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This content is a discussion with filmmaker Olivier Assayas about his filmmaking process, emphasizing his approach to screenwriting, adaptation, and the collaborative, fluid nature of directing, particularly highlighting the making of his film "Carlos."
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This apathy... we wanted to
welcome Olivier Assayas, who, as you know, is
presenting Carlos at the Capitole this evening,
a complete screening, that is to say, the
5:30 version. This is a great
opportunity for those who didn't
see it on television, who was
the first recipient of the King,
to see the film on the big screen and
its beautiful screen. I'm going to address my head...
I'm following his profile right now to
thank the Cinémathèque, which is
behind this invitation, since, as
you know, there was, and still is,
a retrospective of
Olivier Assayas's films in Lestrem, and
some of his films were shown. Most, if not
all, of his films were
presented this week, and the weeks go by
and it continues, so you can find out more in the
the
program at the station. And it was something
we've wanted to do for a long time, for two
years now, so we needed to invite you, to have you
here once, to be able to discuss
your films and your
approach to these films.
This invitation from the Sonatas is therefore the perfect opportunity, and they
thank Michael for coming.
We are here today, and thanks to
Frédéric Maire, who is giving me
this opportunity, so as usual, this
afternoon's discussion is just that—a
discussion. We're not here
to give a lecture, neither historical
nor aesthetic. We were talking about
Olivier Haas's films, but to
ask him about his filmmaking practice.
So, we'll
quickly, after a few questions,
give the floor to others, then take it back, and then
operate a bit like an
exchange, like a fake lover. You feel
free to ask any questions
you want. And as I was saying,
in just one week, this is the opportunity, since
most of you are
preparing for film shoots, whether feature-length
fiction or having
made fiction films
last semester, to ask
Olivier Haas about his passion for
making films.
You shouldn't just ask
all the questions; there are no
bad questions, only sound circles,
a school of thought, and
you can say whatever you
want about cinema and about
the people who make these two black and
It's me who fuels
the most intense discussions, obviously. If I don't have a
different one, I really thank you very much for granting us time,
since you have
a very busy schedule. You're currently promoting
promoting
several films at once, and she's moving on
to another one. It's really kind of you to
take some time for yourself this
afternoon. It was about meeting the teams. A
teams. A
question that
always bothers me when I see too many films is:
until the script is almost written, at
what point do you have to
forget the script and move on to directing?
to what extent a script
should be written, at what point do you let go of
the script to move on to directing? What you
forget about the script is that it's done
in an energy that is unique to... let's say that... well,
I see
things a little differently. That is to
say, for me, let's say that I oppose what we call
call
the script to what would be screenwriting.
For me,
screenwriting is what
begins from the moment we...
Imagine the film we want to make, the way it
lives in these cars, first in
our minds through
characters that materialize a
bit like ghosts, and then
gradually, we start
taking notes, reflecting on
events through sensations, images,
maybe sometimes, sometimes not. And then there's
a moment when all of that
crystallizes, taking the
form of a written document
which for me is truly an extremely
transitional moment in the writing of the
film. It's the moment when you really have to
freeze it because if you don't,
the collaborators you're going to
work with won't have any reference points,
the actors
you want to work with won't know what it's about,
and the
producers won't be able to finance it,
so the film won't exist, so it's
abandoned. But for me, it's as if there's
a kind of
process that
continues, that develops and
unfolds, that at a certain point I
interrupt for the sake of the game. It's so that I can
and while the
script is finalized, the reflection on the
film continues, continues
through the choice of actors, it
continues through the choice of locations,
it continues through the way I
imagine editing and constructing the
film, it continues in the way
I question
elements of the script, and this is a
process that will continue every
day of the film's preparation, every
day of its shooting, and
that will never stabilize until then,
almost until the end of the
film's mixing. So for me, acting—
I've never considered the
script as
something that has value in itself,
nor is it simply an
artistic value. This year,
for me, it's a
literary object, more than just
unidentified, because
I try to write scripts that are as
stripped down as possible, a bit like plays,
I want to say,
where I describe as little as possible, in which
I include as few
psychological elements as possible, aiming for
extreme factual precision, but in a way that
creates something which, for me,
is the scenario that generally doesn't move,
or moves very little. This is what constitutes
constitutes
the construction, the almost musical construction,
which is like a kind of
backbone for the film, something
I can work on, something I can progress on, developing
progress on, developing
and advancing, etc. This is
like a kind of safety net that allows me, even later on, to give
give
space to the actors,
sometimes even a space for improvisation depending on
the performers. But it
has undoubtedly increased, rather than
Senna. I know what I give you the most
attention and concentration on, but
we see the Rue de Foix. For me,
cinema isn't scripted, it's written. But do
you have the same
relationship, let's say,
a beautiful talent, but let's say the
transitional relationship to the Senate when it comes to
historical figures, when that's the
case, for example, all the Carlos loan cases, or
when it's not trashy, literary,
like, for example, the destinies
Sentimental, well, let's say that first of all, that's how
I see
things today. There was another time,
particularly for those who have passed away, when
I allowed myself
freedom. And let's say that it's
because you're taking two
examples that are obviously very different in nature.
Sentimental Destinies
is the only time I've done a
literary adaptation, so I'm
not the author of the original material.
So, a rose either, since the author
of the original screenplay is reality. Well, that's
another debate altogether. In
In
Sentimental Destinies, I'm perhaps concerned with staying as close as possible to
Jacques Chardonne's writing. That is to say,
for me, Sentimental Destinies
is the adaptation of a novel, but it's also a
reflection—mine, at least—on
least—on
literary transposition to cinema. How do we
transpose literally? How can
I manage to
transpose into images the things that
touched and moved me, things that have to do with
nature, but also with the very substance of my
writing. In a
certain way, the style is there, so I try to be
extremely respectful of this premise of
an existing work. Therefore, there is no
invention in the sentimental destinies; there are challenges,
etc., but there is no
improvisation where the words are
very often
those of Jacques Chardonne. The
dramaturgical structure is more
Jacques Chardonne's than mine or
Jacques Fieschi's, who acquired Kiki, who
is the
co-author of the film last year, who
wrote the screenplay with me. But if the
new one, each actor is predominant in the adaptation
the adaptation
of the film, so there you have it. So, that's simple.
Let's say it's this year. It's certainly
a different case. As for Carlos,
I want to say that this is really
the very example of the process I
was trying to describe, in the sense that it's
a film born
from the accumulation of
original documentary material. As long as
I've often said, and I think it's true, that
in *Câblos* I didn't write
scenes, I found them. That is to say,
I got up and set about gathering
all possible elements
around Carlos, using
two biographies of Carlos,
newspaper articles,
police documents, transcripts
of wiretaps, etc. So this
process of research and reflection,
of historical precision
in the writing of Carlos, is
precisely something that lasted
until the end of the
film. That is to say,
I slipped—I say this in the madness of *Sang fou*—I was
already literally
filming, I was still twisting and
exchanging emails with Stephen
Smith, who was the sole author of the
investigation on which I based myself, so that he could
authorize the bankruptcy of the
theme, such and such a hypothesis, such and such a
site, and the treatment of such and
such a situation
according to such and such a... This new element that I
found while searching, reflecting in
Hebrew, and not just me, since, let's say, insofar as
we were doing
work that was also
historical in a certain way, there were
things that came from collaborators
who told me, "We found this, would have
found that, is it true, is it
false, can we use it, ca
n't we use it?" And this is one of the things that, when
we were already
editing the film, there were still
questions we were asking ourselves
about the historical validity of
this or that of our hypotheses, making it accessible while
remaining within its available resources. So
there's the reinterpretation, but after that, it was
even this dimension that
wanted to include the
legal dimension. In Camelot, there are
things that I was forced to adjust according to
the requests of
Canal Plus's lawyers. Is the same precision
in fact, and is the same precision in
the adaptation chat really literary?
literary?
Respect the breath of Jacques
Chardonne, and then no, that of
historical inspector, no, no, because, for example,
I play, take, for example, year after year, well,
I think that it suits him
since the full filmed version, for
example, there's a sequence in Carlos
that takes place
in the offices of the Hungarian political police where
Carlos and his sidekick,
Johannes van Driessche, are received by temporary
agents of the secret service, by
heads of the secret service. It's
believed that they are roughly supervising
Carlos's presence in Hungary. This
sequence is based on a
transcript. That's where
the political police of Eastern European countries, whether
in Europe or East Germany,
Huang Lee, record everything. There are
microphones everywhere, and
after the fall
of the Iron Curtain, many of these
documents became accessible. So,
So,
for this sequence, I literally used material from an
existing situation, from truthful statements.
Then I compensate a little to
make the scene intelligible and digestible.
And then,
if you do
n't remember, this one
literally transforms into comedy scenes, that is to
say, in the sense that I
leave the words, they remain those of Carlos.
But it's true that I play with how
the fans see it. I let the
actors interpret it in their own way.
I let them play with the
language, with their bodies, highlighting the
awkwardness of the translation.
And with it, there's a little moment
of improvisation, literally, around
the use of objects, etc. So,
this sequence is frozen. I had
written it—I never wrote it, I never
scripted it. On the one hand, it
comes from an existing document, and
then I invent and reinvent it
during filming. So there are many
examples of this type. Because
here I'm taking an example that comes from the
actors' performance, but for
example, the unfolding of one of the
main sequences of Carlos, which is
the assault by the commando led by
Carlos, beyond the meeting of the
oil ministers—
perhaps fatal—who were
ministers of the Organization of the
The queue... what,
finally, how I proceed? The
acting brings together all the elements I have. I'm
building, with the elements
a continuity as close as possible
to the reality of this assault. But what
is this phase? That's where it
gets interesting. Kate, what do I have? What do
I have available?
She has a lot of
firsthand eyewitness accounts. There are
many people who were interviewed,
who recounted what happened,
but none of these people were
everywhere at once.
So they each have a
perspective, which is good because
while they are in one room, they don't know what is
happening in
another. So we have to
reconstruct a temporal continuity that
that
restores the truth, the reality of this
assault, which itself is determined by
basic elements such as
simply the space in which
distances are measured within this space.
So the building where the hostage-taking took place
no longer exists; it was razed a long time ago.
So I'm getting plans that
remain, which are those of the
place. So we reconstructed... In the studio,
this space, depending on the dimensions we
had, and all of a sudden, simply by being
confronted with the
actual space and distance, the angles, the
corridors, we realize that quite simply, even
in the accounts of
eyewitnesses, there are
impossibilities, so we are forced
to find a coherence, to find
a logic, and therefore, even in a
scene like this one, which is a
priori highly technical and which
another filmmaker would undoubtedly have storyboarded a long time ago,
well, I give myself the space, let's
say, to equip it with the capacity of
this kind of big machine, to
adjust it according to
reality, once again, from the
historical, factual bag. If we take, for
example, earlier, this
scene becomes a comedy scene, 27
interrogation scenes like that, to what
the actress was already, I thought
at the time of writing, as being a
moment that can be transported,
transformed like that, or it's something that, by
working in the cafeteria
of some media outlets, is transformed because
it falls under Potential, yes, that's it, it's for
sale on the spot. I didn't
write at all that I didn't screw up at all, like a
a
comedy sequence, and then I realize that actually it's
funny, I realize it's
funny because Georges, at the
beginning, I don't know anything about it because first of all, I don't know the
Hungarian actors,
I don't know at all who I'm talking to,
I said I'm not going to have
any expenses, luckily I meet
actors who are actors who are part of
theater troupes,
the two very good actors from
Authie who are rather used to the
Seine opposite, there is, I realize that there is
something that works very
well in the duo between
Alexander Cher and Edgar Ramirez, that there is, throughout
the entire shoot,
a kind of familiarity that is
built between them, and I know that I
can give them space because
they will, the way they will
Using it will be interesting, and
so it's already happened several times that I've realized there's something that
works with two people, and that, well, if I
let them go, the situation
can be funny, or maybe at the same time,
Véronique is funny, but, but, but it's something
I realize, going back,
but also on tour, but so
at what point do we
say to ourselves, hey, it's good to let go,
finally to make sure of death, to let ourselves be
carried away to where the
collaborators who can be, where the
actors or the director of photography, but I
must say that I believe that, that is to
say, I really believe in the
tempting zone in cinema as a
collective, moreover, from this point of
view, it's after, it's me who makes
a line, so he writes, I channel
the energies of each and every one, but there's
someone who does more or less, it
depends on the moments, Jerry, it turns out that a
film like Carlos, given its complexity
and given the way it was made, it turns out
that it has It was even more collective
than other films where there was
something that worked very well
between everyone,
if we ever... but I know it's the
doctor, I'm playing, I really think that
finally I sleep around, or I don't like
control, I don't like controlling it, I
think that the docks site in cinema,
life, it enters cinema precisely
in camp when we arrive, when we manage to get
rid of this question of
control because life is
brought about precisely by the way you are
contradicted by people
you work with, by the fact that all of a
sudden, by being able to
accept that everything flows, that
the operator, even if you have analyzed,
reflects, that is to say that all of a sudden there is
the actor, he has an idea that is
better than yours, or that
even the operator, he suddenly says to me,
but what did you think about these things
like that, and so on, often
no, but in him, sometimes yes, sometimes yes, it's good, sometimes it's,
if it turns out it's It's better
than we imagined before, so, or even just from the
or even just from the
point of
view of the costumes, I'd say poppy, there, there, that's what's exclaimed, that's what
can be
precious, so having
continuity in the work with
collaborators received Thursday on Thur
Carlos, the video Guen Doris and the
costumes of the film,
I find that he arrives, he arrives with
Dustin's proposals, what for
some of the characters that he is, which
added a dimension, which
brought something, and so, and which
was even, so sometimes it was even in
contradiction with what I had
imagined, but
with that, as often, it works, there was
something more alive,
and precisely, it's this aspect, it's the way you have
the gifts, I leave, I had
the feeling of arriving at the rehearsal,
trying, in any case, to
let energies into the
film that
possibly allows you to find a little
life in all of this, but when you
talk, for example, about this scene in a
police station which becomes a
comedy scene at the end,
yes, as if to say that it happens, rehearse
beforehand, you know, before this morning of
filming, you have this
scene to shoot that day in the middle of
work and you're going to try to... To
describe how it went,
Neva said, let's say that,
unlike other sequences in the
film, it's a pure game scene, and it's
a relatively long scene. I'm
not going to take it, it's
literally four pages of
dialogue with four characters
sitting around a table. So it's
sometimes the hardest or most thankless thing to shoot, so
basically I thought I'd
base it entirely on the game. I'm not going to try
to do any fancy
staging or anything like that, any kind of spatial construction. I'm going to be
with the skiing. If this scene
works, it will work on the
game. So I don't have any cameras
to begin with, which means
I can leave the
actors to
improvise. And because it's more
difficult to improvise when you're in this kind of
setup, when you're only
shooting with one camera,
you're stuck on how to
match the two axes.
Inevitably, you have to Having both axes
and the powers to have seen, understood the
reactions, the six dances, etc.
Wait, synchronous offer, what? So, yes,
I announced it, there aren't that many.
It's one of the scenes in the film that I'm
designing with two cameras because I know
that I'm going to play with it. Let
You're talking about... You've talked about
the person who made, for
example, your costumes. Little by little, it will be
a collective effort. I work with the same
people from one shoot to the next. There you go, it's
important for you to... No,
I try to... I try to... to
work with the same people. I know
that I have my share... I've
failed some of the collaborators
who have been there since my first film.
Generous François Labarre, who did
the sets for all my films since the
first one; Barnier, he edited all
the films. Then there's
Galliano, a position where it got worse.
For example, Yo Yo Yo Guen, we did that... It's been
four films that we've made together.
The camera operators offered... In the end, the camera
operators... I have I've only ever worked with
three camera operators: Denis Le Noir, with
whom I started, but who shot
half of the film; Eric Cottier;
and Le Saut, who was
already working with the
second camera when we were shooting in
early September, back in '98, just like that. He's also involved with
Carlos. So,
people, you know, you
know well. So, when does he arrive, in
fact, during the film's production?
arrives late, in fact, it was a done deal. There isn't
much work, let's say that... it holds up. For
me, that is to say, Claudio, I do
n't like the
preparation of films at all. If there's really
a moment in the future applications
of films that I like to spend time on, it's the
preparation because I find that, first of all, there's
a kind of
resistance to reality. In a way, we don't know
yet who's going to play, on what date,
and then I'm not even talking about the
uncertainties about the possibility of
making the film. Well, I'd say Carlos,
despite the... the excess... we got the
green light to shoot the film,
literally four... days before
filming, so it was a nightmare of
stuff, so having fun, and there was very
little work, well, and more work
beforehand, but not the scene, so that of a
copy to compensate constantly,
so I, I, I at home, I think at the
time of filming, what is it that I
really believe in
skiing, in what happens at the moment of the iron,
and that we had to do, I listen, I
know, where I listen to the two operators
because it's not, we can have a
lot of hollow discussions, you know, in
love, I mean, it's like we can make
the actors read Moby Dick, we can make
you, we can, we can tell
the operator, we were inspired by the
paintings of Athens - tel/fax was not frankly very,
frankly very,
very anecdotal
compared to what these covers, what
the making of the film will really be, it
gives indications, it can be the
pretext for a few conversations, but
they are basically, for me, never
central to the making of the film and comes back to
the low distribution of the film, it's when we
are there, we, everyone, that the camera is in the
margin and that they made a So, at that
moment, I'm really listening, and the
layan, through a good exchange, we have to
talk about the costumes. That's it, that's
good, that's the reverse. It's true
that the costumes are
made a lot in advance,
they're made a lot in advance, but they're
also made a lot day by day. It's that
I realize that as much as I have, I'm
interested in working on that,
and so there would be, obviously,
we prepare the costumes for all
the actors. I tend to exchange them
day by day. I see them arrive on
set, I don't know if you're not so good at it, so that we don't try
another color, that we don't try
to interview, what to say is that it's
me, it's if you have, it's really at the
moment of filming, something
becomes very concrete, the rest
and the reference points that I give myself, but everything, everything, everything, everything
is called into question at the
moment of the shot. So, is it the filming
of longer shoots? It's
longer. Because I
tend to run over in the evenings, I
say that I don't let go of the scenes, the
lavender shots, and seeing what I
want. And it's true that sometimes the
schedules and that, that gets a little off track,
but I've never been, I've never made
films where I had a
sufficient budget that would allow me to do what
some people do, that is, to
reshoot scenes, to go over two weeks,
never. I don't know, it's
because it's not for lack of
wanting to, I would have been delighted to be able to,
I've never had savings that would have
even allowed me to have that
freedom. So no, rather quickly, the tone,
rather life compared to others.
I mean, a film like Carlos, and
like three films, if you translate it
in cinematic terms, collapses, etc. These
three films, 12 hours and 45 minutes,
shot in about ten countries with
action scenes, about a hundred
characters, we shot in 92 days. So,
in CCC, it's three
action feature films, each shot in 30 days. Not
much, so what it is is May 7th to 15th,
but at the same time I don't hate it, I
like it. I was initially quite
attentive to the economics of films, and
then I like the convention that
a shoot gives to the shoot
because you also talk about it,
you were talking about improvisation with
the actors because if the
artistic team arrives, the medical and
technical team between the lines, the mayor invites, as
you said, the
actor's comb with the actors requires
degrees, the golden audition, which I don't rehearse at
all, I don't rehearse at all,
and I already rehearse, I hardly ever rehearsed,
and now I don't rehearse at all, that is to
say, in
the sense that I don't even go into the
technical details, that's where I,
including the most complicated shots
on a film like Carlos, or those that involve,
and it's a 10-month detour if
you do it like that, ex Lyon, and so that's a matter
of trust with
the technical team And it doesn't just seem to be
the head of a
department, not just the pope's, to the camera operator.
It's a matter of trust, of
the assistant camera operator who has to
improvise with positions he does
n't yet know,
with a grip who himself will
find his bearings while filming, or even
a boom operator who will try to be as
in the image. There's helping them
find their bearings, or SaaS, and
positioning. But this urgency,
precisely, is
managed in a certain way because it allows everyone to
maintain a kind of nervousness, acuity.
Yes, and then, and above all,
it allows something that is
vital for me for the actors, which is
fluidity between people in real life
and cinema. That is to say, he'll
say that, like, the actors they inevitably
go to, especially on a film like "The
well, it's a period film,
so they go through a department where
they have period costumes, ties, you have to
Attaching oneself to
training, I don't know, well, all
the time, not on the floor, which changes
the appearance of the rafts, which I think about
regarding Ramirez, he spent a
rebound moment in the old days in the dressing rooms, I don't love it, it only stuck when the
the
actors spend time in the
accommodations, ideally they should get out
of the car that brings them or from the
metro, go directly to the G,
obliged to do it, to do it with you, so what
I do is the moment they
arrive on set, I say, well,
listen, here's the plan, it's this, it's this,
you're going to access the third party around the edges, and
before that, that there has been
time for two like that, in fact, this
side is a bit of a setup, we're making a film, what's it going to
film, what's it going to
be, the plan is to
say, I don't have time to think,
and the game at the tournament, that's life, you know, it's something like, well, there you go, you're
you're
Carlos, had to go into the office of the
head of Syrian security and Well,
everything will be fine, we'll see what happens. So,
the disappointment is enormous. It wasn't
the case with the first films, was it?
Reassure me, with 15 Witnesses it was
much less the case. It was much more about
the products, the films I make, you're
more designed to control, more, more, more
inevitably, because it's something we have at the
beginning, we always
need to prove, we say, prove,
including to ourselves. We concede, using
tools that we know, we know how to do the
scenes that we can pull off, that won't produce
CO2. After that, it's
certain that it's a freedom that
we gradually give ourselves, and
this freedom started first with
the actors. They trained, all the
work around the technique. First,
you felt freer to
break free from the technique, consulted,
communicated. I think it's a game at the same time, in
fact, it's both at the same time,
because for me, the break came
after my fourth film. I made a
film called A New Life
in the 90s, this first film in
scope that I I was doing a real
scope, this super heavy camera, etc., all of a sudden
I realized, so
not to take the hot water, I couldn't
lift the camera from the big
Michels and all sorts of furniture,
a beak with all the problems that
the use poses in addition to the
score, it is by
technical details, you know them, like when like
me we know that it's CCC, there is
less depth of field at
comparable focal lengths and to a depth of field
and especially when it's light, you can
eat, I often have sequence shots
that we do, all that makes 360 degrees so we
lose, but we can't put a
spotlight on a stand so we don't see any
light, so there's never any
depth of field, so we paint, we were doing,
I was doing hidden shots,
hyper-drawn, very complicated without
light, so the unfortunate
camera assistant would ask, okay, okay,
we'll go when the shot was ready
and you're ugly, ask for fifteen minutes
to make marks on the floor with
yellow markers, etc., and
it's a job that was quite
fascinating because deep down maybe
Spatially, it's one of the most
complex films I've made, but I came away feeling nauseous. I still couldn't judge it anymore,
and I told myself, never again in
my life, to see a pond, to be comforting
with an actor's role, something like that, it's
over. I know it's the idea of
stopping work with the
municipalities to take technical time.
I don't want to hear about that anymore,
so I sleep. And it's true that the
next film I made, which is "
Cold Water," is between a firm, with these two
films that I shot in Super 16,
handheld camera, with, and, well, this time,
giving myself freedom of
movement, of inventiveness, and it's
in "Cold Water," there are even more
elements, a little more, more, more
framed, more, because, and it's with these,
completely free, loving, but it happened at the
same time, and "Irma Vep," it's the
first, it's the first film where I
really let the actors
improvise and threw them into
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