Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a cool little chat I had with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It’s always fun for me when publicists come in with someone I worship and test the fences. “Would you be interested in talking with Jean-Pierre Jeunet?” My gut reaction is pretty much “Fuck, yes. Why are you even asking me?” Of course I’m a professional (kinda) and usually respond all cool-like. There might be a few moments in the below 20 minute chat that were lost in translation, but I tried to include as much as the conversation as I could. The dude was every bit the jubilant character I expected, his passion for filmmaking evident with every answer. We talk about how he’s constantly ripped off, that The Lovely Bones was a dream project for him, his casting process, his newest film, Micmacs (which is out now in some territories and is rolling out further every week) and his writing process. Oh, and Alien: Resurrection. Enjoy!
Quint: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. I’m a big fan of your movies.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Oh, thank you.
[A representative says that Jean-Pierre Jeunet is good for “15.”]
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: 15 hours?
Quint: Yeah, we are going to sit here for a while and talk politics.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: [Speaking really slowly, like a tape playing at half speed] The… problem is… I speak… very… slow… with the… jetlag…
Quint: DELICATESSEN is one of my favorites. That opening credits scene to DELICATESSEN is probably up there with the Saul Bass stuff for me. It’s just some of my favorite…
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: It’s funny for me because some people say, “ALIEN is my favorite… How is it that you are nothing in Hollywood?” Others it’s “No, it is AMELIE!!” Everybody is different and for some people “Your film is just a piece of shit!”
Quint: (laughs) I just loved the way you played with the opening credits so much on DELICATESSEN, where the editor card had the scissors…
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Each time I try to find something. For THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN we had a good idea, but it was too expensive. We found a second good idea, but too expensive, too. I don’t want to tell you what, because one day I will do it. Because this is the only one without an idea. The City (of Lost Children) is simple just to…
Quint: Speaking of, I was just talking to a friend of mine, I said “I’ve got to run over to this interview” and he was like “You have got to ask him if he’s seen Bio-Shock, the video game, and if he’s going to sue the hell out of those guys,” because it’s all about these big guys in scuba suits that walk around with little girls. He was like “I guarantee you they stole that right out of CITY OF LOST CHILDREN.”
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: So many rip-offs, you can’t imagine, but you know Coco Chanel used to say, “Everything that’s not stolen is not interesting.”
Quint: I love that.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Have you seen PUSHING DAISIES?
Quint: The TV series?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Yeah, the TV series. It’s between Tim Burton and AMELIE.
Quint: Oh yeah? I’ve only seen the ads for it. I have never watched the show.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: It’s very bad.
Quint: So, what do you think when you see something like that?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Sometimes it drives me crazy, especially when it’s a commercial, because they could have asked me to make the commercial. When it’s a feature it depends. In PRECIOUS they have a lot of things like AMELIE, with the book and animation inside and the bed (makes bed creaking sounds). I met the director, Lee Daniels, in London for BAFTA and I told him and he said, “Oh you saw that? I stole you? Don’t ever see my first feature, because I stole your nose, your hair, your cheek, your mind…” (laughs)
Quint: I saw MICMACS at Butt-Numb-A-Thon. I don’t know if they even told you that was playing there. It’s a 24-hour film festival, where you go in 12 noon on Saturday and you leave 12 noon Sunday and you watch as many films as you can in that 24-hour period and it’s vintage films… We watched Powell and Pressburger’s RED SHOES and we also saw MICMACS, SHUTTER ISLAND, KICK-ASS, THE LOVELY BONES, AVATAR…
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: THE LOVELY BONES. Arg! I would have wanted to make this film, because I loved so much the book and the producer was a French friend of mine and she had the rights during five years, she was looking for a director during five years and she didn’t think about me and she loves me, but she couldn’t imagine I would have been interested in it.
Quint: Are you kidding? That smacks of your work!
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: I almost killed her!
Quint: (laughs) Did you see Peter Jackson’s film?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: No. I don’t want to, because I know it would be a frustration. Later I will see it on DVD or Blu-Ray.
Quint: How would you have attacked that story? When you read it, did it just jump out at you?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: In fact I don’t know. In fact I suppose I couldn’t imagine it to show the paradise, because I think in the book there’s no description about the paradise. It’s all your mind, but in the film, of course, Peter Jackson I suppose he had to give some work to his own company of visual effects.
Quint: There is a lot of effects stuff for Susie’s in-between. It’s really beautiful stuff, but you’re right, there is something to the imagination, the personal touch that you put onto it as a reader. You put yourself into Susie’s shoes which makes it even that much more horrible to actually be in them. Now suddenly you are the dead raped little girl.
Let’s talk a little bit about MICMACS; again it went over very well at the screening. To me it has that charm that you put into all of your movies. It’s very light, but also very complicated. There’s just a lot of cogs turning. A lot of things happening and it all seems to make sense, even if you don’t understand it at the beginning. Can you talk a bit about drawing everything together and making the movie come together? That’s kind of a big question, I know.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: The beginning of the process is very strange for us, because in fact we collect small ideas all of the time. I say we, because my scriptwriter, Guillaume Laurant, does the same thing and when we start the film. I need to find the concept of the film and after we open the books and we look for “Oh, the idea of the sugar in the cup of coffee, perfect! Oh, this joke perfect for this scene!” and little by little we have a box full of small parts of dialogs, of character, of details and when the box is packed, at this time you start to write.
That’s the reason it’s so full of details, my films, but sometimes it’s difficult to have everything. For example, the idea about the mine in the middle of a football field, we had this idea for a long time. It’s perfect because we speak about weapons, but sometimes it’s not easy to… In this film we have different moods, a serious issue with the weapon deal, some people are like cartoon characters… It wasn’t so easy to have everything together.
Quint: But it all fuses and I love those different tastes. I think that’s what makes your movies so re-watchable, that you are not dedicating yourself to two hours of the same feeling. Like, I love the heist aspect of the movie.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: The what?
Quint: The heist. The planning of the theft and the execution of it.
[Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s representative translates the meaning of “heist”]
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: The MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE aspect?
Quint: That’s one of the things that I grabbed on to in the movie and the family aspect of when your main character goes to the junkyard and essentially meets his new family. Was that important to you to have that emotional lock-in, a port for the audience?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: I don’t know if we can say if this film is emotional, but it’s a kind of adopted family. For me, it’s exactly the… The cave of metal is exactly like the house of the dwarves in the middle of the forest for (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). They live very far from the real world. They are protected from the real world and on the other hand, it was funnier to us to build a cavern with metals than to make a regular house, of course.
Quint: But there is an emotional connection, like Dominique Pinon’s character where his desire to just be the record holder, just to have that one thing, to have a legacy. There’s a lot that I think speaks to audiences. Can you talk a bit about the cast and what they brought to it?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: On the airplane I saw A SERIOUS MAN from the Coen Brothers and they are very good at casting. Not a fault, it’s perfect. This film is very minimalist and it’s perfect.
My big influence is the French cinema from the 40’s and at this time they had very interesting faces, character actors, and I tried to continue the same feeling. I tried to find interesting faces and you know I often like to work with the same actors, Dominique Pinon. But each time I find new and interesting guys and some times I say to my casting director “Why didn’t I meet this guy for THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN? They would have been perfect!” And I do some tests with everybody, even for the smallest character. In AMELIE, I remember there was a guy who had to say, “Ticket, please” and for “Ticket, please” I saw twenty guys, so you end up with the best of course.
Quint: When you cast, do you put your actors together before making the final decision to see how they work together?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: No, never. You are recording video… and sometimes it’s a kind of rehearsal in fact. If I hire them, it’s a kind of rehearsal. I spend a lot of time. After I rehearse, especially to find the balance between the caricature for the weapon sellers and the crew, I have to find the right balance and it wasn’t so easy, because I couldn’t have everybody together. I rehearse one by one. It’s like you rehearse a symphony. You start with the strings and after you rehearse with the trumpet and on the final day you have the whole symphony together at the end.
Quint: The contortionist in the movie, is she a known actor?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: She is a very good actress for a one woman show in France and if you look on the internet for Julie Ferrier, you can see her as different characters and you can’t recognize her. She is absolutely amazing. You think that there is a trick where they change the actress; no she is the same actress. She is a genius. In cinema she is okay, but in the one-woman show she is amazing. You have to look her up.
Quint: I will, because she was a real surprise to me when I first saw the movie.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: And of course she’s very flexible, because she was a dancer, but not enough for the film of course. We hired a Russian girl. She works in Germany for erotic shows… Yeah. It’s pretty interesting, yeah.
Quint: I was about to say, “So you cut some stuff out then right?” DVD?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: When she was on the stage, my Japanese DP was very moved. It’s interesting. She opens new doors. (laughs)
Quint: That’s very political, I like the way you phrase that.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: And of course for a few shots we put the head of the actress in with CGI, when she goes out of the fridge, the freezer…
Quint: Which is a great moment.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Yeah, but this was a scene that was very difficult to do. I had the idea to put some steam on the mouth and to put with the sound [Makes crunching noises] like the clothes were frozen.
Quint: How rigidly do you plan in advance? Are you somebody that likes to storyboard everything?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Yeah. I believe in working hard. I don’t trust that about directors with inspiration at the last moment, but if you find something different at the last moment, you can change, but sometimes I spend two days to find small ideas for a translation or something, because it’s cheap when you are alone before shooting. So I prefer to make some sketches and put words on the page, because it’s more visual for everybody, for the crew, but you know I can change… especially when an actor proposes something to me different, a gift at the last moment… I jump on it, of course.
Quint: Yeah, well what are you working on now? Do you have anything in the works?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Now, I don’t want to make another personal story. I need maybe two or three years to have this feeling, because I put all of my ideas in a film. It’s very rich in terms of details, but now I am dry, you know?
Quint: You need to fill the box back up again.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Yeah, exactly. In this case, I look for a good book to make an adaptation, it was the same thing for A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT after AMELIE. I’m starting to find interesting things, but luckily I’m a very fast reader. I’m able to read one book per day…
Quint: Oh yeah? Not me. I’m such a slow reader. I wish I could read fast.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Sometime I don’t finish them, of course, if it’s a big book. So, I’m looking for a good story and I need to take my time, because you don’t fall in love immediately. It’s a strange paradox, because I love so much to make movies. I’m in good shape when I work. But I don’t want to make a film just to make a film. I need to be in love with it.
Quint: Yeah. What makes your movies work for people like me is that fact that with every movie if feels like you have the investment…
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: And I couldn’t shoot something I don’t like, even in Paris. I love Paris, but it’s my Paris. I do a lot of location scouting myself with my scooter and I need to be in love with the set I shoot.
Quint: When you shot ALIEN: RESURRECTION, was that something where you were kind have brought in? It seemed to me that that might have been a movie where you got a little railroaded by the studio…
[Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s rep translates the question.]
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: No, I was very free in terms of artistic direction.
Quint: Which is surprising for Fox, because Fox isn’t known for that.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: The worst… It was essentially about the money. It was always “too expensive.” “You have to cut… You have to make less takes, because it’s too beautiful!” “One beautiful shot out of three will be enough.” I heard that.
Quint: Okay…
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: It’s a strange game, because they want the most beautiful film, of course, but on the other hand they want to save money first and that’s the pressure you are in between. But in terms of artistic direction for the casting, we had to discuss of course, but it wasn’t a fight, it was pretty cool.
At the end I had freedom for ALIEN, but for that you have to fight and struggle to explain, to convince them, especially after the test screening when they have 100 notes and you have to try everything. “But this is stupid” and they say “Yes, but you have to try, so we can say you tried…”
Quint: But definitely not like how you work on your films in Paris.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: In France I have freedom. It’s so good to have that freedom. If American directors could imagine… I’m free, but on the other hand in the USA you have so many good actors. Maybe if I find a subject for… I could imagine a film with American actors, but with a French production maybe I could keep the freedom and have American actors.
Quint: Do it!
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: And for example I love San Francisco. I love this city. I could shoot a film in San Francisco. My wife is from San Francisco. She’s American, yeah. I could shoot there.
Quint: Cool, well thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate the time.
Hope you guys dug the chat! Go watch Micmacs, especially if you’ve got a case of the shitty summer blockbuster doldrums.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Sometimes it drives me crazy, especially when it’s a commercial, because they could have asked me to make the commercial. When it’s a feature it depends. In PRECIOUS they have a lot of things like AMELIE, with the book and animation inside and the bed (makes bed creaking sounds). I met the director, Lee Daniels, in London for BAFTA and I told him and he said, “Oh you saw that? I stole you? Don’t ever see my first feature, because I stole your nose, your hair, your cheek, your mind…” (laughs)
Quint: I saw MICMACS at Butt-Numb-A-Thon. I don’t know if they even told you that was playing there. It’s a 24-hour film festival, where you go in 12 noon on Saturday and you leave 12 noon Sunday and you watch as many films as you can in that 24-hour period and it’s vintage films… We watched Powell and Pressburger’s RED SHOES and we also saw MICMACS, SHUTTER ISLAND, KICK-ASS, THE LOVELY BONES, AVATAR…
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: THE LOVELY BONES. Arg! I would have wanted to make this film, because I loved so much the book and the producer was a French friend of mine and she had the rights during five years, she was looking for a director during five years and she didn’t think about me and she loves me, but she couldn’t imagine I would have been interested in it.
Quint: Are you kidding? That smacks of your work!
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: I almost killed her!
Quint: (laughs) Did you see Peter Jackson’s film?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: No. I don’t want to, because I know it would be a frustration. Later I will see it on DVD or Blu-Ray.
Quint: How would you have attacked that story? When you read it, did it just jump out at you?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: In fact I don’t know. In fact I suppose I couldn’t imagine it to show the paradise, because I think in the book there’s no description about the paradise. It’s all your mind, but in the film, of course, Peter Jackson I suppose he had to give some work to his own company of visual effects.
Quint: There is a lot of effects stuff for Susie’s in-between. It’s really beautiful stuff, but you’re right, there is something to the imagination, the personal touch that you put onto it as a reader. You put yourself into Susie’s shoes which makes it even that much more horrible to actually be in them. Now suddenly you are the dead raped little girl. Let’s talk a little bit about MICMACS; again it went over very well at the screening. To me it has that charm that you put into all of your movies. It’s very light, but also very complicated. There’s just a lot of cogs turning. A lot of things happening and it all seems to make sense, even if you don’t understand it at the beginning. Can you talk a bit about drawing everything together and making the movie come together? That’s kind of a big question, I know.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: The beginning of the process is very strange for us, because in fact we collect small ideas all of the time. I say we, because my scriptwriter, Guillaume Laurant, does the same thing and when we start the film. I need to find the concept of the film and after we open the books and we look for “Oh, the idea of the sugar in the cup of coffee, perfect! Oh, this joke perfect for this scene!” and little by little we have a box full of small parts of dialogs, of character, of details and when the box is packed, at this time you start to write. That’s the reason it’s so full of details, my films, but sometimes it’s difficult to have everything. For example, the idea about the mine in the middle of a football field, we had this idea for a long time. It’s perfect because we speak about weapons, but sometimes it’s not easy to… In this film we have different moods, a serious issue with the weapon deal, some people are like cartoon characters… It wasn’t so easy to have everything together.
Quint: But it all fuses and I love those different tastes. I think that’s what makes your movies so re-watchable, that you are not dedicating yourself to two hours of the same feeling. Like, I love the heist aspect of the movie.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: The what?
Quint: The heist. The planning of the theft and the execution of it.
[Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s representative translates the meaning of “heist”]
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: The MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE aspect?
Quint: That’s one of the things that I grabbed on to in the movie and the family aspect of when your main character goes to the junkyard and essentially meets his new family. Was that important to you to have that emotional lock-in, a port for the audience?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: I don’t know if we can say if this film is emotional, but it’s a kind of adopted family. For me, it’s exactly the… The cave of metal is exactly like the house of the dwarves in the middle of the forest for (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). They live very far from the real world. They are protected from the real world and on the other hand, it was funnier to us to build a cavern with metals than to make a regular house, of course.
Quint: But there is an emotional connection, like Dominique Pinon’s character where his desire to just be the record holder, just to have that one thing, to have a legacy. There’s a lot that I think speaks to audiences. Can you talk a bit about the cast and what they brought to it?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: On the airplane I saw A SERIOUS MAN from the Coen Brothers and they are very good at casting. Not a fault, it’s perfect. This film is very minimalist and it’s perfect. My big influence is the French cinema from the 40’s and at this time they had very interesting faces, character actors, and I tried to continue the same feeling. I tried to find interesting faces and you know I often like to work with the same actors, Dominique Pinon. But each time I find new and interesting guys and some times I say to my casting director “Why didn’t I meet this guy for THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN? They would have been perfect!” And I do some tests with everybody, even for the smallest character. In AMELIE, I remember there was a guy who had to say, “Ticket, please” and for “Ticket, please” I saw twenty guys, so you end up with the best of course.
Quint: When you cast, do you put your actors together before making the final decision to see how they work together?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: No, never. You are recording video… and sometimes it’s a kind of rehearsal in fact. If I hire them, it’s a kind of rehearsal. I spend a lot of time. After I rehearse, especially to find the balance between the caricature for the weapon sellers and the crew, I have to find the right balance and it wasn’t so easy, because I couldn’t have everybody together. I rehearse one by one. It’s like you rehearse a symphony. You start with the strings and after you rehearse with the trumpet and on the final day you have the whole symphony together at the end.
Quint: The contortionist in the movie, is she a known actor?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: She is a very good actress for a one woman show in France and if you look on the internet for Julie Ferrier, you can see her as different characters and you can’t recognize her. She is absolutely amazing. You think that there is a trick where they change the actress; no she is the same actress. She is a genius. In cinema she is okay, but in the one-woman show she is amazing. You have to look her up.
Quint: I will, because she was a real surprise to me when I first saw the movie.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: And of course she’s very flexible, because she was a dancer, but not enough for the film of course. We hired a Russian girl. She works in Germany for erotic shows… Yeah. It’s pretty interesting, yeah.
Quint: I was about to say, “So you cut some stuff out then right?” DVD?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: When she was on the stage, my Japanese DP was very moved. It’s interesting. She opens new doors. (laughs)
Quint: That’s very political, I like the way you phrase that.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: And of course for a few shots we put the head of the actress in with CGI, when she goes out of the fridge, the freezer…
Quint: Which is a great moment.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Yeah, but this was a scene that was very difficult to do. I had the idea to put some steam on the mouth and to put with the sound [Makes crunching noises] like the clothes were frozen.
Quint: How rigidly do you plan in advance? Are you somebody that likes to storyboard everything?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Yeah. I believe in working hard. I don’t trust that about directors with inspiration at the last moment, but if you find something different at the last moment, you can change, but sometimes I spend two days to find small ideas for a translation or something, because it’s cheap when you are alone before shooting. So I prefer to make some sketches and put words on the page, because it’s more visual for everybody, for the crew, but you know I can change… especially when an actor proposes something to me different, a gift at the last moment… I jump on it, of course.
Quint: Yeah, well what are you working on now? Do you have anything in the works?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Now, I don’t want to make another personal story. I need maybe two or three years to have this feeling, because I put all of my ideas in a film. It’s very rich in terms of details, but now I am dry, you know?
Quint: You need to fill the box back up again.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Yeah, exactly. In this case, I look for a good book to make an adaptation, it was the same thing for A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT after AMELIE. I’m starting to find interesting things, but luckily I’m a very fast reader. I’m able to read one book per day…
Quint: Oh yeah? Not me. I’m such a slow reader. I wish I could read fast.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Sometime I don’t finish them, of course, if it’s a big book. So, I’m looking for a good story and I need to take my time, because you don’t fall in love immediately. It’s a strange paradox, because I love so much to make movies. I’m in good shape when I work. But I don’t want to make a film just to make a film. I need to be in love with it.
Quint: Yeah. What makes your movies work for people like me is that fact that with every movie if feels like you have the investment…
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: And I couldn’t shoot something I don’t like, even in Paris. I love Paris, but it’s my Paris. I do a lot of location scouting myself with my scooter and I need to be in love with the set I shoot.
Quint: When you shot ALIEN: RESURRECTION, was that something where you were kind have brought in? It seemed to me that that might have been a movie where you got a little railroaded by the studio…
[Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s rep translates the question.]
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: No, I was very free in terms of artistic direction.
Quint: Which is surprising for Fox, because Fox isn’t known for that.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: The worst… It was essentially about the money. It was always “too expensive.” “You have to cut… You have to make less takes, because it’s too beautiful!” “One beautiful shot out of three will be enough.” I heard that.
Quint: Okay…
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: It’s a strange game, because they want the most beautiful film, of course, but on the other hand they want to save money first and that’s the pressure you are in between. But in terms of artistic direction for the casting, we had to discuss of course, but it wasn’t a fight, it was pretty cool. At the end I had freedom for ALIEN, but for that you have to fight and struggle to explain, to convince them, especially after the test screening when they have 100 notes and you have to try everything. “But this is stupid” and they say “Yes, but you have to try, so we can say you tried…”
Quint: But definitely not like how you work on your films in Paris.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: In France I have freedom. It’s so good to have that freedom. If American directors could imagine… I’m free, but on the other hand in the USA you have so many good actors. Maybe if I find a subject for… I could imagine a film with American actors, but with a French production maybe I could keep the freedom and have American actors.
Quint: Do it!
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: And for example I love San Francisco. I love this city. I could shoot a film in San Francisco. My wife is from San Francisco. She’s American, yeah. I could shoot there.
Quint: Cool, well thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate the time.
Hope you guys dug the chat! Go watch Micmacs, especially if you’ve got a case of the shitty summer blockbuster doldrums. -Quint quint@aintitcool.com Follow Me On Twitter
