Eagle eye – An interview with John Lalor
Filmmaker John Lalor on the set of ‘Incident Urbain’John Lalor is an Irish born artist turned filmmaker who recently debuted his short film ‘Incident Urbain’ at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. Beautifully shot by Eric Gautier (‘Into the Wild’), the film has two enigmatic characters and an intriguing plot and script, also crafted by Lalor. Set in Paris, the film follows two men with code names Costello (Jean-François Stévenin) and Colonel (André S. Labarthe) who have a strange and intense connection. They discuss cinema, politics, architecture and even Beckett mostly outside the French National Library. When the duo get the feeling they are being watched and we hear the sound of ambulance sirens, a fatal conclusion is likely.
IFQ enjoyed chatting with Lalor about the making of his ‘noirish’ and brilliant debut film, art and cinema, indie guru Abel Ferrara and his festival experience in New York.
Independent Film Quarterly (IFQ): So John how was your Tribeca Festival experience? Any useful contacts?
John Lalor (JL): Tribeca was a fantastic experience, regarding the management, being taken care of, the filmmakers lounge, meetings, the organization, the very practical things which can help us filmmakers feel comfortable in a foreign environment. I had the feeling that the festival creates the stakes and that they try to place your film in a context and work hard at bringing people into the cinema. From this, I met some young programmers from MOMA who may want to screen the film there and also people from the London Film Festival contacted me, as well as a young film festival in Austria. Being accepted to Tribeca will also help the film in the long term for eventual screenings later in the year.
IFQ: Are you surprised about how well the film is being received? – I recently read it was selected on top 10 lists?
JL: Yes indeed. Well not surprised as it is in New York and they know their cinema. They are passionate about it. The cinema where it was screened each evening was nearly full for every time. I think this kind of confidence is good for filmmakers who are on the edges or in a very fragile space such as mine. I have had to defend this film with all my guile, protect it like a child, and make sure that it gets the attention it deserves.
IFQ: What other festivals are you hoping to screen it and what is your goal for ‘Incident’?
JL: A festival in Austria have made contact and there is some talk about Telluride, Switzerland, New Orleans and the London Film Festival. I think the fact that the film seems to be gathering momentum helps to break down walls that might otherwise be closed off, or might have seemed hostile, to an experimental film like mine, which was after all made by a visual artist coming from a gallery situation. The film could have stayed inside the gallery situation full stop. Everything outside of the gallery is good news for me; it means the film must try and make its own way rather like a river as opposed to a canal. A river is full of surprises, which is really its charm but also its danger; a canal on the other hand, is quite flat and really predictable, when all is said and done.
L-R André S. Labarthe and Jean-François Stévenin on the set of ‘Incident Urbain’
IFQ: Indeed you have to get it out there regardless of the challenges. I loved your two actors; tell us a bit about how you got the actors involved.
JL: Well I approached André S. Labarthe, the man with the dark hat, who founded with Jean-Luc Godard ‘Les Cahiers du Cinéma,’ first sending him the script via a friend, who is quite close to him and six months later he got back to me and was delighted to get involved. He really liked the script and its language and maybe to try acting as he’s more known as a poetic critic and filmmaker. Jean-François Stévenin, the other man with the bird blue shoes who directed the masterpiece ‘Passe Montagne’ in 1978 and was also Truffaut’s assistant, on the other hand was more difficult to get a hold of, taking me about three years really to even meet and we immediately hit it off and he accepted on the spot. Once again not coming from the cinema world made the original jumps quite difficult. Once scaled, these people are really very opened minded and approachable. I think because they are both filmmakers, it made our connection quite easy in that they were full of ideas and game to experiment. Once they were on board, I had to confront my own fears such as believing in myself and the two characters I had invented which André and Jean-François Stévenin would incarnate, situating them and making them real within the decor. This was a tough part of the preparation the question being ‘who were these two men I had created’ and ‘would they be up to the task.’
IFQ: So this is no vanity project – how long had the project been in the works before completion?
JL: I wrote it in 2006 almost like a dream. It was for me a very creative moment in my career where I was writing, painting, and model-making bringing together all sorts of different mediums and channeling them as creatively as possible into my artistic practice. I then had to turn this dream/fantasy into a reality, bring it to life as Ferrara would say – get it to walk on its own two feet.
IFQ: Are you a fan of Abel Ferrara?
J.L Absolutely! (laughs) – Where do I begin when talking about this artist?! He’s the closest artist I would say now, because of his artistic evolution and ambition, to Jean-Luc Godard. I mean turning his back like Godard too, on the money making system and getting on with his own artistic production. Snake Eyes and The Blackout are absolute masterpieces, the storytelling, the acting, but also the spiritual props and fences he puts into his work, make it also fascinating. I watch his films over and over again, all the time. He’s like Cezanne – when Cezanne paints an apple, it’s not an apple that you see, it’s Cezanne.
IFQ: I agree Abel is pretty amazing and funny too! Actually I think he would like your film especially the visual elements and the mysterious actors. Tell us a bit about the cinematography and your collaboration with the great Gautier.
JL: I would love Ferrara’s opinion. His relationship with actors, films like New Rose Hotel where there is plot, but also actors doing their thing, guys at the top of their game being filmed, there are some incredible stuff going on in that film. And by the way thank you. Eric Gautier, my absolutely favorite cinematographer, shot the film. He invested so much of himself into the project right from the very beginning. It was in fact his first short film if one was to calculate in 25 years and so without him there would certainly have been no film and certainly not to the highest of visual standards that we attained in ‘Incident Urbain.’ Eric shot many films: ‘Into the Wild’, ‘Motor Cycle Diaries’, ‘On the Road’, ‘King and Queen’, ‘Gabrielle’, ‘Intimacy’ and all of Arnaud Desplechin’s films. For me it was like a dream to work alongside him, his attention to meaning and detail.
IFQ: Yes the opening shots are especially killer. I’ve always been a fan of chance encounters and I’m curious about how you come up with the film’s concept and dialogue?
JL: It all happened with the construction of the MK2 cinema right in front of the BNF (French National Library), built four years before by a socialist government and then the cinema built by a right wing mayor shortly afterwards. But Briege, the project evolved as I as a human being or artist evolved and I feel the film as in the encounter between these two men also evolved became freer, loosened up, wasn’t preaching high political ideals and such. Well the man with the hat AKA (the Colonel) is Costello’s boss, he speaks to his superlatif using the French grammar (TU) while Costello, the worker or terrorist or bank robber uses (VOUS) a sign of French order etc. This was all used to create ambiance. I wanted to play, to use intrigue in certain moments, giving a kind of historical fictional line to the film, anchoring the protagonists, maybe even to shock French speakers in some kind of way, by using this kind of bygone French grammatical hierarchy. The idea that a boss can use a linguistic detail such as this one, in order to exercise his power over another (subaltern), I found this quite exciting, a sort of silent control.
IFQ: Are you a fan of French cinema? It definitely has a French ‘noiry’ feel – no one could tell you are actually a Dubliner?
JL: I certainly am! Certain films of Melville, Verneuil, and Claude Sautet from the early 1970s, I watch over and over again. However in a way this film is very autobiographical. It’s my artistic/filmic trajectory and love for Paris these last twenty five years. Janet (wife) and I, we became adults together here. Now we are a family of 5, so it is indeed a very personal film project. This film covers I suppose in some way, my entire artistic trajectory here, in Paris. These are some of the reasons there is the conversation about Dublin and Beckett in the film. The idea that I wanted these great French iconic filmic heroes to be talking about Dublin and Beckett was for me almost a childish thrill, a sort of recognition even on 35mm film. However that said, with maturity, cinema is an adult art form, taking risks and getting your kicks with other people’s money is a serious business.
IFQ: So what’s next John?
JL: I’m working on a series of oil paintings right at this minute, on canvas, all the same size, which I would like to show in Dublin in a gallery. The subjects are representing ten images from my next 47min film, to be filmed in Dublin next year, using the idea of the post Celtic tiger’s architecture as a visual backdrop, recounting the story of a young father who abandons his two young children to the state. I will be working with the award-winning film producer Julie Lebrocquy. These paintings are a financial kick start project to raise money to produce the film and then after that a feature film in Paris, with Julie and the incredible Beatrice Dalle, about Paris and her suburbs but that’s another story….
