Lark on the String: The Films of Jiri Menzel | Q&A with Ivan Passer

I suppose I should start asking when was the last time you saw closely-watched rains and what was your experience watching it tonight about 1966 interesting to see what I remember I want to sort of start by setting the stage the context in which this film was made and in an interview that I read you refer to the Czech New Wave and the sort of the work that Czech artists in general were doing during that cultural and political moment of the mid-1960s in Czechoslovakia as quote a conspiracy against stupidity can you describe what it was like being a part of that conspiracy and what that moment felt like when you were living it it was we hated the official movie production history oh I was producing about very successful movies a year and there was based on the aesthetics of the Russian ideologue Stan of and it was supposed to be social realistic movies we are very lucky because I personally believe that to make a good movie not only there but here to many many things you cannot control have to come together and including better for example and we were just lucky that when we started our classes in the film Academy that the communist regime was slowly melting and so we also had a very good education because as I told you the the dean of the school was a real academician and he was like in his sixties and he was teaching movie history and he started his classes every year ladies and gentlemen I'm going to show you movies you are not supposed to see if it gets out of this class I am going to deny it Davos is opening and and he did he showed us Bergman and showed us American movies I remember mr. Smith going to Washington but you know the comedy censorship was so stupid that day for example we are not supposed to see the film of the seeker called miracle Milano which was written by Sabatini who was a member of Communist Party I met him later on and and why it was the film was about homeless I don't know if you saw it is one of my favorite films and the camp of homeless people and that's what I feel and finally they tried to change them out because they find oil there and it's a kind of a fairy tale and it ends up with the police buses taking all these homeless people into jail and when they go through a main square in Milan one of the characters is holding a dove and wishing something and the buses stop and they open up and there are sleepers who are cleaning up rooms and they take these brooms and fly away and as the voiceover says where Buon Giorno is always Buon Giorno and the film was banned in Czechoslovakia you know why because he knows the geography of Milan knows that they are flying toward West it was so stupid and we had to deal with it practically every day so it was exciting to make movies which subversive and and to tell you the truth I miss it a little bit to make a movie which can put you in jail it's exciting it's the time for subversive movies again I think but you know I was gonna ask you closely watch trains was co-written and based on the story by the czech author Bommel Robbo your first short film a boring afternoon was adapted for one of his stories he starred in that film Menzel is known for adapting a number of probables works and we're gonna see many of them throughout this series but what was the what was the connection between his writing his novels in your vision as a filmmaker immense or the new waves vision as as artists Menzel in particular and was he was he a welcoming collaborator was he someone that was it was easy to work with mr. rubble was an extraordinary person he he worked on the this is partly his biography during the war he worked on the train station and and after the war the Communist didn't like him they wouldn't let him publish and he was working as a garbage man and we got together once and we said what can we do for him and we decided to make movies based on his short stories which were called the pearls on the body and for some reason which I don't remember too much I made the first one and they send it to a festival you know and they treated us in the film studio like like second-class citizens they said my movie to the film festival in Mannheim in Germany but they never told me that and I had my radio always tuned to Deutsch ever because one of my friends defected Czechoslovakia and was one of the anchors there so I would listen to and so I came home I turn on the radio and I hear his voice saying at the first film when the man I professor got a film by even pastor boring after forget it was such a shock to me because I didn't know it was there and it was also the way they treated mr. Robert you know he was a garbageman and but after this short they won some prizes in festivals and so he became more legitimate and the near of this novel and he had an office in a beer house he like be here I had a picture when President Clinton went visit Prague so the Czech president was horrible to him to visit mr. about and they went to this different style and he was a wonderful storyteller here he never complained about the Communists he took it as whether you know something you have to deal with and and then when menthol made this movie and to everybody's surprise they got an Academy so he he was very very pleased did did Menzel ever speak to you about his collaboration with crumble and how they how they work together in terms of adaptation he gave me as I told you he gave me the script to read before he made a movie and I remember that and when we had a discussion I expressed a certain opinion that made aa Spencer who was a very good actor by the way you see him in this movie he's playing the doctor who is telling the main guy you know you have to think about soccer yes that's meant so that's the director and he wanted to play the main character and I said you know maybe you should consider to have somebody younger somebody who has some kind of innocence about it and I don't remember what he answered but he eventually did it I don't even know because of me and you know mr. robber was he was very respectful for others people's work so when I wrote a script based on this short story and when I gave him a little part in that and he proved everything he understood that the director has a vision that the vision either turns out to be correct or or effective or not it was interesting when you told me the story about you telling Menzel not to cast himself as the station master because I had recently read through the Joseph sketchies for Ricky wrote a memoir of the new wave called all the all the all the pretty and smart men and women I was but he he wrote in the memoir he wrote quote I am convinced that the reason Garry Menzel did such a superb job with Carabas closely-watched range lies in the fact that he himself is essentially Mila chroma and in that context I thought it was interesting that he cast himself as the doctor because the ends up kind of advising this character who I guess at least this critic felt was very much like Menzel but one of the things that we're talking with us earlier that makes the new way of the check new wave so interesting and fasting is how different so all of the films are in terms of there's such a range of styles and approaches from verichip movas sort of surrealist work to Menzel sort of light comedies and you know Foreman's you know sad times but you attributed that to the different kinds of personalities that everybody had you all had it's very different person could you talk a little bit about how you think men cells personality related to his filmmaking is there a connection there you know in my view Mansell was probably the most talented there was all because not only that he made movies but he was acting on the stage and in films and he directed theatre also and he was always very busy and what was interesting about him that he was kind of the most mysterious character ami he never knew if he had a girlfriend or not he he was always very kind of mysterious about his politics you know he never expressed openly what he thought although we assumed that he was on the right side of history right which of course he was but he was I don't know if it was because he was cautious or it was it was probably his personality because even about his personal life he was mysterious but there was a there was um I mean in terms of like the connection between all all of you who made up the new wave I mean a lot of collaboration a lot of support a lot of connection what how did you and how did the community of filmmakers in the new wave respond when closely-watched rains won the Academy or I mean I checked it earlier what Academy were just a few years before but yeah you know what was unique about that period was that because we came from the same school where we had classes together and sometimes different classes but and we participated in discussions about films a gentleman the Dean of the school was showing us and it was absolutely unique I never saw anywhere else and I lectured in many different film schools different countries we understood that the success of one of us is an opportunity for the other so we were competitive we would you know we would criticize each other humor but we wished each other's success for that because we understood that it opens the door for everybody which I think it's unique I have never seen it anywhere and and strangely enough it it finished with the Russian invasion and you know once in a while I go back and I meet my friends ooh make movies he doesn't exist anymore it's it's a kind of a silly competitive atmosphere which doesn't lead to anything good you know I I work with Mirage Foreman we were free always Yaroslav Abu shake myself and milk and people ask me rush why do you always write in threesome and the officer one of us can take a nap and we learned that it's extremely effective because that threesome acts as a filter if somebody comes up is a bad idea those are the two saying I know that's no good to know and and when I teach I like to tell my students statistically people who work in twosomes or 3000 more are more successful than when they work by themselves so I take them to people who work like that so they can see the result because we stumbled over that recognition because I went to a boarding school with mid-ocean we knew each other since I was still at school Amish finished already and you are talking how in this bloody country you can make a good movie so you know took an empty piece of paper and we wrote down several points we will work with known actors because we felt all the actors were you know I mean they went through all these socialistic movies and although in a studio they said to us listen guys you know you like navistick movies but you know Italians they talk with their hands and they're very animated but chicks are my own colleagues it will not work in front of they used to tell of course it was nonsense and for example the mother of this girl in Vince's film who got all these stamps I found her in a tramway in I was with Yara Popovic the other guy who wrote his Mirage and riding going but we saw her sitting there and we just looked at each other and we waited when she left and she stepped out of the Tong way and he started to talk to her and and then then she was in miosha's film was of a blonde and she became a star movies like men so to her she had this natural talent this woman and it was very exciting to cast movies with people who had no experience and somehow we got lucky he would do auditions you know if I may I go a little bit off the subject we would audition everybody before we gave him a party but if somebody wants to be a president of United States he does I think there should be an amendment that anybody who wants to run for the president has to have two years of public service so you get to know those people reality TV shows don't count as expected record we have some time for a question from the audience if anyone has a question just go ahead and raise your hand I'll call you okay bring a mic over to you and that's your question the term check new wave was did you always call yourselves that or was there a certain point where it felt like people started calling you that or when did it feel like that phrase took hold and you were the check new way we have absolutely no idea there was a French New Wave at that time and we like the French movies but this was foreign critics who started to call that period checking your wave and it fits somehow because but we had no idea when we're in the middle of it other questions from the audience okay Oh over here let me bring a mic back to you okay I wanted to see cutters way is one of my favorite films such a great movie did you want to come to America and when you came to America how you were you accepted by the other filmmakers thank you for liking liking others right I like it too I must say it's fantastic if you haven't seen it go check it out it's really amazing you know as I was saying that you need many factors to come together to make a good movie and just an example when the producer asked me to do he wanted the Richard Dreyfuss to play the lead and I read the script and I said yes I would do that because the characters were familiar to me people who came from prisons you know I knew those characters but I said I don't want to reach it Dreyfuss and United Harty said but that's why we are making the movie because as you know most of movies are made with stars and I said go ahead and make it but I'm not like he's not right for the part anyway then they said we are making the biggest hit of all times Heaven's Gate if you get we would like to have a follow-up movie follow-up movie with one of the stars he's Jeff Bridges so he said it was and and they said but we are not going to help you together you have to so we sent him a scrape the other like falling apart like a ranch-style house in Maribor and we drove with the producers was his first movie and he was like an overgrown hippie to his butterman and he was shaking because he was like 2 years only trying to put it together and we opened the door it made a Hitchcock in sound like I knew he wanted to do the film because he was in dungarees bare breasted barefooted but I didn't have time to tell the producer and there were two German Shepherds standing behind Jeff and so you know is that awkward moment when you say hello hello and then what do you say next and so the producer was so nervous he passed by Jeff Bridges and went to the second German Shepherd who looked like a coyote and he said he was like six feet forward and he leaned over he said you had a nice doggy what is your name nice doggy doggy woof and took off his cheek you could see his teeth right so the first thing she said was oh my god came up with towers and we drove him down to Maribor to the dock and we were sitting in a waiting room and the nurses were coming in and out and Jeff was saying how is it going he never mentioned the script somebody asked who are you making it OE what you would have done if you didn't like the script and Jeff said I would have made the movie well the other question was we have a few minutes and it's I think it's a interesting subject the question did you want to leave Czechoslovakia and come to Los Angeles but what was that experience of yeah exile like and of course Menzel stayed and I was wondering how that might have also affected the group I tell you how we it's a nice short story because you know the famous ball which was satire on a Politburo which they realized only when it was in movie theatres and some communist functionaries complained so they banned the movie and then Alexander Dubcek became the Secretary of Commerce party and he released the movie and because it was already what they call Prague Spring it was like a social democracy emerging and then the Russians came and of course they immediately banned the movie and we knew with Milosh that it's the future doesn't look too good for us and one day somebody called me at 10 o'clock at night that the Russian tanks are leaving military barracks in a small town near Prague coming to Brock so I took my car and looked sure enough it may have been an hour because we are afraid they will take away our passports and so at four o'clock in the morning we're on the border between Czechoslovakia and Austria and there were patches of snow and nobody there the officer came up with a clashing of over his shoulder and he said comrades where are you going I said we are going for a weekend to Vienna he said can I see your passport so I gave him the passport and he said where is your exit visa which was a yellow piece of paper which nobody got yes and I said it's not there they must be in the back of the car so I got out of the car open the back and pretending I'm looking for it and I hear this kind of a dialogue officer says are you Milosh form and the film director and Miller who had a very deep voice yes and the officer said you know I have seen all your movies the officer said and Miller said and I thought I'm going to drop dead when I heard it and we all said and I bet you didn't like any of them can you imagine in that situation of forego the officer said are you kidding do you remember that scene from loves blond like the ring is rolling on the floor under the table and he began to describe scenes from yoshis movies then he leaned like that he said don't look for those Ibiza I came back and he let us go and he used in check something you say only when you know you will never see the people again he said in check be with God and we thought we are leaving only for like a year because it was so absurd that the Communist Soviet Union invaded communist Czechoslovakia and of course we went to Paris because we knew and you asked me how I was you know I never met any filmmakers in New York I was so lucky that I cannot even believe it imagine that about not even three months after I got there one check I arranged a birthday party for his wife actually he was in the reception the same guy and so I went there and there were like 30 checks having fun and and there was one guy leaning against the wall nobody talked to he was the only American who had a Czech girlfriend who wanted to be there and I felt I need to improve my English so I spent the whole evening with him and he his name was David Melton he's a writer and he invited me to opening of his off of Broadway play where I went that week there were like three people in the audience and two of them left during the intermission we went to get a beer he said to me you know I'm doing this for 15 years I cannot make a living I said listen did you write a script she was good he said no I wouldn't know I said you know I wrote you so if you want to write a scrip he said what do we write about I say about the characters from your play and we sit down in three months we had a script and he knew some theater owner one of those small theaters in New York who had some connection to United Artists so he gave him the script and the guy gave it really TARDIS and they said yeah we have a deal with Josie groovy we are supposed to give him three projects a year we don't have anything for him so we give him this and you're secure I said yes and I was on a set shooting American movie with 120 people our crew I felt such an anxiety I was throwing up and then my assistant was cleaning it up and the film got a award of the film critics or the best movie over here and open the door I'm gonna take the last question we live a few more minutes but have you ever spoken to Menzel about his decision to stay in Czechoslovakia is that a subject he talks about yeah because he was here I think twice visiting but you know as I told you he was a mysterious guy we knew one thing about it he was very much attached to his mother and I don't really remember what he told me but maybe it was a language this is my view my view and I'm if his wife was here or Inka she would correct me if I'm wrong but I always felt that he had it very easy in life meant compared to other people like me I was kicked out of high school it's an enemy of the people I was ended up the Gypsy so you know I ended up in a steel mill and stuff like that but mental his life his life was very smooth you know he was very comfortable and that was probably the reason why he didn't want to D it's my view like me Loesch in the film today sorry maybe a little bit like the you know the stationmaster militia in the film today his life was kind of he was hoping his life would just be easy you know were they like his father as well um I want to again make a pitch for the Sunday documentary in which Ivan passer has interviewed several times it really goes deep into this period of time when they check new wave emerged and what happened afterwards after the Soviet invasion but I also just want to say thank you so much for being here tonight it's an honor really to have you on stage [Applause]