PROCESSING BOX OFFICE RESULTS

Building a Career in Unconventional Storytelling

►An Interview With Jaco Van Dormael

Writer-director Jaco Van Dormael’s most recent film, The Brand New Testament (2016), starring Pili Groyne, Benoît Poelvoorde, and Catherine Deneuve, was nominated for six awards, including a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture–Foreign Language, and the European Film Award–European Comedy.

His first short film won the Honorary Foreign Film Award at the Student Academy Awards (1981), and his first feature, Toto the Hero (1991), won the Golden Camera Award at the Cannes Film Festival. His second feature, The Eighth Day (1996), was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and his two leading actors, Daniel Auteuil and Pascal Duquenne, jointly won the award for Best Actor. The film was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

Jaco Van Dormael

Image courtesy of Flickr user Sasoriza

Mr. Nobody (2009) was Van Dormael’s English-language debut, starring Jared Leto, Sarah Polley, and Diane Kruger. It won the European Audience Award and six Magritte awards, including Best Film and Best Director. Mr. Nobody is an epic science-fiction drama with a complex structure, exploring the parallel lives of Earth’s last remaining human, a 118-year-old man named Nemo Nobody. Van Dormael began working on the script in 2001 and shot the film in 2007. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2009, where it received a ten-minute standing ovation. It was released in Europe in 2009 and internationally in 2013, and it has since developed a cult following. With a production budget of $36 million (€32 million), it is Belgium’s most expensive film to date.

Can you tell me about the film industry in Belgium? What are some opportunities and challenges for filmmakers in Belgium?
There’s no film industry in Belgium, no pipeline. It’s possible to raise enough money to make films, but it’s not like in France or Germany where they need the films to be on TV. So in Belgium, because we don’t have this industry, we can make strange shapes of films. We make films shaped like flowers sometimes, and they can get blocked in the pipe, for instance. But there are as many types of Belgian cinemas as there are filmmakers. In fact, I think every film is a prototype in Belgium.

I know you made short films for a long time before you made a feature. When did you make your first short?
I made my first short in 1979. I did ten years of short films. I loved it, because I could make one film a year. I think making short films is an art in itself. But it doesn’t allow you to live, so I started making longer stories.

Were you able to make money with your shorts?
A little bit, and I was also working in the theater, so the two together were enough. I had a very good teacher called Frank Daniel. He taught also at USC and then in New York, and he said, “If you want to be a filmmaker or scriptwriter, you have to learn to live with less money. Otherwise, you’ll never do it.” And it’s a good exercise, I think, to be able to live with less money and still continue to do what is fun.

Where does the financing come from for Belgian films?
Most of the time a part comes from the state. The max from the state is half a million euros, then you have aids like the tax shelter, and the rest is preselling. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to make something. For long feature films, the financing comes partly from the state, partly from aids, and from distributors of French TV if it’s in the French language. But we always make a co-production with other countries. It’s impossible to make a Belgian film without making a co-production with two or three other countries.

You’ve written all of the films you’ve directed. Do you consider yourself more writer or director? Or both equally?
Both. Writing is something more solitary, and it’s sometimes a lonely world. But my last film, The Brand New Testament, I wrote it with a co-writer, and I was very happy to do that. When I am writing alone and I don’t have a good idea for the whole day, then I have a bad day. But what I learned with my last film, if we are two of us writing together, we always have a good day, even without a good idea.

Is that the first time that you co-wrote with somebody?
Yeah, indeed, and it was not with a scriptwriter. It was with a novelist, so he brought something from literature.

I know it took you many years to write Toto the Hero. Can you tell me about the writing process on that one—and how you find writing a short different from writing a feature?
It’s a different rhythm. When you have a script for a short film, it’s something that you can carry in your mind. When it’s a long feature film, it’s like you have a 360-degree script, and it’s impossible to have all of it in your mind at the same time. So I learned to write in sections. The way I write, in fact, I start with bits and pieces that I put on cards. Then when I have a few hundred cards, I put connections between these cards that can be an idea for a character or for a situation or sentiments. And then I put these cards on three tables—beginning, middle, and end; first, second, and third act. And I start to glue them together and see if a story appears. When it appears, then I start writing from the beginning to the end.

How long are your first drafts typically?
Most of the time, far too long—200 pages, maybe. Then I put it in cards again, and I reorganize the cards, adding scenes, deleting scenes, putting scenes together, putting characters together. So I go back and forth by writing and organizing cards on these three tables. It takes time.

My script teacher, Frank Daniel, he said you can see the quality of a script if you look at the pants of the scriptwriter. They have to have a very flat behind, because he has to sit all the day. His advice was that you can write anything, but write three hours a day, everyday. That’s a good exercise. And then it comes and comes, with three or four hours a day of writing. It’s a good rhythm.

What does that rhythm look like for you in terms of how long it takes before you start writing “good” pages? Are there wasted hours?
Most of the time, the pages are not good until the end of the script. It’s good enough only in the last month when suddenly it’s fixed. But before that, the script might be promising but still not working.

Knowing that your scripts can take you six years to write, how do you hold onto the faith for that long, that you’ll eventually get it where it needs to be?
Oh, because it’s describing images—it’s not writing words. So because the film is very visual and the script is only there as notes to describe the images, at the moment when visually it flows, then you know you’re done. And sometimes also when I’m tired of writing, then I consider that the script is finished. That can be a second reason.

If you have a bad writing day, do you have any tricks for getting yourself to write the next day?
I try to always finish with an idea that I think will be good, but I don’t write it today. I say to myself that I will write it tomorrow. So the next day, I know what I will start with.

How much during this process do you give your writing to somebody else to review?
Most of the time, every week. I have friends who are also scriptwriters. For example, for Mr. Nobody, every Friday I gave it to my friend. I read his script, and he read my pages and gave some feedback. We did this at the end of the week, and that made me think during the weekend, and then on Monday I could start over again.

So when your friend gave you notes on Mr. Nobody, did you start on Monday by rewriting, or were you starting with new material?
It depends. Most of the time I go until the end, and I don’t rewrite too much. I rewrite after one version, but I try to go to the end.

I’m thinking about the structure of Mr. Nobody and what that must have been like to give notes on pages as you were writing. Did you know where you were headed? Had you already worked on your cards and figured out the structure for the film?
In fact, what interests me the most is the structure of a film. I try to make films that ask questions but never give answers. But I think the structure of most films, there’s a beginning and a middle and an end, and the third act is where there’s a clear consequence. You’re waiting for the end to have the answer. The end will give meaning to everything that precedes.

But what I’m interested in talking about is the strange experience of being alive—and this strange experience, it’s not very clear. So my films, the end will not giving meaning to everything that precedes. So for Mr. Nobody, I was looking for a structure in arborescence, like a tree that spreads out. Here it is spreading and spreading and asking more and more questions, so every substory is structured in the three acts, but the whole thing is the opposite of a classical story structure.

And of course everything has to be magic, because you are focused on the present moment and not waiting for the answer at the end. You are not waiting to know if the President of the United States will be saved or not, or will the bomb explode. It is just the present time meeting a character. You look around your feet, and you smell the grass, and you look at the little stones around your feet. This gives a perception of the present and the richness of this minute. Then, of course, it gives meaning to this question of what are we doing with our lives? Are we waiting to get to the end, or are we going to do something before the end?

This is a recurring theme in your work. Do you know why?
Because I’m asking myself, writing stories, isn’t it a consolation of aging? That life could have meaning? There was a French philosopher who said cinema and religion, they have something in common—they both make-believe that life could have meaning. What I like is to find the beauty in something that doesn’t mean anything. Even if this strange experiment of living on this planet that is turning around the sun, even if there’s no answer to all of our questions, if the questions are interesting, then it is great to be here.

That is the subject of most of my films. The first one, Toto the Hero, was an old man making a story with his life—and in fact, he destroyed his life by thinking it was a story. In his life, he was the victim, and there was a bad guy, and he wanted to kill the bad guy. But at the end of the story, he realizes that perhaps he is the bad guy and the other guy is the victim. And he realizes also that if he didn’t think his life was a story, then he could be somebody else. But because he’s storytelling his life, he passes his life by.

How long did it take you to write that script?
Six years. And Mr. Nobody was nearly six years also.

For Mr. Nobody, how long had you been writing the script before you found a producer?
I always try to finish my script before having a producer attached. I finance the writing by myself. Most of the time, I write with the money I made from the previous film. This way, I can decide what to write. If the producer reads the script, then he knows if he is interested. Things are much more clear if he can read the script. But also, it’s very rare to find people who can read scripts. Even myself, I’m not sure I can read a script. I know I can write them, but I’m not sure I can read them.

Can you explain what you mean by that?
I know that I’ve read scripts, and I was not very convinced by them when I read them. But then I saw the film and I thought, “Oh wow, it was a good script.” But I couldn’t visualize what the film would be by reading the script. Most of the time, when you read a script, you make your own film in your head, so maybe a financer or producer can be disappointed when he sees the film. But the only person who can really read the script is the one who wrote it, because it’s really difficult to read a script.

I read that your budget for Mr. Nobody was $36 (€32) million. How did that come about? Such a stunning film. Beautiful.
Thank you. The budget is always because of the last film that you made. So if people earned money from the last film, then they put money in the next one. If they lose money, they don’t put money into the next one. I think it’s as simple as this. The two films before Mr. Nobody were successful, so they gave me money.

I think Mr. Nobody is my favorite film, and it’s my biggest success and my biggest failure. Internationally, it was a disaster—but for me, it’s my biggest success. I can’t do better than this film. But it was too expensive, and that’s why producers get into a panic. At the beginning, they put more and more money in, because they think they will win a lot. And at a certain point, they realize that perhaps they will lose the money, and then it can become Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Then suddenly they aren’t kind anymore.

How difficult is that to deal with? How do you manage that when the producer suddenly isn’t so kind anymore?
Personally, I love to make films. I have a lot of ideas for spending money on a film. I’m inventive for how I can spend money, but with The Brand New Testament, I really wanted to make it with less money and have total freedom. So for that film, I was my own producer, and the final cut was between myself, myself, and myself. That was the best feeling I ever had. I never had to convince anybody of anything. Nobody told me, “God drinks too much beer. He shouldn’t smoke,” and things like that. I just did anything I wanted, and it was a lot of freedom.

Do you have a favorite part of the filmmaking process—writing, shooting, editing?
I love all of them. It is always rewriting. There’s that famous line—the first writing is the script, the second writing is the shooting, and the third is the editing. But I think there’s a fourth writing that’s much more important. The fourth writing is what the audience is doing with the film—how the person who saw the film rewrites it in his or her head to add things that weren’t shot or to take things out. That fourth writing is the most important, because that’s what remains of the film finally.

It’s going back to what you said earlier about making a film that asks questions but doesn’t provide the answers.
Yes. So we look at the beautiful questions without having an answer. It’s a good habit not always to have an answer, I think.

With Mr. Nobody, why did we have to wait so long before it was released in the United States? It was several years, right?
In fact, the rules of distribution are something very cruel. It’s like a crowded restaurant where everybody wants to go because there are people, and then there’s an empty restaurant where nobody wants to go because there are no people. I think for distribution it’s a little bit the same. For festivals, it’s a bit the same. At the moment, nobody wants your film, and then one person wants your film, then two, and then everybody wants it. And suddenly three people don’t want your film anymore, and then nobody wants it. It’s a strange process like that. The first release was in France for Mr. Nobody, and it was a disaster.

In what way?
Because there were only bad reviews, so nobody went. If you have only bad reviews and no publicity, it’s really difficult to get the audience to see it. And then all the other countries delayed the release date, so it was an economic disaster. But then the film won the Audience European Film Award. There’s an audience prize, and anybody can vote in Europe by clicking. I was surprised, so I asked, “Where are the votes coming from?” and a lot of the votes were coming from England, where the film wasn’t released. And a lot from Italy, where the film had never been shown. So I realized that the only good distribution for that film was piracy, because it was impossible to buy it or to see it or rent it or video-on-demand it.

My last experience with The Brand New Testament was just the opposite. It was very well released in France, 900 copies. It is like a horse. Everybody bets on that horse, and it did great in Italy and Germany—in all the countries where Mr. Nobody was nearly not released.

Were you able to hold on to the belief that it was a great film even when it was getting bad reviews and wasn’t released?
Of course. But it hurts, it always hurts to have bad reviews. The same teacher, Frank Daniel, told me, “Never read your reviews, because they don’t speak to you. They speak to the audience but not to you.” But it is hard not to read them. For a day or two, I cannot read them, but after that I am curious and I read them, and it hurts.

Do you have friends that you talk to about that? I’m curious how initially you were able to recover from the loss of Mr. Nobody after all those years working on it?
I have good friends, and I had the crew of the film. They have the same wounds, because they worked on the film for so long, too. But I think my medicine for that wound was making a ephemeral film with no money, Kiss & Cry [2011] a film made directly on a theater stage in front of the audience. This is what I do sometimes between the films. I have to realize, okay, I don’t have a symphony orchestra, but I have my guitar and I can play music.

You enjoy the collaborative nature of the filmmaking process?
It is great. And most of the time I work with friends, so my DP is a friend, my sound engineer is a friend, my set advisor—we are all friends. It is great in the morning to be with friends, to make this film together.

How do you balance these relationships where you are friends but working together professionally?
Oh, because making films is fun. It’s like playing when you are a kid. It’s creating a world. It is better than an electric train. It is a huge train, and sometimes on the set we tell each other, “Even if there were no 35mm into the camera, it would be fun to do what we’re doing.”

This is the beauty of filmmaking. And it’s a strange process about beauty. Sometimes when I see beauty in a shot, I say to myself, “It is beautiful, but I don’t know why it is beautiful.” Even if I’m surrounded by people who know the technique very well, at the moment it is out of our control and it becomes beautiful, and then it is magic. Sometimes take eight is beautiful and take two was not. But it’s impossible to know why.

You’ve mentioned your professor several times. Do you ever teach now?
I try to work a few weeks in the film school in Brussels every year, because I am still learning. The students have the feeling that they learn something from me, but I think I learn much more than they do. These kids who can make a short film with $100 in a weekend and on the Monday evening it’s on the Internet, they know how to do this. It’s a very different type of lighting, for example—instead of adding light, they put less light with very sensible cameras. And instead of putting light above, they add something black just to scope the light in a way where you don’t need all the heavy structure anymore. They can invent things. They don’t need the Opera House—they can do it in a garage with three friends. They think they learn from me, but really I learn from them.

What is next? What are you working on now?
For the moment, I am in Montreal. During the release of The Brand New Testament we were rehearsing Cold Blood, which is an ephemeral film on stage. Last week we were in Toronto, and this week we are in Montreal, and it will travel. It’s a sort of vacation, because it is a totally different process. With these ephemeral films, there are only five or six of us who create a piece based on improvisation. We don’t have a story at the beginning. In fact, when we begin to shoot, we don’t have a script. We try to make images on the table or work with sand or glue or with little toys, and after two months of improvisation, a story appears. It is much more collective, the process, because the story arrives only at the very end.

These ephemeral plays, these are plays that you perform on stage on a tabletop?
Yes, and there are synchronizing cameras. So you see the making of it on stage and the result at the same time. You see on stage what the camera does not film, and you see on the screen what is too little to see with your eyes.

Do you have a script in progress at the moment?
A few notes. I need to do nothing for a while to have an idea. It is when I decide not to work anymore that the little ideas come and the desire comes back.