It would be impossible to list all the filmmakers and actors who consider working in Hollywood as a means of gaining international recognition but also of financing their own productions independent from studios, producers and distributors. While their corporate movies are made with an eye on the audience, the independent
productions foreground creativity and artistic freedom. However, there are very few filmmakers, who pursue carriers so different from each other, as the eccentric Hollywood actor, director, producer, writer Crispin Glover (or Crispin Hellion Glover, as he signs his own work). His mainstream career as an actor is associated with megablockbuster productions such as the Charlie’s Angels movies or the recently premiered Epic Movie. As a creative artist he writes, publishes and even performs books, and most importantly makes movies, such as What Is It? (2005) or his latest It’s Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE (2007), which cannot be any further from mainstream Hollywood cinema. After the 2005 premier of What Is It? many people questioned what really it was. Well, it was indeed only the first part of the It trilogy, the second part of which It’s Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE raised even more eyebrows at its premier at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. In It’s fine! we enter the fantasy world of a man with severe cerebral palsy, who not only dreams of making love to beautiful long haired women but turns out to be a serial killer. For the discomfort to the audience scriptwriter Steven C. Stewart’s fantasy comes alive on the big screen with graphic details featuring the severely handicapped author himself, who died within a month of the actual shooting. At the festival I talked to Crispin Glover, who was joined by David Brothers, his co-director and set designer.

To be quite honest with you, it was anything but easy to sit through your film and it certainly raised many questions in me. It made me feel rather uncomfortable and I had two questions in my mind. The first was: ?Where’s the nearest exit?’ and the second was and still is to find out what your purpose was with making this movie.

Crispin Glover: Anything that makes people uncomfortable we exercise. There’s a moment when the audience sits back and questions ?What is it?’. It’s a challenging film but also it’s educational. It’s also Steve’s very personalized vision of the world. What his whole circumstance dictates and what other things are going on in his mind. There’re elements that are related thematically and they go into realms, I call them realms that would be considered good and evil. There’s an academic way to approach it, to talk about it but Steve wrote it in a much more naďve way, in a much more naďve sense and it’s important that we embrace this and didn’t interfere with this naivety as much as we could possible do. We wanted to make this fantastical element look as beautiful and feel as opulent as we could possibly master and people wouldn’t feel that in a traditional, corporately funded film. They wouldn’t go into an area these films can go into. Of course, it means that it’s difficult to find a distributor.
Why do you think it’s important to go beyond that realm? To be more daring than corporate funded movies?
C.G.: I think it’s important to make films, to have films that people can truly relate to. I’ve been trying to come up with a definition for these kinds of films, but I find that definitions can change and people can change too. Things shift all the time. There’re different kinds of things I’m eager to explore. In It’s fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE it’s graphic sexuality, which makes it difficult to be distributed. But it’s vital, absolutely, a hundred per cent vital, there’s no question about it because the way Steven had written it was even more specific, very graphically detailed and to exile that out would have exactly been what corporate entities do.
David Brothers: We could have convinced Steven that we didn’t need to show that. But it would have taken away Steve’s integrity.
C.G.: Yes, we could have convinced him. Also it would have been easier for me to distribute it if it weren’t so graphic. But I wouldn’t feel right about it. I’d feel quite wrong about it.

I understand that it’s difficult to find a distributor for the film but how about financing? How difficult was to have it financed?

C.G.: I financed it completely on my own. This film specifically had been with me for much longer than What Is It? but I didn’t write What Is It? with Steven in mind. But then I thought it would be a good idea to bring Steven into it, both thematically and also to promote his movie. The concept of bringing Steven into it was to make It’s Fine! a sequel [to What Is It?]. (In What Is It? the characters are played by actors with Down syndrome.) I realized that it would be good both commercially and thematically to make Steve’s story a sequel to What Is It?

So was it at this point when you eventually decided to put Steven’s story on the screen?

David showed me the screenplay in 1987 or 1986 so David had already been working with the script for many years before that, but it took a long time to get to the point of making it. What happened is that, well I was actually going to make it part three [of the It trilogy] but in 2000 one of Steven’s lungs collapsed and it became apparent that if we didn’t shoot something soon we may never get to shoot it at all. It was right after the time the first Charlie’s Angels movie was coming out and I realized that the money I was making with that I could put it straight to this film. And that exactly what happened. I shot that movie, acted in it. Then I flew to Salt Lake City - both Steven and David are from Salt Lake City - to meet them and then I went back to LA and David started to build the set in a warehouse. We shot Steve’s film in about a period of six month. Then within a month after shooting, Steve died. And, if fact, he asked us, really on his deathbed, or rather commissioned us to take him off his life-support system. And of course it was a sad and heavy responsibility to tell him yes, we do have enough footage and he could go. He felt that it was time for him to go but also he wanted the film to be finished. If I said to him that we didn’t have enough footage and we couldn’t finish the film then he would have kept himself on life-support. He would have got the operation he needed and he would have stayed alive to make the film. He was a tough character and I especially learned this after he died. I had always known how important it was for him but then I really knew that this was what he needed to accomplish and what he did. We were kind of joking about it, that it was like Steven forcing us to make this terrible movie… I shouldn’t say this because it’s a great movie and I truly feel good about it.
D.B.: You know, some people feel that it was intimate and we may have exploited Steven but I feel that it was Steven who indeed exploited us. He took away twenty-seven years of my life!

Now that you’ve brought up ?exploitation’... Well, it’s certainly an issue, which inevitably comes up in connection with this movie.

C.G..: It’s strange but I think I could say that actually Steven exploited himself. But otherwise I don’t like the word ?exploitation’. Exploitation usually indicates that somebody is having something negatively impacted on them because of what is happening and I don’t see a negative thing that happened to Steven here.
D.B.: Or it could be that someone is using someone else for gain. And I could say, or Crispin could say…
C.G.: We both could say that in fact we made a film that we will get good word about.
D.B.: Or we can say that we made a good film, like I said, Steven used us to get his fantasy realized. But the word [exploitation] does have negative connotations and I don’t like that.

Did Steven see any of the end result?

D.B.: No, he died within a month.
C.G.: So he saw only some of the footage but the film didn’t start being edited until I showed What is it? in 2005 at Sundance. I was involved with so very many of the technical elements that I had to finish that film. So I started the basically two years of editing after …

Two years of editing?!

C.G.: Yes, approximately. I like to take time with editing so it was actually fast for me. It could have taken a lot more time but I have other commitments as well. I have a film, Beawulf [directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie alongside Crispin Glover], coming out and I’ll start touring with that film. It will have a wide distribution and there’s a large publicity campaign built into it and I assume I’ll be a part of that so it makes sense to me to release It’s Fine!... at that point but I had to get it to Sundance because it’s a great place to announce the film’s completion. I know it because I did that before. So I had to get things ready relatively quickly. But I feel good about it. I’m happy with the movie and so is David.

And how much footage did you shoot? I mean, how much material did you have for editing?

C.G.: I think the shooting ratio on this was 17 to 1, which is a slightly lower ratio than I had on What Is It?. What Is It? was a 21 to 1. I had a very high shooting ratio on that one. This is still relatively high shooting ratio but it was important to not scamp and to be careful how to shoot it. The technique was that we generally did about one or two takes, sometimes there were more, but we generally did two. That was pretty much the rule. It was important that every day the actors came into a particular room we set up for recording the sound. So once the visuals were right, we went on to work on the performance nuances and then on the sound, which is a good way I think of doing it and doing things relatively inexpensively. We recorded every actor with all of their dialogue on the scene every day when we would shoot.

How carefully did you work on the performance nuances? Did you rehearse everything or did you encourage your actors to improvise?

C.G.: It depended on the actor, on the situation. With my mother [Marie Glover] and Jamie Farrell, in particular, there were very particular rehearsal elements we had to go through, there were certain performance nuances we had to work on together. With Margit Carstensen, well… she did everything the way we wanted it. I asked her how Fassbinder directed her and she said that he didn’t direct her at all. And I knew pretty much what she meant when she said that because as soon as you start watching her it was evident that this woman … well, she’s one of the greatest actresses that’s alive. I was so grateful that she came out and she was so great to work with.

And she indeed gives a really amazing performance.

C.G.: Oh, she does. She always does. That’s amazing. I’m so proud to have worked with her. That’s the first film she had made in the United States.

Really? I’m very surprised to hear that because she started with Hannah Schygulla, who became such an internationally recognized star, while Margit is not that well-known outside her country. I mean, people need to see her face to recognize her.

C.G.: Though Margit works more now, Hannah Schygulla she doesn’t really work in film much now. She works in cabarets in France but Margit works a lot in films and theatres too. There’s another great actress Fassbinder worked with, Irm Hermann. She was in a lot of Fassbinder’s movies. I really admire her acting as well. She’s very different though. I’m glad that Margit came to American to work on this film because she has a tremendous presence on the screen.

How carefully did you pre-construct the scenes? Did you storyboard for them?

C.G.: David built all of the set in mind with what was going on, with actual camera angles and lighting. So it didn’t need to be storyboarded in that way. We talked about everything. We always discussed things the night before so we had a shot list and we went through what we got.
D.B.: And when you actually look at the film you can see that it almost has more theatrical look.

That’s exactly what I was meaning to say…

D.B.: So it was more about building up the set like a stage then actually storyboarding. We did more planning for medium-shots but most of the time there were wide angle shots, which I really liked.

Why did you decide to make it look theatrical.

D.B.: Well, partly it was personal and also because of the cameraman I worked with. I like to know my environment. I like to know where I am. The other element is that I wanted the audience to be part of the film. When I started planning the set the audience was always in the back of my mind. How they’d react to this, what they’d think because they’re voyeurs in someone’s fantasy. So with the stage and the camera angles you’re almost, as if you were spying on your neighbor. I like that look.

There’s a scene, in which we can see two flats, or rather interiors divided by a corridor. There’s one girl in a bathtub in one of the flats and the other girl is in the bedroom of the other flat. We can see them both at the same time and also we can follow Steven going from one girl to another. As if the wall was missing and you were spying on them from outside. It’s a really spectacular design.

D.B.: And if you put it on TV you’d lose that.
C.G.: It’s an important reason to continue to tour with it theatrically as opposed to putting it immediately on DVD, which is has become the norm. Producers know that they’d only lose money theatrically, so they utilize that as an advertisement for DVD, but the problem is that it gets rid of the projected, large screen experience. But people who go to art house cinemas would know that art house films lose a lot when they’re put on DVD.
D.B.: It was also a gimmick that I’ve just thought of. Crispin and I love older films, old genre films, so that particular scene, because it’s so wide, it’s almost like cinemascope. And when I planned the film I knew that Crispin wanted it to be shown theatrically so we made it look like a cinema scope shot.
C.G.: We shot it with an eye on lenses and camera equipment because I want to keep working on film.

There’s always a performance accompanying the show. Would you mind telling me a bit more about it?

C.G.: Well, it has to do with these books. I’ve been performing these since 1992 and I made many books in the eighties and early nineties.

So you write books as well...

C.G.: Yes, and I publish them too. These books are profusely illustrated so when I narrate them there are images behind me, slides from the books. When you publish them you want enormously people to read the books, especially when you’re an actor, but if I’d just read the text from the book the story wouldn’t come forward because of the illustration helps to move the story. A festival in 1992 that showed a lot of my films invited me so it made sense to me to go and perform a slide show and it was a successful thing and I toured with it a little bit. I could see that a lot of people were coming in and it was a good way to promote a film. And that’s exactly I knew I’d do when we were shooting Everything Is Fine! and when I was shooting What Is It?. The live performance, the dramatic narration, lasts for an hour then I show the film. What Is It? is 72 minutes and Everything Is Fine! is 74 minutes. I haven’t started touring with it yet but I’ll do the exact same thing I did with What Is It?. www.crispinglover.com is where people can find out when I am going to be where. And after the film there’s a question and answer period. It lasts for about two hours. This is usually how much I can talk about it. It’d be interesting to see how questions would be differentiated and how they would be different because obviously they’re very different movies. And then I have a book signing afterwards. That can be the longest part of the evening for me, depending on the audience size. And I not just sign the books I also talk to the people, which is a good business element. People really like that personal touch. And I get people who come back. It’s really is a sincere element that people know that you’re interested in what they think about it and their opinion matter to you. They genuinely appreciate it. And that’s what I conceive when I say the corporate funded distributing is really killing its own market. It’s not good business because they don’t care what people think about their movies. They care about getting their money in the easiest possible way. It’s not good business ultimately and it’s not good ethics either, I think. If I have a 700 seat theatre in Chicago, for example, I was there until 3.30 or 4 in the morning doing book signing. I am being paid though to do so because they’re buying the books so it’s good business but it’s also the hardest part.

You mentioned that you like old films. Which one or ones would you mention as inspiration for this particular movie?

D.B.: I don’t think that there was one particular movie that we could pick. We really just wanted to decorate Steve’s fantasy as opulent as we could. (We didn’t want to set up a castle because that would have been too opulent) but we both like Technicolor films and we wanted to make it look like a Technicolor film.
C.G.: We talked a lot about colors and contrasts. Red, especially but we talked about orange and green too, which we didn’t really use. And then purple or yellow, those opposing colors so we had a discussion to have opposing colors on the set. We built on a lot of projects before this. We started working together in the eighties and David built the set for What Is It? as well..

I am curious to find out more about how the two of you found each other and started to work together.

C.G.: What happened is that when I was nineteen I did a film at the American Film Institute. It was a half hour film, called The Orkly Kid, which I still like. It was a good movie. I met a filmmaker called Trent Harris, who was from Salt Lake and he was friends with another filmmaker from Salt Lake called Larry Roberts. They were doing interesting documentaries and one of the films I was acting in was based on one of the documentaries that Trent made; and Larry Roberts made a documentary on Steven C. Steward with a partner of his, called Diane Orr. I think it may have been about what actually helped Steven to get out the nursing home. And Steven told Larry that he wanted to get his movie made and Larry introduced David to Steven because David was a young, ambitious filmmaker and interested in unusual things and…
D.B.: Basically, what he said to me at that time was that there was a fellow here who had a screenplay but he couldn’t write it down because he was handicapped and that’s how I got involved. Right at that point I was amazed by what Steven told me.
C.G.: It was years before. I, then, was in Los Angeles and that was the time when I started to think that I wanted to make some of my own movies. And Larry showed me some of David’s movies that he was making and they were great, very creative. And I thought David would be great to work with on one of my books, which is in my slides show. I actually sent him copies of my different books…. So we started working on The Backward Swing and while we were working on The Backward Swing David was talking about this screenplay and showed it to me. As soon as I read it I knew that this was the film that I wanted to produce. And then years went by and then the next film we shot on video and then What is it? we shot on film.

You shot some of your movies on film and some on video. Why did you decide to shoot It’s Fine! on film?

C.G.: We could have shot it on video back in the eighties but we knew that it had to have a certain production value. We both have developed to the point that we knew we had to give it the kind of opulence it needed.
D.B.: We tried the best we could do to make it look great.

And then let the audience react to it. For this kind of film,… this kind of heavy subject matter, I suppose, you have to make things really visual, visually stunning, in an engaging and visually stylistic way.

C.G.: I don’t know if I agree. I don’t know if it had to be done that way. It could have easily been shot on location as opposed to on sets and it would have been far less expensive to do it. And the kind of people we could have cast to be in it could have been cast with non-professional actors. There’d have been a different kind of feel to them. It might have felt a little more organic in that way.

But that would have been more like a documentary…

C.G.: It was important separating from that and focusing on the fantastical element.
D.B.: We knew that we could have done it that way but we didn’t want to.
C.G.: That’s why we waited so much for it.
D.B.: And it was because of Steven as well. Throwing him into a nursing home at the end had a little more impact this way.

And also the whole film became more dreamlike, more like a fantasy. This is a man’s fantasy, this is a fantasy world.

C.G.: And that’s why we shot the nursing home on location and not on set. We tried to find the location that we could work in and then we got there and we started shooting and then we found out that this was the actual nursing home Steven had been in. And you can feel it. There’s something about those final scenes. At the beginning he’s well but there’s a differentiation at the end when he had gone through this particular journey. You can feel that something there is very powerful.
D.B.: And also the people we just found there.

Were they real inmates? It must have been pure luck. They have incredibly remarkable faces.

C.G.: I think it’s more than pure luck because it’s part of the documentary element. It was the people he was living with and he reacted to that. Not the same people, obviously, but that was the kind of people he lived with. And that was his reaction to them.

The really interesting aspect of Steven’s fantasies is that he does not only want to have sex with those women but he wants to kill them, actually, he kills them. I think it makes the subject matter even more difficult to tackle.

C.G.: Well that’s what Steven actually wrote and that’s what is fascinating about it. What cracked through in his psyche? And I don’t like to analyze it in too much of a Freudian way but …

But you still can’t help thinking in terms of Freudian interpretations when you see something like Steven’s fantasies.

C.G.: Yes, and there’s also a usefulness to that. And also, as David was just saying, Steven just wanted to play a bad guy in the movie. He wanted to be a villain.
D.B.: In real life Steven was a really charming and a really warm man. At one point he even wrote in the script that ?I have never killed a woman, nor do I ever intend to do it.” If you look at Steven, he looks so harmless. When Steven started the story he had so much anger or angst in him.

Or frustration, perhaps?

D.B.: Yes, frustration, too, perhaps, … but we can’t analyze that too much and I think even if he was here today he wouldn’t be able to tell. (He told me on several occasion that his favorite movie was The Sound of Music.) He set the story in this murder detective genre because…, he was just looking for a vehicle for people to love him and to hate him. And I think he found that vehicle and I think it must have been because of his anger.

I was thinking of frustration because he was a young man when he wrote the script and still unable to live the way ?normal’ young people live, to do what ?normal’ young people do and to approach women as a ?normal’ young man would. And he must have had fantasies that would have been more difficult for him to live out than for other men of his age.

D.B.: Yes, and also because in the first twenty years of his life he was raised by his mother, who was a very strong woman. She raised him in a way that he could do anything he wanted. She got him into public school, which for people with handicap was very difficult. So he believed that he could do anything. Of course, he knew that he couldn’t get the most popular girl with long hair but he could still do what others could do. Then his mother died and that was frustrating for his socially and sexually in very many ways. Later Steven married a woman but that really wasn’t that happy marriage.

From a woman’s point of view, I find it interesting that because Steven is so charming and because of his handicap women go away with him without thinking twice about it. Somehow they become less alert and less aware of what could happen to them and what in fact, awaits them.

D.B.: That’s very rational. I’ve never thought about it that way, that rationally, but yes, it’s possible.

Well, you’re not a woman…

D.B.: That’s a good point tough because Steven treats those women rationally, except for the first woman, Margit’s character.

C.G.: With her there’s a proposal scene… That proposal scene, I mean, I really enjoyed reading the story but when I read that scene, that’s when I decided that I really wanted to make this movie.

Because of the proposal scene?

C.G.: Because of the way it was written. I found that it was very eloquent. It was a very well-written scene. The way the screenplay was written went back and forth between naďve writing style and really expressive great writing. But that was a particular moment of psyche, experience or soul - I don’t know what the proper word is - coming through and expressing itself in a very Cristal lined form. It was extremely clear and later it changes.
D.B.: And later it changes so if you look at it as a fantasy thriller, it is a fantasy thriller. It’s also about a man looking for a woman. And there’re many women in the story who are actually in love with Steven.
C.G.: Love is an essential part of the story. Many of the women say at different points of the film, that they’re in love with Steven.
D.B.: And he kills them and Steven’s explanation for doing that is that these women tell them that they want to cut their hair. Wow…. That is screwed up! But there is almost a cunning humor there. Steven had a fetish for long hair. It was a symbol of womanness and cutting it off was cutting their womanness away from him. They all give themselves to Steven but they all talk about cutting their hair, which for him means ?I cannot have you.” Crispin said we don’t like it Freudian analyzed but I think it’s very Freudian. For Steven long hair represents something like a woman’s period.
C.G.: Yes, absolutely. Well, actually I’m not against analyzing it in a Freudian way, I just tend not to like that kind of stuff. I think though there’s a strong point there within the film that isn’t done enough. I don’t mind waxing and pondering on what the film could mean. I think it’s a film, which can be analyzed in a Freudian way and in other ways as well. It reminds me that at the end of Psycho, for example there’s a detective coming in, who gives a very Freudian explanation for what has happened in the story and why this character did what he did. For me, it’s a question why did he, Hitchcock, have to do this? I know it’s considered to be one of the best horror films, but I don’t like it. I like the other part of the film. If this part would be cut out I’d probably like the film more.
D.B.: [In Psycho] There’s a question and you get the answer, the explanation. We prefer not to give an explanation mainly because we don’t have one.
C.G.: And I’m sure if Steven were here today he wouldn’t be able to give explanation for each and every part of the story.

This is what I believe in too. I think there’re lots of things you can analyze in Freudian terms but there are many that you can’t.

C.G.: That’s part of the fun of being able to think.

I also think that Steven is a charming man, enchanting everybody but there’s some evil in all of us, hidden in even the nicest person’s subconscious.

C.G.: And even the nicest one can dream of murdering somebody without really wanting to murder the person.

And I also believe that these kinds of fantasies can be turned into creativity by putting them down on paper instead of really acting them out. I can accept that handicapped people have sexual desires too. I think it’s perfectly normal. But watching the rather graphic sex scenes… Do we really need to witness these? Of course, I understand that without these scenes it wouldn’t be the same story and that it is in fact one of the key elements that makes your film different from mainstream cinema, which often suggest that only able bodied people, who are young and beautiful can have sexual desires and only they can act them out…

C.G.: Yes, absolutely.

D.B.: It’s animalistic and that’s what can make you or anybody uncomfortable.

C.G.: And obviously Steven has an oddity to him, especially from a woman’s point of view. This is not going to evoke, in most women, a sexual attraction. I bet there are some and at some point somewhere, where I’m showing this film there’ll be someone, who will say I find that very sexy. I don’t know who and I don’t know where. I don’t like gambling but I bet that it’ll happen. I don’t find this film stimulating but I bet there’s someone who does.

I’d like to hear about that!

C.G.: I’ll call you and let you know.

Of course, in the movie I can understand those women because at first you’d think who on earth would like to make love to this guy, but the way Steven charms women you understand that they all fall into his trap.

C.G.: Yes, but also I have to say that the way it is written it isn’t always charm. Karma, the young girl in the movie for instance, says that she’s in love with him the moment she sees him, just by looking at him. That’s the way it was written.
D.B.: Steven charmed every woman in different ways, but there’s anger and frustration in him, as we talked about it earlier.
C.G.: And Karma’s character says at the end ?I’m yours”. Steven’s arms are already around her neck and he’s about to strangle her and she gives into it in a pleasant fashion, right before she dies, she says ?I’m yours”. That’s her last line.

This is a movie that not only made me feel uncomfortable but it is also something that I can’t get out of my mind. I think it’ll be haunting me for a while. Now, talking to you it’s also clear that it’s a movie that’s entirely different from a woman’s perspective than watching it from a man’s perspective.

C.G.: After What Is It? came out I looked at the imdb and I saw that women voted higher for it. I guess, although I could be wrong, I hope I’ll be wrong, I have this feeling that men would vote higher for this movie. Men don’t have the competitive element with Steven C. Stewart here and they all have these pretty women to look at. It maybe a bit discomforting to watch that but for a woman it’s very much the opposite. Some of them also like to look at other women but most of them also like to see a man, a handsome man in those situations. And women don’t have that thing that men have. You know, men are quite visual.

As opposed to women who are more interested in the emotional side of things…. Maybe that’s why women can get attracted to Steven because of the way he charms them and not necessarily because of his physicality.

C.G.: And also I’ve been thinking a lot about Steven’s hair fetish. I personally think that without the hair fetish Steven would have had an easier time with women. So it’s not just his physicality but also there’s something in his psyche, which keeps him back from different kinds of women, only because they had short hair. Maybe, there’s a whole lot of women who would have liked him but because they had short hair Steven said no.
D.B.: It’s like we Americans are obsessed with large breasts, he was obsessed with long hair. Anyway, Steven was a really adorable man. Everyone loved him and loved talking to him.
C.G.: And also his hair fetish is almost as important, if not equally, but almost to the same extent, as Steven’s physicality. If Steven hasn’t had that element, I mean think about it, we could have cast a different person. But because of that specificity he had, that specific interest, we needed Steven to document it. It’s important that he had that severe cerebral palsy but it’s also important he had a fetish for long hair. And it wouldn’t be the same so that’s why it was essential to have Steven to play the role, because of that specificity otherwise, if it hadn’t been written that way, it could have been played by another person with severe cerebral palsy.

What do you think about the message of the film? Do you think people get it? I’m sure that here in the festival you have already got some feedback.

C.G.: I think that the movie is truly educational and I like to have all sorts of responses. I like when people give some thoughts about it instead of saying: ?Oh, it was awful!” Actually, I don’t mind it that much. The worse is when they don’t respond.

Yes, in the case of extreme cinema, it’s always easier to brush it off your shoulder and to say ?well, it’s a part of the world I don’t want to hear about.’ Though, in fact, these films can really broaden your horizon.

C.G.: ?Extreme cinema’. That’s interesting. I’ve never really heard that expression used by American critics.

Well, in Europe it’s used.

C.G.: I got an award called ?Midnight Extreme Award’. I didn’t realize that it’s used as a label for a certain type of cinema. In Europe they also call these types of films as fantastical films, which is so much better than here. Here they’re called either horror or …

But you can’t really define this film in terms of the horror genre …

C.G.: Yes, but just like with other horror films it enters the realms of the fantastic, which is a genre I like.
D.B.: A lot of people are also interested whether we were doing it for the shock value, in order to shock people. And the answer is clearly: NO!
C.G.: Absolutely not! I hate the term ?shock cinema’.
D.B.: It’s all about manipulating people, forcing people to be shocked. We’re not doing this. We’d like to show people something interesting, which they might not see somewhere else but we don’t want to freak them out.

Shock cinema is more like a punch in the nose. It hurts but as the pain goes away its effect goes away as well, while with extreme cinema you push the boundaries of social conventions in a way that it will make people think.

D.B.: It’s also a new way of telling a story because it’s a fantasy but also the audience participates in it by witnessing as we document the elements of a man’s fantasy.

I already admitted that it was uncomfortable for me to watch those sex scenes but I wonder how uncomfortable or comfortable it was to shoot those scenes.

C.G.: There were different situations and different percentages of the graphicness. Probably the two scenes with the most physicality would be the scene with Karma, the girl, which is still not as graphic as the last scene with the character named Nancy. But we all handled these scenes differently and there were different feelings on the set. The girl who played Karma was nervous and young but she knew that it was a good piece of art film and she drank a bit on the night of the shooting and she was ultimately very nice to Steven and Steven really appreciated that, I’m sure. And in the other scene we all knew that it would be a lot more graphic. We had a lot of cameras and we were all probably a little bit nervous.
D.B.: I think we were more nervous than the actors.
C.G.: But once it started and we had all the cameras going and all the equipment going everything almost became normal.

And the rest of the crew?

C.G.: The crew was really minimal because of the way we had to shoot the film. We had to make it as easily and as inexpensively as possible so the crew was really kept to the basics.
D.B.: The other important thing with the crew was that Steven was really close to them. They all fell for him and they all knew it was important to realize his vision on the screen because of him. They all saw how important this story was to Steven. Although he didn’t really looked like he was about to die, he was a really handicapped person, he lost a lot of weight but he was there just as long as everyone was there. And if someone was sad or tired he would ask ?What’s wrong?” ?I’m tired.” ?Well, me too, but we should keep going.” he would reply. He really worked round the clock. We were all friends and we were all aware of his physicality so we tried to do our best to make him feel comfortable.

You remarked that European critics related differently to the film. How about European audiences? Are you planning to show it in Europe?

C.G.: I’d love to. And I’d be interested in meeting the audiences there. I have property in the Czech Republic. I bought a chateau outside Prague and I often go there. I’m also learning the language. I experience a kind of culture shock there. Here, in the States, people recognize my face because of the big corporate movies I make. There I don’t get recognized in the streets that much. I also experience the people’s mentality as a kind of culture shock. They have an entirely different concept of things like time and money. I think it’s the heritage of the old system. There’s a nice element about it. But sometimes you want to get things done.

How about Hungary?

C.G.: I’ve never been there but I’ve heard it’s very beautiful. I’d love to go to Budapest and perhaps to show my film.