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Julian Schnabel Paints The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
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MM: How does your work as a painter dovetail with your work as a director?
JS: I’ve spent my life as a painter, and I guess there’s a whole set of rules [that go with that] about what I want to look at. My goal is to see something I didn’t see before, or invent a new situation for myself, or paint a painting in a way that I didn’t paint before. I’m more tempted not to look at what other [directors] are doing and see what’s residing in my subconscious and find a way to do something that doesn’t have a reference or, if it does, has been obscured by time… It’s not interesting for me to take formal inventions that I’ve seen other people use and incorporate them into what I’m doing. My approach is one I imagine a painter might take.
MM: Do you draw or paint at all as part of your development of a film?
JS: No. There are never any storyboards—there’s never anything like that.
MM: I’m curious as to how you prepare before you step onto the set. From talking to you, I can imagine that you give yourself a certain amount of freedom to find a film as you go along. I don’t mean with forethought…
JS: No, no, it’s true. [But] I knew what kind of lens I wanted to use; the swing and tilt lens, which enables you to be more selective about what part of the image you keep in focus. That gave us a less flat quality. Sometimes when the camera gets put on sticks, I find it very flat. Most of Before Night Falls was handheld—even when the camera wasn’t moving—so you felt like something human was going on, like it was breathing.
MM: With Basquiat, Before Night Falls and again on this picture, you’ve gotten some wonderful, very natural performances. Has your approach to working with actors evolved since you began directing?
JS: I think I’m better at it now.
MM: (laughing) That’s a good sign.
JS: It was great to work with Javier Bardem on Before Night Falls, but I think that Javier didn’t know what I was doing sometimes… On this movie I think people were less worried about not knowing what was going on; I think that just happened progressively. You really need [trust], because if people don’t trust you when they’re working with you, it’s hard to trust yourself. You start to doubt what you are doing and then you get depressed and you don’t want to go to the set the next day. (laughs)
MM: Was the trust you felt just given, or have you learned how to gain that?
JS: I always got along with actors. With Javier Bardem, it’s as though we went to Vietnam together and came back with our arms still on. I’ve had great times with actors. It can be tough for the technical crew more than the actors.
[My team] on Before Night Falls were all following their bliss; my first AD, Sebastián Silva, is certainly one of the best there is (his credits include Titanic and Babel). There were a lot of hours and a lot of people, but it was very rewarding. I had people who were willing to put up scaffolding in electrical storms. We shot 60 days in bad weather without stopping once. When it came to The Diving Bell, and I could go home at 8:30 at night, it was relatively easy. I couldn’t believe that I could go to sleep at a regular hour. But the technical part is often challenging.
On The Diving Bell, I think my cameraman was concerned about how much of the swing and tilt lens people could take. (laughs) I’m not talking about the cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, but the cameraman. Janusz was very helpful—very quick and very good at translating [my vision].
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This story was published in the Fall 2007 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
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