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By DP30 david@thehotbuttonl.com

DP/30: Amour, writer/director Michael Haneke (LA 2012)

Please see “DP/30 @ Cannes 2012: Amour, writer/director Michael Haneke” for more conversation specific to this movie.

This Interview interpreted by Robert Grey.

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7 Responses to “DP/30: Amour, writer/director Michael Haneke (LA 2012)”

  1. Kevin says:

    Maybe next time you could treat Micheal with a little more respect, and ask him some decent questions?

  2. David Poland says:

    Perhaps you will give me a list…

  3. shank says:

    Watching this interview is so awkward..Bad silly questions..totally wasted the great man’s time

  4. scooterzz says:

    finally got around to watching this and must call bullshit on those first two comments…where exactly is the ‘disrespect’ and what questions would you two geniuses asked the ‘great man’? (really?…’great man’?…jeeze, fanboys can sometimes be such boors)…

  5. David Poland says:

    This attitude came up on the first Haneke interview too. Not sure what they want. Don’t much care. Haneke seemed engaged. That’s what I am after.

    It’s funny. I was quite intimidated the first time around with MH and with Olivier Assayas, The Dardennes, and a few others. Each time, it’s turned out that the director was far more down to earth and less up his/their own ass than I feared. So I remember pretty much every one of those with great pleasure.

    I had a pretty specific conversation about Amour with Haneke in Cannes and I’m not sure there was a ton more to say about that film. He is not terribly interested in self-dissection. So I did in this one what I do with many extremely talented people… I had a conversation as I might over dinner. I’m not saying it’s always great. But I don’t run into many people who are anxious to run as soon as the shoot is over. And MH and I did 10 minutes – that I wish I had on tape – on today’s indie film scene. He was not insulted or unhappy with the conversation. And that’s really my first goal. Then I pray that it is interesting for the viewers.

  6. Niall Maher says:

    David,

    What you do – I love.
    Your interviews give an insight into both the creative and the fiscal aspects of the film making process.Fantastic.

    Now David – the rub – PLEASE PLEASE have a bit of a chat with your camera crew.

    It’s below par, the constant re-framing suggest people justifying their existence.

    One good Mid – and THAT is a good interview.

    Sorry to leave a negative comment.

  7. Matt says:

    Thank you Niall, exactly what I was thinking:

    Great job David, but the camera is irritatingly distracting.

    Simplify please. One MID all the way.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
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“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

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