Mad Scientist
Michel Gondry discusses The Science of Sleep.

Forget about ‘what evil lurks in the heart of men.’ A more apt question for moviegoers this season might be: what sort of brilliant stupidity lurks in the brain of French director Michel Gondry?

After ten years of making beautifully weird videos for the likes of Bjork, Beck, and The White Stripes, Gondry made his feature film debut in 2001 with Human Nature. If that was not altogether well-received by critics, all was forgotten after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, his second collaboration with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, for which they won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

His latest film, The Science of Sleep, is the first one scripted entirely by Gondry. At its heart, it’s a sweetly melancholy boy-meets-girl story which revisits the notions of heartbreak, memory and the unconscious that underscored Eternal Sunshine.

Gael Garcia Bernal is Stephane; an aspiring illustrator and sometime inventor toiling at a calendar company in a basement office in Paris. Charlotte Gainsbourg is Stephanie, Stephane’s neighbor and a kindred creative spirit. Much of the film is told through Stephane’s fantasy and dream life: a full-on Gondry mash up of claymation, bits of cable access and a little spin-art thrown in for good measure.

I read that you consider Back to the Future a great film.
Yeah, I love this movie.

So this is a sincere interest?
Yes. I like it because it’s very intelligent. Obviously it’s acted a little bit over the top, but there’s no slickness and it’s very playful.

Did any American films have an influence on The Science of Sleep?
I didn’t look at other movies for this film, because I had so much emotion in me. I just had to dig inside my memory to find it.

I read that you shot the animated sequences first for the film. In terms of structuring the picture, how did that work out for you?
Yes, we shot them eight months before at my country house in the mountains in France.

It was hard because I had to make artistic decisions early on while the story was still changing, and I had to commit to things that would have taken me much much longer to commit to if I had shot them after. It was good, though, because I like to work with these limitations.

Gael Garcia Bernal is totally charming in the film. How did his character come about?
Well, I met him one year before we shot, so we had a lot of time to get to know each other, and see what we had in common. I learned about his sense of humor and his insecurities and what he had that could add to the character. Stephane is a combination of him and I, and I think that’s the best way to work it.

I was particularly impressed by his inappropriate penis jokes. Who did that come from? You or Gael?
Oh, that’s my sense of humor. Spike Jonze once told me I have a kind of Tourette’s Syndrome. I have this problem where sometimes I challenge myself that I have to say the word “penis” or “anus” to a stranger within five minutes.

Does that usually work out well for you?
I think I usually get away with it. But what you see with Gael in the film is that sometimes he should just be quiet and shut up, but he can’t help it.

It’s almost like a test.
Yes, he’s testing. When you meet someone you like, sometimes you want to see if this person has a sense of humor. With my girlfriend, we were in the first week of our relationship and we were walking along a canal in the South of France, and I put my hand into her panties, and she had this fart ready to go and she farted in my hand. It sounds very gross, but at least it meant we shared the same stupid sense of humor.

[silence]

Ok. Both characters in Eternal Sunshine and The Science of Sleep are illustrators. If we were to open up your journals, what would we see in there?
Uh, it depends. A lot of dream illustration, and I try to explain how the dreams came to me. Ideas for projects or videos. Relationship issues. My own feelings.

Do you use any special kind of notebook?
I use the skinny ones so I can finish them. The thick ones are depressing.

In casting Charlotte Gainsbourg, did you feel some sort of connection to her father and his music and films?
No. Obviously her father [Serge Gainsbourg] is like one of the most influential arts and music person in France, but since she was 13, she has been a very special actress. Her persona is huge. On one hand you can identify with her completely, and on the other hand she is completely unique.

The Science of Sleep is such an unusual film–do you think it’s going to polarize your audience? Do you think some people will wish you made a more conventional movie?
Well, I don’t know… I don’t want to be drawn into a system. I would rather make small films. And people will go and see them because they know they will watch something which is personal to me. Then I can make a thriller or I can make whatever.

Are you going to approach your next film, Be Kind Rewind, with a similar personal aesthetic?
Yes. It’s going to be very personal. It will be much more universal too, I think. We’ll see. I’m going to change the style of shooting a bit I think because I’ve been doing a lot of camera hand-held, and I want to be more sober and established with the camera.

It stars Jack Black. Can you briefly give us the basic plot?
There are two guys–one is working in a video store and the other is working in a junkyard. One of them gets comically magnetized, and the next day he spends all his time in the video store and accidentally demagnetizes all of the tapes. The customers start to complain, and the only way they can find to save the day is to reshoot all the films–like Back to the Future and Robocop–and play all of the characters themselves.

You know, I’m curious about Block Party. Are you interested in doing more documentaries after that?
We’ll see. I’d like to do a documentary on my son next. He is 15 now, and he is a painter. And I did something with my auntie this summer. She was a teacher in the countryside and has lots of interesting stories. I started to record some already and I want to do more.

When you were working with Dave Chappelle, could you see any signs of the stress that caused him to leave the country?
No, no no.

He seemed relaxed?
Yeah.

You know, in looking at Dave Chappelle’s story–how he was doing well, but inwardly felt immense pressure--do you ever experience this yourself?
Yes, but it’s on a different scale. I have pressure because I get solicitations for many different projects, and it’s hard for me to say no.

I remember one time I didn’t want to do this commercial but the producer talked me into doing it, and I wanted to escape. So the driver came to collect me at my apartment in London to bring me to the plane, but I was tired and I asked the producer to give me one more day and he said, “No, it’s not possible.” I tried to stop the driver, but he had been ordered to bring me to the plane, and he would not stop, so I opened the door and jumped out into the snow while the taxi was driving.

So I can identify to this kind of pressure. From my own experience I know that sometimes you just have to walk away, and people will find their own solutions.

As a European director working in America, how do you strike a balance? I imagine that in America you feel very European and in Europe you feel very American.
I’m just trying to be myself. My biggest block was getting people to accept me as a filmmaker even if I was coming from doing music videos.

Well, I think that’s a good place to be. To be a stranger no matter where you work allows you to be an artist more.
Yes, well, one of my favorite directors is Roman Polanski. I like him because he’s lonely in his work and he never belonged to any places–he was always misplaced. He doesn’t belong to the Nouvelle Vague or whatever…

As long as we’re speaking about great directors, I was recently reading about how Werner Herzog makes his movies and each shoot is Herculean task with lots of near-death experiences and pushing the crew to their limits. How would you describe the environment for your shoots?
I think it’s a gentle [unintelligible].

A gentle couch?
No, that would be nice. It’s a gentle chaos. That’s how I would describe it. And I try to live with chaos, because I think from chaos I get the best from everybody.

Well, there’s a way that the best art has a feeling of being complete, but there’s some open areas too.
Yeah, by keeping the chaos, it keeps people free. I like to keep some things spontaneous.
You feel there is possibility at every given moment in time. And I think that’s how life is.

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