An Interview With Milos Forman: His Entry into Film Making and Loves of a Blonde

well I was always fascinated at first fascinated by a theater because probably because my brother who is 12 years older than I am and you know before the war ice only two films Snow White and the strangely enough a silent version of the check most popular opera then I didn't see any films until I was 13 years old because nobody would give me money to go and see Nazi propaganda type movies you know but in that time my older brother was already working as a set designer in a small touring company of operettas and every time this operator came to a town where I was living at the time I was allowed to spend the evenings backstage with my brother and that was fascinated for fascinating for me not you know the live backstage to smell all the makeup and grammars soubrette ass and everything you know and so why I wanted to enter the drama school to become a state director but I was not accepted there and out of desperation more or less so that I don't have to go into military service I applied to a film school the only opening was at the category for screenwriters and fortunately I was accepted there well I started my first film concourse competition if you want amateur films there's a whole movie for my friends and then when the doors that were under opened and they gave me a chance to finish it as a movie which can be released in the theaters then I needed to do a little fixing of the it's it's half documentary really but we wanted to give it a little bit of a plot so I I called an even passer because we were together he was two years younger his daughter his younger in this school in podía bloody and we both you know loved theater and films and talked a lot about it so and he was then also attended the film school so I called him in and while we were talking about this I don't know who somebody somebody informed me about that book which was written by Yaroslav Papa Chak but was not published was rejected by the publishers and I should read and that's how I met er aPOPO sure it was a book about more or less autobiographical about him in 1945 as a young kid you know and so we and it's such a it was such a fresh wonderfully true book that I took you to the studio and they allowed us to work together on a screenplay now our inspiration strangely enough were not the Great's of the cinema yes we loved the movies by I don't know John for Charlie Chaplin rené Clair Marcel carné you know you name them all now our inspiration was the reaction to the stupidity of the films created by this period of so-called social socialist realism which was so everything was so fake so untrue so propaganda oriented that we just wanted to bring you know our truth subjective truth and objective truth you know real people real faces on the screen we had some we had some inspiration especially it was the Italian Neorealism the Sikh t-slot Rada and all these guys and at the same time the news well you know filtering in about the French new-wave sort of cinema verite style which we embraced enormous Lee because it showed you were real people on the screen what we would like to do is to yes use the cinema verite but to tell the story not just to document the life industries but tell the dramatic story with it what a blonde was a film expressing compassion the idea started when I was walking home one night just like two o'clock in the morning in Prague and I saw a girl with a suitcase walking it's interesting it was just the way by the way she is walking you could read a lot you could see that she's not rushing home from light world she's not rushing to be not to be late on the early morning work she is somehow killing times seems to me seem to me and yet on the other hand of obviously she the way she was looking you know shoes while walking was clear that she doesn't want to be approached she's not soliciting anything and I started to talk to her after a while she gained the confidence I found out that she's from a town where are working possibilities mainly 400 mostly only for women the result is in that small town in the northern Bohemia 90% of their inhabitants are women and a lot of them young girls working in the factories shoe factories and they're in panic and this girl met some engineer there who claimed that just one day and she fell in love with him because he was looking at her and they ended up sleeping together that night and the next day he left and gave her the address to visit him in Prague so she came to Prague only to find out that that address doesn't exist and so that was the new clothes for you know loves Oh a blonde the main female protagonist in loves were blonde is Hannah breaker which is she's a sister of my first wife Jana break oh uh Jana breaker who was all during the time you know very very well known and loved actress in Czechoslovakia and I knew her little sister you know for a long time and I knew that she can do it the father of the boy he is the uncle of the cameraman Miroslav hungry chick the mother of the boy that was very interesting you are driving one day riding one day street car to go to work to my apartment and me oh stop above shaken even faster and we're not talking something's I don't know who said some stupid joke and the woman sitting next to me in the street card started to laugh so we turn to her and she said she started to apologize and you know that she just loved the joke like that then he started to talk to her and she was so alive that you know two minutes later that was to stop well we should go off please come in as Canada's coming to us why let's do a little do to be in the movie mean the movie yes you can be in the movie you're kidding and she followed us and we did a little reading with her and she was like a machine gun astonish me or not I do not want if any is a video or not actin of mutton a it to the Rope of alert emergency where tell any shots go it puts a bear occasion of atrocious Kosovan estará be moot overlaps no you stupid is obscene a separate astonished at which one there are cheats at Latin MIT Penny's it's also video at a national I would you better say what I like to do was I not to give them the script especially to non-professional actors because you give mr. Shahbandar the script and he goes home oh oh show me what is the script what is the script and you end up that their wives are directing your movie because they throw them in front so in front of the mirror they will start to practice and rehearse and the dead the wives or the sons or daughters are you know correcting them and like that so I didn't give them script what was wonderful for me experience wise was that I come on the set and I tell them ok ok so now this is you you you you are here and you are there and you say something like this and this and this and you say something like this and this and this and you do something like this and this and this and that it will end up something like this and this and this and you know they remember a little bit but not every word ok let's do it and now they have to do this which they just could barely remember the ideas what they have to touch upon in their own words and I'll tell you 50% while at times it was better than what was written on the page because they were using their own language which correspond it to the personality to the way they talked and and they felt comfortable in it you know it's very interesting the difference between the professional actor and non-professional like that non-professional actor is no little camera-shy his audience shy he doesn't like being watched by people that camera is an object he doesn't mind too give himself you know strip him he's so naked in front of that object he Minds do it in front of people professional actors the other way around they love the audience they are playing to the audiences the camera is intimidating the camera doesn't laugh camera doesn't express enthusiasm for them they you know they don't like it very much so it was very interesting and mixing professional and non-professional actors helped both vladimir popov was very professional only by training he went through the drama school for actors he acted in one or two films before but deep down he was so non professional actor which showed you know why when he was at the peak of his popularity he couldn't walk in the street without people and you know you must understand one thing in those times like communists didn't like stardom they didn't like anybody to be more known than the politicians whom the nation should love you know they didn't like nice loving actors you know so that was some something you know to gain the status of a star at the peak of his career he suddenly arranged somehow he to leave the country went to England for three years he was washing windows floors while studying the English to do the high school diploma then he kept washing windows and studying another nine years to become a doctor so deep down he was not an actor you know with Americans recheck was probably the ideal collaboration for me because we were so much tuned into the same regions that we were I was not even aware of working with him it is just went it went so smoothly everything and they're not aunt rooms on the set and was you know and I'll tell you also what sometimes limitations are very beneficial for a film because we had so little money so we had to feel very fast we didn't have you know unlimited amount of days for shooting and so especially when you are working on the crowd scenes you didn't have time to you know he has perfectly every moment and every motion of everybody so very often what you did that you just provoked some kind of general anarchie you know I mean that an alkie you know the camera has to wander around and it all gives such a authenticity to the scenes alive and it's because we need just didn't have a time to rehearse enough what we like to do also is that to use two cameras and to tell people that okay that this one camera will follow of course the main protagonist you know we center of the scene but the other camera I told everybody will be wandering around and you will never know who is on so please stay in the character all the time all the time and that's wonderful because it's helping first of all it's helping the main protagonist because he doesn't feel that ever the whole concentration is only on him or on her so he didn't feel that pressure right plus on the other hand the fact that everybody else was in the character even if they were just extras that they were not sort of lying back I'm not on the camera so I'll just you know stay even watch the actor you know and help the whole relax everybody and mainly relax the main actor flop so a blonde was a big success commercial in Czechoslovakia I think it was the second most successful film in the history of chicks in Iran and it was very successful in a broad and was invited to New York Film Festival it had a wonderful reception and I guess that somehow influenced Academy voters to include it among the nomination for foreign language film and and I flew for the first time to Los Angeles you know but it was interesting because Miriam Billings who was the public relations for the American company who bought the film you know told me much listen enjoying being here but don't don't be disappointed because well you will not win and and it helped me it helped me

Channel: Sattam Ghosh

Views: 10,142

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: HZB8US6EHz4

Length: 16min 32sec (992 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2015