Manchevski reaches out to American audiences

The Jerky Boys were in the same Seattle hotel doing publicity for their "film". The Jerky Boys got on KUBE. The Jerky Boys got mobbed at Blockbuster Video by drunk frat boys. Milcho Manchevski, Macedonian writer/director of Before The Rain, receives considerably less attention in his hotel room. The 35-year old Manchevski goes to bed early. He has never heard of The Jerky Boys.

By the next morning, The Jerky Boys have left town. Paul Newman rhapsodizes with Barbara Walters on TV and Manchevski watches, but keeps the sound off. Cassette tapes sit in a row on the coffee table: The Last Emperor soundtrack, "The Complete Tom Jones," and Nirvana's "Nevermind." Nirvana's "Lithium" in each of his film's three sections, but his producers were "too cheap" to buy the rights. He settled for "So What'cha Want" by The Beastie Boys.

Each of Before The Rain's three sections puts a person out in the rain, literally. In the first, a Macedonian monk living a vow of silence in a 12th century monastery discovers an Albanian girl hiding in his room.

In the second, a British woman is torn between two men, her marriageminded boyfriend and a rakish photographer, Aleksander (Bade Serbedzija). The third segment follows Aleksander's return to his Macedonian hometown which he finds razored with racial strife.

Interrelated but self-contained, the trilogy of stories builds with each successive crisis from quietly personal concerns to global, political ones.

The non-linear plot might remind some of Pulp Fiction, but Manchevski chuckles at the comparison. He spoke with Quentin Tarantino in Venice and Stockholm—"Extremely smart writer, in Pulp Fiction he did what Hollywood has been trying to do for eighty years"—but Before The Rain owes more to the Aleksander Petrovic film Three (1965).

"Almost every film is in three parts," he says, "it's just not acknowledged. In Macedonia they had a vote-in contest on which film people liked better, mine or Pulp Fiction."

Who won?

"We did. But they would in L.A." Before The Rain is Manchevski's debut feature, and the first film to come out of the new republic of Macedonia. The populace declared their independence in 1991 after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The tiny nation is still much beleaguered; UN troops, including 560 American GI's, patrol the country's borders with Serbia and Albania.

Manchevski, who left Macedonia as a teenager for New York (he directed videos, most notably, "Tennessee," by Arrested Development) began writing his first feature film in November 1992. Before the Rain filmed in Macedonia for seven weeks, then packed up and moved to London for three more—just in time for the U.K. to diplomatically recognize the new republic.  The finished film has Macedonian, British, and French producers, whose names shall not appear in this article since Manchevski's attitude towards them is cool. "The four major producers had never produced before. The camera was three days late for the first day of photography. We sat around playing cards."

Britain's Channel Four sunk money in Before The Rain but pulled out. "They wanna be a studio when they grow up," sighs Manchevski.

As bellboys clear away the coffee, I ask Manchevski what films he would take to a desert island. "The Tenant," he says. "I would take Goodfellas, either Drugstore Cowboy or My Own Private Idaho, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid."