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Check out this article in the print edition of StudentFilmmakers Magazine, September 2007. Click here to get a copy and to subscribe >>
You shot The Inner Life of Martin Frost on video, scene by scene. Could you elaborate on this, your reasons, and how it allowed you to come up with new ideas for blocking and camera set-ups? Paul Auster: This is a crazy experiment that I devised. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done this. But because we had such a small cast, it’s such a limited number of locations, and it was possible to do it. We were rehearsing. Sophie wasn’t there; she was still in college, so she hadn’t come to Portugal yet. We had someone substituting for her. But Michael, Irène, and David were all there. We had been doing very good work, and I thought they were really ready to shoot; and we had one more day of rehearsal. And I said, well, let’s shoot the whole movie in one day. Let’s just see what happens. We’ll do it on video, in order, in sequence because obviously, we couldn’t edit it, so we had to do it scene by scene. And we were running all over the place from one scene to the next. I said it would take us about three hours to do it – it took nine hours. But, certain ideas came to both me and Christophe Beaucarne, the DP, about certain angles of the camera, certain kinds of blocking. Smalls details, but everything mattered. When the character Martin is reading the letter from Claire, who’s mysteriously run away, he just sat down on the tire and leaned his back against the car. I had originally written the scene with him standing with his hand on the roof of the car and his back to the camera. But, watching David just sit down on the tire made me think this is a much better way to approach it. Also, when Irène writes that same letter, I had always imagined her doing it on her lap in the car. But what she did was she leaned forward and wrote it on the dashboard with her face just behind the windshield, and I thought it was a beautiful look to it. So that’s how we blocked out that scene in the film itself. But a lot of little things came from that one crazy day. How have you seen the area of film distribution change throughout the years? Paul Auster: Well, I’ll tell ya, I don’t have a long history in the movies, but it’s been, let’s see, since ’93 when I finished Smoke, the screenplay. And Wayne and I had started actually been working on it since ’91. So it’s been sixteen years. So that’s actually longer than I would’ve thought. It’s become so much more difficult to make a small, independent film. It’s almost impossible. Back in the good old days when I had my script finished and our producers sent it to Miramax, they said fine – we like it, we’ll give you the money, and we’ll produce the film. Good, just go ahead. This time, I wrote the script, and I sent it around to a number of American distributors hoping to get financing for it – very inexpensive, I mean, this is a minuscule budget. And they all said, it’s very interesting, we like it, but go ahead and make the film, and then show it to us, and maybe we’ll distribute it. I said, well, how can I make the film? I don’t have any money. They said, well, that’s your problem. And that’s why I turned to Paulo Branco, who’s a European producer – someone I’ve known for fifteen years or so. He has an office in Paris and an office in Lisbon. Paulo is a legend in Europe. He’s produced two hundred and thirty movies, if you can imagine, and he’s still in his fifties. He said to me after Lulu on the Bridge – Paul, if you ever want to make another movie, I’ll produce it. Remembering his words, I called him up, sent him the script, and he became the producer. And it just turned out that it was much less expensive to film in Portugal than to do it here in the United States. Could you talk a little bit about how you received distribution for your film, The Inner Life of Martin Frost, and what was involved? Paul Auster: Well, we were in a festival in NewYork in March. New Directors/New Films, which is at Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center. We were very honored to be the opening night film. I felt very happy about that. And, needless to say, distributors came; and the most enthusiastic response came from Dan Talbot of New Yorker Films, so we went with him. And I’m just grateful that we have somebody. There are so many small films today that do not get distribution at all. And it’s a pity – all the work, all the hard word. So, I feel very lucky. What advice would you give to aspiring screenwriters and directors? Paul Auster: If you love to do it, just keep doing, and do the best work that you possibly can. It’s a very tough business, and it’s filled with very unsavory people. People you really don’t want to have to deal with that much. The work itself is such a joy. The spirit of camaraderie. The crew, the actors, all the technicians, the editors. All of these things are so enjoyable that I guess you just have to do the best work you can. All the time. And maintain the highest level possible.
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