Film Interview: GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH Director Damien Chazelle
Saturday, 11 December 2010 12:20
Film Interview: GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH Director Damien Chazelle
Interview with director Damien Chazelle discussing his charming new fusion of indie film sensibilities and MGM musical charm, "Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench"
Perhaps the most charming film to come out this year, bar none, Guy and Madeline On A Park Bench is a reminder to any ardent film fan that creative, gutsy material can still be produced and be distributed out to the world at large as the indie film world continues to struggle in finding sizable audiences. A fusion of gritty, cinema-verite black and white visuals, early Nouvelle Vague emotional territory, and MGM musical spectaculars, the film follows the romantic lives of its titular characters as they fall into, out of, and possibly back into love, chronicled by a sequence of smart, jazz-inspired musical numbers that are catchy and without cynicism. On the eve of its Los Angeles theatrical run, Vegas Outsider spoke with the film’s director Damien Chazelle about this fun gem.
Vegas Outsider: To start from the beginning, where did the initial idea for this film come from?
Damien Chazelle: I knew I wanted to do a musical. It's really the strangest genre there is, the Hollywood genre that's the most open to experimentation. I was used to a certain way of making films --- documentaries, 16mm, camera on my shoulder, that sort of thing --- so I wound up making Guy and Madeline in the same way. I wanted to see how far I could push that contrast: between actual documentary and full-fledged MGM artifice. It's easier than one might think because the best musicals --- and by that I mean not just Fred and Ginger pictures, but jazz two-reelers from the thirties, 60's French musicals, Bruce Connor shorts, jazz docs like "Jazz Dance" --- all pay very close attention to the real world. The question is always: how can the real world lend itself to a musical?
VO: How was the overall process of fleshing the story out into a workable script and then producing it, given how tough the independent film business is these days both in terms of making films as well as distributing them?
DC: My collaborators and I were in a kind of bubble when we made the film. It was so off-the-indie-film-radar, we were still students and we just asked everyone we knew to chip in if they could. We were lucky enough that so many people were so generous and enthusiastic. The nice thing was that we were really able to make the film our own way: develop it for almost a year, shoot for over a year, edit for another year. The fleshing-out, the writing, the choreography, the music --- everything took a very long time. But we benefited from that extra time.
VO: Could you discuss your inspirations, if any, in terms of the film's look given that it is an interesting mix of gritty, verite-style dramatic scenes mixed with these charming musical numbers? DC: It was important to me that the film's look is consistent from beginning to end. I wanted the musical numbers to feel as though they emerged organically from the rest of the film, as though they belonged to the film's world and didn't just exist in counterpoint. The solution was to film those numbers as though we were a documentary crew just stumbling upon them, with some tweaks made as the film progresses and the numbers grow more involved. By the end, the camera movement and cutting are more clearly choreographed, but the handheld, the grain, the black-and-white --- all that stays the same. I loved the look of those old jazz docs from the sixties, or the Robert Herridge CBS segments, with Lester Young, Billie Holiday --- those musicians lived and breathed in that black-and-white grain. I wanted to film a new crop of jazz musicians in that style.
VO: What are your thoughts on the central relationship between Guy and Madeline itself? Because it seems that while Madeline is able to grow from their breakup and become a fuller person, Guy instead almost seems more captivated by the idea of her at times and what she brought him emotionally. Do you feel that they are a couple who should belong to one another unequivocally? DC: No, I guess they don't really belong with each other. They have some kind of connection, but it's hard to pinpoint, and I didn't want the movie to "explain" their romance or their attraction to each other. I think the only explanation the movie offers is in the music, which is as it should be.
A movie like Top Hat is hyper-articulate in its dialogue, yet only becomes truly expressive in its music and dance: the way Fred and Ginger dance "Cheek to Cheek" together says more than the film's entire script. It's almost a movie of its own. Of course, what's brilliant about a movie like that is that the numbers need the rest of the film --- they resonate because of what we've seen just before and what we see right after. But there's something sad there as well: you always feel like the romance is ending abruptly with the close of every musical number. Guy and Madeline come alive when they're making music --- I think Madeline wishes she were Ginger Rogers --- but they're lost the rest of the time, and that doesn't exactly spell a stable relationship.
VO: Finally, what has been the overall reaction to the film as you've been able to gauge it personally from audiences? Better or worse than you may have hoped for? Any surprises? What would you like the audience to take away from Guy and Madeline experience-wise?
DC: It's been great showing the film around and getting it out there. I made the movie I wanted to see, and it's been really rewarding to find that there're people out there who I guess wanted to see the same film! My hope is that it audiences are able to respond to it in the way I responded to those old musicals and semi-musicals that inspired me --- the rough-hewn ones, the scrappy ones, where the music would sometimes genuinely take you by surprise.
To learn more about the film, go to www.guyandmadeline.com
