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'Enter the Void' Director Gaspar Noe Talks Sex, Drugs and Cinema

By Simon Abrams (Subscribe to Simon Abrams's posts), Posted Sep 29th 2010 8:03PM
(Pictured right: Gaspar Noe and Simon Abrams. Photo taken by Susan Norget)

Though writer/director Gaspar Noé is probably most well-known for the graphic and seemingly interminable rape scene in Irreversible, his second feature, it's very hard to make charges of being a provocateur stick. The man's intuitive style of filmmaking and fascination with the interplay between corporeality, taboos and the afterlife precludes the assumption that he is knowingly trying to push your buttons. Enter the Void, his trippy third feature, continues in that tradition, focusing on the risqué relationship between Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) and his estranged sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta).

Enter the Void is, amongst other things: a 161 minute-long hallucinogenic trip, a love story, a roller coaster ride, a ghost story, a very loose memoirs, an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey and a further extension of Noé's career-long exploration of the role of rough sex in a Buddhist-inspired cycle of reincarnation. I spoke with Noé recently to talk about the film, the difference between the director's cut and the theatrical cut of Void and what his favorite hard drug is.

It's interesting to see how you structure Oscar's thoughts in Enter the Void because, as in Irreversible, we're so immersed in the protagonist's point-of-view. How does that affect the way you wrote the character (in your script)?

Noé: I didn't really write the character; his name is Oscar, which is really close to Gaspar. I started by using my own name for the main character but then, because the movie's not really autobiographical. I thought it could be tricky because people might assume that's about my life and it's not about my life, although I know many people who are like the main character. I was (however) considering putting my own voice in the French-dubbed version. I dropped that idea because now, I'm 46 and my voice doesn't sound anymore like a twenty year-old kid.
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D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus on French Pastry, Documentary Filmmaking, Bob Dylan and Richard Nixon

By Simon Abrams (Subscribe to Simon Abrams's posts), Posted Sep 22nd 2010 12:00PM
Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Cinematical


The films of D.A. Pennebaker, now 85 years old, comprise one of the most formidable oeuvres of any non-fiction filmmaker. While concert documentaries like 'Don't Look Back' (1967), 'Monterey Pop' (1968) and 'Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars' (1973) are probably Pennebaker's most famous works, recent collaborations with wife Chris Hegedus, like 'The War Room' (1993) and 'Startup.com' (2001), have proven the durability of their brand of cinema vérité filmmaking.

Making roughly a film per year, Pennebaker and Hegedus have collaborated on numerous documentaries with their signature unobtrusive "fly on the wall" approach to filming. It allows them to better capture their subjects in their environment, reserving judgment for the editing room afterwards.

Pennebaker and Hegedus' new collaboration is 'Kings of Pastry' (2009), a new vérité doc that follows Jacquy Pfeiffer, a Chicago-based French pastry chef and founder of the French Pastry School in Chicago. Pfeiffer covets a celebratory collar awarded to winners of the famous Meilleur Ouvrier de France (Best Craftsman in France) award for craftsmanship in pastry. Competition for the collar is so fierce that it's a nigh-Olympic three-day event that, in some cases, requires knowledge of complex mathematics and even basic engineering. I sat down with Pennebaker and Hegedus recently at their office on Manhattan's upper west side to talk about filming Pfeiffer, how the two filmmakers work together and any number of films that the couple never made.
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'Heartbreaker' Star Romain Duris on Crying and Dirty Dancing with Vanessa Paradis

By Simon Abrams (Subscribe to Simon Abrams's posts), Posted Sep 10th 2010 9:32PM
Filed under: Interviews, Celebrity Interviews, Cinematical
With Heartbreaker, French star Romain Duris continues to capitalize on his image as a young and very talented pop star. He first came to US audiences' attention in melodramas like Cedric Klapisch's L'Auberge Espagnole and Jacques Audiard's The Beat My Heart Skipped and has since proven himself to be a versatile performer that, like American superstars like Johnny Depp, chooses his projects very carefully (his performance in Christophe Honore's Dans Paris is wonderfully nuanced). Having just starred as the titular comic book antihero Arsene Lupin, Duris stars in Heartbreaker as a man hired to break people up, specifically women that don't yet know that they're not really in love with their boyfriends/fiancés. I had a thoughtful chat with Duris about his self-image and how he makes himself cry.

Cinematical: There's a great running gag in Heartbreaker where you make a terrible grimace whenever your character needs to cry (on command). How do you cry on film normally?

Roman Duris: Exactly the same (way).

Cinematical: Really? You just make a...

Duris: (laughs) No, no. To be honest, I used to. I didn't do any school of theater so I have no method. For my first few movies, yes, when the director asked me to cry for something, I was like, "Fuck! Shit, how can I cry? I can't!" It's strange-I wasn't an actor so I think I did the same (thing). I had to put my face in a physical way to help the tears (come out). I was joking about that with (Heartbreaker) director Pascal Chaumeil when we spoke about this strange face he's (Duris's character) going to make. I said, "I know exactly what I can do. I'm going to give you that and you'll tell me if it's ok for you or not." So it was natural for me because it came from...yes...
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Martin Scorsese's 15 Favorite Gangster Flicks

By Simon Abrams (Subscribe to Simon Abrams's posts), Posted Sep 9th 2010 8:15PM
Filed under: Fandom, Home Entertainment, Lists, Features, Cinematical
I guess it was inevitable that somebody should ask Martin Scorsese, a man whose reputation was made and is still probably widely typified by his crime stories, to come up with a list of his favorite gangster movies. The Daily Beast did just that and while it's easy to see why, it looks like Scorsese is a big Jimmy Cagney fan. Being a voracious film fan, many of the titles on Scorsese's list are not your typical mob fare (Sorry, no Godfather to be found). But there is The Public Enemy, my favorite Cagney role and probably one of my favorite gangster movies of all time, at the top of Scorsese's chronological list.

While it would be hard to imagine Scorsese submitting a dull survey, it's nice to see that he's putting his curatorial powers to good use. After Cagney roles like White Heat and The Roaring Twenties, there are a good number of titles you probably wouldn't have heard of otherwise like Pete Kelly's Blues and Force of Evil, which Scorsese says "had as great an impact on me as Citizen Kane or On the Waterfront.". It's also nice to see recognition for already acknowledged (but still hardly mainstream) works like Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso, Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos and especially John Boorman's superlative Point Blank. Check out the list here and get your Netflix queues revved up.

Judd Apatow Switches Gears; Now Working on Female-Centric Projects

By Simon Abrams (Subscribe to Simon Abrams's posts), Posted Sep 9th 2010 6:45PM
Filed under: Deals, DIY/Filmmaking, Movie News, Cinematical
Collider has word that Judd Apatow will collaborate with up-and-coming writer/director Lena Dunham on an upcoming tv pilot for HBO. Dunham plans on writing, directing and starring in what will likely be a semi-autobiographical series. Her most recent feature, Tiny Furniture, got great word-of-mouth from SXSW and won the "Best Narrative Feature" prize. The news comes as a bit of a surprise to some because, well, Dunham's a girl and Apatow's comedies typically treat women like comedic foils for their boy-men protags.

Then again, having seen Tiny Furniture, I can say that though Dunham is in fact a lady, her style of comedy/drama is probably more in-sync with Apatow's than most people might think. Tiny Furniture is a semi-autobiographical indie that roughly follows Dunham's post-grad slump after she moved home and was unable to find work or a normal romantic relationship (mumblecore darling Alex Karpovsky plays one of her two love interests but it's assumed he's stringing her along). In other words: it's a movie about growing up and learning to accept new social responsibilities. How does this not sound like a Judd Apatow comedy?
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Don't Trust Opening Weekends: 'Kick-Ass' Wasn't a Bomb After All

By Simon Abrams (Subscribe to Simon Abrams's posts), Posted Sep 8th 2010 9:03AM
Filed under: Box Office, UK Box Office, Cinematical, UK Box Office

On Sunday, the New York Times featured a disheartening article about this summer's bigger winners and losers. For example, the Times's Brooks Barnes points out that while many thought that Kick-Ass's failure to break the bank during its first week in theaters meant it was an unmitigated dud, the fact is that the adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.'s "mature," ultra-cynical super-yarn was a pretty big hit. To recap: Lionsgate Entertainment picked up the film for $15 million and projected it would make $30 million domestically during its opening weekend. The film only made approximately $20 million in that time, sending off all kinds of premature alarms. But the film has made $97 million worldwide and is estimated to sell 2 million copies once it hits dvd, blu-ray and is made available for purchase via online media outlets like Itunes.

Barnes's piece uses Kick-Ass's slow-but-steady success to point out how prognostication of a film's success really doesn't depend so much on its opening weekend anymore. There's no real speculation as to why that is in the piece, probably because it's a tough phenomenon to pin down: it's not just the home video market that's making up for lost revenue, it's an endurance test in theaters as well. On the one hand, How to Train Your Dragon made a lot of money opening weekend and even more money later over the course of the summer, grossing a total $497 million. On the other, Date Night flopped during its opening weekend but made out rather nicely in the long run, earning $152 million.
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Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman' Gets Optioned ... Again

By Simon Abrams (Subscribe to Simon Abrams's posts), Posted Sep 5th 2010 11:03AM
Filed under: Deals, Movie News, Cinematical

Big news if you're a Neil Gaiman fan or even just someone that got into comics because of the man: Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision Blog reported on Wednesday that Warner Brothers has optioned Gaiman's Sandman comics for a tv series. The series is, at present, scheduled to be helmed by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke.

This is a story that's been a long time coming. Originally, Gaiman's seminal comic series was supposed to be turned into a movie in the mid-'90s. Warner Brothers had the rights and word was Killing Zoe director Roger Avary would direct with a script from Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who later co-wrote Small Soldiers and the first and second Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. But the project never happened, partially because Gaiman thought the script he was handed, after numerous rewrites, was terrible. According to Wikipedia, the script was so bad, it was partially responsible for Gaiman's decision to give up writing stories about Morpheus, the titular King of Dreams, and the Endless, his immortal family.
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