Old years. It's show time. People fake good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want cold sod. That's
a little hot popcorn and no monsters in the Projection Booth. Everyone pretend podcasting
isn't boring off. I do see the story of the Wizard of Oz as
the story of David Lynch himself becoming a filmmaker. David has gone over the
rainbow from the very first film ever. He lives in a different reality than
you or I do, and that's quite obvious. Why would Lynch be that
absorbed for the Wizard of Oz? Did you watch the Wizard of Oz on
a perfect day at the perfect time as a child and it sort of baked
into his subconscious Hey hoaks, Welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, our old friend
Alexander O Philippe is back and talking about his latest film. Though he's got
a lot of films coming out over the next little bit, here his latest
one from twenty twenty two, Lynch Oz. It is a amazing look at
the influences of the Wizard of Oz onto the films of David Lynch. Of
course, it goes a lot deeper than just while at Heart does some amazing
work in this I highly recommended the movie itself is making its way around the
country right now. I think it's playing at the IFC Center in New York.
It's playing at the Detroit Film Theater the weekend of the seventeenth of June
twenty twenty three. It is well worth your time to check that out.
I hope you enjoy the film, and I hope you enjoyed the interview essay
films happy They don't happen that often in twenty twenty three, and I'm very
curious what were some of your inspirations for the way that you put this film
together As far as being an essay style film. There's a lot of reasons
why this particular film end up being this way. The first reason being COVID.
We started working on Lynch as in Earnest in March twenty twenty literally as
things started shutting down, so obviously didn't have the luxury to go and interview
people in person or on camera, so that was a huge consideration. But
also when you're dealing with the topic like Lynch Oz, which is fairly esoteric.
It's a film fundamentally about the mysteries of influence and inspiration on the creative
process. It's certainly not about answering questions. It's about opening new doors and
new windows into possibilities, ways to interpret or look at David Lynch's works,
to look at the Wizard of Oz through a different lens, all of those
things. And so therefore I was really attracted to the idea of essentially getting
participants who were one completely willing to go down the rabbit hole with me and
to see what we could find together, but to really in a way give
each one the opportunity in the space to develop a full thesis. Really,
the six chapters are six different than you had connected ideas and ways to explore
and to reinterpret or re envision the possible connections conscious and unconscious between the works
of the Village the Wizard of was So, what was the seed of the
idea? Where did this come from? Because obviously you've done movies on Psycho,
on Alien, and with Alien you've got the Francis Bacon connection. Francis
Bacon David Lynch, Is that taking that path or how are you getting to
lynch us it's all very intuitive. One thing leads to an other, you
know. As I like to say, it's all about what I love,
and it's about passion. It's about following this passion that I have in trying
to mind the significance of those films in the public consciousness. I'm very interested,
obviously, you know, if you look at my buddy of work in
those movies that are more than just movies that have become cultural events, and
they become cultural events for certain reasons, right, that's because they tap into
our collective psyche in at a particular time in history for very different reasons.
Psycho was a hit for completely different reasons that an Alien was a hit,
and that's what I'm exploring in the film in Memory, and I think the
Exorcist resonated for different reasons, and there was of Oz and so on and
so forth. Right, So I think clearly I'm very interested in that.
I'm very interested in the way that certain movies break out and why do they
break out, and what is our relationship with them? What does that mean?
Very interested in the idea of movies almost as these sort of living,
breathing entities, right that sort of come to us that find a way to
come to us on the Selver screen, and because we need them at this
particular time in history. This idea that filmmakers and writers and creators are in
a way conduits for mythological archetypes and ideas to come back through time perennially to
either haunt us or teach us something or reflect something about who we are at
certain times in history, because those are the stories that we need at this
particular time. I think if you look at film as myth and if you
look at film as dreams, as collective dreams, then I think there are
it's undeniable that there's something to that you mentioned the sick different chapters of the
film. Where do those folks come from? How do you work with them?
They came from my dreams? Nay, some of them are friends.
What's interesting about this process of making this film is that, again, once
I committed to the idea of telling the story in chapters, I couldn't just
interview or ask to interview fifteen people, because if all fifteen say yes,
then I have a five hour film, right, So that's that was not
possible. So I had to really literally go one by one and so for
me, it was really finding people who you know, intuitively got it and
were willing to go there with me. And then beyond that, there's different
reasons. Any Nicholson, I've known her for a while now, but she's
brilliant, obviously, and I had listened to her podcast episode on The Wizard
of Oz, which I thought it was really great at some really wonderful ideas,
and I felt that she would be able to really anchor the narrative in
the importance and significance of the words of Oz in culture and started essentially making
these connections to the works of David Lynch. She's the anchor really of the
piece. John Waters was longest shot. I'm really glad he said yes,
And I felt that there was something really important there in the sense that obviously
his career and David Lynch's career are sort of ran parallel, right in some
ways. I don't know they're necessarily friends, but they obviously do know and
respect each other a great deal, but they were They both really grew up
and were influenced by the Words of Oz in very powerful ways, and so
I thought that was a very important voice for the film. People like Karen
and Aaron and Justin and David Lowry and Rodney Asher. I've known them for
a while, and you know, it's always such a joy for me to
be able to pick their brains about anything film related if they're willing to go
there and were. Rodney was a no brainer, obviously, because he always
deals with sort of multiple realities and what's real and what's not ideas that are
very close to this. I felt that he would be an incredible match,
and sure enough, in fact, he's just the perfect chapter right after Amy,
because you think you're anchored, you think you're grounded, and then and
incomes Rodney and he literally pulls the rug from beneath your feet. And then
by the end of his chapter you don't even know where you are. It's
am I the Wisden of Oz. Has our world been transported elsewhere? You
know, what's real, what's not? It's wonderful stuff. So that was
it. They came one by one, and and of course I approached a
number of people who didn't want to do it or couldn't do it and didn't
work out. And you're never going to get everybody if you want, unfortunate,
fortunately or unfortunately. But at the end of the day, just going
one by one like this. And I didn't know for sure that I was
going to have six chapters. It could have been seven, it could have
been eight, it could have been five. But they started talking to each
other. The chapters did in some very interesting ways, and like somebody will
bring up an idea in one chapter, and then in the next one that
ideas goes in a different direction or expands. It was a multi step process
when in the writing process. First I interviewed them over the phone and essentially
what I call a jazz interview. So we riffed on the idea of Lynch
and Oz, and I kept fishing until I felt like they had given me
enough for what I thought was a thesis. And at that point I transcribed
the interview and I wrote what I thought was their chapter, send that to
them for approval, with some suggestions and ideas the things to potentially add.
And then they went back and said, no, they want to cross this,
and they want to remove this. They wanted to add this. So
it became more collaborative at that point, and eventually, when we were happy
with the script, I sent them back to a recording studio to rerecord their
voice over and that's what you have in the film. So it's been a
really unprocessed Yeah. Yeah, as you're reading what they wrote, are you
already starting to think of all the mental images, all of the things that
you want to put there for the visuals you have to end That actually really
informed the scripting process of what could be in the film or not, because
again we don't have the luxury to cut to them on camera, so everything
had had to be told visually. So on a very micro level, I
had to think from the scripting stage very meticulously about what we're going to watch
on screen. Now. Of course, a lot of that stuff ultimately ended
up changing during the editing process, but I could not send them a script
without having the confidence that we would be able to handle every single micro moment
visually. Wouldn't have been possible. One thing I didn't want to do is
to send them to recording studio and then three months later come back and say,
oh, you know what, can we do it again because I messed
up? Yeah, you don't want to do that. So it's a very
involved, very different process every film that we make. Every single film is
completely unique and different, as different challenges and demands but it was really fun.
I really enjoyed this particular process. You said you started around March of
twenty twenty. So what started then was that the reaching out to people,
or was that Okay, I've got everything, we're recorded now and now it's
time to do the visuals, or what was that moment. We may have
actually started the process a little bit earlier, but that's that. March twenty
twenty was when I started actually having the audio interviews with them, just or
low fi low rez phone interviews to start fishing for their chapters and where you're
like, Okay, in six weeks we'll be able to meet in person and
talk about this, or where you're pretty realistic as far as the long haul
of the pandemic, No I had committed to. Certainly didn't know that the
pandemic was going to last the way that it did. Nobody did, right,
I mean, I'm sure some people did, but certainly not the general
public. But I was committed to making the film in this particular way and
never look back. I was that it wasn't a let's do a preliminary interview
and then I'll see you in three months in a studio. That never crossed
my mind when it comes to the visuals. Obviously, editing is key for
this movie. Tell me about that relationship with your editor and how are you
actually are you cataloging all of these moments and saying, Okay, yeah,
this time code, we're going to go to here or is it more organic
than that? Yeah? No, David Lawrence, it's amazing he did.
This was my second feature with him. He also did Leap of Faith,
or film on the Exorcist and William Friedkin. He's a massive cinephiles. He
brings so much to the table, so many options and solutions and things I
haven't thought of. I mean, every day is a sort of geek fest
because we were literally geek out about every single moment, and so I'll have
always clips in the script as I'm envisioning it in my head. But he
knows that doesn't mean like it has to be this way, and so he
will he has folders of other options or things that I've I haven't necessarily thought
of that he will present so that we can literally audition each clip. And
it's very important to us to make sure that every single clip but it doesn't
just tell an A to B kind of story. It's like somebody talks about
something and then boom, this de illustration. Sometimes that's the way it works.
Becomes an art form when the clips work on multiple levels, and so
sometimes you have to really audition a number of clips. It's a very painstaking
process. We're talking I can't remember, but we have well over a thousand,
if not twelve hundred, maybe fifteen hundred clips, I don't know,
So you do the math. It's a very intense process and then full of
discoveries, you know, sometimes it's discoveries, it's happy accidents. Things happen
all inevitably in the editing room that is always unexpected and sometimes miraculous. Do
you have any examples of something that happened like that in this one off the
top of my head thinking about creating these sort of connections in chapter one between
the Wizard of Oz and It's a Wonderful Life, which is it's so astute
by the way of amy to mention that the joy then when somebody says this
is to go and find these mirror effects in a way, right, so
when she talks about the Wizard of Oz going away and coming back, just
the way that it's a wonderful life, went away and then came back.
We found these shots that essentially act as avatars for the films themselves of George
Bailey going away and coming back, and the same with Dorothy. But David
had a wonderful made a wonderful discovery of he's telling me about the scare the
scarecrow dance when he dances around and falls on his butt, and then of
course it's the great sort of dance and it's a wonderful life when they fall
into the pool, and he presented them to me side by side, and
my gosh, it's just like such a beautiful sort of mirror effect in the
way that again it's somebody will mention something and you will deliver this line,
and you're fishing for evocative parallels between those films. But then you when you
realize that those parallels go beyond just the narrative structure of the stories themselves,
that there are moments in the film that serendipitously create this mirror effect. That's
super cool. It's a joy for me to do this. And yeah,
I mean we've had many of those things happen. Yeah, I never really
would have brought those to mind either the whole idea too, of Dorothy saying
there's no place like home, and then George Bailey on the other side of
the screen praying to get back to his wonderful life. Of course, way
back in ninety one, when I was reading my first film book, have
I think was David Boardwell was talking about the parallels between Star Wars and Wizard
of Oz. So I was so glad when that came up on screen.
I was like, yes, this is perfect. So it was great to
see that. I loved all the way that the idea is tied together.
And that's just something that you've done so well for so many years now,
and this is just another stellar example of your talent. Thank you. We
worked very hard at it, but it's a joy and it's again for me,
it's really about communicating my just love of movies, and I see our
films always is a little bit of a bridge between film studies and the general
public. This idea that film study and scholarly books on film, as incredible
as they are, I think a lot of people are maybe a little bit
intimidated by them. And I'm talking about just cinephiles, people who may not
even consider themselves cinephiles, people who just love movies, who love to watch
great movies. But I think I think those people like to go through the
exercise of deconstructing films and trying to discover things and talk about film with their
friends. And so to me, I think part of the role of my
films is precisely that's to debunk this idea that you need a PhD. In
order to have fun deconstructing movies. That this is something that we can all
do in in some way, and that there are rewards at the end of
the rainbow over for all of us in doing that. That's the joy,
not just a film, but of art in general. Right. Art has
to be engaging and fun, and it's a process of discovery and dialogue and
conversation. And you're not you're not just conversing with your friends. You're conversing
with the artists. You're conversing with, and in the case of artists who
are long dead, you're still conversing with them because they're still reaching out to
you through their work. So to me, this idea that work of art
can only be interpreted in one way is so reductive and silly. It's like,
that's not what art is about. And I'm not just talking about films
like the films of David Lynch, which obviously there's many ways we can interpret
them, but even the words of Oz, which seems to be a very
straightforward story. I think there's many readings of it that you can make.
I almost like the idea of you being stuck when it comes to the pandemic
and having these restrictions put on you. It's like I always say when I
talk about movies made under communist rule or where there's some sort of censorship or
something. Here you are. You have these wonderful audio essays, you have
all of these film clips, and that's it. You can't go out,
you can't shoot anybody, you can't do the talking head interviews. I love
that you had that impediment that you turn into an advantage. That's the thing,
right, It's like, you're a filmmaker. You have to figure out
a way to make films. And I should also mention that at the time
I was also working on another film in tandem, so it's called to taking
It also is just coming out now, and the Cantalog is going to be
releasing it. I believe through vinegar syndrome on blu ray pretty soon. That
one is about the john Ford monument Valley Westerns, and it's about the semiotics
of money in Valley. That one was what's interesting, it's very similar.
It's also told there's no talking heads, it's voices, but they're criss crossing
voices. In this particular case, there's a chorus of voices. But we
had started working on that film before the pandemic and actually had made the decision
to approach it that way, that we were not going to film the interviews.
And so when COVID hit all of a sudden, we were working on
two films, and one by design, the other one not by design that
involved just telling a story completely visually through clips, and so it was there
were different but very similar challenges. And so yeah, the pandemic really occupied
me. I was occupied by those two films. Now, the one thing
that I know for sure Amy brings up, and I hope everybody listening to
us realize this, is that David Lynch does not like to talk about his
own work. So what was his involvement with this if anything, Because I
imagine he had to have some sort of thing going on because you use his
image on the poster. No, he has no involvement in the film.
He was the first one that I reached out to. I was pretty clear
that he was not even want to participate because, as you said, he
doesn't like to talk about his work, and quite frankly, it's better this
way. Essentially a film like this, which is again, it's not about
trying to crack the David Lynch riddle or solve Lynch in any way, shape
or form, because that would be a stupid exercise to do. There's nothing
to solve. There's nothing to solve about the creative process. But I still
felt that I needed to reach out and say, we're making this film,
would you like to participate in typical Lynch in fashion? His response it was
very nice, but he said I need to keep my eye on the donut.
Yeah. You can read that in a lot of different ways. My
interpretation of it is that basically he needed to really focus on his thing.
So he's been aware of it, and that was the extent of it.
I don't know that he's watched it. We had a screening of it at
the coronat the Island Film Festival. His sister Martha lives there, and she
came to the screening and she introduced me on stage and why did the film
loved it? She then came to tell me stories about how she does remember
David just being obsessed with the Wizard of Oz as a kid, which was
really cool to hear. Oh, But and then she said, I'll talk
to him about it. I'm sure, I'm sure he'd love it, but
I don't know to this day whether he's watched it or not. And again,
I think we all know he's not particularly interested in this stuff that's made
about him, and I totally respect that. Well, I totally respect that
You've dealt with some living filmmakers, some who have gone to the great beyond
Hitchcock. But with Lynch, it doesn't matter if he's still with us or
not when it comes to discussing his films, because he won't be part of
the discussion. That's right. And it's interesting because you could make the argument
that just you know Hitchcock in a very different ways, you know, and
certainly for Psycho, they both are the men behind the curtain, which is
very interesting, and like maybe I have a curtain fetish or something. I
don't know. Will there be a third one? Really to this, I
don't know when did the movie get locked and when did you first see it
with an audience. We premiered at Tribeca last year or so, twenty twenty
two, and that was Yeah, that was the first public screening and went
super well. It's gone to make festivals around the world and I went to
many of them. It's been really well received. And obviously now we're opening
it. Just it opened in New York and it's about to open in LA
and thirty plus cities. Now. They keep adding theaters in the States and
in Canada, which is very exciting. And yeah, I'm really hoping that
Lynch fans come out and geek out with us, and I hope that people
are just curious or cinephiles in general. I think this is a film that
goes beyond Lynch, and as as I've said, it's really a film about
the mysteries of cinema and the mysteries of inspiration influence, and it's a film
too experience on the big screen. I'm really helping to see this on the
big screen because it just it looks amazing, just the quality of the clips
looks fantastic. Just on my little screen, I'm like, gosh, this
looks so sharp. Oh yeah, no, it's it looks really quite stunning
on the big screen, and especially a lot of these sort of like split
screens. There's a lot of sort of stuff that it's best appreciated, I
think on the bigger screen. Yeah, So when does the john Ford film
come out? We had some theatrical screenings a couple of weeks ago, and
I think Tivad is coming up. I think they're still working out the ZVOT
situation. The Blu ray will be available, I think in the fall.
Again it's called it's called The Taking, and people are interested in go to
Decknalogue, which is the k A n A lge dot com and look for
details. But yeah, I'm super proud of that film too. It's it
definitely belongs and the continuation of the filmography, the preoccupations that I have about
movies and the way that movies work on our brains. And then then we've
got the William Shatner film that's about too You're released as well. We premiered
a south By Southwest this year and working on plans for a release. So
yeah, there's a lot going on, So tell me about the Shatner film.
It's the best way that I can describe it. So it's called you
can call Me Bill, and it's the best way that I can describe it
is it's a mystical film about William Shatner at ninety two and about all the
things that he deeply cares about now at this point in his life, after
having had the life being extraordinary life that he's had that he continues to have
because he has way more energy than you and I combine, and I guarantee
you that he is a powerhouse. Though he's like an energizer bunny. I
have a lot of admiration honestly for him. And he's a real he's a
real inspiration. There's a you know, it's a film I would say very
much about death, about the fact that he knows that no matter how long
he lives, he's going to die soon. And he knows that and it
bugs him because he's, as he says, he's having too good a time
here, which is wonderful. It's a deeper, darker, stranger film,
I think than people anticipate, and it's We've had an incredible response out South
by Southwest critically, the film is has really been embraced as well. It's
been a joy to kind of see that. And so I'm about to go
to a number of big festivals now internationally to share the film with some of
those audiences. And then Legion m which produced a film along with us at
Exhibited Pictures. Legion them are They're wonderful. It's really our second collaboration with
them. Memory was a finished film and then they came on board at Sundance
in twenty nineteen, but this one was truly a co production and they've been
wonderful partners. They really know what they're doing. I hope we'll have any
more collaborations with them. They're just wonderful people. So what else? What's
next for you after that? There's two projects that right now are at the
contract stage, so hopefully I'm not jinxing anything by saying it, but yeah,
one is Texas Chainsaw Massacre fiftieth anniversary film, which obviously I'm chumping at
the bit. That's going to be a special one and very unique angle on
this one as well, That's all I will say. And then another one
it's a true crime story related to Psycho, so adding stepping back into the
shower as it were, but with true crime elements, and it's very stranger
than fiction kind of story, almost like a whole of mirrors of real life
Norman Bates and Buddy doubles and stand ins and Buddy doubles to the Buddy double
and all kinds of weird, creepy stuff. So that's what's on the duckhead
right now. And then in the film on Vertigo, which been working on
on the side, which will take me a long time because that's a very
personal film but very important to me. And then all kinds of other projects
that were various projects in developments, have various stages of developments. Yeah,
it's a busy time, you know that. I'm excited to see every single
one of those. Been a fans and stay one, so can't wait.
Thank you so much for your time. It's always great talking with you.
Thank you so much, and thank you for your supporting And I hope people
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