Hey folks, Harry here. Man... forgot to intro this one there for a bit. I got excited at getting the cool interview up. Man... does this guy have great stories to tell. I'm envious of ol Anton. It looks as if Anton is going to be finishing up transcribing some interviews and sending em in before returning to that far off planet. But... let's enjoy his work...

Sunday the 19th

Quick post-fest stats: I saw 39 ½ films (I ducked out of Simon the Magician to catch Guinevere) which lasted 62 hours and 23 minutes, and slept about 49 hours over the 10 days. The shortest film I saw (George Lucas in Love) was 9 minutes long; the longest, l'humanite, 2 hours 28 minutes. I saw the big hypnotic Sauron-esque eyeball in the fest ad approximately 1000 times.

Now the awards!

Some of these are real and some of them I made up. Don't hurt yourselves guessing which are which:

People's Choice Award: American Beauty, Sam Mendes

Best Fixture at Bistro 990: Liev Schreiber

Most Welcome Nudity (tie): History is Made At Night, Ilkka Jarvilaturi and Big Brass Ring, George Hickenlooper (thank you Irene!)

Least Welcome Nudity (tie): l'humanite, Bruno Dumont and 8 ½ Women, Peter Greenaway

Best Canadian Feature Film: Five Senses, Jeremy Podeswa

Best Canadian First Feature: Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the '70s Generation, Catherine Annau

Most Representatively 'Toronto' Film: Third World Cop, Chris Browne

Discovery Award for Best First Feature: Goat On Fire and Smiling Fish, Kevin Jordan

Harvey Weinstein Award for Award Schmoozing: Goat On Fire and Smiling Fish

OK, that one needs an explanation. I hadn't heard any buzz at all on this film (its first screening was on the 16th) until Saturday night, after all the ballots were in- when suddenly this one was all anyone was talking about. (Their publicists were DDA, if you're hiring.)

FIPRESCI Award for Best World Premiere: Shower, Zhang Yang

John Spotten Award for Best Canadian Short Film: Decharge, Patrick Demers

FAGEFY Award for Best Documentary: Mr. Death, The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr., Errol Morris (must bend to the will of the buzz on this one)

Here are the summaries of the 'line buzz' on each of the Galas:

Felicia's Journey- Pretty good, not bad, can't complain

Me Myself I- Much better than Sliding Doors (for what that's worth)

Ride With the Devil- Jewel can act! Holy shit!

Mumford- Tolerably amusing

American Beauty- Oh. My. God.

Cider House Rules- "I thought it was pretty bad." "Have you read the book?" "What book?"

Snow Falling on Cedars- (Bonus Varietyspeak!) Hicks should stick to pics with tic schtick

Sunshine- Elegant and eloquent

Girl of Your Dreams- Aw, not another WWII comedy!

Sweet and Lowdown- Insert your opinion of the last five Woody films here.

Orfeu- Huh? Which one's that?

Simpatico- Isn't this a Dick Francis novel? Why not?

Est-Ouest- Wow.

Jakob the Liar- Couldn't be more manipulative if it tried. Bad A-list comedian! Bad!

Music of the Heart- The bit where Freddy crawls out of the violin is cool. (Alright, OK, it was pretty good.)

Love in the Mirror- Not as good as that Shakespeare thingy from last year

Anywhere But Here- Damn good. Amidala rules OK!

Onegin- Messy, messy. And if Liv is Russian, why is she doing a British accent?

My personal top ten:

#10- Third World Cop. I get the giggles whenever I think about it. "What you want, an air strike?" Better than Lethal Weapon 4, that's for damn sure.

#9- Human Traffic. Runner-up for best first feature.

#8- The Humiliated. Why can't tormented artistic geniuses be more like Lars?

#7- Freeway II. Damn those pussy distributors!

#6- Spring Forward. Look out for this one, it'll probably breeze through the art houses pretty quick.

#5- The Item. Where can I get the comic book adaptation?

#4- 8 ½ Women. Don't leave us Peter!

#3- Kikujiro. A singular film from a singular talent.

#2- American Beauty. Everything you've heard is true, and more.

#1- Princess Mononoke. This is to Disney what Lord of the Rings is to the Belgariad, what Andy Kaufman is to Tim Allen, what caviar is to Skippy. (I mean, they both go on crackers, right?)

Peace out y'all. Be seeing you.

Anton

Jesper Jargil Interview

Jesper Jargil is the director of the Humiliated, the documentary on the Lars von Trier film the Idiots.

Anton Sirius: This is your first feature documentary?

Jesper Jargil: Not my first documentary, but yes my first feature documentary. I've been in the business for many, many years- I started in '65 in television. You probably weren't even born yet.

AS: You'd be surprised.

JJ: I knew this was what I wanted to do, to be in the movie business, so I worked my way up the way you did at that time, almost as an unpaid assistant, working 28 hours a day. By chance I got into making advertising films, and I got to work with a Danish firm that was really open-minded, that would let me do things and work things out myself, and from there I got into directing commercials and writing them. Of course this was not my idea when I started in the business, but advertising films became my film school and also my way of living because in a small country- even though in Denmark we're pretty good at promoting film production, I mean for a small country of 5 million people film has been well looked upon by the cultural authorities, the Minister of Culture etc. think it's important that we make an impact, and we have with Lars von Trier and Billie August and others, but you can't make a living. Even with the support of the government it's almost impossible to make a living doing documentaries.

AS: How did you end up doing the Humiliated?

JJ: I've known Lars for many years. We actually did some commercials together. I met him when he was in film school. The first time I saw Lars I was shooting a commercial for milk, and we had rented the same stage- I had half the stage and he had half, because we were not using sound. He was doing something silent and I was doing a product shot for milk, so it was me standing all day zooming in on a glass of milk, and we were pretty irritated because we had some side lights coming over from Lars, he was using the most strange light setting I'd ever seen in my life, he was going opposite, it was like he had the colors like he was exposing a negative, this reversal of color. I was looking at this white milk and every time I'd look over I'd say "Blech! Blech! What's happening over there?" But we got a chance to speak to each other and after that we've been on and off working on concepts- sometimes I have been directing things where we worked on the concepts or script together, and sometimes I have produced films he ahs directed. Actually in many ways I am responsible for Zentropa. I introduced him to Peter Aalbaek (producer of Zentropa), I hired Peter on as my production manager when he had just come out of school, and they met each other and actually some of the money they made from advertising was the basis for Zentropa.

AS: So it's all your fault.

JJ: Yes. I'm to blame. Anyway, in '96 Copenhagen was the Cultural City for Europe-each year there's a different city, and a lot of money is put into promoting cultural events- and Lars made an exhibit in a museum in the middle of Copenhagen, not a small museum, and he had written the concept and script for an exhibit called the WorldClock, or Psychomobile #1. This involved 53 actors for two months acting every day for three hours, and each actor had a public script that was put up each day and a secret script that they could not tell to anybody. There were 19 rooms they could go in- a hospital room, an office, a hotel- and each actor had a certain relationship to each room, and each other actor, but these were secret, so for instance if we two were actors you wouldn't know if I loved you or hated you, but of course during the day you would probably find out. But then it could change further because each actor had 4 moods to be in, and these moods were steered by ants in New Mexico. In New Mexico there was a video camera watching an anthill, and the ants would crawl or not crawl, and this video signal was sent directly by satellite to the museum hall and projected up where you entered the exhibition, and there would be on the screen something symbolizing each room, and when an ant would pass a symbol 4 times the color in the room would change and the room would go 'BEEP BEEP BEEP' and everyone would freeze for ten seconds, then the action would continue on as before but now the actors' moods would be different, and the action would not have changed. And from the time the exhibit started the action just went on and on, and if an actor 'died'- you could commit suicide, or you could be killed by another actor, for instance if I shot you, then that was it. You couldn't simply come in the next day. It was all over for you. Everything had consequences. And I got involved because they wanted me to go to New Mexico to set up all this with the camera, and we don't need to do that, we can do all this over the internet and via satellite. I said I would arrange it over there. So we did that. But I went to the exhibit just to look at the set-up, and I brought a camera. This was never intended to be a film. This exhibition was to be live only. There were the 53 actors, and then the public coming in, and the public wouldn't know who were the actors…

AS: So the rooms were completely open.

JJ: Oh yes, the public would wander around - they would find out eventually of course. I thought this was really interesting, so I just started filming it. I would bring in my DV camera and start shooting this. And then I decided I wanted to record this for serious, so I was given permission to go into certain rooms, do close-ups, I was allowed to do whatever with the camera. And when the audience saw me they would think I was one of the actors, "Oh of course Lars von Trier wrote in a cameraman." For these two months I documented this on my own. I got no support for this, and I didn't know what it would lead to. Then I showed Lars a little bit of my footage, because he never went in and saw it, but I showed him a little bit while he was preparing the Idiots, and he liked it and I think it gave him courage to shoot the Idiots himself. It ended up being very Dogme style, because I had only the one camera, and I think when Lars saw it he said, "Well, if that bloody idiot can do it I can do it also." And then he asked me if I would do the casting of the Idiots in this style. I sought this chance because I preferred some of the actors from the WorldClock to use in the Idiots. And then the production was set up and someone was to be his co-director and photographer. He still didn't think at this point he was going to take over the camera as much as he did. I think he ended up shooting 80% of the Idiots himself. So he hired me and one other guy to be his co-photographers, and I said OK I'll do that on one condition: that you let me do a film about the film. And Zentropa cannot produce this film, because I don't want this to be a PR stunt. It's not going to be the kind of film where I'm interviewing people and the actors are saying "Oh, you're so great, Lars." It's going to be a document about the making of this film and I want to have total access to everything. You cannot say no to me. You cannot say don't go. And you have to see to it that the actors agree to this, and the crew. And you cannot say no to the finished result either, you're not going to have any influence on how it looks. And also I want total access to all the materials of the film, including the out-takes…

AS: That also included the audio diary Lars was keeping?

JJ: Yes, but I didn't know that at that point. I just knew at that point that I also wanted to be able to cut in scenes that he didn't choose. I didn't just want to have quotes from the finished film. I knew that there were certain scenes I'd want to go into and show how he built them up. It's not only for this film, the Humiliated. I'm doing a trilogy- the first one, I've just finished editing the one about the WorldClock. I'm having trouble with the title, because of the direct translation from the Danish. Like the Humiliated, in Danish this one is called the Exhibited. You cannot say that in English, people told me. You cannot say that a person is exhibited.

AS: Sure you could.

JJ: But if I call it the Exhibited people will say, "That's a strange title." But that's what it's called in Danish. And then the third one is the Kingdom.

AS: That's one about the Dogme film…

JJ: The first three Dogme films.

AS: …as opposed to Lars von Trier's 'The Kingdom'.

JJ: Yes. Because the Humiliated does not go so much into the Dogme rules. It goes more into the personal things.

AS: It is a shockingly honest portrayal of the shoot. The only thing I could think to immediately compare it to was Hearts of Darkness.

JJ: I know that picture very well, and for a while I was- but I didn't, it was too funny- I wanted to call this film Dark and Heartless. We started working calling it Dark and Heartless, but it was too funny, and not really true.

AS: But about the audio tapes…

JJ: Yes. With the tapes what happened was we were almost finished shooting and Lars came and gave me these tapes. I didn't know that he'd been doing this diary.

AS: That must have seemed like a gift from above when you sat down and listened to them.

JJ: But also in a sense I wasn't blind to the idea that this was his way of manipulating me.

AS: Oh, of course.

JJ: Of course it is!

(We both laugh.)

AS: He can give up full control but not actually give up full control.

JJ: I mean, this was so interesting so I used them. But what would have been nice too would've been if Anne Louise, this actress that Lars builds up and breaks down, had also had a diary. Because he gives me the diary the film becomes a portrait of Lars, which it wasn't intended to be. It could have been interesting to hear, oh…

AS: The counter-point, so to speak.

JJ: Yes.

End Part One. Next: the Gang Bang Scene.