FilmJuice talks with auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet, mastermind behind the likes of Delicatessen, Amélie and the somewhat ill-advised Alien: Resurrection. His latest film, the excellent Micmacs is out now.
How did you come up with the concept for Micmacs?
The concept for this one was a mix between three different ideas: the feeling to speak about weapons sellers, the feeling to have a band of silly people like the Seven Dwarfs in Snow White or the toys of Toy Story, and to have a feeling of revenge. I’m a big fan of Once Upon A Time In The West, so I wanted to meet the three different themes.
I also love the idea of Pixar or Disney movies to have one idea per shot so we opened our box of notes, because we note everything we hear in life. We have files of notes, of gags, of small bits of dialogue and all this stuff, and we think, "Oh, the story of the sugar in the coffee is perfect for this scene", you know, and when the box is packed with ideas we start to write. This is the best way to have a ton of details in the film. When we write, he (Guillame Laurant) writes the dialogue scenes and I write the visual scenes and by email we exchange ideas and I re-write his stuff!
Why is it important for you to have a co-writer such as Guillame Laurant?
It’s like ping-pong. You have to find the right partner, it’s exactly like in real-life, you find your lover. It is very important and when you find you don’t give up – you keep him or her. And Guillaume is the perfect partner for me. When I find an idea it’s like dong-dong-dong-dong and at the end I could not say it’s my idea or his idea. But I need to find the concept first because it’s my thing. I am going to spend two years on this thing.
Once again, you play with the theme of an orphan fighting against a monster.
It’s the story of all my films, even Life of Pi which I didn’t do for lack of money, but it was the same story of an orphan fighting against a monster. In that, it was a tiger, in Micmacs, it’s weapons sellers, another time it’s a butcher in Delicatessen. I don’t know why. Often my wife is reading them and she says: “Oh shit, it’s one more time the same story!” I hope maybe one day I’m going to change.
So did you research the weapons industry before filmmaking?
Just by luck, I knew an ex-Minister of Defence in Belgium, by coincidence, and they were very open. They opened the door, we could take some pictures, and they explained everything. It was pretty weird because they showed us things like an arrow that goes through a tank, and it doesn't explode, it just gets the temperature so high that everyone burns inside the tank.
And they conveniently forget the destination of that technology. When you say: ‘But it’s to kill people’, they say: ‘Yes, yes, but you know, we’re on the right side. We work for the Ministry of Defence, not the Ministry of Attack.’ So, they protect themselves and they don’t care because they love technology. It’s a question of money also.
The central character was originally written for Jamel Debbouze. When he was replaced by Dany Boon did your perception of the character change?
No, not a lot, except that Jamel Debbouze has a handicap, because he had an accident with a train when he was a kid and I changed the beginning of the film because Jamel was supposed to have the accident with the mine. They are very different in terms of physical aspect – Jamel is like a shrimp and Dany is like a bear – but in their minds they are very similar. They come from the street, and they have imagination.
Dany is a writer, an actor, a performer and a director. I am very jealous, because he had 21 million admissions for his film Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, can you believe it? Amélie was a huge success and it was 8½ million. Yes it was a good film, OK, but 21 million? Nobody can understand it. In the whole world Amélie is still a bigger success, but in France what can I do?
Danny Boon is also a mime performer. Did you like to use that?
Jean-Pierre Jeunet: He’s a one-man show. He’s a writer, an auteur, an actor and a director. He also made animation. I’m very jealous because he got 21 million admissions for our film.
Did you immediately think about Danny straight away after Jamel pulled out?
Yes, because I am professional, and I could imagine Jamel could have an accident or refuse the film, so then Dany Boon was already in my mind. I discovered Dany Boon around 15 or 17 years ago doing his one-man show. He was playing a depressed guy and going and he was so funny. It's not funny when I do it, but he was funny.
I really enjoyed the Delicatessen cameo.
Thank you. I wanted to make it Amelie, it would have been funnier. I wanted to see Amelie with kids and a baby crying, Mathieu Kassovitz with a beer bottle in front of the TV. But of course, Audrey (Tautou) said ‘no’ because she was shooting Coco Before Chanel. So, I made it Delicatessen at the last moment.
You also place loads of billboards advertising Micmacs in the background of the movie. What was the idea behind that?
It doesn’t make sense, does it? But I thought I don’t care: it’s funny for me, so it can be funny for some other people. There are five posters. If you don’t see them first time, you have to buy it on DVD!
You are working with actor Dominique Pinon yet again!
I can't make a film without Dominique. It's not a question of superstition, it's just that he surprises me every time, and he has a beautiful face, for me it's beautiful, like an African statue. Marc Caro used to say to me, you have African statues and Greek statues, and we prefer African statues. It has become a kind of game between us; this time I threw him in the Seine and he even had to have injections for protection against the rats' pee. Also, you can't see it in the film, but under the water we had two divers to pull him to the bottom so he popped up like a bubble. He loves that, he pretends to be shocked but he loves it. Maybe the toughest part was the cannon, because he stayed for a long time inside the cannon, and sometimes we told him, "OK, we are going to eat, see you later!" (He laughs)
In Micmacs you fire him from a cannon into the Seine.
Do you have kind of a competition to see how much you can put him through?
Not really. But it became a kind of game between us. Yes, we throw him into the Seine and he had to have an injection for protection against the rat pee. When he was in the water, we had two divers to pull him to the bottom.
How did he react when you told him that was going to happen?
He loves that! He pretended to be upset. The toughest part was when he was inside the cannon, because he had to stay in there a long time. Sometimes, we fooled him by saying, ‘OK, we’re going to eat! See you later!’
How do you position Micmacs in your filmography? Your first films are very dark, whereas Amelie is very bright and positive. So, where does Micmacs sit?
I would say it's a mixture of everything I've made, a kind of conclusion, and now I need to make something different. I had some reproaches in France -‘You always do the same thing’ - and it's true, but I was supposed to make The Life of Pi, and that would have been very different with the sea, the tiger, and the kid. For money reasons it didn't happen, but I felt I had to shoot something, so I opened my box and just put everything I love in this film.
If you like my films it's OK, but if you don't then don't go to see this film. There is a restaurant across the road that serves meat, but I am only serving fish. I thought about young...I don't want to say kids...but young people for this film, because it is a slapstick, a cartoon. Ideally, I would like to have the audience for Pixar movies, it won't be the same thing, I know, but I think it could be the same audience.
You had the Hollywood experience with Alien Resurrection and you tried to do Life of Pi. Will you make another American movie?
Why not? For Life of Pi, I wrote the script and I had the freedom. So, the freedom is the most important thing for me. I need the complete freedom. By law you have the final cut in France. Did you know that? For Alien, it was different. It was OK. But I always used to say that every day was the toughest day of my life. One day, I even drove past the gate of the studio in my car, because every day was a fight.
In the end I am proud of the film, and I stayed friends with 20th Century Fox, they were helping me make The Life of Pi, but I prefer the freedom. I would like to find a compromise because I would like to shoot with American actors. When I hear my American agent say, "There is an American actor, he lives in New York, and he would like to meet you. His name is Al Pacino." I say, "Oh, why not?"
Michelle Pfeiffer, Forest Whitaker, Nicole Kidman, so many actors say they want to meet me, but only with the freedom. Maybe I could make a French production with an American actor, like Taken from Luc Besson, I am thinking about that, but it depends on what subject I can find. But I would like to change, I would like to change the spirit, I would like to change the way I shoot.
I wanted to shoot with a handheld camera very fast, but my DP and a lot of people told me no, it was too jittery, and when I saw Slumdog Millionaire I was very pissed off, because I would have liked to do that. I like 3D also, because Micmacs could be in 3D, so why not? I need to change.
So have you shelved Life of Pi?
I know they are supposed to make the film with Ang Lee, but I know they don't have the solutions. You have the three worst elements: a tiger, a kid, and the sea. It would be completely impossible, so we have to do everything with visual effects. In the end they asked me to produce it myself, so we made some research and we were less expensive, 59 million instead of 85 million, but in Hollywood they want to cut the budget, they want a cheaper budget, and I don't think it's enough.
I don't know, I would like to make the film, but I really don't know. I think this is the kind of project we will speak about in ten years, and one day there will be the technology to make a fake tiger and you won't see the difference. In Narnia, you see a fake lion and it looks fake, but you don't care because it's a fantasy movie. In The Life of Pi you have to believe in the tiger. We might have the technology but it is very expensive.
You use now use visual effects in your films but they also still have a very real feel and a hand-made quality. Is that important to you?
I need both. In Micmacs you don't see it, but there are 350 shots with visual effects. Sometimes it's just to erase something, and sometimes it's more difficult. In this film it's not the fake balloon like in A Very Long Engagement, it's not very difficult things, but there are lots of visual effects. It's a tool, and I use every tool, I love to play with everything. Orson Welles said a film was like an electric train, and for me it's a Meccano. I want to use everything in the box: the costumes, the casting, the dialogue, the music, everything. I don't want to leave anything in the bottom of the box.
Have you ever considered being in front of the camera?
(He laughs) No, never. I’m too handsome
