Rehearsing Yasmina Reza: Art - performed by the Katona József Theatre 21 KByte	He recently finished shooting his latest film, Portugal. He adapted his own theatre production, Zoltán Egressy's play onto the screen and directed it in a small village in the Bakony hills. This gave the excuse for the conversation - and several other screenplay ideas of his. Was it your idea to make a film of Portugal, or were you approached with it? It was me. Somehow during a performance it occurred to me. I called Sándor Simó, director of Hunnia Studio and asked him to see the play. He did, we applied for money and the whole thing started. This is all - everything happened very quickly. Was this after the theatre premiere? Of course, around the twenty fifth performance. You have films that have been waiting for completion for more than ten years... Yes. One of my scripts have been waiting in my drawer for almost fifteen years. How much did you re-design Portugal for the screen? Pretty much. I can't express it in percentage, but rather extensively. Of course during my directorial work for the theatre production I already changed the play a lot. When I started the script, naturally I put lots of exterior shots into it. And much had to be changed in the interiors as well. So the screenplay itself was different from the play. I wrote small scenes, lines, dialogues into it - so I did interfere. You already changed the ending of the stage version, didn't you? Yes, but I didn't write it. I convinced the author, Zoltán Egressy to add a scene to the end. He wrote it immediately and it worked very well. The idea, though, to end the story later than it originally ended, was indeed mine. For the film version you introduced new actors as well. Three of them. Zsolt Kovács, József Kelemen and Viktor Nagy - all of them came from Kaposvár. These roles were there in the original play, only different people play them, than the ones on stage. I also added some new characters. Eszter Csákányi plays Satan's wife, who have been seduced by Bittner. In the play, there is only one sentence about this. I thought, if this is a film, she should appear. Quite a few new characters were born this way. There's the priest's mother for instance, who is mentioned in the play, but she never appears - so I wrote a few sentences for her and we meet her, played by Éva Olsavszky. I included the yard of the priest's house. I added quite a few new scenes for the priest, but for all of the characters, really. Most of the actors are from the stage production. What made you look for the three new ones? I originally wanted to have an older actor for the priest. Zoli Egressy even asked me why I didn't play it myself? But it was all right on stage to have a younger actor - Péter Takátsy, later Roland Rába. But the film is different. When you direct for the stage, you have a company of which you have to cast the production. When you direct a film, "the whole country" is your company, you can work with anybody you want. This is so all around the world and it is quite natural. But going back to the replacements, I only replaced two actors, and a third wasn't available for the shooting. Unfortunately this turned out in the last moment, production started in two days' time and for a while it seemed that I would have to jump in. I stood there in the production room, the first ten minutes went with no ideas of what to do, the next ten with wondering what the hell is going to happen? Do I have to play it? OK, I'll play it, then. But within an hour I knew who should play the role, I called him, he was available, came happily and he turned out to be marvellous. Are you happy with the fact, that in the end József Kelemen played the role? I think it became better this way. He is a fresh face in Hungarian film and he also appreciates such a role. He brought new energy to the whole thing that's around him. When you made the film version, did you work differently then in the theatre production? Do you insist to have theatrical situations, rehearsals, or do you have a different approach? On the contrary, the actors insisted on it more, than I did. I never wanted to make it theatrical, I tried to work against it. But this is only natural, you cannot work on film as you do in the theatre. Even so one of the main dangers was how theatrical the stuff remains. My basic aim was that it shouldn't be, or rather that it should be in a way. Maybe the way in Cassavetes' Premiere you see a film, but you also see theatre. In this sense I did let it remain theatrical at some points and I supported this tendency. Sometimes being theatrical helps a film, but in general I was against it. But do I work differently? Of course I do. My method is basically the same, or whatever it is - I don't have a method, but the way I work is the same. I am very actor-centred, so who I see on stage or on film is always the single most important factor for me. This is my basic way of approach - how these people, or actors are? It is quite typical, that there was hardly any tension during this whole shooting. It was a good company, too... Very good. But I myself wasn't tense either, only for a couple of moments, when the daily twelve hours' work simply felt too much. Did you have rehearsals before shooting? No, because most of the actors had already played these parts. But in a way this was more difficult, since we had to change many things that had worked in the theatre. It partly concerned the actors' gestures, their "size", and partly a way of thinking and meanings. At the same time it was a great advantage that I didn't have to deal with problems of their learning the lines. For example, they immediately recognised if I left out a sentence. They then looked for it, the confident rhythm, or balance was disturbed - but this can also improve the material. So, for this reason, I consciously left out lines but on the other hand I had wanted to anyway. When you prepare a script do you concentrate on situations and characters or do you compose pictures? This all goes together. One always triggers the other. It can happen, that an image can create a situation, but I don't have a set method for this. I do whatever develops in my head. Of course, situations always come first. Whatever belongs to the story is always preferable to what is only an image. But sometimes it occurs that I insist on a particular image and I try to adapt the situation to suit it. This is not my invention, everybody works that way. We fall in love with things, we feel that we have a very expressive image in mind and we try to make it work at all costs. Not desperately, but at all costs. They are important to be there, because they are typical of me. If they add up to the essence or express the world of this particular film, then you have to insist on them. Are you more interested in film directing, than film acting? Or you don't decide... Theatre and film are very different. If we are talking about films, then I'd say I'd rather direct, then play. This is not by chance, it is a matter of circumstances. There are no good films, not one that I would gladly play a part in. They don't even call me, but then, there is nowhere to call me to. And being nostalgic is not your style... It isn't. I'm a bit bored with what I have represented in Hungarian films. There are very few of my films that I can even remember. Even though I've been in a lot of films.. There are some, that everybody remembers you of...Just Like America, Eskimo Woman Feels Cold... You can't say too many more. That's it. There are some, but not too many. As I said, I myself can't remember them. Not because I'm old and stupid, but because I don't find them important. What was the first one that you found important? I don't know, maybe Wild. I quite liked that one. József Madaras was supposed to play that role, but for some reason he couldn't accept it and Ferenc András, who was then still in college, called me. This film was made from one of the best collections of short stories of the world, the one called 'Owl River'. But it was good to play in András Jeles' college film, The White Army. There are two of your scripts in preparation that I know of. Would you talk about them? Which ones do you mean? Roi Ubu, and Yes, In Italian Si. Are there others? Yes, sure. But these two are no closer to completion than the other ones, either. It seems as if you had told me the other day, that the latter would have bigger chances if Portugal is successful. It is not necessarily the film that would have bigger chances, but me. If Portugal wins the audience, then my next script could work more easily. Normally I keep cutting the branch I'm sitting on. I often say what I think and don't consider what the price would be. Some years ago a poster was published with the pictures and names of every Hungarian director. You were not included. Do you see a reason for this, or is it simply a mistake? I don't know. I was a little hurt, though. If it is being rude then therefore, if a simple mistake then therefore. But I have no idea how that happened. But not only did my chances not improve after The Three Sisters, they even got worse. I got a few bad reviews and the film went only for a short time. Nothing has happened to it ever since, it's still on the shelves. How do you feel about it now? How could you accomplish with it what you wanted? That's difficult to judge. That film got made in a very short time, we almost immediately gathered the money for it. I went to Simó and asked what he would say if I wanted to film The Three Sisters. This was in 1990, just as the Russians were leaving. He grabbed the phone and got the money. It was basically one sentence that he needed to say. But the film wasn't to be what everybody expected. Not at all and I never intended to do what would have been so obvious. That showed in the way it was received. Everybody was disappointed, they didn't understand why I wanted to make films at all. What's this actor trying so hard? That is: we recognise him as a good actor but he shouldn't push too hard to direct films. Didn't the Tunnel count as an artistic accomplishment? That didn't count at all. This business is too lightweight for anything to count as an artistic accomplishment, or even for anybody to recognise that you want, maybe even can make films. This never occurs to anyone. Does it have a different motive now as compared to when Tunnel was made? Tunnel was my first directorial effort. I went to Studio Balázs Béla then, I didn't even consider any other studio. They received the script well, immediately supported it and gave the money - so it was great to make a film then. Now it was again great to make Portugal, but when I made The Three Sisters I had many problems. I was a bit undetermined, I found myself in a compromised situation which didn't do any good to the film. But it was too late then to change, the site, the money, the actors were organised, there was nothing to do. Still, we shot the film in a very short time, I think it was twenty-one days...Although we had lots of problems. I think I even should have replaced my director of photography. You have mentioned that often you keep cutting the branch you are sitting on. What exactly do you mean by this? For instance, if I'm asked what I think about Hungarian film the I tell the numerous bad things that I think about it. There is very little that I find to be good. Sometimes I call the members of the decisive board and I tell them to fuck off, I tell them to first learn to read scripts before they take the right to decide who can make films in Hungary. I keep telling these things to different people. Of course there is a lot of anger in this, I know that, but I think I have a reason to be angry. For example one year I got thirty-five million forints for a film and the next year they told me that I didn't have this money because the story is only good for a ten minute short film. What script was this? Yes, In Italian Si. This is a working title which I haven't changed for fifteen years. Can you tell me what the story is about? Well, I have almost forgotten by now...In the middle of a meadow different people sit onto a carousel - two young people from a wealthy urban company and merry villagers. The carousel's owner would like to close for the day, but he agrees to start the carousel again if they pay for five runs in advance. After the start the carousel owner dies and the people are trapped on the roundabout. Basically the film is about how people react to distress - and of course how they get down in the end. It is a sort of social criticism, a description of human communities. What words do we use when we "live happily" and what do these words mean when we are in trouble? But as in every disaster movie, it has love, hate, sin and confession - and characters typical of this genre. I guess you will have to rework a fifteen year old script if you can make the film now. Certainly, it all should happen now and not fifteen years ago. I will have to refresh the dialogues a little - now I really know what this story is all about. It would be great to be able to make it. Is there no easy way in Hungary - or is it only you that has difficulties to use it? There is no easy way in Hungary. I don't know about other countries, but I don't think there is one anywhere. You said that you keep telling everybody the bad things you can say about today's Hungarian film. What are you thinking of? This is a difficult question. It's hard to grab the main problem - the whole thing adds up from many smaller or bigger problems. The first cathastrophy is that the Hungarian film studio doesn't exist any more. You go to the old building and you find a TV channel there. Many strangers walk about in the old corridors. There was a time when you had to give your ID in order to be let in, because nobody knows you in the building where you have been working for so many years. But this is only a technical mistake. The main problem is obvious: Hungarian film doesn't have its own equipment any more. Somebody else owns it and rents it out for enormous money. There is little money anyway for a Hungarian film but a huge part of it is spent on hiring lamps and cameras and I have no idea where that money goes to. I doubt that they go back to filmmaking. From what aspect do you think that the films you have played in are very insignificant? From the aspect of topic, role, imagery, thought and spirit. Just Like America and Eskimo Woman are of course exceptions. Partly because there I felt that I played real film roles in them, they had stories, there were real films, they had a world, they were saying something. But films like Huszárik's Sindbad, Bódy's American Torso, Jeles' The Last Fling, Jancsó's films or Makk's Love...you don't really hear nowadays about films of such strength, style or depth. What do you think the reason is? Are there no longer directors who can do that? There are no serious people any more. There are no serious film artists, only clever ones, tricky ones or god knows what, but no serious ones. Besides the ones I mentioned, I couldn't name anybody that's still around. This is probably being unfair, but that's my experience. Even the ones that started that way have been corrupted. After a couple of years or films, everybody gets distorted. Who seemed to think in the right way has become empty-headed by my standards, one that I can't exchange more than eight sentences with. This is my biggest problem with films, too. There are films being made for no particular reason. Should it be a comedy - OK, let's make a comedy. But it's better not to talk about its quality. I think taste in general is bad. Somehow the thing is not deeply rooted, it doesn't come from the artists' strong, personal world but from some sort of "filmmaking purpose". You don't feel why a film is made? They normally consider who it is for, because that means business. When a shooting starts they already know how many viewers to expect, know what music it will have, the CD is already being made, by the time the film opens, the CD is already in the stores. Then it turns out that maybe the CD is better, or maybe the whole thing was made to have a CD and somebody could make loads of money. Are you faced with such expectations? No, I work with Sándor Simó, who may be the only exception. He is able to think about a film as a film, he gives chances to the most new filmmakers, like for instance András Szőke. Simó is a curious man and he has bloody good taste and he is very easy to communicate with. He is an island among the other studios, where it is always worth going. How could Portugal "overtake" the carousel film in terms of fulfilment? On the one hand the decisive board supports cheap films, on the other hand they may have had enough of my constant phone calls and my sending them to hell, accusing them of corruption and inability. They must be tired of that and when I appeared with a new script they said OK, this is a cheap one that we can shut him up with. But they didn't forget to note in the letter that Portugal is the last one on the list of materials that they would give support to. It is horrible that certain directors get billion forint budgets while Jancsó has to beg for one million and can't start his new film. Anyway, I am not complaining, I'm only pissed. Make no mistake, I don't want them to give that money to me - give it to someone else who is a real director and hasn't made a film for years. Many directors have started to work as hired "employees", the producers tell them what to do and how. Have you never been approached with such offers? Never. The television has asked me to shoot two episodes for the Intermezzo series - I think I did the last two. You may call that "employee-work", but I enjoyed it and it worked well. I think I prevent them from calling me with such offers. Talk a little about your Roi Ubu script! Did the idea occur to you during the stage production? No, much later. I don't know, somehow I started working on it. I wrote it very quickly, it's about sixty pages long. I wanted to make a live action feature of 'Ubu', but Zoltán Kamondi read it and said that it is clearly animation. I had to admit that it was true. Then I went to Varga Studio and Varga later thanked Kamondi for bringing me there. He said that since Yellow Submarine he hadn't read such a script. He told me to start right then - and I was overjoyed. Of course I took right then literally, I never thought in terms of years. It seems that he meant years when he said right then. It seems that these things go slower. Nevertheless I asked a few graphic artists to do some designs, so it actually has started. Now I'm waiting for it to continue. We first need three million forints to make a couple of minutes as a demo to be able to apply for support with that. Of course everybody knows that an animation feature is of great value, since you can sell it everywhere and it also means fame. This is where I should be clever - but in such situations I get frustrated instead of accepting that Varga is right, the thing takes time. Such a film takes four or five years to make. I should be patient and less shy. I should approach somebody and ask for three million forints to make those few minutes. So I apply for co-production partners as well. But I wouldn't go to just anybody. I don't feel like talking to the obnoxious wealthy businessmen, who have fucked up Hungarian cinema with their multiplex movie theatres. I find it more harmful than important. Do you like cinema at all at the moment? I do, but I seldom go. When I have the ticket, the door closes and the film starts, it's great. But it's hard to get to that point. When I'm busy it's hard to imagine to start off to the cinema, travel, line up for the ticket, buy it, no ticket, let's try another cinema... What have you liked recently? I'll tell you what I've seen. One is Secrets And Lies, the other is the Verlaine story, Total Eclipse - I liked that one very much, too. The way Leonardo DiCaprio played is quite unique. His whole performance was about a changing personality. It was totally credible. And a recent favourite is Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat. I admire his artistic bravery. Getting back to your own work, you say that you have several other scripts ready... I'm not saying that they are ready - some are ready in my head, some have five or six scenes written down. Some have the whole storyline and the rest is in my head. Suddenly ideas occur to me, I don't nurture them consciously. When you started acting, was the story about ultimately wanting to direct as well? I didn't even consciously decide to become an actor. I think it was a subconscious path. For three years I worked in Pinceszínház, because I was attracted by "fooling". A colleague of mine played there and I asked her to take me to the place. I was twenty-six and I loved being around the theatre. After three months they took me as a member. Three years later I went to play in Kaposvár. I came back to Budapest when I joined the company of Katona József Theatre in 1993. They wanted me to go to Új Theatre as well, but I chose Katona instead. I like working there, what's more, I can regularly direct as well. Did you direct theatre earlier than film? Yes, but not much. My first stage production was 'Mario And The Magician'. Was this some kind of compensation? Did you want to do it differently than others? Not at all. I didn't want to chase anybody away, or introduce new forms, nothing like that. I simply wanted to try myself. It was the whole thing that excited me, not only acting. I was interested in every single prop - how something gets done. I went to the workshop to paint sets, I watched them do it. At Pinceszínház I was also stage manager while I also played - I made a living on that and actually lived in the theatre. I slept on the rows of chairs, for months I didn't go out to the street. What I had inside was enough for me. This hasn't changed much, everything that has something to do with our art interests me. So you don't consider yourself part of any particular style, you do what comes? Yes, I do what occurs to me, but there must be things that are typical of me - what I like, what attracts me more than other things. Sometime I will have to consider what I've done and what is in common in them. I don't know. But this area interests me on a very large scale. My scripts and stage work are proof of the fact that I like approaching things from several different angles. I am attracted to the circus, film, theatre, I like acrobats, thoughts of complicated nature, sciences, I am particularly drawn to transcendentalism...From burlesque to horror, from adventure movies to documentary, everything interests me. I have made a more than ten hour long documentary that I never put together. But I'm also interested in simply going somewhere with a camera, say an expedition, to be faced with real forces of nature. Do you think there is an Eastern-European quality in your films, or for that matter, in films in general? Naturally so. Maybe a little less now, but a typical and good quality of Eastern-European films has always been a common feature - want for freedom, or searching a way out. Stopping dictatorship, re-balancing identity - this has always been common. You can't really say it now, because seemingly these problems have been solved. Of course they haven't. While we gradually turn into colonies we think that now we are free and we have nothing left in common. When we understand that we have become colonies, maybe there will again be a common Eastern-European film language. Great film artists like Menzel, Forman, Jancsó, Wajda, Szabó, Huszárik - had something basically common between them. But for such artists it is irrelevant where they live - they are universal. I think if something made Hungarian film interesting it was the fact that we had people who thought universally. You put the sentence in the past... Yes. But maybe there are such people left. It would be unfair to say the opposite. I find János Szász a good thinker who has a unique world, taste, so he is an exception from what I've been talking about. I don't know everybody. I generally feel what I feel. Eastern-European film has always had something good in it, just like English, Italian, Russian or French. It was good when it didn't deal with direct politics, it didn't complain, but it tried to present a basic human situation or problem. Your own films build up from several of these examples. My world is a bit far-fetched, different ideas keep coming up in my head. I don't wish to devote my self to one particular issue or style. I find it much more interesting this way.
Yasmina Reza: Art - performed the Katona József Theatre 21 KByte
Andor Lukáts: The Three Sisters (1991) 21 KByte
Péter Gothár: Just Like America (1987) 21 KByte
Lívia Gyarmathy: Now It's My turn, Now It's Yours (1984) 21 KByte