Holy Motors introduction and post-screening discussion with David Pendleton and Leos Carax.

Transcript

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

John Quackenbush  0:00 

February 23, 2013. The Harvard Film Archive screened Holy Motors. This is the audio recording of the introduction and the discussion that followed. Participating are HFA programmer David Pendleton and filmmaker Leos Carax.

David Pendleton  0:16  

It’s a great pleasure to welcome you here tonight, to be here to watch Holy Motors with a conversation with the great filmmaker Leos Carax afterwards. Let me just gather my thoughts after doing my lion taming act outside. I just wanna make a few introductory remarks, primarily to thank the people who have made this program possible. These two screenings, tonight and tomorrow night, with Mr. Carax in person, mark the end of a two-weekend retrospective of Mr. Carax’s films that we presented here at the HFA. In a career that spans just about thirty years, Mr. Carax has made five and a half films, which makes each one of those all the more precious. And we've been very happy to be able to present all of them to local audiences.

For their help in making this program possible, first of all, I want to thank the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I always want to say, “I want to thank the Academy,” because they've given us support for our visiting artists’ series. But very especially, I want to thank our invaluable partners in all the French cinema that we present here at the Harvard Film Archive. And that is the Consulate General of France, here in Boston. And I want to thank, particularly, Anne Miller in the cultural affairs office and her colleague, Eric Jausseran, as well as the Consul General Fabien Fieschi. A number of these people are here. Can we please give them a round of applause?

[APPLAUSE]

We're very grateful. We're very lucky that France, which is one of the great filmmaking nations, has a government that understands that French cinema deserves support, and cinema in general deserves support. For their help with this program in particular, we've gotten some really nice prints from the French Foreign Ministry. Thanks to Delphine Chilese in the French film office and Muriel Guidoni in New York. I want to thank Florence Charmasson at Unifrance for their support with Mr. Carax's travel. He's somebody who doesn't like to make a great number of public appearances. And so we're very grateful that he's agreed to come here and we're grateful for the support of these people. And finally, I also want to thank Marie Losier at the French Institute Alliance Française in New York, who's arranged a joint retrospective. And Mr. Carax will be going there after being here. Another brief round of applause to the rest of our partners, please. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

So without further ado, Holy Motors. I won't say too much about the film. It's a mysterious film. And one of the great things about it is discovering its surprises as you go. It's Carax’s first film in thirteen years. But it marks a really joyous and vital return to cinema. It's also his first film that he has made digitally. And he's had many eloquent things to say about digital imagery versus cinema. Perhaps we're going to talk about that afterwards. But I won't say much, as there are many ways to see the film. Many different entry points. You can see it as a series of episodes that demonstrate the range of emotions and sensations and genres that the cinema is capable of. You can see it as a futuristic film about a strange kind of performer. But it can also be seen as a film about big questions. Like, how did we get here? Where do we go when we leave? And the way that cinema can model or reflect our understanding of those questions. I think it's no exaggeration to say that the film's ambitions are as large as that. But above all, it's an enjoyable, frightening, silly, funny, upsetting film. Enjoy and stick around for some questions with Monsieur Carax afterwards. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

John Quackenbush  4:01  

And now, David Pendleton.

David Pendleton  4:04 

First of all, I want to thank you so much for coming here. The film came out almost a year ago, and I know that you've been doing a lot of traveling and doing a lot of talking about the film. And we're very grateful for your willingness to come here and talk to us as well.

I’ll start by asking a couple of questions, and then we can open it up to the folks in the audience. Your previous feature film before this was Pola X in 1999. And then, you made Merde, one episode out of a three-episode film a few years ago. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you began this project. Whether Merde was in some ways, sort of a warm up? Did you have this project in mind already when you made Merde, since the lead character in that reappears in this film as well? Or if not, then what was the genesis of Holy Motors?

Leos Carax  5:13  

When I made Merde, no, I didn't have this project. I had many projects that I didn't make in the last twenty years.

David Pendleton  5:28  

John, can you turn up the mics, please?

Leos Carax  5:31  

And I think this film came from—mostly from—the rage of not being able to make films. So the last film I didn't make was supposed to be in London. And when I decided not to make it—I couldn't find the casting—I thought, “If I don't make a film very fast, I don't know what's gonna happen to me.” So I had to make a film very fast. And to make a film very fast, I remembered the experience of this little film we made in Tokyo three years ago. And I thought I would do this in the same way, which is make a film fast, cheap, which means digital. Digital means not watching the dailies, for me. If I watch dailies I want to remake everything, so it slows me down. And it meant shooting in Paris. It meant, basically, mostly filming this actor Denis Lavant, because, well, he's the actor I know the best and he's the only actor I can ask anything.

David Pendleton  6:58  

Denis Lavant plays the lead character in all of your films, except for Pola X, and people have often written about Denis Lavant in your films as if he were sort of an alter ego for the filmmaker. But here, in this film, we see you yourself in the prologue to the film. Was there a certain decision to appear yourself along with Denis Lavant? And can you say a little bit about your appearance in the prologue?

Leos Carax  7:31 
Well, because it was a small film, I started it like a home movie. So I'm there in the beginning with my dog. And then you see my daughter behind a window, and then I pass the film to Denis.

David Pendleton  7:54  

But we open with a roomful of spectators who seem to be sleeping or dead. And it begins as if the cinema is in sort of, perhaps, a state of crisis or has perhaps already died. I mean, the film is about, so much about death and rebirth, I'm wondering to what extent that grew out of your reflections about the state of filmmaking as well? Or filmgoing?

Leos Carax  8:26  

I didn't see the film as a film about cinema. Maybe it became more of that, maybe. I knew the language of the film would be cinema, but I never thought of it as about cinema. But like every project, they always start not with ideas, but with images. Two, three images and two, three feelings. And I feel I have to edit them together, these feelings and these images. And one of the images I had was the public. The public seen from the front, which you never see. Nobody's ever, you know... nobody sees it. I see it obviously, after a screening like now, but you're not watching a film. There's no film–  Like King Vidor, when you do see that at the end, you know, The Crowd. Or you see the public and they're laughing. And it's very powerful. And so, I guess, because I hadn't made a film for a long time, and it was maybe because I was afraid. I felt I had to be in it myself, to introduce the film, to get rid of the fear.

David Pendleton  10:04  

There's another part in the middle of the film. The conversation between Monsieur Oscar, played by Denis Lavant, and the man with the birthmark, played by Michel Piccoli, where there's this question of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. And if there are no more beholders, the question is, is that then the end of beauty? And there seems to be this concern that maybe there aren't spectators anymore or that people aren't looking at beauty.

Leos Carax  10:38  

Yeah, this scene, first I was going to play that part. But then I thought it would be confusing because this character is played by the French actor Michel Piccoli. He’s not a filmmaker. We don't know what he is. He could be, you know, he looks like a dictator or like a mafia person. And then I hesitated to keep the sequence because it's the only sequence that names “cinema,” in a way. There’s the word “camera” in it. And I'm still not sure if it's good to have it there or not. But yeah, in this kind of science-fiction world that I invented for the film, with this job that doesn't exist, this Monsieur Oscar’s job, which is traveling from life to life. It's a world where you don't see the cameras. Although it seems to be a world where people have to act and change, you know. They act all the time. So I guess it comes from my… I mean, there's a sadness about cameras, you know? The cinema was invented with huge machines, cameras, and projectors. And they were beautiful. And they were very powerful. And then these cameras became smaller and smaller, and you don't see them anymore. So you have to reinvent this power. Like, if you see, let's say, when in the first shot that was shown to people was this train in France, you know, getting into a station. And people were afraid and amazed by this image of the train coming towards them. Well, this amazement is gone. So you have to reinvent this power. Every generation has to reinvent this power of cinema. But even more so now with all these machines gone. Or if you see an old silent film by Murnau—like, what is it called? Sunrise?—if he follows a character, a man at sunrise, from the back, the camera is so heavy. And so it's like God watching the man. It's like God's eye. Well, if you do the same shot today, if a kid does it on YouTube, you know, you don't have that feeling of God anymore. So you have to reinvent this power. And this is, I think, what every filmmaker has to do.

David Pendleton  13:53

Well, there are a few times when, inside the limousine, we see Monsieur Oscar looking outside through the frame. And there is this sense that the image, now, has been tamed. Not only that, but that the image has sort of replaced the relationship to the outside, in some sense.

Leos Carax  14:17  

Once again, for me, it's not a film about cinema, but… Well, that's a problem with digital. You know, it's a problem with the idea of digital. Because the cinema is this powerhouse. I was talking about this primitive power of cinema, the “holy motor” of cinema. Cinema is like this: it blinks. Between two images, you have black, and that's where the poetry is. And with digital you don't have that. Digital—I don’t know how do you say it in English, but–

David Pendleton  15:06  

You say it in French. It’s like a constant flow, yes?

Leos Carax  15:09  

Well, you know, we all blink with our eyes. You say that? Blink? Yeah. If you don't blink, your eyes get dry and you get blind. And that's what digital is. It's a world where you don't blink anymore. It's very tiring. And I don't like it.

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  15:31 

Well, I've noticed in many of your earlier films, you would sometimes insert very brief bursts of black leader, almost as if you’re forcing the spectator to blink. And I don't think we see that in Holy Motors, although there are those moments where we have interruptions which we have also seen in some, very old.. from the very beginnings of cinema. And I’m wondering if that punctuation is your way of, sort of, reminding spectators to blink or to refresh their eyes.

Leos Carax  16:04  

Yeah, these are images from Marey. It’s 19th century, it was the ancestor of cinema: chronophotography. And I was amazed because when I-. I knew these images, we all know them, in a way. Or probably the most famous one is not by Marey, but is Muybridge, which is the horse, when he filmed the horse. But when I look at these men—because Marey filmed these men and these little boys, he hardly ever filmed any women—to me, they remind me of the actor Denis Lavant. They remind me I’ve had as much pleasure at filming Denis as they had at filming their horse. These guys in the 19th century. And it's what cinema is. Cinema is the human body. It's this human body in action. It’s the motion pictures, and how motion has to do with emotion. So, because Deni was so important in the film, and because the film is about that, I hope, about the human body in action. That's what I like. That's how I introduced the film. I mean, we'll go further. I like to experiment. I mean, I don't dislike the possibilities of digital imagery, or 3D, or whatever. But we always have and what we like to see the most is the human body. Even though we like explosions, or to watch things we've invented—guns, cigarettes, cars—what we really love to watch is the human body in action. Running, dancing, fucking. The human body.

David Pendleton  18:18  

Well, there's also a moment in the film where you actually sort of fuse the digital and the body, or at least show us the place of the body within the digital image, which is the motion-capture sequence. And there clearly, you do the alchemist’s work of taking this digital imagery and making something new out of it. I noticed that there's also a little bit of computer animation in Pola X, too, as well, for instance. There's the image of this river of blood or of lava that the characters are floating in.

Leos Carax  18:51  

Yeah, I try to use whatever’s there.

David Pendleton  18:57  

[LAUGHS] Are there any questions in the audience? I've got the audience mics up here with me, so if the ushers can come and grab the audience mics for me. If you ask a question, please wait until a mic has been passed to us so that we can all hear your question. James, you want to take that? Take the other one. There was somebody in the middle who had his hand up. James will come around and pass the microphone to you.

Audience 1  19:29  

Thank you so much for coming. Could you talk about how you first became acquainted with Denis Lavant and how you two decided to make films together?

Leos Carax  19:43 

Well, we’re the same age. We’re the same size. When we met, we were twenty years old, probably, and I was trying to make my first feature—it was called Boy Meets Girl—but I couldn't find the boy. So the film was delayed. I was seeing a lot of boys, but I couldn't find the guy for the film. And when there was, at the agency—I don’t know in English—unemployment agency for actors. And they had pictures that I was looking at. I saw this strange face. So I met him and I chose him. I wasn't sure, you know, I just felt he was different. And I had to make this film. I couldn't go on. It had been delayed for a year already. So I chose him, but I was not sure of anything, because, you know, I was starting, and I hadn't studied film, and I had never been on a shoot. So anyway, we did this film. And then I thought, “Okay, I have to do another thing with him,” because there's so many things I didn't film. There's so many things I didn't see. The way he moves. The film was pretty static. So I made a second one. Then we made a third one. But we don't know each other. I mean, we're not friends or anything. Now he lives like, next block, so sometimes we meet in the street and say “hello.” [LAUGHTER] But not more than that.

David Pendleton  21:43  

Well, I was thinking of Tsai Ming-liang, the Taiwanese filmmaker who's talked about when he discovered the actor that he uses quite often, Lee Kang-sheng, who moves very slowly. And it was that slowness that sort of generated the rhythm of a lot of Tsai Ming-liang’s films. And there's a way in which I feel that Denis Lavant’s sort of plasticity, and his agility at movement, I'm wondering if that's inspired even a film like this, which is in some way sort of like a cartoon, you know? Like, Denis Lavant is like the Wile E. Coyote, if you've ever seen the Road Runner cartoons, who runs off a cliff or blows up and then, in the next sequence, starts all over again?

Leos Carax  22:24 

Yeah, he's 3D. But he became all that. He does that. I mean, basically he came from the circus and theater. Like cinema came from circus and theater. And he changed. I mean, if you see the first film we made together, the second film, his body changes. For each film, his body has changed. But you can ask Denis anything. I think these actors are rare in cinema. I call them more creatures than actors, like Lon Chaney or Peter Lorre or a few others, but they're rare and so I'm very lucky to have found him.

David Pendleton  23:19  

Oh, we’ve got another question here in the audience.

Audience 2  23:24  

The woman that you named as Jean in the film reminded me of Jean Seberg. Both the way, physically, the way she looked, her hairstyle, and the fact that she committed suicide. Was there any intention of doing that or not?

Leos Carax  23:45  

No, there was no intention. So the actress. I didn't know her before. Kylie Minogue. So I told her, you know, they’re lovers. They were lovers twenty years ago. And they cannot talk because something too painful happened. And so she's going to sing something. And I told her about the actress Gene Tierney, who I like very much and who maybe you know. Had a hard life and became kind of crazy. So we talked about that, and I decided to call her Gene, like Gene Tierney. And then I thought this actress, Kylie, would look good with a short wig. And once we put the wig on we saw that she looked like Jean Seberg. What could we do?

[LAUGHTER]

And she was called Jean. So that's how it happened.

David Pendleton  25:02  

There's a way in which your films sometimes interlock or refer to each other briefly. And of course, we see the Pont Neuf from the roof of the Samaritaine, which harkens back to the lovers of the Pont Neuf. Is there a certain pleasure that you get from working out a certain system, or thinking of the films as working together as a cycle?

Leos Carax  25:31  

I don't think so. I mean, I didn't want to shoot in Paris or in France anymore, or in French. But all these films I tried to make elsewhere, in London or America or Russia, I couldn’t make them. So when I knew I had to shoot in Paris, I was first depressed because I don't like the city anymore, except the bridges I still like. I tried to rediscover Paris in a way. But I went to a few places, like La Samaritaine, which obviously are important to me. Samaritaine is this old department store which has been closed now and destroyed. I mean, the inside has been destroyed, except the staircase. You see it in the film. We had made a film twenty years ago on this bridge, and we had rebuilt this part of Paris in the countryside. So I felt I owned this building. [LAUGHTER] I always wanted to go back and shoot. From the moment they closed it I felt I’d been wanting to do a feature film inside there. But they wouldn't allow anybody inside, so it took a lot of time to get inside.

David Pendleton  26:59 

Paris has certainly changed a lot over the last twenty or thirty or forty years. Is it the changes to the city itself that have sort of disillusioned you with the city? I mean, there's even a certain reference in Les Amants du Pont-Neuf to a certain creeping gentrification, etc., inside the city.

Leos Carax  27:25  

Well, I think it's normal to be bored with the city where you live in, because I've been there more than twenty years now. And I feel it hasn't changed enough. I feel the problem is it doesn't change much, actually.

David Pendleton  27:45  

Are there other questions? There's a woman there in the middle. And then the young man on the aisle, in the back. Raise your hand so that James can see you. No, no, in the middle, James. Keep going back. That woman right there.

Audience 3  28:02 

Thank you again, so much for joining us today. It really means a lot to have you here. Obviously this raised so many questions for me about, well, about what happens next. And I'm wondering if you'd be able to share some of your personal perspectives on death and what making this film forced you to think about.

David Pendleton  28:25 
[TRANSLATES TO FRENCH] What comes next, meaning, after death?

Leos Carax  28:35  

What comes next after death?

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  28:38  

Or if you have any reflections about that?

Leos Carax  28:42 

Well, what comes next after life is death. What comes next after death is nothing.

[LAUGHTER]

Nothing. But, I mean, it's a lot for people who stay, who don't-. I mean, cinema is pretty morbid. When I'm asked, “For who do you make films?” I could never answer, really. But now, I think that we make films for the dead and then we show them to people who are alive. So it's a strange experience. But, I was saying before that in the beginning of a project there are a few images and a few feelings. And I think for this film maybe there were two main feelings. One that in French we call la fatigué d'être soi, which would, I guess, “to be tired of being oneself”? Yes. And the other feeling is the need we have to reinvent ourselves. We have to reinvent ourselves at some point in life. If we don't, we stop living, or we die, or we... So I think the film tries to talk about that.

David Pendleton  30:32

I mean, don't you think part of the appeal of the cinema, too, is the fatigue of being oneself. Like to go and to become somebody else for a little while?

Leos Carax  30:48  

Well, it's more than that. I mean, the experience of watching a film. I mean, obviously filmmakers were first spectators.

David Pendleton  30:56  

Right, yes. No, that's what I mean. I mean, they were spectators as well.

Leos Carax  30:59 

Yeah. But I only have my experience, you know, as a young spectator. And yeah, it was intense, because you suddenly discover that there's another place on earth. There’s an island called cinema where you can see things. You can see life and death and love from different angles. So I decided that that's where I want to live, I want to live on this island. But it's more than-. At the time, I was not tired of being myself. I was a kid. But I didn't know where I belonged, you know, like, every kid. I didn't know what was my country. So it's very lucky if you can discover where you want to live.

David Pendleton  32:01

There’s the young man in the back on the aisle there. And then we'll get some people in the front.

Audience 4  32:05  

Hi. I was wondering if you could comment on how your interest in the machine arose out of working with Denis.

Leos Carax  32:13

[INAUDIBLE]

David Pendleton  32:15  

If you can relate your interest in the machine to working with Denis Lavant. And did this interest in the machine in some ways arise out of working with Denis Lavant? Machine, like the motors in the film. Or this idea of the machine as opposed to the digital, let's say.

Leos Carax  32:39  

I forgot how the title was found. Pretty early. Because in my mind, it was kind of a science fiction world I had invented—with more fiction than science—but still, a world that's close to ours, but it's not ours. And in that world I imagined that people and machines, and animals, kind of had to regroup in kind of solidarity, to fight the virtual world. A world, let's say, where there wouldn't be any more actions or any more experiences. That’s why science fiction is interesting because it has to do always with reality. It's always asked the question: what is reality? Can we still face reality? What interests me is his experience. That's basically what interests me. So do we still want to live experiences? Do young people still want to take a boat and go to sea like Melville or Conrad? Or go to war, if they want? Do we still have actions, which means responsibility? Machines are important. I like machines, yes. I like when you can see the motor. But today's cameras are not cameras anymore. They’re computers. You don't see anything. But yeah. I’d rather be angry than nostalgic, so…

David Pendleton  34:57

And Generoso, in the front, has a question. Is there anybody down here with an audience mic? Pass it over to Generoso, please.

Audience 5  35:16

I've read in interviews in the past that you're a great admirer of the work of Fassbinder. And I understand that this film, because of necessity, had to be made very quickly. And of course, Fassbinder was very prolific. He made three films, sometimes, a year. And I'm curious if any of his process was involved in the creation of the film.

Leos Carax  35:37  

I'm sorry, because my English is not perfect.

David Pendleton  35:39  

It's not easy to hear either. [SPEAKS IN FRENCH]. If the process of Fassbinder was in some ways helpful for you to make this film very quickly. Or an inspiration to you when working quickly.

Leos Carax  36:05  

Fassbinder is completely an exception. I mean, some people have made more films than him, you know, like Ford. Or they made hundreds of films. And he made only thirty-something -six, or... But he made them by himself, which was not the case in terms of Hollywood. He had no industry; he just created the industry. He created everything. He was very powerful and, obviously, you can’t last very long doing that. But, I've made very few films. I started early but I’ve made very few. And if I hadn't had problems with money I would have made more but not so much more. Because I think, as I was saying before, about reinventing yourself, I think if I make a new film I have to feel I’m not the same person as the one who made the film before. So that can take time. But I'll try to make more.

David Pendleton  37:31  

I thought I saw some other... There's a hand right here. Okay, let's take this hand here, and then we'll take your question.

Audience 6  37:39

This is a little bit of a follow-up question. We expect a script to be written and sets to be built or locations found. Watching this I found myself wondering to what degree locations decided the appointments that you filmed.

Leos Carax  38:02  

I think every appointment comes from a different place. La Samaritaine was there before. Obviously, I knew I wanted to film there. And sometimes they were locations I didn't know. That helped, because I had to rediscover some parts of Paris I didn't know. Locations are very hard. It's like casting. Casting is terrible. That's why, if you imagine a film, let's say, without knowing where it's going to take place and without knowing who's going to be in it, the chances are you're never going to find the people who are going to be in it, and the places. So now, I try to force myself to only imagine films for actors in places I know exist. There are a few projects that I didn't make because, if you write you want the woman to be, a two-meters Russian beauty who can do this and that, the chance is you're never gonna find her. So that's why imagining the film for Denis was a big help to do it very fast. To imagine it fast, to shoot it fast.

David Pendleton  39:33 

And this is the person here with the microphone.

Audience 7  39:34  

Bon soir. What got you into the movie career? What inspired you to become a movie director?

Leos Carax  39:54  

Films. Films. I discovered cinema around sixteen, seventeen years old. I went to the cinema before that, but I never thought of it. I never thought there was a man behind the camera. I went to see, you know, Charles Bronson or Marilyn Monroe. And then, one day, yeah, I understood. I thought, there has to be someone behind the film. So there has to be a man behind the film, because, usually, it was a man. So there's a man, there's a machine. And in front of the machine, you can put a woman. And then, I thought, “This is perfect.” And at the time, I didn't talk to people. I didn't relate. I thought, “If I have this machine, I can put whoever I want in front of it. I can film. I can show the world. I can connect.” So I stole a camera—a little camera—and I started to shoot.

David Pendleton  41:20  

Was it a sixteen-millimeter, or eight-millimeter, when you first started?

Leos Carax  41:24  

It was a Bolex. Sixteen-millimeter.

David Pendleton  41:30  

Are there other questions in the audience? Yes, there's a question there. And then this young man over here.

Audience 8  41:40

There's a short sequence near the middle of the film where the limousine is traveling through the cemetery, along a winding road, and the video image becomes sort of smeared and corrupted looking. Is this like translating traditional analog manipulation of film into a more modern format? Is it important to produce those sorts of effects in films?

Leos Carax  42:10  

It's called “data motion,” I think. It comes from a mistake in the digital files, when you have a kind of mistake and then all the pixels get-. So, I mean, this scene was not in the project. There's a whole scene in the cemetery, in this big French cemetery, Père Lachaise, with Denis Lavant and Eva Mendes. We would get there very early in the morning, before the cemetery was open to the people, and I thought it was amazing to drive through the cemetery at sunrise. So I imagined this as a nightmare or kind of dream-nightmare. It was during the editing, it was after the shooting. The film was, I could see, was starting to shape around images and about this new world of images, of digital images. I thought, instead of ending the dream in a classical way, there could be this kind of, the image destroys itself. In old films, it would have been, you know, the fire, when the image stops in the projection room. People don't know that anymore, I guess, but it used to happen. The image would go on fire. It was very strange and very scary. And beautiful.

David Pendleton  44:03  

You mentioned Eva Mendes. I wanted to ask very quickly, because I had heard that at one point you were thinking of using Kate Moss as the model. And I think her name in the film is like Kay M or something like that. Is that true? And how did you come to work with Eva Mendez instead?

Leos Carax  44:29 

When we made this little film in Tokyo, with this character called Monsieur Merde, we really liked this character, the actor and me, because we had to invent a language for him. We had to invent everything. And we wanted to go on with this character. So I thought I would make a film in America with Monsieur Merde. A feature film called Merde in USA.

[LAUGHTER]

And it would be a bit like a Beauty and the Beast project, with Denis coming out of the sewers. And so, when he would pass a fashion shoot and he would kidnap Kate Moss. And that's the only segment of the film that comes from a pre-existing product, let’s say. But then Kate Moss was getting married. [LAUGHTER] And so I had met Eva Mendes at a festival and I asked her.

David Pendleton  45:56  

She has this total beautiful glamour, very much like Ava Gardner or somebody out of like this sort of earlier era of Hollywood. It's a very different experience, I think, than it would have been with Kate Moss. My interjection.

Yes, this gentleman here has a question.

Audience 9  46:15  

Hi, thanks for coming. Just to ask a little more about process. To what degree do you shoot from a shooting script, once you start? And are you shooting from any other list of commandments or tenants or truths or intentions that you carry, or is it just organic? Do you just kind of go with it and see if this is right, or this is wrong? Also, I just wanted to say, it reminded me a little bit of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire for some very strange reason.

Leos Carax  46:57

Well, I'm not a writer, so I don't write as a writer, of course. But you do need a script for the money and then for the crew. I mean, I don't think my films are so far from the script, in terms of action, dialogue or whatever. But I go on writing all the time. I mean, the day of the shoot, the day before. I mean, it's a paradox, because when it was film, and not digital, I would film a lot. Some of my shootings were very long. And I would make lots of retakes. In digital, which is much cheaper, I decided not to watch the dailies, so I don't do many retakes anymore, and I don't even regret anything. I just go. Yeah, the film becomes more a physical experience, where you have to go through a tunnel, you have to keep the strength, you have to renew the strength. But you don't judge what you're doing. You know, it's only the editing table that you'll discover whatever is there. And you have to do with that.

David Pendleton  48:45  

Maybe if there are questions, maybe we'll take one or two more, and then we'll wrap it up. Oh, here's a question, right down here in the front. Steven, there's a young man down here.

Audience 10  49:00  

Thank you. Of all directors, who inspires you most and why?

David Pendleton  49:07  

I'm sorry, “of all directors, who is very important?”

Audience 10  49:11  

Who inspired your work?

David Pendleton  49:13  

Ah, who inspired you? Who inspired your work? It's a very long list.

Leos Carax  49:21  

Yeah, too many. Too many. I mean, you know, I saw lots of films from-. I started to make films at the same time as I discovered film. So, you know, from sixteen years old to probably until I made my second film, I saw a lot of films. Silent films, mostly, but not only of course. Silent films, American films, Russian films, until the New Wave, the French New Wave and other New Waves in Europe. And then I stopped going to the movies, more or less. But, I wouldn't give names, but a lot. Many, many directors.

David Pendleton  50:11 

That might be a good place to suspend the conversation until tomorrow, when we'll be seeing Mauvais sang, your second film. And we can talk a little bit more about those earlier years. I want to thank you very much for your generosity and agreeing to come two nights and to discuss your work. Both new work and older work. Thank you very much, and thanks to all of you.

Leos Carax  50:32

Merci.

[APPLAUSE]

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