CITY Issue 55 - (Page 43) / / / / / / / / / / / ///// THE FUN PART OF THIS MOVIE IS THAT WHEN YOU SHOW IT IN ANY COUNTRY, YOU'RE BASICALLY BRINGING NEW YORK TO THAT PLACE. I’m self-taught. I didn’t go to fi lm school. So what happens is that eve y once in a while you see a film and you go, “Wow, that’s what I want to do,” and you t y it in you own way. Sometimes it wo ks and sometimes it doesn’t. With Unmade Beds, I was eally t ying to not even make a film. I was uneducated in filmmaking but I was so ambitious and so obsessive that I just wanted to make a fi lm movement and that’s how the New o k, the indie, whateve you want to call it, unde g ound thing got sta ted. [It was] f om that and my film, The Fo ei ne . New o k seems to be the one constant in you films, f om The Blan Gene ation in the s th ough lphabet Cit in the ’ s to this yea ’s Empi e II. How do you think New o k has changed ove the yea s? I think in many ways New o k has gotten a lot bette . I know a lot of people don’t believe that, but I think New o k back then was so d ug-infested, c ime-infested. It was dep essing. It was dep essed. Okay, it was c eatively ene gizing, but in many, many, many ways it was much wo se than it is now. I mean, yes, the a chitectu e of those yuppie apa tment buildings on the Bowe y a e awful on some level, but they’ e much bette than what it was befo e. So, I’m defi nitely not one of those people who thinks the past was bette . I defi nitely think even fi lmmaking is mo e fun now in a way because you can do it in digital, you can put it on ouTube, and a lot of othe stuff. So, I’m not a nostalgist fo nostalgia’s sake — “It was bette .” I’m mo e like, listen, the e a e still p oblems. But, you know, if you eally emembe what it was like, it was ho ible. I mean eve ybody was on he oin, you know? C azy. So that doesn’t mean it can’t be c azy now, but I defi nitely p efe it now than then. Lowe Manhattan, and T ibeca in pa ticula , have played a la ge pa t in that evolution. How do you feel going into the festival? I’m sup emely excited because it’s the best venue fo my wo k eve . nd this may be one of the best things I’ve eve done, too, one of the most fun movies I’ve eve done, so I’m eally excited about it. I’m eally excited about the venue. I’m excited about the festival. It’s the most inte esting fi lm festival in the United States at the moment. It’s defi nitely got the most ene gy. Some of the olde ones, like Sundance, have a ce tain cachet and business and all that kind of stuff, but I think in te ms of excitement, to have a fi lm festival in New o k, that’s iveting, that’s g eat. 43 I guess emode nist is the next va iation of postmode nist, which is to take something that was in the cultu e befo e and then tu n it into something else, like taking it out of context. So it’s kind of what pop a t was in a way. I was using Wa hol as kind of a soup can. It’s like edoing that but it’s done in a completely emode nist way because it’s using the technology and the sensibility of contempo a y athe than nostalgia. T ibeca will be the fi st No th me ican audience to see the movie. What was it like showing this New o k fi lm last Septembe at the Venice Film Festival? Have you shown it anywhe e else? The fun pa t of this movie is that when you show it in any [othe ] count y, you’ e basically b inging New o k to that place. So, if you show it on a big, huge sc een in Venice, it b ings New o k to the Venice skyline. I showed it in a th-centu y Tu kish steam bath in G eece. It looked eally cool inside this fou -centu y-old piece of a chitectu e. Do you think that viewe s a ound the wo ld have esponded to it the way that viewe s at T ibeca will? I think they have a diffe ent point of view because fo them it’s also something slightly exotic. New o k has a fascination outside that’s diffe ent than fo us who live in New o k and kind of take it fo g anted. It’s like we don’t look at the Empi e State Building in the same way. Wa hol’s thing was that he ecognized that the Empi e State Building is like a “sta ,” he called it: “Empi e State Building is a sta ,” o “a movie sta ,” and it’s the e all the time in the skyline. We just don’t get it that much. But people othe places a e like, “Whoa, Empi e State, ah, fabuloso!” So you’ve sc eened it in Tu kish baths and va ious othe locales. Do you have an intended venue fo this fi lm? Well, I thought that the best venue fo it would be in ve y la ge piazzas, you know, ve y la ge scale, but it tu ns out that it’s also wo king in theate s. I think we’ e still t ying to figu e out whe e we’ e going to show it in New o k. One idea is to show it in G and Cent al Station in the evenings and the othe one is to show it in a movie theate . Many of you fi lms seem to d aw conside able inspi ation f om olde , landma k movies — Empi e, of cou se, but also B eathless, Ta i D ive , and fi lms like those. What d aws you to them and inspi es you to einte p et them? STILLS FROM EMPIRE II.
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