GUY DIXON
February 23, 2008
For the White Stripes, French director Michel Gondry turned the band itself into Lego animation, and filled pockets of New York with drums and amplifiers that multiplied on-camera to the beat of the song. For Bjork, he created intricate worlds of vengeful teddy bears and stage plays about stage plays about stage plays, receding endlessly.
And for singer Kylie Minogue, he created possibly the most fascinating music video of the lot, and one of the works that helped solidify his reputation as a gifted director: It was the immaculately choreographed clip of the singer walking around a city intersection again and again, each time meeting another overlapping video image of herself, as all the background characters multiplied as well.
Now, as Gondry continues to move more into feature filmmaking (building on his 2004 breakthrough movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) with his latest picture, Be Kind Rewind, starring Jack Black and Mos Def, the question is whether his reputation for music-video genius - almost childlike in its inventiveness - will translate into commercial feature filmmaking. Particularly feature film's fixation on story, story, story, with little room for accidents and digressions.
Gondry himself puts it this way: "If you plan too many details, you don't have any room for life to squeeze into [the films]. So I try to leave as many gaps as possible that are going to be filled up on the spot. With my first film, I was a little too careful, I did too much storyboarding. I realized that the best parts of the film were the parts where I had more freedom to let things happen."
For instance, he says, "When we did Eternal Sunshine, we went to shoot in Montauk, N.Y., and there was a big snowstorm as we arrived. The producer said, 'No, you can't shoot here, because everything you shoot will not match, because the snow is supposed to melt.' But I said, 'Yeah, we can do this scene and this scene.' That's how we got the great scene on the beach in the snow," he says, of an iconic shot involving Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.
"Especially if you do something a little dreamy," says Gondry, "you have to give a little space for accidents to happen. Otherwise you're going to end up using all the most contrived parts to tell the story."
Even with the Minogue video, which had to be highly planned out, it was impossible to control everything on camera, from the singer's many movements to all the extras' busy background activity. Such added improvisation is what gave the video its life. "I like to do music videos," Gondry says, "because we can work on concepts that are really pure, and can be completely abstract."
Much of Be Kind Rewind takes place on a rundown street corner in Passaic, N.J., with which Gondry clearly developed an affinity. His 2005 film Dave Chappelle's Block Party similarly celebrated Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood as much as the film's onstage performances. Gondry himself grew up in the Paris suburb of Versailles, and says he identifies with that feeling of detachment from the big city but also envy of its glitter and commercialism.
The crew spent approximately three months filming on-site in Passaic, whose location was stumbled upon by accident. "Before Be Kind Rewind," explains Gondry, "I was shooting a video for the White Stripes, when I went to see a guy, Irv Gooch, who is a mechanic. I've worked with him all the time since Eternal Sunshine, and he plays the role of the mechanic" in the new film."
The mechanic's lot where Gooch works became a key shooting spot: Behind it was a power plant, which was incorporated into the story to explain how Black's character gets freakishly magnetized and then proceeds to erase all of the VHS movies in the video store where the Mos Def character works.
From there, most of the film follows the story of how the two reshoot the Hollywood films they rent using backyard props and ridiculous homemade effects.
Gondry, though, didn't grow up being the type of kid to put on puppet shows for family or friends, creating elaborate worlds that would later lead to his inventiveness as an adult. "I was too shy. I wouldn't do shows for people. I remember doing one magic show one time, but it was a disaster.
"I don't come from this place where I wanted to be famous or to be recognized." That said, he adds, "We are all a little bit like Mos Def's character, who wants to get approval from his father figure, Danny Glover's character. Of course, I have that too. When a father compliments you on your work, it's very satisfying."
His fascination was instead with technique and how things get made, and remains so. "I always like to see how the technique is visible in the final result. That interests me. It would be like having a transparent car, to see the engine moving. That's fascinating. I don't get that from making a show for people. ... I didn't have this urge to be in front of an audience."
Maybe that explains why he has chosen to remain more of a maverick, continuing to work on music videos, and doing the occasional ad, even though he admits he does advertising work only to make enough money to see himself through the year. "This urge to be accepted by a large number, I didn't have that, because my parents were really encouraging anyways," he adds.
Gondry got his start in filmmaking shooting videos for the French rock band Oui Oui. Formed while Gondry was in arts school, its members stuck together from 1983 to 1993; Gondry was the drummer. He still plays, and has even drummed on a Kanye West track, as well as with Paul McCartney and with Booker T. and the MGs.
But with Oui Oui, the band's sound was neither dark enough for the underground nor catchy enough to have a widespread appeal. "We didn't make it easy for the journalists to support us," Gondry concedes. "[The music] had a naivety which made it easy for people to criticize us."
Perhaps it was all for the best: The videos stood out enough to convince Bjork to ask him to shoot her image-setting video Human Behavior for her album Debut, which launched both her solo career and his.
And even as feature-film projects continue to beckon to Gondry, the endless font of video ideas carries on unabated. "I have a collection of ideas which I have never had the opportunity to execute," says the director whose work seems to always run just a little bit ahead of the curve. "And so when I get the music, sometimes it just corresponds to an idea I had already."
globeandmail.com: Gondry's journey from White to Black
Linear Mode
