Escapades

That’s a romantic story that yet has to happen. I was here two years ago when Sasha Waltz was performing at the Royal whatever theatre, I think it was ‘Roméo et Juliette’ – very beautiful. We were thinking of having her as the choreographer for ‘Suspiria’, which didn’t happen in the end. But I fell in love with this hotel and its kind of Japanese, 1960s cool. I wanted to come back with my partner, Ferdi, for a romantic weekend, but he couldn’t make it in the end.

Ferdinando is a wonderful, real, real, real Milanese guy. I like northern Italian people. He’s a great film director. I can send you the link to his first movie, that I was one of the producers of, about the Italian poet Antonia Pozzi, who killed herself in the late 1930s because she couldn’t bear the weight of life. It’s an incredibly beautiful film.

Interesting. A lot of people ask us: ‘How can you be in the same room?’ First of all I’m attracted to artists in general, but the personality that attracts me most is that of the director. I’ve never been fascinated by actors, not even remotely. Sure, we all have our voyeuristic moments of ‘Mmmmm’ when we see a good-looking actor. But do I want to talk with an actor about life? No, thank you. But with directors, yes, always. I remember I was completely enamoured with people like Bertolucci or Fassbender. Not just because of their movies; I wanted to know everything about them. I haven’t had many relationships, but the ones I had were always with directors. I’ve learnt there is no such thing as competitiveness between artists. Because my vision and their vision are so individual, they cannot collide. The last thing I’ll say is this: my real secret wish is that Ferdinando becomes very successful and rich so that I can retire and spend his money. You know, to cultivate a garden for both of us. I have no ambition to be a big director. Not at all.

But my dream is to retire. That’s not a one-liner; it’s true. To spend every year of your life with the abstraction of making a film, with a crew of 200 people and their passions and their stupid priorities, the pressure of having to deliver, the pressure of spending other people’s money and having to be nasty because you don’t want to give up your integrity? And then to show your film to the world and to have to talk about it and repeat your answer to the same questions again and again… I used to see making films as a kind of paradise and I now realise it’s kind of a hell, to be honest.

Well, yes, because their success may lie in their lack of personality and their possibility
of being clay. I remember when I did my first film, ‘Melissa P.’, I was so happy that
we got Geraldine Chaplin to play the grandmother, so we set up a meeting and this very teeny, tiny woman, very lovely, says to me, ‘Tell me what I need to do because I’m nothing without you.’ And in a way that wasn’t sexy for me. You know? I was, like, ‘ugh!’

Exactly. There’s this great book, ‘Notes on Cinematography’ by Robert Bresson, who says, ‘Don’t go for actors, go for reality.’ He always used people from real life as his actors. He probably stole their personality for the purpose of his films, and never worked with the same actor more than twice. That’s interesting. Says me, who mostly works with established actors!

But everything I just said doesn’t apply to Tilda Swinton, if that’s who you’re thinking of, because Tilda is a true filmmaker, a real cineaste. She’s definitely a real collaborator.

I think the most simple answer is: we are family. I like family. There’s something about a group of people that are bonded by invisible threads. And also, I have so much fun working with Tilda that I can’t even call it ‘working.’ The ideas that come out of being with her are incredible. She’s so invested. And she’s so funny. I don’t only do movies with her. I do a lot of stuff with her. We always say we want to do a zingarata. It’s from a movie from the ’70s in which four friends go strolling around, getting lost by car and having a lovely zingarata – going around like gypsies.

And that is probably because – and I’m doing some cheap ‘Reader’s Digest’ psychoanalysis
here – I can’t swim. I cannot swim. If I jump in a pool or in the sea and I can’t touch the ground, I will drown.

That, and I have a fear of snakes, so you see snakes in my films too.

Originally there’s a big pool in ‘Call Me by Your Name’, in the book, but for the film we shrunk it to this teeny tiny fountain, like a drop of water. It’s a safe watery environment. ‘Call Me by Your Name’ is a gentle film, a kind film, a movie about the capacity of effusiveness and the transmission of knowledge, and I didn’t want an ominous pool in it.

I totally, consciously, didn’t want to cast any kind of shadow of sadness or conflict over the story. And that’s why the making of the movie was so complicated and took so long. Every time we approached people for money the question was: ’How do you hook your audience if there’s no conflict? It’s not believable that these boys have no problems with their affair and they can just get away with it like that. Try to rewrite the script. Maybe the mother can be mean?’ So I actually went back to the script and made it even more clear and obvious that the mother was benign. So the financing process was very laborious: a little money here, a little money there. The film was made with the tiniest budget you can possibly imagine. Everybody was essentially working for free.

At least we didn’t get into this thing of ‘Oh, look at the boy. He has a love affair with another boy and he’s faced with all kinds of obstacles.’ I can’t relate to that kind of thinking. I don’t want to underestimate the suffering and violence from homophobia, but I also don’t want to make a film that endorses this ideology of oppression and fear, whether it’s from the world outside or from the tendency towards self-victimisation within the LGBT community. I hope
that if you disempower hatred, the oppression might go away.

A great example: Truman Capote, who was this tiny squeaky-voiced queen in a bar in Martha’s Vineyard, drinking whiskey like a truck driver, was addressed in a homophobic way by a big guy. Truman punches him in the face and the next morning they become best friends. And that was in, like, 1958. ‘Call Me by Your Name’ is, I think, less about that, and more about family. It’s a family film, for and about family. It’s the closest thing to a Disney movie that I’ve done so far. It’s ‘Bambi’. What is ‘Bambi’? Little Bambi loses the mother and becomes an adult and finds love and his father, and the spirit of his mother and the spirit of the woods keep guiding him. It’s Bambi’s guidance through the generations that you find in ‘Call Me by Your Name’. Both parents have a way to address a transmission of knowledge to the boy that is both direct and indirect, which I find beautiful and endearing. By the way, the classic Disney films have of course been filled with queer identity. Think of Tyrus Wong, the Chinese guy who was the great painter of Bambi’s landscapes. He made this Austrian, semi-Nazi ecological identity into that gorgeous queer Disney forest.

I would do ‘Bambi’! If I’d be granted complete control I would love to make a Disney
movie. But I’m not going to contradict myself. Between that and retirement, I’d still prefer to retire.

I so do not have a garden. I can’t afford one. Maybe one day.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays you’re allowed only proteins. Yoghurt in the morning, prosciutto at midday, then chickpeas and prosciutto the rest of the day, and then fish. At five o’clock you want to die from disgust. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays you go for a slice of brown bread with honey for breakfast, then a little fruit, then you can have a little pasta and vegetables and again fruit, and then fish. And on Sundays you can eat whatever. It’s good. It works. I don’t smoke, drink or do drugs; food is my only compulsion. When I’m working, when I’m nervous, I just think ‘Eat, eat, eat.’ Last year I was completely swollen and devastated. I had to stop.

I love to cook.

I usually don’t eat when I cook. I like to cook for other people. Sometimes I invite people for dinner but I don’t sit at the table because I have to cook.

No, I think it’s discipline.

I think it’s very boring to eat something you’ve picked, bought, brought home, smelt, cut, cooked, boiled, fried – by that point I’m over it. I’d much rather concentrate on the perfect execution of a plate than have to actually eat it.

Imagine! So boring! Still, after 20 years, I can’t be bothered to see my first film again. You just see all the mistakes. You know, my big concern about ‘Suspiria’ – now that I’ve shot it and we’re editing it, putting the sound to it and watching it a thousand times – is: will it be scary? I don’t find it scary anymore. It’s my big, big, big concern. When they made ‘The Exorcist’, did they feel any fear when they were watching the edits?

You have never seen the original film? That’s funny.

I like that. That’s very good. Will you promise me that you will not see the original ‘Suspiria’ before you see mine?

There’s a lot of contempt for the idea of me remaking ‘Suspiria’. The original is such a cult classic; people say you can’t remake it. I’d be scared to remake a classic. It’s like recording a cover version of an amazing song, like ‘Let It Be’ or ‘Return of the Grievous Angel’ or ‘Do You Wanna Funk’. Oh, no. Look at painting. The nativity scene was painted a thousand times. Brueghel painted what his father painted. Every story has already been told. Scheherazade and the Bible say it all. There’s no originality in the canon of storytelling; it’s the point of view that counts. Hitchcock made ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ twice, once in the ’30s and once in the ’50s. Was he lacking ideas, or did he actually do the greatest thing a cineaste could do? He had a point of view. So I love the idea of doing a remake and focusing on the perspective. When I was approached to remake ‘La Piscine’ as ‘A Bigger Splash’, I hesitated. I had no initial desire to make that film. I saw the original film once: horrendous. In the case of ‘Suspiria’, it’s different. I am 46 and I worshipped Dario Argento from when I was ten years old. He, Bertolucci and Hitchcock were my heroes. I remember as a teenager in Palermo, a colleague of my mother called our house to say that she’d seen Dario Argento go into a restaurant. I ran, and there he was, eating with a beautiful lady, and I stood outside the restaurant looking at him for the entire meal, like a stalker. And ‘Suspiria’ was especially an obsession for me. I was eleven when I saw the poster of the woman and the severed head and the blood flowing, and it made a big impression. Then a few years later I saw the movie, and I was obsessed and wanted to make my version of it. My mother still has the notebook in which I made these drawings of posters for my remake: ‘Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Suspiria’.’ When we bought the rights for the remake ten years ago I felt humble. I didn’t have the guts to do it, so we tried to make it with another director, my friend David Gordon Green, but that never happened, and then ‘I Am Love’ became a nice art-house success and people said, ‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’ I got back that fever-y thing. So, I think a remake is the most respectful way to celebrate a film. I wouldn’t be me if there wasn’t Dario Argento’s ‘Suspiria’. It’s me saying ‘Thank you Dario.’ And I think it’s possible to dream another version of what Dario dreamt back then. But there’s a lot of anger about this film. A lot of hate online. ‘How dare he!’ Tilda, Dakota Johnson, even the involvement of Jessica Harper from the original cast didn’t make the haters calmer. Only when we announced that Thom Yorke is making the soundtrack did they warm up a bit.

The music for my two new films surpassed all my expectations: Thom for ‘Suspiria’ and Sufjan Stevens for ‘Call Me by Your Name’.

In the book there’s a narrator, I think it’s the character of Elio talking, but I can’t stand movies with the voice of a character talking, ugh! I do like a narrator in a 19th century
novel tradition, but who could do that? I could have done it myself if my English pronunciation wasn’t so Italian. So I thought I needed someone who has his own identity as an artist. Sufjan Stevens! He’s young-ish in terms of the character’s age, and he’s now. So I wrote an email to his manager who immediately said that would never happen, Sufjan doesn’t care about these things. But I insisted and insisted and insisted and one day I managed to set up a five-minute phone call with Sufjan. He’s super shy, and he didn’t want to do the narrative, but he said he could make us a song. I mean – please! I wanted to use his song ‘Futile Devices’, which he agreed to rearrange for us. I didn’t hear back from Sufjan for about six months, and then he came up with these two new songs. I mean, this kind of stuff only happens once in your life. Not to just get two Sufjan songs, but to get these two songs. They’re so beautiful.

Well, then I wrote him and invited him over to my house to see the film when it was finished,
as he was coming to Italy anyway. So, the doorbell rings, and this stunningly beautiful man is at the door. I mean, I’d seen pictures of him, but in reality he is beyond handsome! Those eyes!

Ah yes, you thought Oliver has a wank with a ripe peach, but it’s Elio.

I was so scared to film that scene. I didn’t believe that you could put a peach on your cock and just come. We were already shooting the film and I just couldn’t make up my mind if we’d cut that scene or not. I was afraid I was being a prude, so I thought I had to at least try it for myself. So one day, after lunch, I got a peach, went to the loo, took the pit from the peach, masturbated and… I can tell you, it works very well. André Aciman was right in his book. So I went to Timmy and said: ‘I’ve changed my mind about the peach scene; I think it can work. You should try it for yourself.’ And he rolls his eyes, like, ‘Duh. Of course I tried it, and of course it works.’

Timmy and Armie are both incredible in that scene. The aggression, the physicality, the fragility. We had this amazing director of photography, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, and after we shot that scene I turned around and he’s weeping. Those things happen very rarely, when that moment of performance is so direct, so raw and unbiased. No smoke and mirrors. I feel like this movie is the closest thing I ever did to an unfiltered, raw use of the material, without any artifice. The thing that excited me when I started making films was the possibility of artifice, which is now the thing that interests me the least.

Maybe that can be the topic of conversation the next time we meet?

Unconsciously, yes. Probably. Wanting control is a characteristic of mine. It comes in handy as a director. Yeah, but when it spills over into life, it can be a little bit too much. I’m the tutor of my 16-year-old niece; her parents gave me the responsibility of raising her. She studies in Parma and she comes here every weekend, and I’m very strict with her. We’re very open with each other, but I’m very strict. I don’t know why. I wish I was her lovely uncle, but I’m not. I’m a bitch.

We’re doing press viewings. We showed it in Sydney yesterday. Sorry for the vanity, but can I show you some of the reactions that the distributor sent me?

It’s nice. The reaction at Sundance was so strong and powerful, it made me immediately confident about this film.

Super exciting! I’m glad, for the effort we made. You saw the set; it was a teeny tiny production, but it seems to resonate in a deep way and it goes beyond the boundaries of sexual preference. And also, it’s exciting to witness the development of a young actor like Timothée, to watch him become his own thing. He’s so spectacularly great in the film. And working with Armie to get him out of his comfort zone and still see him so much in command of his own actions…

It’s funny; I wanted him for the role, and we share the same agency in LA, so he got the script and then I got a message that Armie wanted to talk to me. So he says, ‘I think the script is great but I’m scared that it goes so far beyond what I’ve done in the past.’ I said, ‘That’s great news that you’re scared, because fear goes with desire, so that’s perfect. Hug your fear and jump with it!’ And then he says, ‘Okay, I’m in.’ That was fantastic. A few minutes later my agent calls me and says, ‘What did you do? I didn’t want to tell you beforehand, but I knew he was going to pass.’

I’m the youngest of three children, so you learn to observe and become a strategist to get what you want. I’ve always been good at avoiding trouble. And I learnt that making films is about how you talk to people. The most important thing is: who is the person in front of you? So I think it’s because I’m curious about people that I can detect their essence. That’s my job.

I’d much rather be left alone and not be put under the scrutiny of the public eye… I’m not that narcissistic. My narcissism is to talk about flowers rather than anything else. Also, let’s think about sexy politicians. Let’s talk about Emmanuel Macron. I think he’s so sexy! My dream is to see him naked. I think it’d be beautiful to look at him naked. The guy clearly is a narcissist. He enjoys this incredible attention upon him and he lives for that. That fuels his energy. I don’t have that at all. Do you?

And that horrendous clothing politicians have to wear! You have to be what Italians call grisaglia. Even if you go for the most fantastic Raf Simons for Jil Sander business suit, and only wear that, it’s still a boring look. You can’t wear Comes des Garçons and run a country, can you?

Sometimes. I regret not buying two coats of their ‘flat’ womenswear collection from 2012. I had some money at the time and could have afforded it. It would have been fantastic to have them.

I do. I like to collect clothes. Sometimes I buy them, or designers give them to me. Whenever I get something I try to opt for the most flamboyant, extreme thing, and I wear it once, like a wedding gown. I have this wardrobe filled with extravaganzas.

That’s how I dress usually. I remember I was in the jury of the Venice Film Festival and I wore blue trousers and a pink jacket from Raf for Jil Sander. You should have seen the faces of these cinema people! ‘What’s that faggot wearing?’ I was awarded the prize for the worst-dressed man at the festival. Oh, you know who’s watching ‘Call Me by Your Name’ just now? Raf Simons, in New York. I saw the guest list for the screening. Also, Nan Bush. Who is that again?

Ah, yes. I’m curious to hear what Raf thinks of it.

Don’t know, maybe he’ll tell the PR after.

Nice, no? They’re by Carlo Moretti. They’re from ‘A Bigger Splash’. That was a lesson I learnt from Bertolucci. The first time I went to his house, I looked at the sofa and I said, ‘That’s from ‘Luna’, correct?’ Yes! Every piece of furniture in his house comes from one of his films. Which isn’t completely true about my house, but many things come from my films. You can get the best furniture from film sets. I just loved these lamps and usually there’s a budget for props, so I said to the set designers, ‘Just make sure you get these Moretti lamps so that I can keep them afterwards.’

Federico Marchetti, the founder of YOOX, is a good friend. I met him about ten years ago. I love to talk to him about business. How do you foresee online shopping like he did? I’m fascinated! And then I always wanted to design houses. Refinement is something I’m drawn to. I enjoy decorating my own houses. One day Federico asked me to come and see the building he bought in Como, and he asked me what I would do with it. So I put together my very first interior-design mood board, and he loved it. So there we are. We’re working on it since last September. I love it. Going to the construction site, pretending you’re the architect, is super scary. I’ve always felt like a sort of con man, a hoax. I never studied film. I just said ‘I’m a director.’ Now I’m an interior designer. You just say you are.

I think we’re pushing the envelope of invisible luxury to the max. It’s devastatingly precise on the details, it’s crazy.

Yes, or how the light hits a surface. A specific colour of a portion of the room is reflected in the furniture on a specific moment of the day. There’s a lot of my passions in it: modernism, Brazil, patterns…

Is it part of an Italian tradition of design?

Absolutely. I think that Italy, for all its operatic showmanship, if you look closely, was probably the most advanced, cutting-edge laboratory in the world in terms of 20th-century art and design. If you compare 1950s cinema, art, design and architecture from Italy to that of the rest of the world, there is no match. Sorry. Let’s talk about Enzo Mari for three seconds. His lessons in design were ground breaking in every possible way, and they’re still unsurpassed. That’s the Italy I’m referring to.

Where did you get that? He was terrible. I hated him: a 40-something, ignorant, ineffective TV-generation person. He’s always been a starfucker, trying to be nice to the glitz and blitz and the fashion world. He thought that’d be good for his image. I think politicians should practise the art of humbleness, but that’s been completely lost, unfortunately. Maybe Angela Merkel does it, but her problem is that she’s biased, like all German politicians. But at least you get the idea that she’s working for the benefit of the community. Did you read Yanis Varoufakis’s new book?

It’s called ‘Adults in the Room’, his memoir of six months as the Greek minister of finance. He recorded every conversation with everybody, from Schäuble to Merkel to Dijsselbloem. It’s beautiful. And he’s sexy. A big-nosed Greek stallion in flowery shirts.

Oh no, he’s a great professor of economics. He’s considered one of the greatest thinkers in the world. Read the book. His one problem is that he and his girlfriend posed for these horrendous pictures in ‘Paris Match’. That was so bad. He regrets that. I’m sure he’s a narcissist.

We’re almost finished editing it. We’ll have the first viewing next week in LA. As it stands now it’s very long: 2 hours and 50 minutes. I wish I could have made it shorter, but my movies are character-based and you need time to breathe. ‘I Am Love’ is 2 hours. ‘Call Me by Your Name’ is 2:10. ‘A Bigger Splash’ is 2:05.

I’m afraid so. I can’t really help it.

No, you can’t. If the script says: ‘Gert sits on a chair,’ there’s no way to tell how long that should last. There’s a scene in ‘Call Me by Your Name’ where Timmy sits on the steps of the villa. That’s it. It lasts a minute and a half. If you make it shorter, you take off a lot of texture. You’re trying to get into a mood. It’s not just a story that needs to be told. What’s the story of ‘Call Me by Your] Name’? Summer, boy meets boy, boy fucks girl, boy fucks boy, father talks to boy. That’s the story, but for me it’s a film about family. Bambi. What could be a good way to revamp ‘Bambi’ in your opinion?

How to remake ‘Bambi’ – that’s maddening me these days. I mentioned it to my agent and now he’s set up a meeting with Disney. They want to see me in two weeks. I need to solve this.

Really? When was that? The 1980s?

I don’t see much current cinema. The pattern of filmmaking has become so repetitive:
I understand a movie after five minutes. In order not to be bored, I skip new films but I like to see old films. Last night my father and I watched ‘Days of Wine and Roses’. Have you seen any good Hollywood films recently?

Let me see – I keep a list of the movies that I’ve seen.

Give me your list!

Hated! Ter-ri-ble. Such a cynical attitude. Hated it.

No, what is it?

Ah, the beautiful documentary by Werner Herzog about the internet. That’s so good.

Let me check my email. Oh, look, here’s a message. ‘Reactions of the audience were extremely good.’

Let’s talk about Piet Oudolf, the garden designer. He’s my hero. I want to meet Piet Oudolf. I’ve read all his books on gardening. He’s such a great character. Have you met him?

My dream is to make enough money to get a house with a garden and hire Mr. Oudolf to do the garden. I’m dying to go to his garden in Hummelo in the Netherlands. People know him from the perennial grasses, but in truth he uses a lot of flowers and trees. Have you been to Dries van Noten’s garden? I’d love to go there too. His garden is, like, ‘Wow!’ Really, gardening is the only thing I’m interested in. Oh, look, here’s a message from Raf.

It’s being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, which is one of the classiest distributors in the business. For a director, that’s something to put on your chest. And they bought the rights for the whole world, which is very rare. Very prestigious. They do all the Almodóvar films, Haneke, Woody Allen. And they decided to release it in November, which is the best date you could ever get for this kind of film, for the Oscar season. If a distributor gives you that window, it means they’re pushing the envelope for you. Which doesn’t mean it will get an Oscar, of course, but the film will be pushed. Have you seen the trailer?

I always wanted to make a gay love story. Or more than one. I knew I wanted to convey that feeling that I know very well.

Oh my god, you will love it! The decadence! It’s the last great example of the complete crash of the bourgeoisie, and only because they can’t accept the fact that they have a son who’s an artist. It’s so beautiful. So beautiful. I dream of making that into a movie. I read it for the first time when I was twelve.

I’d like to make a film about Salah Abdeslam, the only terrorist who made it back to Belgium alive after the Bataclan massacre. A typical Molenbeek guy.

No, he’s alive, in jail, and he refuses to talk. There’s something interesting about him. He was a rent boy, drinking booze, and he only got radicalised in the last three weeks before the attacks. In the end he didn’t want to die and walked away from the Stade de France, out of Paris, for hours and hours. Two friends picked him up, they drove him back to Belgium. They were stopped by the police but they let them go, then he went into hiding. I think it’d be a great film, but I need the right person to write it with me.

It’d be almost impossible. You surely won’t find any big budgets for it.

Don’t make me think of that or I’ll want to retire even more. Or make a movie once every 15 years. I’d love that. Did you know that in the US they track people’s search results for movies, and based on that they can exactly, exactly predict how they will perform at the box office?

Oh, I refuse to do that. They obliged me to do it for ‘A Bigger Splash’, and when I got the results I threw the whole report in the bin. Then I took a picture and sent it to them. Literally. I don’t give a shit. Gert, I can stop making movies today and I’d be happy. I can live on one potato a day and I’d be happy. I have no attachment to the medium at all. I don’t give a fucking shit. That’s my freedom.