Stephen Woolley interviewed by Cath le Couteur
Stephen Woolley with cast at 'Stoned' World Premiere.
Stephen Woolley was interviewed by Cath Le Couteur exclusively for Shooting People. Read about his latest film STONED and his thoughts on the difficulties of distribution in the UK.
INTERVIEW: THURSDAY 3rd NOVEMBER 2005 at the CURZON SOHO, London
Let's have a quick show of hands just to kind of get a sense of who is here in the audience because it kind of help Stephen know who you are as well. How many directors have we got in the audience hands up. And how many other kind of core crew editors, camera, makeup, costume - yeah, a couple. Writers how many writers have we got here - a selection. And actors how many actors have we got - ok quite a few actors. How many documentary film makers hands up.
It is interesting hearing you talk about the kind of depth of investigative journalism that you went through and I understand that you hired private detectives as well in trying to uncover what happened that night. And my question is how faithful you were to the events, how much of it did you choose to do a representation of those events and if you were incredibly faithful to what you believe took place why did you make the decision to do it as a fiction piece and not a documentary?
Well I am not a documentary filmmaker and you know I've known Nick Broomfield for a very long time and I am very appreciative of Fred Wiseman: it's a genre of which I am a big fan - a huge fan of - and I love documentary films. But that hat was never my thing, and I wanted to create a movie that would be a piece of entertainment as well as being a piece of history. And I think Michael Collins for most people in Ireland stands as something which they can take their kids to and say we're watching a movie, and we are also watching history. And similarly with Scandal I told the story from a different perspective. The story for people at that particular age was the story of Profumo, poor Jack Profumo. We told the story of Christine Keeler,Mandy Rice Davies, Lucky Gordon and Stephen Ward, and so I told it from the victims' perspective. And that is really what I tried to do, to burst the bubble of The Beatles being a boy band by making Backbeat, and making the movie about the existentialists in Germany at that point in the early 60s when we were supposed to hate the Germans so much. The Germans created the image, they created the haircuts, they created the black look.
I love looking back on history and saying oh my god that really happened! And so the thing about this particular movie is that I tried to turn around the notion that the Rolling Stones were this big rebel band and The Beatles were the cuddly band. This was a film about how in fact there was one rebel and that was Brian Jones, and the rest of it was basically Andrew Loog Oldham saying The Beatles are Christ, you are the Antichrist. You know they didn't really have a clue as to what was going on. Brian actually was the rebel, and nobody had a clue about what he was trying to do because he was creating music and recording Moroccan musicians that nobody had ever heard of. He was the first person to record the Jajouka musicians, nobody had ever heard of that.
But I mean he was also a really tough character. For me the film kind of exposes an almost acrid underbelly, its almost this kind of nightmare vision slightly of the 60s, not an Austin Powers vision.
No, it's the dark side of the 60s
Yeah. Did you ever kind of feel frightened by the fact that you had... I mean in the middle of all of this there is smoke coming off the pool, a freaky house, debauchery and so on. And in the centre of it, is this, he is very charming and obviously very musically talented, but you know there is also a monster lurking within - Brian. Did you ever feel frightened of working with a character who was, you know, difficult?
Most monsters are human for me. I am more interested in the Sheriff of Nottingham than I am Robin Hood. I find the Sheriff of Nottingham movie is one I would run to see. So for me, I am fascinated by more complex and more difficult characters and Brian's character is tortured and it's strange and it's weird. And I don't want to see another Hollywood film about some heroic rock god, it isn't about that. He shied away from the heroic rock god - that's what they are now. The Rolling Stones are touring America as we speak selling tickets at 300 bucks ago, you know they have become heroic rock gods and I don't know what that means, but to me that is uninteresting.
What is interesting is that they were started by this one guy Brian Jones, who put the band together, who was inspired by music that nobody really cared about. You know that is why there is Robert Johnson throughout the film, that is why the music is not the kind of music you would hear from a film like this. And I think, audiences don't want to see heroic rock gods on the screen because it means nothing. Despite all of Brian's faults, and there are many, I didn't get into this project because I like Brian, I got into this project because I thought it was a fascinating mirror of the hedonistic 60s. He seemed to me to be somebody who was completely out there completely pushing, completely experimenting all the time and then getting lost and hitting out like a baby. That seemed more interesting than making a film about a rock god, and I certainly know I am going to have a heavy time releasing this film as a commercial film in cinemas.
One of the things we were speaking about earlier was distribution and it was incredibly hard for me to get distribution for this film in the UK. I managed very luckily, through the people that financed the film and put the money behind the film, to be able to get Vertigo to come in as well who are an extremely good distribution company, to release the film. Every distribution company in Britain rejected the movie and said there was no market for this film and yet the oddest thing is that whenever I've screened it, and now I have screened in almost every festival that exists from San Sebastian to Dinard to Cork to Edinburgh to London, we get a packed audience of young people. And that's the odd thing, the big thing about this movie is it won't appeal to young people but our big pull on the film is young people.
I think we would like you to spell that out a bit more, you know there are a lot of people I suspect in the audience that are aiming to get their first features off the ground. What is your plan - what can we learn from that?
Well I don't have a plan I just think you have to be determined that if you feel that there is a market for the film and you know where it is, and sometimes that just amounts to asking a few of your mates you know, "would you want to see this?." And I asked a lot of young people and their mates 'would you want to see a film that is about this?' and they will go "well the Rolling Stones are really boring and old and decrepit", most of them. But this is a film about the 60s, "oh I'm interested in the 60s I like Jimmy Hendrix I like Led Zeppelin". I used people like The Bees and White Stripes and 22-20's and people like that in the film, because they sound like the 60s to me and they sound like the 60s to anyone. And so I used the sound and the fashion and the look to get that stuff going but you know I think that really there was a portal to the past for me into this area and it's hard to know what to say to people about how you would say "why would you go and see this film?" or "what does this mean to you".
Do you think the landscape has changed? Most people here will know Stephen's history with Nik Powell, but for those who don't, they were distributing really, really seminal films "Eraserhead", "Evil Dead", "My Left Foot" like hundreds and hundreds of really fantastic independent films. You say that the distributors haven't picked up your film and it's been really difficult. How were you choosing the films that you wanted to distribute and do you think there is a difference in what distributors are looking for now? - what kind of challenges do we face as film makers?
That's about 400 questions in one question! My whole approach to acquisitions at Palace for us goes back to when as a young kid in Islington I saw a lot of films and I don't know why, maybe because we didn't have like a lot of space to hang out and so I hung out in cinemas. I could walk to nine different cinemas from my door within 10 minutes and so I saw a lot of films as a kid. And I wasn't doing it as an education I was just doing it because of some weird sign from God. I just used to walk off and go to the movies. I'd go on my own and I never felt bad about it because most kids went with their girlfriends or they went with mates. Sometimes I'd go with mates and sometimes on my own, but mostly on my own. So when I started acquiring films I would look at scripts or I would look at movies and go 'I haven't seen that before' and that became my trick, which was: I've never seen that before, I've never seen anyone do that before, I've never seen anybody make that kind of movie. And so when I saw films like "My Left Foot", "The Evil Dead" "Nightmare on Elm Street" or whatever, these were the films that I wanted to buy. Because we acquired such a broad scope of films that we released, there would generally be an 'oh my god!'. When I saw "Evil Dead" I had really not seen that before! When you see the zombies hit three times, or four times it becomes comedic. And so when I started to think 'I've never seen that before', I just thought well probably nobody has seen that. I spent so many years as a teenager going to the National Film Theatre and going to see Japanese seasons and animation seasons, it was the education through movies.
I think Stephen is making it sound really easy
No, no, no I've seen a lot of movies, I've seen a lot of films
It sounds like a lot of those decisions were brave decisions because they were going against the mould at the time. Do you think today's climate is also as open?
No, it's dreadful. The problem we all have now as film makers is that, people don't see movies in cinemas anymore, they see them on DVD and most of the films that I would have seen, I'm not just talking to the younger members here because there are some people here who are probably my age, and there may even be one or two that are older than me. When I was a kid I was able to see many films through the Electric Cinema, through the Everyman, through the Paris Pullman and all these cinemas that existed then. I would see my first Polanski, Chabrol or Truffaut films on the big screen and now you are seeing them on DVD. And the great thing is DVD is wonderful because we see perfect prints you will see the film in a much better way that I would have seen it in terms of the quality of the picture. But what you won't see is a Bergman film with 500 people or 200 people or even 50 people or even the neighbour, you will see it with you and your partner and the cat or the kids, or somebody walking around the room naked, I don't know! You will see it in an environment that would not be with a bunch of strangers. And the excitement of seeing a movie in a dark room with 400 or 500 people, complete strangers is fantastic, and cinema meant that to me. And I was lucky enough, fortunate enough to be on the end of that era when I can see my first Chabrol or first Truffaut or first Polanski film in that way. Now it is DVD and sadly that is where distribution goes as well, because now it is all about DVD.
My final question is about the digital screen network. There has been loads of discussion in the shooter bulletins about what this network actually means. It feels like it has been sold to us as a ticket for our future glory. Do you think it is and what are the things we need to know and think about when distributing our films?
It is difficult for me because as you can tell I like film, I like the film, I like the projectors, I like actually to hang around with projectors. I will probably get arrested one day hanging around with a projector! You know I think this idea of video projections is a difficult one for me to come to terms with because I would personally pay more to see "My Summer with Monika" by Bergman or Polanski's "Cul de Sac" in a cinema, on film. And I am not sure who they are trying to get. They are not going to get the guys that don't want to see those movies in, because those guys don't want to see those kind of movies. And so the audience that want to see "City of God" on film or want to see "Paris, Texas" if there was a rerun of "Paris, Texas" that was going to be a DVD or a projected image that wasn't film at a cinema near me, I wouldn't go. But I would go to the Little Theatre in Bath where I live to see a screening of "Paris, Texas" as I am doing next week, for a 35mm screening of "The Battle of Algiers" that Pontecorvo is going to present. "The Battle of Algiers" is one of my favourite movies so I will go and see it projected in a cinema. I would pay I don't know 20 quid or whatever, I don't care, I would go and see it to see the image in that way. That's maybe just me, I'm a boring old fart you know!
There has been a massive revival of Super 8 as a format
Yes actually Super 8 I would go and see as well, it's the texture of film, it's the celluloid, the smell of it, and that is not to put down people making films on other formats. I am of a generation that thinks that way, I am not really very clear in the way that... I know that you can shoot films in a different way and I know that George Lucas is brilliant at "Star Wars" or apparently thinks he is brilliant at "Star Wars" and you can shoot it in that way. And I think George Lucas has spent too much worrying about technology and not enough time worrying about the story, character...
I have got lots more questions that I would like to ask Stephen but I feel greedy. So let's hand over to the audience now.
I just wondered if any of the other Stones have seen the project or had any comment about it?
Ok this is the first question I get on every single Q and A! Have the Rolling Stones seen the film, and do they have any comment on it? The Rolling Stones were sent the film a few weeks ago and so far there is no comment because the best thing they can do is not comment. The Rolling Stones do not exist as people anymore, they are a huge, huge, huge company. They are touring America, they have been touring for 6 months, and they are touring for another 3 or 4 months. They play every stadium and they sell out every concert and you are talking a massive amount of money. And so the individuals of Mick and Keith and the other band members don't exist beneath this wealth that they are churning out, and it is huge. They sold out the Hollywood Bowl within 3 minutes of going on the internet and the tickets are $200/300. So I knew when I made the film I had to double, double check everything I did in the movie because I knew if I went into the monolith I would be sucked up and I would never get out again and the film would never have been made. And they did not want this film to exist in their heart of hearts because they don't want a film that says that The Rolling Stones as they are touring now, isn't the real thing. And so this is a bit like a fly in the ointment. They did start to ask for it and I sent it to them after I had made it and after I had shown it. Now it has shown in San Sebastian, Dinard ,Cork, Toronto and Chicago and all around the world. I would be very hard for them to stop the film now. I knew at an early stage they could have stopped it, and so I never involved them.
I just wanted to say that John Mathieson who shot Stephen's film made a fantastic comment after I saw the film's screening about the ongoing success of the Stones. He reckoned that the Stones are still incredibly successful - because - they have kept their rock hair J
Next question.
I will be slightly greedy I've got two. First of all casting - was that very difficult for you?
It was, yeah. Obviously you know there is a question of wigs - I have been a wig man from "Scandal" to "Backbeat". You know there are always lots of wigs for long hair and short hair. And I knew that if I cast an actor that people knew like Jude Law, it would be Jude Law with a wig, it wouldn't be Brian Jones. I knew I had to have somebody that people didn't really know about and so I had to cast actors and not stars. I was very kind of conscious of that. About 10 years ago Brad Pitt, who I obviously got to know a little bit on "Interview with a Vampire," was kind of like making sounds about 'oh Brian Jones that sounds interesting', but I just thought Brad Pitt as Brian Jones, no way! Well you are laughing now but imagine if you saw it on the screen, you would just immediately start laughing you know. I would be able to shoot the film for $50 million and it would be fantastic. And so I was very conscious that I didn't want somebody who was recognisable as a household name as Brian. The rest of it I just lucked out, I just happened to get Paddy who I am a huge fan of. And Leo did a film that alerted me to his talent which was movie with Dominic Savage which was incredible, and he was amazing
"Out of Control"
"Out of Control" yeah, it was just amazing that film. And then David Morrissey is great and Tuva Novotny who plays Anna, I would work with her tomorrow. She is a Scandinavian actress who I met in Denmark who was great, I needed a Scandinavian actress to play Anna. Monet Mazur, Amelia Warner... I just was very lucky. And then Ben Whishaw came in to play Brian and he was too dark. He was in Hamlet and he is now starring in the adaptation of "Perfume" which Tom Tykwer is filming. And Ben just said "yeah I'll play Keith Richards" he is one of the best actors around. And so I got actors. You see as a producer I had always been encouraging all my directors to cast stars and as soon as I became a director I went "fuck stars I need actors"! And so that was the thing that was important really, to get actors.
I thought it was very well cast. Secondly do you think you will direct something else or was it just the one off?
No I did have glorious fun with the actors and yes I will direct something else but I don't know what, when, if. I've got lots of thingsI have been developing as a producer. I just feel it was kind of a turn. I never felt like going from the cinema usher to cinema manager to programmer to owner to you know, acquirer, all the stuff I did was always moving around it wasn't moving up. It wasn't like I went from lowly producer to highly acclaimed director because I don't believe in that. I think film is a collaboration and I think everyone on the film whether they are writing, whether they are editing, whether they are lighting the film, they are all incredibly important. I don't believe in the auteur theory. I believe that cinema is a collaboration. If you go back to the best films that Chabrol made, if you go back to the best films Truffaut made, we talk about them in that way, but actually you look at the actors and you look at the writers and you look at the editors. I mean where would "Citizen Kane" be without Gregg Toland, who lit that film. You know we give everything to a director and for me now finally, I give everything back to the team of people that made that film, because they saved my fucking life, you know. John Mathieson, John Beard, Deborah Saban who was my first AD you know, they made this film and so I am a cipher for that. Luckily enough I was passionate enough about this subject matter to be able to get their best, but without their best I would be nothing. And we talk about film in very abstract ways and because I have been so close to it on every level I can actually talk about cinema in a very direct way. I will direct something but do you know what, it will be me, and lots of other people.
I've got a question about the music cuts for quite an interesting soundtrack and I was wondering at what point did you actually start to cut the music into the film in the editing, in the post-production?
The question was about the soundtrack and at what point did I cut the music in with the images. Through the 12 years of developing this bloody thing I had what I call the Bible which are like different Robert Johnson tracks that I wanted various versions of, and most of that music made it to the film. But there was a Velvet Underground track which I had cut to the first time that Brian meets Anita Pallenberg and then you have loads of stuff they go off and have this fantasy world that nobody else except them had. And that was originally going to be a Velvet Underground track which I had to replace with White Rabbit Jefferson Airplane which I did quite easily. But mostly the music was pre-ordained and so I was able to think about that while I was shooting. But that track was cut, that scene was cut to that track. But generally I had a very conscious idea of the kind of music I wanted. And then when David Arnold came in to score it I had already pre-temped the film with Debussy and other tracks that I wanted. And so the best track cue for me is just before the pool sequence when she is drunk and she comes back into the room and the music to begins to contrast, it seems to be fighting against the image. And so when she is puking the music is actually quite melodic and nice and then it builds to Paddy's character Frank sort of attacking her on the bed. And then it goes into kind of weird music and then it is quite nice again as you see the lights go on in the pool. David Arnold is a genius, and again he is somebody that did so much for the film. Obviously I knew what I wanted from the music and I knew the score, but to be able to find someone that can not only deliver but to deliver more than you ever thought you could get, is great. I think that is the privilege of being able to direct something and work with a great team.
Guys unfortunately there is just time for one more question
I was really interested in the after life ending if you like, I mean obviously you could have made a choice to finish it at his death but I just wondered what pushed you into that after life?
It is very easy to be very trivial - there aren't enough ghosts in British movies! I loved the idea of the ghost of Brian coming back because there is this magazine that exists called Spirit and it is very odd, very strange people run it and they are all quite young and they have this weird thing of Brian Jones and a ghost of Brian. I just wanted to add a little bit of spooky kind of supernatural feel towards the end of the film and also wanted a comment for Brian to finally speak to us and say what he thinks, because throughout the whole movie he is talking a lot but we never get to the base of Brian. We never get to what his real character is. That's because I'm a crap film maker! And so at the end of the film I really did want for him to say what he thought you know, and so I wanted the last line of the film to be the thing about what happiness is - that it is boring. And any of us that know and I think for most teenagers that is the thing - that they want to be engaged, they want to do something, they want get out, they want to be in a rock band, they want to do this, they want to change the world. You know all of us, once you get to the state of happiness - where is that state, what is that state? It's about the only thing for me you know, I'm happy because I have lots of stuff that is going on and I am doing blah blah blah and all of us hopefully in this room are in a state of kind of happiness. But it is really "semi happiness" because we always think there is another place to be that is happy you know, and if you ever get to that place it's boring. And so I wanted the ghost of Brian to tell us that, and I thought that was quite a good excuse. And also there are not enough ghosts in British films!
That's it our time is up. Please join me in thanking Stephen and wish him the best with his film.
MASSIVE APPLAUSE.