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JANE BIRKIN, interviewed by Marie Losier
“Do everyone has to come out in the street to smoke in New York? Every one looks like prostitutes, it is very strange, it is not good for the Ozone no!” She laughs and I feel comfortable starting. ML: How did you meet Antonioni and started working with him in Blow Up? JB: I didn’t meet him straight off, I think he must have sent some spies around and at that time I was doing a musical about English boarding school and at that time I was married to John Barry , so I think it was roughly around that time. Tracy Reese, my cousin Tracy rang me up and said “there is this strange Italian who asked me to do a screen-test and pick up a telephone and put off a date” so when it was my turn, when I was asked, I thought that it is what I was supposed to do but NO I was asked to write my name on a wall, in very small letters, so starting out in very small letters I wrote, J A N, and on the third letter I had to turn profile because they wanted to see if I was photogenic and on every third letter I had to turn profile and they said“no, no bigger bigger, make letters bigger”, so I made them bigger and so I went on writing B I R, profile, K I N, profile and suddenly they said, “No why are you doing that?” So I said “hello what am I in?” Do I have to make up something? So I tried again and they said “so you girls you that is the way you girls are, you think you can get jobs that way trying to impress the director by making your name so big” and then I WAS in tears (she giggles). Suddenly, this tall man say coupez! (CUT!) in Italian and it was Antonioni (she shows her big smile for a long time with glittering eyes) and this extraordinary elegant man came up and said “ I just wanted to see what your reactions were, so you’ve got the part but you have to know that you have to take all your clothes off, and I can only give you 3 pages that engage your part and even Vanessa Redgrave doesn’t have any more than 3 pages, and then he took out for lunch and he couldn’t have been sweeter. So I went home and John Barry very rightly said “well you will never do that because you already turn off the light at home when you take your clothes off, so you can’t but it is a pity because Antonioni is the biggest, greatest film directors alive” which I didn’t realize of course, but John did, and I thought well what the hell, Ya! ok I would do it . So it went, he was very particular about our shoes, dresses, I remember he had them painted, he had the tights painted the shoes painted , my hair that was kind of brownish color, he changed me into being a blonde and Juliana Hills? into being a brunette, and he was precise about sweat machines, and about where all the chair was, because he is an architect, and just more delicate than sweety you could never guess, much later in the Venice film Festival I got a got a sweet note from him saying he had voted for me for the Rivette film Love On the Ground (L’Amour par terre), with Geraldine Chaplin, and I though “how kind of him to taking the time to see where my career went, it is very touching when grand and great directors do that when you had really a cameo part in a film (she laughs), and I just think that there is no park just as the sun light is going down at Crepuscule, there is no park when you hear the rusling of the leaves, where you don’t think of Antonionni, and that particular scene with Vanessa and the body and the way the leaves make that noise, and it goes immediately into Black and White, that is quite something if a film has one thing that will be a constant reference nearly everyday in your life, because of the impression it makes, a bit like Psycho and the douche (shower)! Ya! He was a darling. ML: I wanted to know more about your experience with Jacques Rivette when you worked on his film Love on the ground (L’amour par terre) and your fear of improvisation ? JB: Ya! I turned him down when he came into my house in Rue de La Toure, and then he came out with Geraldine Chaplin, to the top of the house and then he explained to me that he wanted to make a movie but there was no script, and I said GOD, If there is no script, I jump off the window, I need rails to know where I am going, I can’t do that sort of things, and then he said it was going to be a conjure and I hate conjures, I hate people that pull out pigeons from their sleeves. It is sad, miserable, all those feathers falling out (she laughs), and I said No! No! I couldn’t possibly do it, and he just said “ well I am sorry because I just love you, I have always wanted to work with you and out he went off the front door, out went Geraldine Chaplin, and from the top floor, I remember thinking, Oh that man just said something that is all you want to hear, that he loves you, that he always wanted to work with you, and Jacques Doillon was with me and he said You know if I was you I would go and see what he has done”, I think you are rather foolish to turn things down without even knowing what the man is. So I went off and Jacques said you should see Celine and Julie Go Boating playing in the movies somewhere on the left bank, so I went with my daughter kate, John Barry’s Kate, and I was knocked out, it was one of the best film I had ever seen in my entire life, and I thought if I come out even half as good as those 2 actresses , even a quarter as good, even not to their knees or ankle or even their big toe, so I rang Geraldine Chaplin and she said, I know you don’t like feathers and I said No I want to do it, I want to do it, I changed my mind, so she said ring him up , and she gave me his phone number and so off I went and it was true that he gave you a page everyday, the night before if you were lucky and sometimes an hour before and at the end of the film, if you kept all the pages, then You got the script! Sometimes I thought he could have handed it a little earlier and I scraped my arms with my fingers nails not to strangle him and at the end of the film because he is so petite and so fragile that I thought, I must not hurt him but I couldn’t believe he couldn’t do it before, It was Marivaux language and it would have been better to know it before because I am such a bad learner, and I don’t speak French well so I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t have handed it before and then I realize that probably for him that is it what makes the excitement and it ‘s also for an actress and then when I did a Marivaux play with Piccoli, and we learned the lines together at the house, we lived in the same house, with all our children, all his children and mine children, I thought that probable that is what gives Rivette a thrill also is You know we don’t know but we are doing this interview here in Central Park and when we go back that way someone might shoot us and we would be doing this interview quite differently if we were saying the most dramatic things, important things that you want to go to a legacy and we would be furtively looking around to see where the gun shoot is going to come from we wouldn’t be acting in the same way as we are now, gay and light and trivial! And I think that is what he wants to capture, You don’t; know what is going to happen within the next 2 seconds, and that is what Rivette gets by not giving you the script, you don’t know what is going to happen to your character which is great! ML: On the contrary was Je t’aime moi non plus (film by Serge Gainsbourg) improvised? I would love you to tell me more about Serge Gainsbourg as a filmmaker, as well as a song-writer, a composer: Je t’aime moi non plus is the title of the film but it is also one of the most beautiful song he ever wrote for you. JB: With Serge it is the reverse of Rivette! Serge wrote everything, the whole script, and in fact it was written as a song, there were hardly any dialogue. It was written like a sort of Oscar Wilde. He used to use words for what they are not and leave them for what they are and I would say “Serge how could you say such things? He would say I can’t resist a pun, I can’t resist a good word and it is true of him and Oscar Wilde, they couldn’t resist a good word, and Je t’aime moi non plus was like that, it was very easy to learn, everything was built, he chose Joe from heat (Joe Malanga from Heat by Paul Morissey), and thanks to Claude Berri and his wife, Anne-Marie who financed it, we would never have seen these films before. And Serge brought a great innocence to the film, and perhaps the happiest of memories; people would have died for Serge, he should have been a colonel in the war, people would have built bridges, sacrificed themselves-he just gave everybody such self-esteem. It was just such fun to please him, he was a great, great inspirer, and for singing as well, and if you managed to hit the note he was the first person to cry, putting his kleenex out and blowing into it. Then I knew the song had pleased him; he was the most emotional man I ever met ML: Can you tell me about the shooting of the film with Catherine Corsini? JB: Yes, the film came out in July but I shouldn’t have done it, I loved her, but I shouldn’t have done it because I should have realized that people wouldn’t have I were a grandmother, It didn’t have the credibility and it might have taken away the funniest and my god it was funny! When Pierre Richard dies and we crush him with a car, then pick up his arm and look up the time, the film had so many humorous things in it, I really can’t think why it was such a disaster for her, so I am sad for her. I turned down a play at that time called Mathilde to do this film, I was fed up being dramatic so I thought, I want to be funny and kill people for no reason, this is a completely immoral film and I thought that was fun, I was fed up with the heavy stuff. But I shouldn’t have thought I could play anyone just because it was fun. The script was so funny, and it is rare to read a script where people are going to be so cruel, dreadful and so funny but there you go! But it was great fun getting dressed with wonder bras, wigs, and Amelie Duquenne was absolutely sweet, and Pierre Richard I had not met since La Moutarde me monte au nez, and it was so funny to be together again and I thought and all of us did, that it would be a wild success and perhaps it will in a different place at a different time but the directress it is really hard and I just thank her for having taking me on and I made up a couple scenes that were really funny that worked, and I tried to put as much of me in it as possible that would make it be humorous and yet perhaps the very basic thing of the fact of no one believed that It was a mammy ML: Jane you also shot a film called? How was it to go behind the camera and play with actors without acting this time? JB: I did the film in one place, one sequence and then made it onto a play, all in one shot, with all the risk that it implies, because with one take you can’t make it faster, change the rythm, or suddenly change the environment, because you only have one take! Also I just had great actors, it was just great fun to play with them, I loved it! I love filming other people, other faces, and I love writing, perhaps as much as anything else! ML: You have written Kung-Fu Master with the whole family in it and Boxes with your mother also, would you do another film with the whole family? JB: well now they are very busy, Charlotte (Gainsbourg) is working on a film with Yvan Attal, and Lou (Doillon) is much older, but if they want to do older sisters then I would be delighted! ML: Merci Doctor Rey by Andrew Litvack , it is not out yet but was screened here at FIAF and the audience was crazy about this film, they even asked me if I could screen it for a whole month! Is it a film you are proud of and was fond making? JB: I LOVED IT!!!! He is writing another one where I am a private detective. I think I probably found my master! (she laughs). I think he is such fun and I am not afraid for one second, not one second, I am at other time afraid of film directors or anybody really but I‘d rather not! Andrew is just so humorous so funny, he makes you feel so funny which is a great talent. I met him at Merchant Ivory on The Soldiers Never Cries. I love him, he is just a divine sweet boy, I couldn’t have gotten closer to anyone. ML: oh we are back to the hotel ready for your next interview, thank you Jane for letting me run after you with my mic in the street of New York, it made it very playful and a real pleasure! JB: Oh not thank you to you, and thank you for having succeeded to have the courage and patience to interview me in the middle of the honking, the wind and the risk of being run over at any minute!
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