Catching the Big Fish (7 page)

KUBRICK

 

 

 

Stanley Kubrick is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, and he did me a great honor early in my career that really encouraged me. I was working on
The Elephant Man
, and I was at Lee International Studios in England, standing in a hallway. One of the producers of
The Elephant Man
, Jonathan Sanger, brought over some guys who were working with George Lucas and said, “They’ve got a story for you.” And I said, “Okay.”

They said, “Yesterday, David, we were out at Elstree Studios, and we met Kubrick. And as we were talking to him, he said to us, ‘How would you fellas like to come up to my house tonight and see my favorite film?’ ” They said,“That would be fantastic.” They went up, and Stanley Kubrick showed them
Eraserhead
. So, right then, I could have passed away peaceful and happy.

 

I like of all Kubrick’s films, but my favorite may be
Lolita
. I just like the world. I like the characters. I love the performances. James Mason is phenomenal beyond the beyond in this film.

INLAND EMPIRE

UPANISHADS

 

 

 

When we began, there wasn’t any
INLAND EMPIRE
, there wasn’t anything. I just bumped into Laura Dern on the street, discovering that she was my new neighbor. I hadn’t seen her for a long time, and she said, “David, we’ve got to do something together again.” And I said,“We sure do. Maybe I’ll write something for you. And maybe we’ll do it as an experiment for the Internet.” And she said, “Fine.”

So I wrote a fourteen-page monologue, and Laura memorized all fourteen pages, and it was about a seventy-minute take. And she was so phenomenal. I couldn’t release it on the Internet because it was too good, and it drove me crazy, because there was something about this that held a secret for more. And I would ponder over this thing. And something more would emerge. And that would lead to another scene. But I wouldn’t know what in the world it was, and it didn’t really make much sense. But then, another idea would come for another scene. And maybe this one, the third one, was very far removed from the first two, even though the second was quite a jump from the first.

 

One day we were getting ready to shoot a scene called “The Little House,” which involved Laura Dern and my friend Krzysztof Majchrzak, an actor from Poland. Krzysztof arrived in Los Angeles fresh from Poland and the CamerImage gang brought him over to my house.When he got out of the car, he was wearing these goofy glasses, and he smiled and pointed to the glasses.

 

So I got the idea that he planned to wear these things in the scene and I said,“No, no, no, Krzysztof.” And he said, “I need a prop. I need a thing.” So I went into my office and I opened up the cupboard and saw a little piece of broken tile, I saw a rock, and I saw a red lightbulb, but very transparent like a Christmas light. I took these things out and offered him a choice. “Take one of these, Krzysztof ”—and he picked up the bulb. I put the other things away. I wasn’t going to let him have those anymore. I just gave him the bulb. So we went out to the small house and Krzysztof came out from behind a tree with the red bulb in his mouth, and that’s how we shot the scene. So one thing led to another.

 

I really had this feeling that if there’s a Unified Field, there must be a unity between a Christmas tree bulb and this man from Poland who came in wearing these strange glasses. It’s interesting to see how these unrelated things live together. And it gets your mind working. How do these things relate when they seem so far apart? It conjures up a third thing that almost unifies those first two. It’s a struggle to see how this unity in the midst of diversity could go to work.The ocean is the unity and these things float on it.

And I thought,
Well, obviously, there’s got to be a way that these relate—because of this great Unified Field.
There couldn’t be a fragment that doesn’t relate to everything. It’s all kind of one thing, I felt. So, I had high hopes that there would be a unity emerging, that I would see the way these things all related, one to another. But it wasn’t until halfway through that, suddenly, I saw a kind of form that would unite the rest, everything that had come before. And that was a big day. That was a good day, because I could pretty much say that it would be a feature film.

THE NAME

 

 

 

One day, still very early in the process, I was talking to Laura Dern and learned that her now husband, Ben Harper, is from the Inland Empire in Los Angeles. We were talking along, and she mentioned that. I don’t know when it popped up, but I said, “That is the title of this film.” I knew nothing about the film at the time. But I wanted to call it
INLAND EMPIRE
.

 

My parents have a log cabin up in Montana. And my brother, cleaning up there one day, found a scrapbook behind a dresser. He sent it to me, because it was my little scrapbook from when I was five years old, from when I lived in Spokane, Washington. I opened up this scrapbook, and the first picture in it was an aerial view of Spokane. And underneath it said, “Inland Empire.” So I figured I was on the right track.

A NEW WAY TO WORK

 

 

 

Working on
INLAND EMPIRE
was very different.We shot it entirely in digital video, so the level of flexibility and control was amazing.

Also, I didn’t have a script. I wrote the thing scene by scene, without much of a clue where it would end. It was a risk, but I had this feeling that because all things are unified, this idea over here would somehow relate to that idea over there. And I was working with a very great company, StudioCanal in France, who believed in me—enough to let me find my way.

DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY

 

 

 

I don’t do director’s commentary tracks on my DVD releases. I know people enjoy extras, but now, with all the add-ons, the film just seems to have gotten lost. We’ve got to guard the film itself. It should stand alone. You work so hard to get a film a certain way; it shouldn’t be fiddled with. Director’s commentaries just open a door to changing people’s take on the number one thing—the film. I do believe in telling stories surrounding a film, but to comment as it’s rolling is a sacrilege.

Instead, I think you should try to see the whole film through, and try to see it in a quiet place, on as big a screen as you can with as good a sound system as you can. Then you can go into that world and have that experience.

THE DEATH OF FILM

 

 

 

I’m through with film as a medium. For me, film is dead. If you look at what people all over the world are taking still pictures with now, you begin to see what’s going to happen.

I’m shooting in digital video and I love it. I have a Web site and I started doing small experiments for the site with these small cameras, at first thinking they were just like little toys, and they were not very good. But then I started realizing that they’re very
,
very good—for me, at least.

 

You have forty-minute takes, automatic focus. They’re lightweight. And you can see what you’ve shot right away. With film you have to go into the lab and you don’t see what you’ve shot until the next day, but with DV, as soon as you’re done, you can put it into the computer and go right to work. And there are so many tools. A thousand tools were born this morning, and there’ll be ten thousand new tools tomorrow. It happened first in sound. Now everybody’s got ProTools, and you can manipulate these sounds, just fine-tune them unbelievably fast.The same thing’s happening with the image. It gives you so much control.

I started thinking and experimenting. I did some tests from DV to film, because you still have to transfer to film to show in the theater. And although it does not look exactly like it was shot on film, it looks way better than I would have thought.

Once you start working in that world of DV with small, lightweight equipment and automatic focus, working with film seems so cumbersome.These 35mm film cameras are starting to look like dinosaurs to me. They’re huge; they weigh tons. And you’ve got to move them around. There are so many things that have to be done, and it’s all so slow. It kills a lot of possibilities. With DV everything is lighter; you’re more mobile. It’s far more fluid. You can think on your feet and catch things.

And for actors, to get down into a character in the middle of a scene and then suddenly have to stop while we reload the film cameras after ten minutes—often, this breaks the thing. But now you’re rolling along; you’ve got forty minutes down in there. And you can start talking to the actors, and instead of stopping it you can move in and push it. You can even rehearse while you’re shooting, although I start goofing up the soundtrack, because they’ve got to chop out all my words. But many times I am talking to the actors while we are shooting and we are able to get in deeper and deeper.

DV FOR YOUNG FILMMAKERS

 

 

 

My advice is to use the opportunity DV brings to do what you truly believe in. Keep your own voice. Don’t do anything for the sole purpose of impressing any studio or some money people. That always seems to backfire, in my experience. It’s great to go to film school, and you can get a lot of intellectual knowledge there, but learn by doing. And now that costs have fallen, you can really go and do it on your own. Then there are lots of film festivals that you can enter and see if you can catch some distribution or financial help later on.

DV QUALITY

 

 

 

The DV camera I currently use is a Sony PD-150, which is a lower quality than HD. And I
love
this lower quality. I love the small cameras.

The quality reminds me of the films of the 1930s. In the early days, the emulsion wasn’t so good, so there was less information on the screen. The Sony PD result is a bit like that; it’s nowhere near high-def. And sometimes, in a frame, if there’s some question about what you’re seeing, or some dark corner, the mind can go dreaming. If everything is crystal clear in that frame, that’s what it is—that’s
all
it is.

 

And high-def, unfortunately, is so crystal clear. I saw a piece of film on the screen in my mixing room shot in high-def; it was some kind of science fiction. And in the background, I could see wood screws in what was supposed to be a metal console. It’s going to be far more difficult to build sets for high-def.

FUTURE OF CINEMA

 

 

 

How we see films is changing.The video iPod and videos online are changing everything. A tiny little picture, instead of a giant big picture, is going to be how people see films. And the good news: At least people will have their headphones. Sound will become, I think, even more important. But then maybe you can put the iPod in something and squirt the image on a big screen in your home, have subwoofers and beautiful speaker systems and quietness in the house, so that you can fall into this world.

The whole thing is, when those curtains open, and the lights go down, we must be able to go into that world. And in many ways, it’s getting very difficult to go into a world. People talk so much in theaters. And there’s a tiny, crummy little picture. How do you get that experience?

 

I think it’s going to be a bit of a bumpy road. But the possibility is there for very clean pictures—no scratches, no dirt, no water marks, no tearing—and an image that can be controlled in an infinite number of ways. If you take care of how you show a film, it can be a beautiful experience that lets you go into a world.We’re still working out ways for that to happen. But digital is here; the video iPod is here; we’ve just got to get real and roll with the flow.

COMMON SENSE

 

 

 

Most of filmmaking is common sense. If you stay on your toes and think about how to do a thing, it’s right there.

ADVICE

RAMAYANA

 

 

 

Stay true to yourself. Let your voice ring out, and don’t let anybody fiddle with it. Never turn down a good idea, but never take a bad idea. And meditate. It’s very important to experience that Self, that pure consciousness. It’s really helped me. I think it would help any filmmaker. So start diving within, enlivening that bliss consciousness. Grow in happiness and intuition. Experience the joy of doing. And you’ll glow in this peaceful way. Your friends will be very, very happy with you. Everyone will want to sit next to you. And people will give you money!

SLEEP

 

 

 

Sleep is really important. You need to rest the physiology to be able to work well and meditate well. When I don’t get enough sleep, my meditations are duller. You may even dip into sleep at the beginning of your meditation, because you’re settling down. But if you’re well rested, you’ll have a clearer, deeper experience.

 

Maybe even in a sleepy meditation you’re transcending a little. But it’s far better to have a very clear, clean system as you go in. And when you dive, it’s very powerful, very deep.

 

When you meditate, the mind settles down to that deepest level, and the physiology settles down right behind it. And now, through lots of research, they know that in that deepest state in meditation, you’re getting three times deeper rest than that of the deepest sleep. Still, sleep is important to prepare you to get to that level.