental film that you plan on making? MH: I consider all my films experiments, at least from my mind. CACHE is just as much an experiment as FUNNY GAMES. Are you trying to manipulate the audience by breaking the fourth wall and rewinding the film? MH: Yes, absolutely, that was the whole point. I wanted to show the audience if you are home how much you can be manipulated. You think it’s all an illusion and a film then I do this rewinding and I look at the viewer and wink. I do this again and again to show how much I could manipulate the viewer. In view of this overriding illusion of what you see and hear in our media world, it’s a good idea to create a little bit of mistrust in the fairy tales of motion pictures. Are you concerned about how the intensity of these scenes will be seen from an American audience? MH: I hope that the slap in the face I’m trying to give will work as well. With FUNNY GAMES, CACHE or THE PIANO TEACHER, do you see particular genres you are experimenting with? MH: I try to have always a self reflecting level in my films, and maybe that’s the difference between myself and the mainstream. What’s your next project? MH: My next film is a very simple film. It’s a historical film that plays before the first World War and it’s about education in Germany, so the children in 1913, it is these children that would grow to be the Nazi generation, so it’s about the bringing up of that generation. What’s with the juxtaposition with the classical music mixed with the heavy metal music? MH: Actually it’s not heavy metal, it’s just like the film, it’s a parody of a classical heavy metal. The classical music is not a soundtrack in my movie. All my music is not meant as soundtrack, it is part of the action and part of the story. The other music is under the title and it’s the ironic colon in that “OK we go to a thriller, but it’s something more cynical.” The same music comes at the end. Were you less demanding of Naomi Watts than you were of Suzanne Lothar? MH: You probably have to ask Naomi and Suzanne that. I’m actually very kind to the actors but I’m also very stubborn. Were you tempted with such a creative cast to change anything at all, or were you just determined to do everything shot for shot? MH: You could be tempted but as I said before, I had that principle of doing this shot for shot. Don’t forget the actors within a certain framework have a certain flexibility to express themselves. There are little changes to make it American. Did you do that? MH: I did have help with that. It was pointed out the small things that might not work. The script was first translated, then we went through it with a fine toothed comb. For example, in the scene when they try to summon help, the Austrian version she tells him “Call someone,” and when he asks the number for the police, she doesn’t remember, but here in America, I was told that everyone over the age of two knows the number for the police, which is 911, so it would be unrealistic that they didn’t know the police so we had them call 911 immediately in this film. Thank you Michael.
MH: You are welcome. INTERVIEW COLONEL’S CRYPT: Going back to the original, what was it that inspired you to make FUNNY GAMES in the first place? MICHAEL HANEKE: As you probably know, I did BENNY’S VIDEO before that and that also deals with the issue of violence, so I felt that I hadn’t said everything that I wanted to say about violence yet. So I thought of a story which involves the audience, in which the audience is almost another actor. CC: What was it about the American culture that wanted you to base it as your guideline for the original and now with the remake? MH: This is not a depiction on American violence. Violence in the meantime is an international phenomenon, or rather the depiction as well. It’s just because that America and the English speaking market dominates the industry, we often identify violence with America, but there are also Asian films with the same kind of violence. CC: The original was released at a time when you had these ultraviolent films that were considered hip and cool and FUNNY GAMES is what I would say is an anti-violent film. Since that time a new genre has emerged in the label of “torture porn” where everything is shown to you in graphic detail. Would the more extreme lust of violence be a reason why you decided to go back to FUNNY GAMES? MH: Yes, definitely because the subject of violence is more exposed today than ever. I’m not a big fan of torture porn. CC: You were talking about wanting to do this with Naomi Watts. Was Tim Roth somebody that you wanted from the beginning as well? MH: No, I was looking for different people, so I found him interesting because normally he is playing the other side. He’s always the bad guy, so I found it interesting to give the opportunity to an actor who has a certain image that he can show the other side. He’s a great actor. CC: Was the fact that he was a parent help in his performance? MH: For him it was really hard. I saw that he protected Devon, the boy who was playing Georgie, more than usual than I’ve seen on a film set because he told me that the boy looked like and reminded him of his own son so he was really emotionally moved during the shooting. It was not an easy shoot for him because he couldn’t separate the filming with the reality as a parent. CC: Was this the first film you shot in America? MH: Yes. CC: How did you like shooting in New York and how was it different compared to shooting in Europe? MH: Shooting was not so easy because I am not used to working with so many people, because of the unions there were many drivers and people in the studio with nothing to do there so it went much slower than I am used to in Europe. For example, I did the first one in six weeks and it was easy. Here I had eight weeks and it was very difficult. My English is also a handicap in communicating with the actors so it was frustrating. CC: You shot the majority of the interiors on a soundstage in Brooklyn, but how was the process of finding the right exteriors and settling on Shelter Island? MH: This was difficult because the framing was clear so I had to find exteriors that allowed me to make the same camera movement so it was difficult. The location scout was a real problem to finally find the right location. I thought before I shot it that it would be my easiest film because I did it once but in reality it was my most difficult. CC: Even though with this film, it was a shot for shot remake, did you approach it differently as you would with your other films? MH: No, it’s really the same thing. For example, I showed at the beginning because Naomi had told me she felt like a bayonet because it’s a remake so I showed her my first screenplay and the new one. The first one was my little drawing and storyboards, but the second one had the photos from the first film. It was identical, so I was shooting the first film the same way as the remake. I cannot really draw well but everybody can understand what’s going on, so I’m always working with storyboards and it’s always precise. There was not a big difference, but one difference was where you make a film and you don’t like something, you have a chance to cut it up. With a shot for shot remake, every scene has to work so the pressure is much bigger because you don’t have as much liberty to react when something doesn’t work, you can’t really change it. CC: One of the things I most admire about you is that you are against convention. Throughout your career, you’ve been going against the norm and have brought an extremely unique style. What would be your advice to any aspiring filmmaker? MH: Try to find out what you really want to do, that’s the most difficult. I am a film professor in Austria so I am always telling my students that the most important thing and the most difficult thing is to find out what you really have to say in your films. When you just copy somebody because you adore a great director so you try to make the same thing, that’s bullshit, it’ll never work because it’s not your picture, it’s his picture and it’s not anywhere as good as the original. So to find out, you have to find why you want to do this, not to just say that you want to make a film, that’s nothing. To find out is a long process that could take your whole life to find out. CC: Where do you see filmmaking going within the next five years in terms of cinematic violence? MH: It’s going to definitely be worse. If you look at film history, we started out with someone being shot and he just tumbled over. Then he had a red spot on his shirt, and then there’s blood splatter. It’s become desensitized. If it’s too much blood, you have to take it back a step. For example, the latest Coen Brothers movie, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, they were very smart in how they depicted violence. You see the gun off and then you see the blood slowly flow on the floor. It’s much more impressive to see that than to see a chest or head explode. The movement is up and down, waves and trends will come and go, it’s like fashion. Who knows what will happen? CC: I leave the last word to you. MH: Many thanks Scott. FUNNY GAMES opens in theaters on March 14th from Warner Independent Group. (Special thanks to Caitlin Speed at Falco Ink)
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