Interview: Tarsem (The Fall)

Walking through the labyrinthine corridors of the Waldof Towers I fear I’ve lost my way until an eruption of laughter exploded behind one of the mirrored doors. I’m in the right place. Tarsem, whose best known for his dynamic commercial career, emerges from his hotel room barefoot, grinning and he quickly became one of the most ingratiating filmmakers I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing.

Set in the early years on silent cinema,The Fall tells the story of a young stunt man, Roy Walker, who injuries himself to the point of paralysis. Suicidal and depressed he begs little Alexandria, another patient at the hospital, to provide him with Morphine in exchange for a fantastic story.

Tarsem has only directed one feature film prior to The Fall, the 1999 thriller The Cell which starred Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn. The film received a lukewarm reception and disillusioned the director with the Hollywood machine. Thus, Tarsem wanted his next film, The Fall to be a completely self-produced venture, and with a little help from his friends Spike Jonze and David Fincher the project began its journey. Four years, twenty four countries and several edits later, The Fall is ready for release, but will audiences be attracted to a no-star, visually driven, surrealist picture in this day and age? We’re about to find out.

Tarsem Singh

Benjamin Crossley-Marra: So this film first premiered at Toronto in 2006 correct?

Tarsem: Yes, we premiered an early cut at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival but that wasn’t quite the final cut yet. They really wanted it to premiere at Toronto so I quickly put an edit together.

BCM: So a lot has changed since 2006?

T: Very little was changed in terms of scenes, but in terms of structure, the two stories going in and out of each other, we really hadn’t finalized that relationship yet. So now that it’s about to come out I’m finally doing press and I have to admit that it’s a passion project that I was absolutely made for.

BCM: Now I understand you drew your inspiration from the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho?

T: I did, but it looks nothing like my film though. Yo Ho Ho is a film I saw about twenty years ago, I liked one idea about it, so I bought the film rights. For the next seventeen years I travelled around the globe looking for locations that could be part of the fantasy world I envisioned for my film. I almost began production right before The Cell, but The Cell became the more obvious choice because it was more set-driven and The Fall relied heavily on locations. So logistically The Cell made more sense to do first, unfortunately, there was one intended location I stole from The Fall, the first scene of Jennifer Lopez on the sand dunes, but the rest I saved until we began production.

BCM: I was going to try and see Yo Ho Ho before I came in today…

T: (laughs) I don’t think you’ll be able to find it even with your resources. It’s a very tough film, but it had a particular structure that I liked. I was obsessed with doing a story-within-a-story film for a long time and when I saw Yo Ho Ho I thought it was very close to what I wanted to do so I bought the rights. I really love the theme of storytelling and how different people hear different things. There’s always three incarnations of a story: the story that is being told, the listeners interpretation and the version the listener retells in the future. It’s always funny when someone tells you how they saw this great film some fifteen years ago and when they sit down to watch it again, are surprised by how much they’ve actually changed the story in their heads. So for The Fall I really wanted to present two worlds that were very different. The “real world” was very static and was driven by performances. The “fantasy” world was over-the-top theatrical and highly stylized so much so that people couldn’t identify it. I also wanted it to be period piece because the characters should not have seen (or be able to reference) films and genres.

BCM: Why the insistence on shooting this in twenty countries? Why not use CGI?

T: Can you see difference between when people do that and this film?

BCM: Sure.   

T: Well you’ve just answered your own question. Even though a lot of people claim that they can’t see the difference, they can still feel it. There’s a difference between how you view images and what you feel. I really wanted to create a visual experience with no CGI effects.

BCM: Did you pitch The Fall to any major studios?

T: I pitched in the beginning but I knew it would be am impossible sell because the little girl is completely dictating the direction of the story. The executives baulked at the idea that a six-year-old would essentially be in charge of how the final film turned out. So I decided: let’s go on a trip, let’s do it low budget and if it takes six months or four years that doesn’t matter.

BCM: Did you encounter a lot of problems shooting on location?

T: Of course! The logistics were a nightmare and that’s why people shoot with green screens. But I was adamant about shooting on location because I believe it’s something you’ve never seen before.

BCM: Now I heard that you had actor Lee Pace trick the whole crew into actually believing he was paralyzed?

T: Well, there was a miscommunication between myself and Catinca Untaru, the actress playing the little girl, she spoke no English when she first came to us and she came in thinking the actor actually was paralyzed. She thought he was like Christopher Reeves! So when we found location in South Africa where we would shoot the hospital I told none of the crew that Pace could actually walk. Because he wasn’t that well known, we we’re able to go through the entire shoot with the crew believing that Pace actually couldn’t walk. We shot in the entire thing in sequence for twelve weeks and it made it easier on little Catinca because the situation became part of her reality. We had a nurse that would carry him to the set and even changed the script so that nobody knew the truth except for me. I have to say the crew had a mixed reaction to finding out, some were very angry actually, but I think in the end most understood.

BCM: David Fincher and Spike Jonze are credited with “presenting” this film. What exactly was their role?

T: Both of them came on at quite an early stage. I love Hollywood films, but I kept telling everybody that I was making this personal film outside the system. So after The Cell both of those guys really helped me push the film into production and really encouraged me to begin shooting even if all the finances weren’t in place. Fincher and I have been friends for over twelve years, I met him at MOMA when I was giving a lecture. We talked about forming a company together. Since then the company didn’t work out, but we’ve maintained our friendship. Fincher’s interesting because he’s been able to make the kinds of films he wants to make within the studio system. Jonze has also made the films he’s wanted to make, but outside the system. I don’t think The Fall looks like it could have been done by either director but it’s similar in a stylistic sense. For example, Jonze’s films are all about the character, he doesn’t give a shit about the camera. In Fincher’s films an actor could give the best performance in the world but if his head isn’t framed right it won’t make it in the final cut. In The Fall both styles are used to distinguish the “fantasy” world which relies heavily on visuals/framing and the “real” world which is all about performance. 

BCM: I find that a lot of today’s younger filmmakers shy away from visually driven cinema in favor of more dialogue laden works like the “mumblecore” filmmakers. Why do you think that is?

T: That’s very true. I think it always depends on the backgrounds people come from. In the 60s and 70s all of the sudden you had a lot of film critics making movies, which led to a lot of “referential” films being produced. In the 80s and 90s we saw a lot of filmmakers who came from commercial/artistic backgrounds, which led to the visually dynamic films of that era. This is a very expensive medium to learn in unless you’re a writer and Fincher and I came in through the more commercial end of the spectrum. So in the festivals you get a lot of films that are dialogue driven because festivals are supposed to represent the non-commercial end of said spectrum. But I love dialogue driven films, I’m a big fan of Lars Von Trier et al.

BCM: You were at one point attached to direct the film adaptation of Alan Moore’s Constantine. What happened with that?

T: Constantine was a very interesting project but the studio and I had different ideas in terms of where we wanted to take it. So we had some very solid creative differences because what I loved in Constantine is not where the studio wanted to take it. Life’s too short to be wrapped up for five to six months in a project you don’t really love.

BCM: Now you’re next project is titled Unthinkable?

T: Well there’s Unthinkable and The Unforgettable. Unforgettable looks more realistic at this point in time. Unthinkable was a very, very hardcore torture film that over time producers got a bit too “chicken” with. I mean once you begin to use torture for a means other than information retrieval you begin to tread a really slippery slope and it just got too hardcore for some people. I don’t think torture is a subject you can really pussy-foot around, you really have to go all the way or not at all.

BCM: Are there any “dream” projects you have yet to realize?

T: I’ve always been a huge fan of the short stories of Borges and would really like to do an anthology film of his works. But right now I’m in a very good place, I might not make another film for ten years or I might make one tomorrow. I have a girlfriend that I love right now and I’m very happy.

Roadside Attractions releases The Fall in theaters today!