INTERVIEW: Ryan Roberts on Oliver Sherman

Ryan Roberts’ feature debut, Oliver Sherman, follows the lives of two US war veterans as they struggle to come to terms with life after war. Franklin has left his old life behind and is happily married with children; but this tranquil life is thrown into turmoil when old friend Sherman shows up on his doorstep in need of bed and board. Sherman has not recovered from the trauma of war, and his presence in Franklin’s home has chilling consequences. Roberts’ film, based on Rachel Ingalls’ short story Veterans, is a tragic and poetic exploration of friendship, trauma, and broken masculinity.

FtF: So what attracted you to Ingalls’ short story?

RR: Well I had spent almost five years on what I thought was going to be my first feature, but it turned out to be too big for a first feature. And there was a momentum behind it in terms of development and financing, in terms of producers and crew attached, so I knew I could get some sort of movie made. I had never attempted adaptation before but I thought that it might provide an easier immediate answer in terms of making a movie; so I started reading short stories by the boat load thinking I could read something and than make it my own if it was a short story. I was in Canada, in my local bookstore Indigo Chapters, and I spotted this book that I had seen over five years earlier in a Village Voice ‘Best of Year’ list. And just in the store I started reading this short story and read the whole thing in one fell swoop and started having ideas then and there. I suggested to my producers that maybe this should be the first feature; so they went and got the rights, and that’s how it happened.

FtF: So you weren’t actively seeking something in the thriller genre? Or something with a military theme?

RR: No, but weirdly it turned out to be quite similar, thematically, to the project I had been working on for the previous few years: in terms of the threat of violence and the notion of damaged masculinity. Those things from the previous project are evident in what I did with this short story.

FtF: What was your experience of adapting the story?

RR: Well it was almost a novella, it was about 70 pages, but this is a very loose adaptation. I didn’t work with the author in any way because I didn’t want to be indebted to her or feel guilty that I was deviating from her initial impulse. So I never talked to her or contacted her, and I don’t know if she has seen the movie. The short story is more literary than the movie; the main character is a bit more cold and removed than he is in my movie. But I think the movie respects what she was doing.

I would say the short story was not inherently cinematic. The majority of scenes are not actually in the short story; they are a visual embodiment of ideas from the short story. What I like about her work is that it is very timeless and you don’t know where it’s set. I embrace that thoroughly in all my work. I try to aim at something lyrical and displaced, and that drives some people nuts but I like it a lot.

FtF: The film is certainly timeless. You avoid any mention of specific times and places for their military service.

RR: Yes that was a conscious decision. There have been so many movies that are political and are specifically about the Gulf, etc. But even if there wasn’t a war on I still would have made this movie. The novella actually takes place during the Korean War, but in the entire 70 pages I think it is only mentioned in one line. I would say her work is not really alluding to any given context. She doesn’t want to make political things, she wants to make timeless things, and that’s why I chose it.

FtF: Did you already have this superb cast in mind? And what was your experience working with them?

RR: Well the first person we cast was Molly Parker. It sounds ridiculous but to get Canadian financing you need to cast a Canadian actor in a lead role. But I thought she was perfect for the role, and I knew she had been on Deadwood with Garrett (Dillahunt) so I thought she could help us get to him as well. Sure enough she did help to facilitate that so I went to meet Garrett and we got along. Strangely the hardest part to cast was the third lead, the husband, because the Canadian financiers were literally counting lines and decided that Molly’s character had fewer lines than Garrett and the Franklin so we needed to cast another Canadian actor in the third role. So in the end we cast Donal (Logue) because it turned out that he had been born in Ottawa and lived there for about two days. But Garrett and Molly had been on Deadwood together and Garrett and Donal had been on Life together about a month prior to shooting. So I didn’t know them but they all knew each other well.

FtF: Did any of them bring anything specific to the table regarding their characters?

RR: Well, you would have to ask them. I mean I know that Garrett lived next door to a Vietnam vet when he was younger, and he said that a lot of what’s in that role is what he witnessed from that guy back in Seattle, where he is originally from. We had about five days of rehearsal, and it was sort of frightening for me because I had never done rehearsal before, so there was no one giving their all in terms of rehearsing scenes, it was more about the four of us reading through the script and talking through it, discussing what things meant and making sure we were all on the same path. I would say that Garrett, especially, was so disciplined and such a gentleman at all times during the making of the film. Nothing like his character at all! If every movie I make could have Garrett in it I would have him in it.

FtF: There is an unseen TV set playing in the background during some of the domestic scenes. What was that about?

RR: It is a movie without any real soundtrack; it is just natural sounds. So we were trying to figure out how you build tension with background sounds, and also how you fill the background without it being too predominant. But in that specific instance there is no hidden message or specific reason for that track; it was just an attempt to fill space without using some giant Spielberg score. I think it is more unnerving when there is no score and there are just background sounds. I embrace that, although it makes the sound design all the more difficult because you need to fill the spaces and stop things from being flat or boring. I wanted to keep things quiet, I didn’t want a score, we wanted to work with diegetic sound. People expect a score now, so to withhold that creates another type of tension.

FtF: So what are your plans for the future?

RR: Well I spent five years on what I thought would be my first feature. We had a whole crew for it, government funding for development, producers, etc. All of that ended up going into this so this film actually got made quite quickly. At the moment I sort of feel like I am recovering from this. Toronto was the festival premiere and that was almost a year ago. But at the moment I am still concentrating on this and we will see if the other project gets off the ground soon.

INTERVIEW: Alma Har'el & Joe Lindquist on Bombay Beach

Alma Har’el is one of the most interesting freshman filmmakers of this year’s Berlinale. Her exciting debut, Bombay Beach, tells the story of a forgotten community of misfits and youngsters living on the east shore of the Salton Sea, deep in the California desert. The most immediately striking thing about this leonine filmmaker, hailing from Israel but based in Los Angeles, is her exclamation mark plume of tousled fiery hair. But as this feature documentary suggests, there are more vivid colours and jolts of energy lurking within. I had the good fortune to spend a chilly Berlin evening discussing the film with Har’el, along with her editor Joe Lindquist.

ND: So you shot the film entirely on your own?

AH: That’s right, I shot it on a Canon Vixia HD. It’s just a consumer camera, you can buy it for like $600 at Best Buy. I was alone out there, with the headphones on and the boom in one hand, holding the camera up to my face the whole time because it didn’t have a viewfinder and it was impossible to see the LCD screen in the sunlight. And it was 45°c out there! So it was sort of crazy; but it was so much fun hanging out with them for four months; it was like a second childhood. They are all so interesting, and they just became my friends. I still go to visit them every few weeks.

ND: It is clear from watching the film that you were really looking for the human aspect: telling the story of people you know, and not pretending not to know them?

AH: Well this was my first film, and I didn’t really have any interest in looking for the ‘drama’ as many documentary directors might. Like when Red had his stroke, some people might have thought, “Great! He’s in the hospital!” but that really wasn’t my state of mind. I mean there is a lot more stuff that I could have put in the film – there are paedophiles and meth addicts and hookers – but I didn’t think it was necessary or relevant to what I was doing. When we were editing we slowly noticed that there were just certain things we weren’t going to include. It became clearer and clearer what our stories were. While we were editing we brought in people to give us notes, and one quite famous editor said, “What are you? A filmmaker or a social worker?” I thought, “Well I don’t think I’m either of those things.”

ND: Was it a conscious decision to concentrate on the courage and strength of the community, and ignore the failure of outsiders to help them?

AH: You know, I don’t think it is as easy as it looks. It’s not as if there is someone that was supposed to be helping them. When I first came to America I thought everybody only cared about money; but the US actually has more philanthropy than anywhere else, so there are tons of organisations in the area that try to help educate, and give food, and do all sorts of things. Of course there are things that aren’t justified, and capitalism and greed do exist. I mean this area has just been completely forgotten, and they have been left there, and somebody should take care of it of course; but it’s just not what this film was about. What matters is how these people that I care about deal with their lives. And I think they are very heroic the way they go about it, and the dignity that they manage to find in their situation, and the love that they have, it is really beautiful.

ND: You do make a more overt statement on one specific social issue in the US: the pharmaceutical industry.

AH: Well I am not against pharmaceuticals at all, in fact I am on pharmaceuticals; but I think that the problem, as with most things, is how people use them. In America, things gets out of control and lose perspective. When I arrived there I was shocked and wanted to find out how it was possible for a child as young as Benny to be given so much lithium! There is so little research, and no one even knows if these drugs will help such a young mind because it is still developing. It is really tragic, but I tell myself that Benny’s spirit is so strong, and his imagination is so strong, I have faith that he is going to be stronger than the medication. I think it is sad because now, in America, one in every four children is medicated, and the children that are most medicated are actually in poor areas, and they don’t even get therapy with it.

ND: One of the most noticeable things about the film is the magical dance sequences that you created with the people in the community. Did you already have that idea before you started? Or was that something you thought of while you were there?

AH: I had an idea in my mind to do a film like that for about a year, but I just couldn’t find the right context. Then when I got to Bombay Beach I thought that these people could really get something out of it… and they might just be bored enough to agree! And also I knew that the location itself could pull it off. I believe that, in life in general, when contrasting feelings are embraced they can create beauty. So sadness and happiness, and loneliness and celebration; they can come together to create a more rounded feeling of what life is like. And I felt it so strongly when I got to Bombay Beach: it is surrounded by dead things but also bursting with life, with all these children running around with the dead fish. It is all together there, so I just wanted to try to take it all in, that was my journey.

ND: Can you both talk a bit about the process of discovering this fairly personal and pioneering style of documentary storytelling?

AH: There were a lot of people that wanted to edit this, and some of them had a lot more experience than Joe, but there was something about Joe where we both felt we were going to discover this thing together. When we had a rough cut we brought more experienced people in to give us notes, and everyone said they thought it was beautiful but they weren’t sure that it was working because they had never seen anything like it before. It was definitely a difficult process working out what we liked, and then holding onto it when we got told it wasn’t working.

JL: Yeah, after that visit we were all sort of down because we had been trying to make a point of not using any standard conventions, but people didn’t really get it. One of the first things I saw that Alma had put together was a rough assembly of the kids in the kitchen making fun of Benny, followed by “the Benny dance”. The essence of what it became in the film was all intact at that early stage, and for me that was the moment I knew I wanted to be a part of this, because of how unique it was. The dances are a reflection of what has just happened, they are birthed from the actual story, so I knew that if we could do that throughout the whole movie, which was Alma’s intuition, for me that was incredible.

ND: One of the people listed in the ‘Thanks to’ credits is Werner Herzog. How did that come about?

AH: Werner’s wife, Lene Herzog, is a beautiful photographer and a good friend of mine, and I showed them the film when it was finished. He gave me the funniest notes! They were mainly technical notes about the sound; but he loved the film and thought it was perfect the way it was. The people that came into the screenings would always say, “but what is this film about? Just put it in a logline.” But when I showed it to Werner he was the first person that just said, “Its about the American Dream, the broken American Dream.” And of course he was right.

ND: So you already had a relationship with Zach Condon [of the band Beirut] before you began the project? What was his involvement?

AH: That’s one of the best relationships I have. He is just a beautiful, inspiring, artistic person, and a very good friend. I am a huge fan of his on every level, and I have learnt a lot from him. So we did it like this: first I listened to all the albums, and I chose all the songs that I thought could maybe work, which was probably about fifteen or twenty songs. And then he sent me a hard drive with all the songs that I had picked in separated tracks (so each instrument in splits) and said, “Do whatever you want with it”. That was such a trusting thing to do and we were so thankful. So when we had a rough cut I went to New Mexico for a week and stayed with Zach. He has a studio there so everyday we would go and work on a scene and he would just write stuff and record it on the spot. And we went to his parent’s house in Santa Fe with microphones and recorded stuff on this organ that he used to play as a kid.

ND: Do you think your unusual decision to incorporate music video and magical realist elements into the film could attract a slightly different audience of music video fans?

AH: Yeah, perhaps. There is such a problem with music videos and with the industry in general. I loved doing them, but at a certain point I realised there is less and less room for them. I hear things are actually improving again now, but I took a break from that and realised I needed to find a new way to incorporate music videos into my work without needing to do it for a label. Because it is still a legitimate language.

ND: You finished the film two days before arriving in Berlin. What are your plans after this?

AH: Well we have already been invited to 20 more festivals after our Berlin screenings, and hopefully more will come along. So I think we will just go around and show it at film festivals and see if people like it. It’s not going to be easy; it’s not going to be a film that people jump on because they cant see how they would make money off it right away. But if people write about it and talk about it and get interested in it, then maybe it will make it to the cinema.

Bombay Beach screened in the Panorama section of the Berlinale and will certainly screen at a variety of festivals around the world this year. As for a general release – it would be a triumph for our languishing film medium if distributors could summon up the courage to bring this film to a cinema near you.

PRESS CONFERENCE: Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky)

‘Black Swan’ is the story of a prim Prima Ballerina (Natalie Portman) who is forced to expose her dark side in order to maintain her position as the face of the New York City Ballet. The film marks another development in Darren Aronofsky’s startling career: combining a unique take on the thriller genre with captivating, choreographic camerawork and excellent performances, this film is sure to cause a few ripples come award season. The following press conference was attended by Aronofsky, two of the film’s stars – Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel – and producer Scott Franklin, and was chaired by Screen International’s Mike Goodridge.

INTERVIEW: Derek Cianfrance on Blue Valentine

One of the standout hits of Cannes and Sundance, ‘Blue Valentine’ is a gritty and infectious portrayal of a failed marriage. Director Derek Cianfrance has spent the past twelve years perfecting the film, stripping away the layers of sentiment to reveal a truly raw and original domestic drama. FAN THE FIRE met up with the director at the London Film Festival…

INTERVIEW: Matt Reeves and Kodi Smit-McPhee on Let Me In

When news that a US remake of Swedish horror hit ‘Let The Right One In’ was going ahead, many were anxious to see what Hollywood would do with the nuanced and genre-bending original. Most probably weren’t expecting ‘Cloverfield’ helmer Matt Reeves to take on the challenge, but his remake is respectful of the original while also ploughing new turf, and amping up the horror for a US audience. FAN THE FIRE met with the film’s director Matt Reeves and young star Kodi Smit-McPhee in advance of the film’s release…

INTERVIEW: Breck Eisner on The Crazies

With a few successful TV projects (including an episode of Steven Spielberg’s Taken) and a big budget action feature (Sahara) under his belt, Breck Eisner piqued the interest of a somewhat unexpected crowd with his hit 2009 horror flick The Crazies. The film, which came stamped with Romero’s seal of approval, delighted many horror fans and made the industry sit up and take note of this new force in ‘Genre’ filmmaking. After a few false rumours (including a supposed remake of Cronenberg’s The Brood) Eisner has officially announced a slate of exciting remakes and adaptions, including Flash Gordon and Escape from New York. Fan the Fire jumped at the chance to interview this exciting and prolific new horror filmmaker…

INTERVIEW: Matt Harlock & Paul Thomas on American: The Bill Hicks Story

Bill Hicks is one of the most renowned cult figures in the world of comedy, adored across the world for his unique brand of astoundingly filthy yet spell-bindingly poetic satire. But relatively little is known about his personal life, and in the fifteen years since his untimely death, only a smattering of short documentaries and live recordings has kept his memory alive. Well Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have put this glaring injustice to rights with their passionately detailed and evocative feature documentary, American: The Bill Hicks Story. They were granted unprecedented access to the Hicks’ estates mountainous archive of unseen footage and photographs collected by the wild man himself throughout his career. They have been given what may well be the last say on one of America’s most important spokespersons, and they have proved more than worthy of this huge responsibility.

FtF: How did a project like this leapfrog LA, New York, Chicago, etc and end up at your door in London?

MH: Bill is always someone that was thought of as culturally significant in the UK, and for some reason there had never been a full length telling of his story. There was a short documentary made shortly after he died which was just over 35 minute film. But it struck us that Bill had this amazing life which has this wonderful, almost Hollywood, arc to it in terms of his overcoming the drink and drugs and becoming very successful and then getting terminal cancer at the age of 32. It seemed that that story was something that people needed to know about because Bill lead this real life of meaning, and he was also a groundbreaking comedian who changed the way a lot of people saw what comedy could do. So I think that it was something we both believed that, as a story, had a wonderful aspect to it, over and above any personal interest that we have in Bill

PT: And it was one of the great, unmade bio-pics as well so we were fortunate that it came along for us to pitch at channels. Then it’s a case of making something that stands out. This began as part of a series for Channel 4. There had been a few documentaries in previous years, such as The Kid Stays in the Picture, that had used a more basic version of the animation technique; and Touching the Void was also this hugely cinematic documentary that didn’t feel like a generic documentary, so already we knew that the documentary form was evolving at that stage. And it was becoming more cost-effective to do it on computers, you didn’t need to employ Hollywood Studio or the more expensive Post-Production houses here [in Soho], regular animators can now do this. So lots of things all came together at that time to make this possible.

MH: And also, the Hicks family hadn’t spoken for 12 years. They had had offers but I think that they were very wary of going with people whose motives weren’t quite clear, and wanted to make lots of money. So they were quite cautious but I think they also felt that now is the time to put this story down as a historical record. They knew Bill’s story was important and they needed to tell it. So all of these things were coming together at the same time and we were lucky enough to be in the middle of that.

FtF: And you had organised Bill Hicks tribute evenings in London before hadn’t you?

MH: Yes, we had done some live events which involved comedians and then footage of Bill which I had sourced on the internet, but this was back when you bought VHS tapes. The idea of that was just a tribute night, ten years after he died, and that was when we first got in touch with Bill’s family so we had been in touch with them before taking a film idea to them. We just wanted them to know what was going on in the UK, and how their son was still being thought of. And that was our first contact with Bill’s family.

FtF: What was it like sifting through Bill’s enormous archives of footage and photographs? Did you already know what you were about to find or was that a voyage of discovery for you?

PT: We didn’t know at all. The animation side of things developed as we went along, so we just had to start at the beginning and build on it as the story developed. We knew it was going to work as an approach but we didn’t know, scene by scene, what it was going to involve. We didn’t know how much or how little the photographs would relate to the story we were telling; and as the story develops there are more and more constructed scenes that have to be put together to tell the story. All the interviews were conducted right at the beginning, but then you job is to uncover the real story. So you cant go in with preconceptions of what people have said and what you have read. Especially with Bill’s family where there is a very polarised view that has been presented before. The job is to put all of that out of your mind and really find out what the truth is.

MH: In terms of the archive, there was some amazing stuff that we found. We were aware that there would be some unseen footage, and a lot of the material is either Bill’s personal tapes that he had got out of the back of VHS camcorders, some of which were over 30 years old, or stuff that his brother Steve shot, and that’s the sort of shaky Handicam stuff towards the end. But I think the most affecting stuff was some of the voice-recorded tapes that Bill made for himself. He was alone quite a lot, and when he had no one to talk to he quite often spoke to a tape-recorded. And just the idea of that 18-year-old kid in LA scared about whether he is any good at comedy is very touching; and also, in a weird way, we felt that Bill hadn’t made that tape with any specific use in mind, and we were the ones that ended up using it so that was very strange. It actually felt, on some level, like he had actually made that tape for us; and it felt very personal. Obviously are job is to make sure everybody else gets to hear it as well because it gives a lot of insight into who he was as a performer and a person. But that was certainly one of the most interesting bits of archive, that these real little personal messages that Bill had left on little tape recorders, which were lying in boxes in his mum’s spare bedroom.

FtF: What was your experience of working with the Hicks family? Did you get a sense that they were trying to guide your depiction of Bill? Or were they as open as memory would permit?

PT: Well that’s kind of our job as filmmakers… to make sure that nobody ‘guides’ you. We had several days with each person and they were deep and emotional interviews. The family were very open about everything really. They were aware that there had been earlier depictions of Bill’s childhood, and obviously what you have is the mists of time, so you are asking people to remember things from a long time ago. But there was never any sense that they were really trying to portray him differently. But how did that seem to you?

FtF: I got the impression that they were entirely honest in their recollections of Bill; he has a public persona of being quite volatile and corrosive, and so I thought perhaps his friends and family might be overly defensive of his character, but they clearly see no reason to hide elements of his character or try to portray them in an insincere way. He was who he was, and the people who knew him loved him for it and clearly still do.

PT: Well yes, and you also have to remember that they have been portrayed by other people in the past. There certainly were words had in that household and Bill was certainly a fiery teenager, but with only that side of the story being told by friends who saw him shouting with his parents… I mean all teenagers shout with their parents! And this is certainly something that I have been aware of throughout my career, is that there is often a lot of pressure from broadcasters to go for the sensational. I mean everybody cried during these interviews, but we haven’t just pasted that across the screen. Now I know full well that if we had done that in a Sky doc and Sky had seen that footage, they would have insisted that I have everybody crying on screen. So obviously, if you’ve got a few lines about a kid shouting at his parents, that’s what you’re going to put in. But then all you end up doing is distorting the real picture, and your job as a filmmaker is to present an accurate and rounded overall picture, and that’s what we did.

FtF: Was it difficult to track down any of the people from Bill’s past that hadn’t been involved with his family and friends for a long time?

PT: Yes that was certainly an issue at first because we were just two unknown British guys. I suppose a lot of the early work happened with the family. It was a case of winning trust because I think they had a fairly strong idea of who we were and so they were willing to talk. Then it was a case of us building the project and getting broadcasters involved, because the family are approached by people all the time so they want to know that a project is realistic. Mary really helped by letting other people know that the family were getting involved with this project, but it still wasn’t until the last minute that everything really came together; literally the day before we flew a couple of people weren’t decided and it was only when we were on our way that they agreed. But of course what happens then is they meet you and you start doing interviews and you build up a proper bond, and trust gets established when they find out who you really are.

We did the interviews in quite an unusual way because we didn’t take any crew in, it was just the two of us. Because these people aren’t celebrities, and it’s very easy to put people off when you turn up with crew and lights, so instead we went for a very naturalistic set-up, with people sitting at home in their own environments. And we even started recording without the camera, so it’s just pointed at the floor, just to get people talking, and then we introduced the camera more slowly, which is why it comes across so naturalistically, but it is very easy to blow that.

FtF: How much did Bill inform your opinion? Did you look back at his famous routines and find you had a new perspective on them after interviewing his relatives and sifting through his archives of personal footage and pictures?

PT: Well, everything in the film started with the material on stage, and I think it is fairly natural that that informs everything that is happening. One thing we had the benefit of was watching scores more performances than other people have seen. And often it’s the bits between the well-known routines where you really feel Bill, and a lot of those moments have ended up in the film. The essential job is to be true to that person; we obviously had these ten people telling the story, but the job is to convey who this enigmatic character is, and that counts for both the onstage material and the interviews. There is a subtle job being done by everything and so when you leave the theatre you can come out with a very strong idea of who a person is. Showing what Bill’s comedy was about, and who he was as a person, informs most of the storytelling. You start with a much longer version of the story that isn’t as coherent, and as you edit the thing down you cut the bits where Bill’s character isn’t coming across as strongly or the story is wandering of the track of his comedy developing; and the more you cut it down the more distilled a picture you get of this guy.

FtF: Did you ever worry about making a film that would appeal much more to Bill Hicks’ fans than the wider public?

PT: Well that is the advantage of being independent, in that you are free from that sort of pressure. I suppose there was pressure early on to include celebrities, but we knew that wasn’t the right approach because we were going for the people that really knew Bill. But one thing we were aware of from the start is that this film had to work for fans who already love Bill and for the people who have no idea who he is. But that is quite an unconscious thing that happens when you are forming every scene. You are just automatically aware of an audience and you are crafting it for that wider audience. There are things that particularly play to fans or play to the uninitiated; but it’s really just a great archetypal story, and our job is just to tell the story properly so that it will work for both camps.

FtF: Have there been any big surprises in terms of people’s reactions to the film at the North American festivals you have been to?

PT: Well one interesting thing is that we took a pole at the beginning of a screening and about a quarter of the people said they knew Bill quite well, so that means three quarters of the viewers had come along either to find out more or because they had heard it was a good film. And that’s great because our job here is to get Bill known on a much wider map, and the festivals certainly seem to suggest that that is working. I was actually kind of expecting some kind of backlash, because the film received so many good reviews up front I was just expecting there to be a journalistic camp that reacted against that. I mean some people haven’t liked the animation and some people have thought it was too long, but overall it was a great reaction and people have told us they have never seen reviews like that for a documentary… ever!

MH: We have always been quite keen to find out what the audience make up was in each of the screenings and so quite often we’d do a poll and just ask how many people in the audience would consider themselves to be either a fan of Bill’s or someone that knew him quite well. That number has been fairly consistent, between 25 and 35% in the US (at the London Film Festival it was considerably higher), and that is very encouraging because that means people have either seen the reviews or the description of the film and decided it was something they wanted to see, or they have been dragged along by somebody who already knew Bill. And that is one of the stated aims or goals for the film is to try and get his word more popularised, and so that has been very encouraging for us to see the diversity of the audience make up. It’s not just for Bill fans, there is a very wide range of people coming to see the film.

FtF: Everybody talks about Bill’s performance at Just For Laughs in Montreal in 1991 as being a watershed moment for stand-up comedy. What are your memories of that event?

MH: Well I personally was just someone who had seen bits of this guy on TV, and then this full length performance, which really blew everyone away, and I think that it wasn’t just the material he was talking about – specifically the Gulf War, which at the time really made people, and especially English comedians, sit back in amazement – it was also the performance skill was so crafted and so adept. He was able to move between really filthy material and really quite sophisticated political ideas, and he could just seamlessly take you on these wonderful flights of fancy. I don’t think people were really ready for him; it wasn’t as if he had developed and grown in the UK comedy scene. People had no idea who he was when he first came over and he suddenly lit everybody up like a Christmas tree. It really was something that people were talking about. I remember people coming up to me asking if I has seen this guy, and that isn’t something that happens much anymore. People used to always talk about The Play for Today and Cathy Come Home and people would say “don’t you remember when…” about specific moments in television history, and everybody had seen them. And that Montreal performance was certainly one of those moments.

PT: We spoke to Bruce Hills, who runs Just for Laughs festival, and he recounted that at that time they were looking to do these one man shows in Montreal but they didn’t know who was going to do them. And Bruce Hills saw Bill in New York, doing over an hour of material on stage, and it just blew him away. And he made a phone call and said, “Right, I think I’ve got the guy.” And Bruce counts that as his proudest moment in terms of the world of comedy. And then Tiger Aspect were over there doing stuff for Channel 4 and saw Bill and got to know him there. And they then brought him back to the UK.

FtF: Web 2.0, and the rise of Youtube, has facilitated a huge increase in the number of people familiar with Bill’s work as snippets of his more famous shows receive millions of hits online. Was this a consideration for you as you started working on the project?

MH: Well I’m not sure that we thought about it in terms of now being a “good time”. I think this film is something that always needed to be made, because of who Bill was and because of the legacy and work that he left behind, and because of how important he is on a cultural timeline. Obviously it is gratifying for us that his most popular clips are getting 1.7 million hits because it means that more people get a chance to find out about him, but I don’t think we considered that as part of the reason for doing the film. It was something that sort of happened in tandem; the rise of Youtube was happening while the project was being made. But the great thing, as you say, is that it gives people a chance to delve into a bit of Bill in bite-sized chunks. I think that is something that Youtube does very well, if you are looking to try and find ten of fifteen new things and you’ve got an hour and you can watch two or three minutes of lots of different stuff. And I think we are hoping that people who have been intrigued enough to watch a four-minute long clip on marketing and advertising might now come along and find out a bit more about the man that came up with those routines and where he was in his life and what may have inspired him to go and do that.

INTERVIEW: Samuel Maoz on Lebanon

Samuel Maoz, like so many young men of his generation living in Israel in the early 1980s, had his life turned upside down by the 1982 Lebanon War. He stayed quiet on the subject for over two decades, but the advent of the Second Lebanon War in 2006 inspired him to take up a camera and document his feelings. The resulting film, Lebanon, is a startlingly visceral and torrid tale depicting the breakdown of morality and humanity on the battlefield, all filmed within the confines of one Israeli tank. The film has become a universal hit with critics and festivals, and picked up the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2009.

FtF: Ok, we don’t have long so I’ll jump straight in. Why did you feel you had to get this film made? Was it for a sense of personal catharsis or because you wanted to comment on Israeli society?

SM: Firstly, for me it was a kind of need. It was a need to unload and to expose the war as it was, without all the heroic stuff and the rest of the rubbish, but it was mainly a need – not necessarily to forgive myself – but to find some understanding. I had a responsibility, and in a way my responsibility was inevitable, a part of my destiny. You can see in the ‘banana grove’ sequence [where a timid gunman fails to kill a Lebanese suicide bomber who then proceeds to kill many Israeli troops] that if you pull or do not pull the trigger, it is the same; you are a kind of executor. But in the end there is a huge difference between knowing that you didn’t have a choice to the fact that you feel guilty. But still it wasn’t enough for me, and I can explain why, if I may?

Ftf: Absolutely.

SM: They used to call us, in Israel, the ‘Lebanon generation’. We were in a very weird situation: many of our parents and teachers came from Europe, from the German camps, and they were totally unstable. I can remember my schoolteacher, with a number on her arm, shouting hysterically at us that we needed to fight for our country and die for it if necessary because everybody wants to terminate us. Maybe she had her own reasons for feeling this way, but we were normal boys, born in Israel, and all that was in our heads was the Tel Aviv beach and girls. But we were brainwashed so, at the beginning of the 80s to come back from war with your two hands, two legs, ten fingers, without any burn marks on your face, and to start complaining that you “feel bad inside” was almost unforgivable. They told us, “say thank you that you are alive, we were in the camps!” In the end the turning point for me was during the 2006 Lebanon War, because suddenly I found myself sitting in front of the television watching the news reports and I realised that I hadn’t spoken for 25 years, and now our kids are dealing with the same Lebanon again. When it is just a concern for you, you can pass it; but when it is touching your children, that is something else entirely. That is the red line. I now had a totally different motivation: I am not complaining any more, the feeling is no longer about me and my problems and my needs and memories and pain. Suddenly I realised that if I can find a way to create an effective feeling, maybe I can actually save lives here and there.

FtF: So this isn’t an overtly political film? You are trying to change things using an emotional, rather than a political, story?

SM: Well yes, I chose not to do a political film because to do a political film from Lebanon, or any anti-War film, is to do a politically correct film. If you want to change something – and when I made Lebanon I wasn’t thinking about Venice or the Golden Lion – if you want to change people’s opinions and try to do this by talking to their heads in a political way, usually you will achieve the opposite, their opinions will become more extreme, because nobody wants to hear that they are bad. So you try to talk to people in another way, through the stomach and the heart. If you are a mother you wont care if the soldier is Jewish or Arabic, right or wrong, but you will care if they are a child because it could be your child. I would prefer to change one mother’s opinion than satisfy one hundred intellectual journalists sitting around Europe. And in the end this is the real meaning of politics: to change something and not just say nice slogans.

FtF: Could you talk a bit about how the film was received in Israel?

SM: Well the reaction was very interesting. When the audience was younger, the reaction was more positive, and when the audience was older the reaction was less positive. Obviously this is preferable to the opposite, because the youth are the future and the older generations are the past. And I really can understand it: the older generation had their wars [1948 and 1967] because they felt they had no choice and they really believed that everybody wanted to terminate them so they had a lot of motivation and they won against all odds. When we had our war [the 1982 Lebanon War] it was ‘so so’, we were stuck in the middle. But when this young, global ‘iPhone’ generation had their war [the 2006 Lebanon War], with the best military equipment and technology, they lost, because they don’t have the motivation anymore. So you can understand why the older generations feel that this is not the time for a film like this because maybe mothers wont send their children to the army. And the younger generations want to search for a normal life. They have seen people like themselves in London and Paris, they are connected to the world, so they wonder why Western youngsters can have normality but not them? But certainly in the end the reaction was more positive than negative, and I suppose winning the Golden Lion at Venice helped it because it gave a certain respect to Israeli cinema and gave us an important prize so it helped the film to be accepted.

FtF: What are your feelings towards the likes of Ken Loach and Bridget Fonda trying to boycott Israeli films at the Toronto Festival?

SM: Well firstly, we arrived in Toronto one day after receiving the Golden Lion so that perhaps spoiled their party because suddenly an Israeli film came with such an important prize. If you want my opinion, it is silly because the first step if you want to change something is to talk about it; and if you shut my mouth, nothing will happen. In the end, Israeli directors are rarely from the ‘Right’ side of the political map so it is stupid I guess.

FtF: What inspired you to film entirely within the tank? Was it a purely aesthetic decision?

SM: Well I knew that the issue was not the plot, and even the events that really happened are just the symptoms. The real issue is the burning soul, what is going on inside the soldiers’ souls. And I remember asking myself, how can I show what is going on inside these soldiers’ souls? It felt almost like a student project. But then I realised that the only way to explain it or understand it is not with the head, but as I mentioned earlier, with the stomach and the heart, to ‘feel’ it. And in order to achieve such an emotional understanding you must create a very strong experience. So I told myself, I will put you inside the tank, in such a way that you totally identify with the characters. You see only what they see, you know only what they know. I tried to ensure that the viewer wouldn’t feel like an objective audience member watching the plot unfolding in front of them; I wanted them to feel it, to see the cross hairs in front of them and see the victims staring straight into their eyes, because this is the only way to understand it. It was a totally conceptual reason. And of course I wanted to stick to my truth, because if I put the truth in front of your eyes it must be the total truth. And my truth was inside the tank, if I showed anything outside the tank I would have had to create fiction.

FtF: If you had gone outside the tank you would immediately have had to make an editorial decision about which elements of war to show and which to leave out, whereas within the tank you could show everything?

SM: Well this is the beauty of cinema. By the end of the film you feel like you have really been inside the tank, but technically if you look at shot after shot, there is not even one shot where you see the whole interior of a tank. You see maybe five or six pieces of iron and a few liquids. So in the end there is no tank, I am giving you twenty percent of the tank and all the rest is imagination. In the cinema, 1 + 1 is much more than 2. It is more than the shots; it is the spirit.

Lebanon is released in UK cinemas on 14th May 2010.