Multi-faceted writer Kurt Andersen

Kurt Andersen is truly a brilliant writer, having mastered just about every form there is: fiction, journalism, even musical theatre... well, the talky part. There's even less reason to dislike him when it is taken into account that the only job from which he has ever been fired, that of editor-in-chief of New York magazine, is the only job for which he has ever been qualified (or so he said when delivering the commencement speech, which I as a student at the school was fortunate enough to witness, for the high school graduation of his daughter's grade in June). Here I had the incredible opportunity to speak with him back in December, and we discussed everything from Harry Houdini to a comparison of Barack with Bonaparte.

Hi, Kurt, how are you?

I’m good. How about you?

I’m great. How’s LA?
Y’know, as you’d expect: really sunny and warm and… a nice place to be right now. [laughs]

God, it’s freezing. It was like 20 degrees here [in NYC] today.
Yeah, so I hear.

What are you doing out in LA?
This place called the Art Center College of Design, a couple of years ago—it’s a graduate school for graphic designers, industrial designers—they asked me to be their, quote, “visionary-in-residence” for a term and I said “Yeah, as soon as my youngest daughter’s done with high school and if I can come in the winter, I’ll do that!” So she’s graduated from high school and it’s winter, so here I am. And since both my wife and I have fairly portable jobs, we’ve moved to LA for the semester.

Wherever you can escape this ridiculous winter, more power to you. All right, the first thing I wanted to ask you is a project I heard you were working on: a musical about Houdini.
Yeah, I have been involved with that for many years with my friend David Rockwell, who’s best-known as an architect but is also a theatre designer, and he and I began talking about that a few years ago, about doing something together, and we came up with the idea of Houdini, and… we developed it. We’ve gotten a director involved, and a lyricist, and a composer—Danny Elfman is doing the music—and various people, incredibly experienced book writers are being talked to… so I’m sort of the creative consultant, the producer, basically, on that project. And, you know, it’s show business, and with any show business I’ve ever been involved in I always assume it’s not going to happen, just defensively, so… [laughs] You can’t bet on it. But this looks pretty hopeful; it’s moving forward.

Yeah, I’ve heard enough about it from so many different places that it seems pretty likely. And at one point I even heard Hugh Jackman was attached.
You know, there’s conversation going on, so I hope that happens.

One of my favorite movies is Scoop, which deals with magician-y things, and he’s in that, so I was like, “Oh!”
Well, as it turns out, he’s a big magic/Houdini buff. So I think that’s why those conversations really got going. When this project was first announced, nymag.com interviewed me and they asked me, “Who do you want to be in the starring role!?” and I said, “Oh, it’s too early to talk about that. But if I had to, Hugh Jackman would be great, obviously!” And apparently his people saw that, and one thing led to another, so there you go. So, yes, that would be fantastic.

Well, I’m excited. Because of Houdini’s birth name being Erik Weiss, my family likes to joke that we’re related to him. You never know!
Could be! Is your family Hungarian? That’s where his family comes from.

You know, we are! I’m going to have to investigate this. So, you also wrote the book several years ago for another musical based on a comic strip, Broomhilda, right?
That was entirely pushed and done by my friend Martin Charnin, who did Annie, the musical, and he’s done other stuff since then but he basically thought, “Well, I had good luck turning a comic strip into a musical; maybe I could do it again!” So he came to me with Broomhilda, and at that point I had never written musical theatre before, and… we worked on that, and that still exists, and, again, in the great always-might-happen limbo of show business it could happen but it hasn’t happened yet.

Yeah, that was your first foray into musical theatre writing. What got you interested?
You know, it’s funny, as a very little kid my parents had a record of West Side Story, which—for some reason, at five years old, I would play it again and again and again and learn the music. So I had that, but for whatever reason it never really… I wasn’t like a musical theatre kid or anything, and then I sort of thought, “Oh, okay, that’s this old form from the middle of the 20th century that I don’t really get.” And at a certain point, in like 2001-2002, I saw several shows that made me suddenly thing, “Man, you can do interesting things with this form.” And I don’t know how much it was the fact that I happened to see these three really good shows within a few months of each other, or that I was of an age where I could appreciate it, or whatever. But I saw Hairspray, which a friend of mine actually wrote the book to, and then I saw this show Urinetown, which was fantastic; there was another one, or a couple more, that I saw. But those were these two musicals that… I mean, Hairspray is a more conventional musical, but I thought, “Man, it’s really good, and it’s really well-done on every level,” and my friend David Rockwell had designed the sets for that as well. And this other very strange, very funny, very self-conscious kind of musical, kind of off-Broadway-ish, called Urinetown, and I thought, “Oh, I’ve been exhorting this whole genre unfairly. This is interesting.” I didn’t immediately set off to say, “By god, I want to write a musical!” but when Martin Charnin came to me and said “Might you be interested in this?” I was suddenly more interested than I would have been if he’d come to me a year before.

I never saw Urinetown, despite self-identifying as a theatre buff, but I’m generally an apologist for the more poppy, low-grade stuff because I got into theatre through Rent.
Yeah. Well, Rent isn’t low-grade. I saw Rent back when it was off-Broadway, and I liked it—

No, no, Rent is not low-grade, but it definitely appeals more to the populace, which is sometimes frowned upon.
Well, I think sometimes something is looked down upon because it’s a huge success, as many things are looked down upon for. But, no, and now that West Side Story is being revived, I’m actually looking forward to seeing that one when I get back to New York. [laughs]
Yeah, I’m looking forward to it! I hear some lyrics were translated back into Spanish by the creator of In the Heights. Yeah, exactly, which seems like a really smart way to update that. I think it makes sense. I think it’ll make it seem less dated than it might have been.

It’s great to see something coming to Broadway when everything is closing now. Hairspray just closed!
I know! And it’s partly because a lot of shows close after Christmas, and it’s partly because a lot of these shows have run for years already, but—yes, it’s the closure of lots of things that’s made it a story because of the horrible economy.

I don’t think there have ever been so many shows closing in the span of, like, a month.
Right, and because of the horrible economy it’s obviously a very difficult time for people to raise the many millions of dollars necessary to put on big shows, certainly. In a normal time, if nine shows closed all at once, it would be like, “Wow—nine shows closed all at once!” but there wouldn’t be this sense of “And it’s going to be a long time before nine shows are able to replace them!” [laughs]

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to Broadway in the coming years. Okay, to shift gears 100%, I would like to talk about the recent presidential election. You were an early-on supporter of Obama starting when?
Well, I, like everyone else—well, not everyone else, but most people who were paying attention—became aware of him when he spoke at the Democratic Convention in 2004 and thought, “Wow! This guy is incredibly impressive!” And, basically, as soon as his campaign for candidacy began I thought, “This is gonna be my guy.” And he was. For about the past four or five years until recently I had this column in New York magazine, and I didn’t start writing about the campaign as such in that column—which really wasn’t a column about politics, it was about whatever I wanted to write about—but by the end of 2007 that was obviously the interesting thing for me to write about. Well, at least for me, and I became obsessed. So, yeah, the first time I really wrote about the campaign I declared myself as not some sort of objective observer. And, again, it’s a column, so you’re supposed to be giving your opinion on things. I made it very clear—actually, I remember saying it was possible there could be three New Yorkers running for president: Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani as the Republican nominee, and Mike Bloomberg as an independent. And in September of 2007, that was a plausible possibility. But over the course of that piece, I said, “What I want to make clear is Obama’s my guy, as unlikely as that seems, as much of a long shot as he is.” But then, you know, it was an amazing campaign. And, yeah, I was for him as soon as I saw the guy. I saw him at a very small gathering in the summer of 2007. I got to see him be interviewed by somebody for an hour and everything I’d thought about him from afar was confirmed by just having that kind of proximity for an hour. And, there you go, he won. I’m very happy.

It was definitely the most excited campaign—well, since I’m alive, but that’s not saying much. But it’s probably involved people my age more than anybody has done in years.
Well, since ’68 and ’72. I mean, the first time I ever voted was 1972, the first time eighteen-year-olds could vote, and I lived in Nebraska and I was part of the McGovern campaign. And basically, since then, I vote every time but I haven’t cared this much since I was eighteen years old about who was elected president. And I think one of the reasons that people my age—adults—well, people respond to Obama for their own reasons, but I think the frosting on the cake was the fact that we felt excited as we hadn’t in many, many years, and to see that the people your age and in their twenties were also excited just added an intense pleasure to the whole thing. Here, different generations are all enthused by this same possibility.

Truth be told, I originally supported Clinton, but after a while I began to disapprove of how I felt she was running her campaign and I switched.
Well, good for you.

[laughs]
Yeah, I happily voted for Bill Clinton twice as president, and I’ve seen him speak in places several times and he’s an incredibly impressive person, and I’ve voted for Hillary Clinton for senator twice and she’s fine. I just thought… I mean, entirely apart from the fact that everybody thought, “Oh, she can win; he can’t win,” I would have voted for her, but I would have voted for her with the same… not hold-my-nose, but lack of real enthusiasm with which I’ve voted for almost every president in the last thirty years. But, yeah, I wholly agree with you. They got slightly bum-rapped, I guess, for things they said in the heat of the campaign. But they both said some things that were deeply unfortunate about race.

I especially was disappointed because I—well, especially from her I expected more than for her to stoop to that. And even after she gave the primary bid to Obama, she took the longest time to officially endorse him, and I was like, “Come on, what are you waiting for? This is not what the party needs!”
Yeah, and if it had gone the other way I would have been pissed but I would have gotten over it. I wouldn’t have said, “And I’m gonna vote for John McCain!” So I can imagine myself in their shoes to a degree, but the idea of the dead-enders who actually did support John McCain, that’s just nutty.

Yeah, that’s what baffles me. If your politics are such that you supported Hillary… why would you vote for John McCain?
I would like to read the piece where somebody goes and talks to those people.

[laughs] Exactly.
“Okay, you have some distance; now the guy won. How do you feel about having…?”

It was definitely something, though. And obviously everyone was kind of shocked by McCain’s move to choose Palin, but I was… he was just, like, blatantly trying to cash in on the angry Clinton supporters, and the way that he did it was kind of appalling. What, you can’t even choose a woman who’s been in politics for more than half a second?
Yeah. No, I know.

But it made for some good episodes of Saturday Night Live, I guess.
Yeah, it did indeed. It made what I guess was a story that was too implausible for fiction even more implausible. I mean, really, if this election from beginning to end had been a movie or a novel, people would say, “That’s ridiculous.”

Yeah. Well, there are a lot of people who complain about Bush having been in office for eight years, and I totally agree about that, but at the same time it’s interesting to think that if we hadn’t hit rock bottom we probably would not have ended up with this election.
No, that’s right. And life works that way, history works that way often. It’s unintended consequences; institutions and eras have within them the seeds of their own destruction, and you’re absolutely right about that. You know, I think if the economic disaster catastrophe moment had happened November instead of September McCain might have won. And, indeed, if the Iraq War had gone well… I mean, all the alternative histories that could have happened would have affected that.

Yeah, it was the perfect storm. We just finished studying Napoleon in my history class, and it’s interesting to think about how so many of the tools he used in his road to success were completely dependent on exactly the very way in which the French Revolution had unfolded.
Exactly. History happens how it needs to happen, and people are quick to say, “Oh, it had to happen that way, because of this and this and this,” but nothing ever has to hap—the point of view looking backwards always makes looks everything look sensible, but in any given case, whether it’s Napoleon or Obama, you can see all the moments in which the card happened to fall this way and then this way and that’s why things ended the way it did.

So your column in New York magazine—did you say you just recently finished it?
Yeah, I did, at least for a while. I’m taking a long sort of sabbatical from it. This summer, when the theatrical project came up—and I also sold a pilot to HBO for a possible series and I also have a third novel that I’m working on—I just suddenly had so many other things going on, I just told them I would write through the election and through the end of the year but then I would take time off. So now I’m taking time off from my column.

You’ve been involved with New York magazine for a long, long time.
Well, I was involved under its previous ownership as the editor-in-chief and then they fired me, and then when new ownership came in and they hired this guy who’s now the editor, a brilliant editor, Adam Moss, he said, “Please come in and write a column for me.” And I didn’t want particularly to write a column or to get back into magazine writing, but he’s somebody I’ve always liked and admired and figured he’d do something great with the magazine, so I came back when he came there five years ago.

The magazine is up there. It’s one of my favorites. And the website is great too.
The website is really good. And in fact I had nothing to do with it, but I think it’s probably the best website for an existing print product there is. I really think they do it better than any other magazine.

Read more about Kurt Andersen on his website.
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ROUND-TABLE: 'Sugar' directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

There are two kinds of people: those who have seen Half Nelson and those who haven't. Although I myself fall into the latter camp, I find that people of the former variety inevitably insist that people like me are deeply missing out. Well, for those of us ostensibly missing out, the directing team behind Half Nelson, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, have a new film in theatres. It's called Sugar, it's about the journey of a Dominican baseball player who (like so many faces unknown to us) does not achieve the dream, and it is a flawless gem. At this roundtable interview, the two directors talked about their sublimely succesful sophomore turn at directing.

Could you talk about what the inspiration was for this film?
RYAN FLECK: The inspiration for this movie? Let’s see. It was actually right before we took Half Nelson to Sundance in 06. I’d read an article—I’m a baseball fan, and I’d read an article that just had a sentence about the Dominican camps for the Mets or some team, and I didn’t know what that meant. I knew a fair amount about the game but I didn’t know exactly what that was, and I started to do a little research and realized just about every major baseball team has one of these camps in the Dominican Republic where they sign players and they house them and teach them a little bit of English in order for them to come to the United States and make money for their teams. And we thought—we’d heard of the big time guys, Ortiz, Ramirez, all these famous Dominicans playing in the majors, but what happens to the guys who never quite make it there? Hundreds of guys a year go through this process. So we just started interviewing them; that led to some research, and that’s where the story came about.

And you weren’t inclined to make it a documentary as opposed to a fiction film?
ANNA BODEN: It never occurred to us until we started telling people what our next movie was about. They were all like, “Oh, it’s a documentary?” But it didn’t occur to us to approach it like that.

Anna, are you a baseball fan?
AB: Am I a baseball fan... um, I appreciate the game, but I don’t understand the whole concept of feeling good about yourself when your team wins or bad about yourself when your team doesn’t win, so I guess I’m not officially a fan. But I like watching, and what drew me to the story was more the “American dream” aspect of it. There’s this one guy who’s going after one thing his whole life, but he’s still so young and trying to figure out who he is, and his idea of the American dream changes along the way.

How did you approach it as an editor? Because that’s obviously a pretty complex…
AB: You mean the baseball stuff? It was something so different, between what we had been doing with Half Nelson, and, from scripting to shooting to editing, it was just such a different thing because everything is so planned out and we’re so used to shooting in a loose “let the actors do what they want” kind of style. So I think that the editing for the baseball stuff really started before we were shooting, and we kind of went through our shot list on video and shot out some of the stuff during the rehearsals, and I had my laptop in the Dominican Republic with me and we edited together the sequences to see what was working before we even shot it on film. I think that was how we started to find the rhythms and how we wanted to shoot it eventually.

Was it a conscious decision to go with somebody who hadn’t acted before for the lead role?
AB: We weren’t against—if there had been some nineteen-year-old, amazing Dominican baseball player/movie star, we would have been like, “Bring it!” [laughter] We weren’t against using an actor at all. It was just kind of what the role required—there was a much huger pool of young Dominican baseball players than there was of young Dominican actors.
RF: Who could also play baseball.
AB: Who could also play baseball. And we wanted to keep it authentic, and eventually if we interviewed enough people we would find somebody who could act. And we got lucky.

How many baseball players that come onto the league actually default and stay in the US? Did you find that out?
RF: We don’t have a specific stat because a lot of the guys stay illegally, so it’s tough to know for sure. But the first place we started our research was up at Roberto Clemente Park, which is where the last scene of the movie takes place, so a lot of those guys were the people we talked to who told us their stories, and we kind of worked our way backward from there and they introduced us to somebody who was still over there, and we met their families, and we kind of did research like that. Exact numbers it’s hard to tell, but the majority who don’t make it would prefer to stay here than go back.

When you did that research, was there like a lightning moment when you realized, “Oh, there are all these guys around us who are good enough to make it to the majors in our day-to-day lives in New York”?
AB: That’s something that was interesting to us. I mean, we realized that one of our good friends used to be a baseball player—but, definitely, when going up to the Bronx and going up to Washington Heights and meeting so many people who had been professional baseball players, and who had made their living playing baseball, it was eye opening. And now they drive for Frito-Lay, or they work as a dishwasher, and that was something that attracted us to the story. You know, we live in this place that has so many people from so many different places with such rich histories; how did they come here? This is one of those stories.

Anna, how did you get yourself situated in this very machismo sports culture and get situated in a culture and gender not your own?
AB: That’s… an interesting question. I didn’t approach it as trying to find what was different… I guess the better answer would be that… both of us knew very little about this going into it and so much of our understanding of it was based on research. Our understanding of the character was based on talking to people and hearing their stories, so I think that probably the machismo culture and all of that was just part of what we were learning and trying to understand about this character, and it came from taking little bits and details from all these lives of people we met. Then, also, spending a little time in a minor league clubhouse [laughs] and seeing what the vibe was there—noticing how the vibe changed when I was there versus when [Ryan] was based alone, based on what he would tell me.

How did it change?
AB: Um, the porn magazines went away. [laughter]
RF: There’s a scene that was cut from the movie where everyone’s hanging out in the clubhouse and passing around a Playboy and stuff, which was something that I experienced when I was in there without Anna. And then when she came in that kind of disappeared.

Could you talk a little bit about your shooting style and your approach, particularly about the harsh sunlight in the Dominican?
RF: Sure, there were a lot of challenges about working in the DR because we were pressed for time and, like you said, there’s a lot of harsh sunlight that created problems for our DP. But, you know, we ended up laying down a lot of—because there’s a lot of dark skin and harsh sunlight in the DR—
AB: And baseball caps.
RF: And baseball caps, so it’s hard to get details. It’s really a nightmare for photography. But we laid down like a huge white sheet right between the mound and home plate, so any time we’re in closer shots there’s a lot of reflection coming up from the ground. But in terms of the shots, we watched a lot of baseball movies and how they got it wrong; as a baseball fan, I felt like we wanted to capture a part of the game that hadn’t been seen in movies before. We watched Raging Bull; those fighting scenes were some stuff. That’s a much bigger movie, I’m not trying to compare this to Raging Bull, but I think there’s a feel to some of those subjective sports moments that we were studying.

Sugar is in select theatres now. Please go see it; it really is magnificent.
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English actress Kimberley Nixon

Kimberley Nixon is criminally underrated. The 23-year-old actress has flourished in just about every genre into which she has ventured: she got excellent reviews as Sophy Hutton in the recent adaptation of Cranford, is delightfully bitchy in both Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging and Wild Child, and looks set to be completely and utterly awesome in the more independent upcoming films Cherrybomb and Easy Virtue (her costar in which film, Ben Barnes, we spoke to recently as well!). There's a lot to be said about her... but how about we let her speak for herself?

First of all could you talk a bit about your character in Cherrybomb?
I play Michelle; she arrives in Luke and Malachy’s world like a whirlwind and completely changes the dynamic of the relationship between these two best friends. She is sassy and confident but there is a vulnerability there that only one of the boys will see.

What was it like working with Rupert Grint? How did he seem to adapt to the indie atmosphere?
Rupert was great to work with. Ron Weasley was quickly forgotten when we started to rehearse and shoot the film. He instantly became Malachy and I was really impressed because it must be hard to shake a character you’ve been playing for almost half your life. But I think he preferred the pace of an indie movie; we would do between 6-10 scenes a day and he said on Potter they would just about complete one.

It almost feels like it’s against type for you, but it’s so hard to tell because your celluloid debut was last year. Is this a type of film you hope to keep making?
Definitely. This was more the kind of material and character that I worked on in drama school, so to get back to it within a year of working professionally was really thrilling.

Speaking of type, you actually have a pretty diverse repertoire thus far: chick flicks, period pieces, independent film. Is there a particular reason for this diversification?
I have been incredibly lucky so far and no-one’s more aware of it than me. There was a danger when I graduated of always been the ‘girl next door’ but working with a great agency I have been seen for a huge spectrum of roles, which is not the norm in this business. It’s very easy to get boxed in.
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How is your approach different for a period piece than for something modern?
I am always more relaxed in a contemporary piece than a period one. But with the latter, there is an ease there for me, which I can’t really explain. I like the restriction of the costumes and dialogue.

Speaking of which, Cranford, Easy Virtue, and in fact Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging were literary adaptations. How did this differ from playing an entirely originally created role?
I have never let this worry me. I always look at the character on my own and make my own decisions about who they are. You can never please all the people all the time, so I play them truthfully and I think that’s a good start.

Let’s talk about stage work. You were in Girl with a Pearl Earring recently. How was that?
I played Griet in Girl With A Pearl Earring on stage last year and I made the decision not to watch the film version with Scarlett Johansson, as I wanted her to be mine. But I can’t wait to watch it now and see how we differed or were similar in our choices. But having my professional theatrical debut in the Haymarket in London’s West End was breath-taking. I find stage work easier as that’s how I was trained…but I love the challenge of film. I find the difference in processes fascinating.

Do you wish to pursue theatre more thoroughly?
Yes, I am already excited about the theatre work I could do in the future. I have done quite a few classics, so a new, contemporary piece would be a great thing for me to do.

I assume you sing, since in college you appeared in Quadrophenia—do you ever think you’d participate in a similar project?
I was in Quadrophenia in drama school but am under no illusions that I am a singer. I find the entire thing absolutely frightening, which is why I auditioned for Quad in the first place: I wanted to face my fear. But there are much better singers out there than me!

Would you like to incorporate music more into future roles that you play? What sorts of roles are you especially keen on playing?
I do love when work I have done is fused with music and I don’t just mean where a film or play has a soundtrack laid on top but that music is a real part of the rehearsal process and helps shape the final product. I did a play called Road that we toured to Milan and I loved how we used music in that show. I would love to play someone super cool and together…who always looks immaculate and is one step ahead of the game. I am very clumsy in real life and really admire that ‘cool’ quality in people. I just don’t have it.

You’ve said you’re a film buff! Could you tell me some of your favorites—classics, scarcely-known indie films, anything else?
My favourite film is French Kiss with Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan. I accidentally came across it when I was younger and fell in love with it. I am a huge Kevin Kline fan. Princess Bride is definitely in my top 3 and the other one is probably Moulin Rouge. I hated it the first time I watched it but when I watched it a second time, it just got me and I love how a film or piece of theatre can do that. You can love something as a whole when piece by piece you’d normally hate it. But I love 80s and early 90s feel-good movies, usually with Michael J. Fox.

What actors in particular do you like, especially with regards to independent or lesser-known actors?
Kevin Kline and Robyn Wright Penn are two people I always loved watching. I think it’s their eyes. I always think blue eyes look more truthful that brown, haha. I have worked with some great actors who are well known but are geniuses in their own field. Katherine Parkinson and Christian Brassington (Easy Virtue) are hilarious and quirky and just brilliant, Sophie Wu (Wild Child) is an excellent comedic actress and writes a lot of her own material but it’s pretty off-the-wall and Georgia Groome (Angus, Thongs) is a great actress and I can’t wait to see her in her first play in London very soon.

Are you a big reader? What is some of your favorite literature?
I am an avid reader. My favourite author is Agatha Christie: I adore murder mysteries and the period in which her books are set from the 20s to the 50s. I also love Jane Austen, I know it’s not original but a classic is a classic and Pride and Prejudice is a wonderful book. And I have already worked with Mr Darcy, even though he played my Dad!

Is there anything else you’ve been working on (film or otherwise) about which you’re particularly excited?
There are several films in the pipeline which I am excited about. My boyfriend is writing a feature film at the moment, that I will beg for a part in and I just completed a short for my younger brother, who directed it. I can’t wait to find out what my next part will be.

Keep your eye out for the release of Cherrybomb and Easy Virtue.
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'Paris 36' director Christophe Barratier and star Nora Arnezeder

Few French films make it big in the States (perhaps because those rascally French directors have the gall to shoot their films in, you know, French) but with his first film, The Chorus, director Christophe Barratier created one of them. He is back this year with a new cinematic offering, Paris 36, a heartfelt, sentimental, purposefully artificial look at three men who, with the aid of an aspiring singer named Douce (Nora Arnezeder), set out to rehabilitate an old cabaret. I got to speak with Mr. Barratier and with Miz Arnezeder about the film, and it was certainly a pleasure. Enjoy.

Sorry I’m out of breath. I only found out at the last moment that I was able to do this in person so I had to sprint.
NORA ARNEZEDER: Oh! No problem. [laughs]

So how are you?
NA: I’m good! Thank you.
CHRISTOPHE BARRATIER: Great. Excellent.

That’s great to hear. When I was reading about the background for the film, it mentioned musical comedy; is this a musical?
CB: No, it’s not. It’s a mixture of different styles, but it’s not a musical; it’s between drama, melodrama, and there are some musical parts. But we sing in the movie just because it’s integrated in the action [when a character is performing a song onstage], and it’s not a musical if you think like Moulin Rouge! or that sort of thing. Totally not.

But it is about a venue, and about reviving…
CB: Yes, but it’s a kind of pretext. It’s not really about musicals or about songs, it’s just workers who are working on a musical and want to be artists.

Right. And it’s very grounded in history, am I right?
CB: It’s—no, there is a social background and a historical background, but it’s just a background. It’s not a political movie, and neither is it a social movie. It’s just because in ’36, in France, there was a big crisis, and for the first time left-wing government was elected and France was in a big wave of hope for wonderful tomorrows, and these wonderful tomorrows never happened because of World War II. And so that’s a background, an important background, but it’s just a background. It’s a story of brotherhood, love, and focused on the characters and nothing else.

Nora, tell me about your character, Douce.
NA: She’s from the north of France, and she comes to Paris to become a singer, and so she meets three unemployed men who want to rehabilitate a cabaret, and she will fall in love with one of these unemployed men, and… and you have to see the movie! [laughs]

This is your acting debut, am I right?
NA: Yeah. It’s my first important part in a movie, and it’s a real chance for me to sing and to act as well, and they’re my two loves.

How did you end up in this movie?
NA: It was two years ago… I did an audition, so I did a singing test first, and after that an acting audition, and at the end a singing test. So that’s how I got it.
CB: It was important for me, because the three male stars are very well-known in France and there was just one female character, to discover a new face, a new talent, and that’s why I focused—really, it was important for me to do a huge casting to discover a great addition, and that’s what happened.

What were some of the influences in terms of the style of this movie? Cinematic influences or…?
CB: Well, when you are a director you have always several influences, but you cannot say, “Oh, for this movie, I will search my influence from this or from this or from this.” There are some shots that are more American than French, there are some scenes that are really French, there are some images that are just not French, and my ambition was more to say, “Let me tell you a story: once upon a time in Paris…” And so I can’t be so focused on my references, because my references are French cinema, Japanese cinema, some American… I can’t give you specific references.

I like how you say “Once upon a time in Paris”. You make it sound like a French fairy tale.
CB: That’s exactly what I wanted. This Paris has been shot on sets, built by set designers, and this artificiality was part of the plot. It was not my purpose to do a realistic movie or a documentary about this period, just to take an opportunity to share emotion with the audience.

From the stills that I’ve seen it seems like there is a very lush sort of look to the film, saturated with color and visually arresting.
NA: Mm. A real aesthetic movie!
CB: Yes, that’s why I worked with Tom Stern, who is American, who is the director of cinematography for Clint Eastwood, for Sam Mendes very often, and he was a good person to give this film life on set with a lot of light, shadows, contrast, and real saturated colors. It’s bigger than life, I should say.

Nora, how did your singing help you approach this acting role?
NA: Well, thanks to my singing classes that I have been taking for years, I’ve… Douce is a singer, so maybe if I hadn’t taken those singing lessons I wouldn’t maybe have the role, you know? So that’s good. [laughs]

How was it like working together?
CA: Working with her? I know when you…
NA: It was horrible?

[laughs]
CA: No, but in terms of direction, ninety percent of the direction of an actor is done when you have made a good choice, and I was sure that Nora was perfect to fit the character of Douce. And the first experiment was to make sure she felt very confident and relaxed and free to reach what she could be, and of course we expect the actor to give us what we expect, but very often they give us more than we expected. And with Nora, I was sure that she was a real artist, and even though she was full of doubt when she was on the set with all the lights and the cameras, she was at the maximum, at 100% of her possibility.

Were there any literary influences that either influenced the film or, Nora, that influenced your portrayal?
NA: Yeah! Before the shoot, I’d seen a lot of movies with… yep. [laughs]
CB: But I don’t think actors should require so many influences, you know? I think it’s more my job to maybe give them some perfume from the period. I don’t care if they know anything about history.

Paris 36 is playing in theatres now.

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