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Lanza: Fragile Geometry: The Films, Philosophy, and Misadventures of Nicolas Roeg
A survey of the work of the British filmmaker, his vision of a decentered world depicted in such films as "Don't Look Now," "The Man Who Fell to Earth," and "Walkabout."
- GenresFilm
176 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1989
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About the author
Joseph Lanza
13 books11 followersJoseph Lanza is the author of several books with subjects ranging from popular music to obsessive film directors, including ELEVATOR MUSIC: A SURREAL HISTORY OF MUZAK, EASY-LISTENING, AND OTHER MOODSONG (University of Michigan Press) and PHALLIC FRENZY: KEN RUSSELL & HIS FILMS (Chicago Review Press, 2007) -- a psycho-sexual, hyper-humorous, biographical thriller celebrating the great director. He recently appeared as himself in the 2011 BBC4 documentary: THE JOY OF EASY LISTENING.
He recently contributed the essay "Foreground Flatland" in the OXFORD HANDBOOK OF NEW AUDIOVISUAL AESTHETICS (2013) and the CD booklet essay for "RONNIE DOVE: The Complete Original Chart Hits (1964-1969)" from Real Gone Music (2014).
His forthcoming book is entitled, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE AND ITS TERRIFYING TIMES, from Skyhorse Publishing -- scheduled for release in mid-January 2019.
He recently contributed the essay "Foreground Flatland" in the OXFORD HANDBOOK OF NEW AUDIOVISUAL AESTHETICS (2013) and the CD booklet essay for "RONNIE DOVE: The Complete Original Chart Hits (1964-1969)" from Real Gone Music (2014).
His forthcoming book is entitled, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE AND ITS TERRIFYING TIMES, from Skyhorse Publishing -- scheduled for release in mid-January 2019.
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June 22, 2009Read the STOP SMILING interview with filmmaker Nicolas Roeg
MINDFLOWING WITH NICOLAS ROEG
By Nile Southern
(This interview originally appeared in STOP SMILING The Auteur Issue)
The ultimate outsider inside the citadel of moviedom, Nicolas Roeg makes films his own way. But that wasn't always the case. He began working as a camera assistant and focus-puller in the early Fifties. He soon advanced to camera operator, and by 1961 he'd begun a 10-year career as a cinematographer for some of the most influential directors of the time, working with David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia), François Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451) and John Schlesinger (Far from the Madding Crowd).
His breakthrough as a director came with Performance (1970) — a hallucinatory account of an on-the-run assassin (James Fox) drawn into the bohemian world of drugs and eroticism in the home of Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg. Walkabout was released the next year — an awesome cinematic opus (which Roeg also shot) in which a depressed father drives his children to the Australian desert and tries to kill them before he kills himself. They survive the outback thanks to the intervention of an aboriginal tribesman who is on his own rite of passage.
Roeg continued to work as a director (and occasional producer), developing his distinct vision. He is currently working on the film Adina.
Stop Smiling: You're really stretching the medium in your films. Sometimes you use stills, backward motion, superimpositions, voiceovers, flash-frames, slow motion. You pull out all the stops.
Nicolas Roeg: I don't think of it as technique. It's how we think. I find human exchange very difficult. I listen to the radio a lot. Often the phrase “What I mean is” comes up, or “Do you understand what I'm trying to say?” Certainly in our language, English — it's so vast — the meaning changes. It's a living beast. Your grandfather coming back would wonder what people were talking about. In every sort of human exchange, there is the difficulty of being understood.
I try to use as many emotional and visual sound links as I can to make words understood. We're stuck in all kinds of forms. The retained image is a marvelous thing, because it has nothing to do with literature. I've always thought that documentaries are even less historical than dramas. There's always someone selling you a political program with documentaries.
When you ask about technique, I like to think that cinema is totally undiscovered so far. Someone said to me, “I don't understand all these flashbacks and flash-forwards.” But that's how we are in life. I tried to do this in Bad Timing. When the lovers meet again, their thoughts are different from what they actually say to each other. That's a marvelous thing to be able to do, but it's not a technique. It's trying to establish a cinematic understanding. In terms of business and marketing, and trying to get a lot of people into cinema, I've seen that form coming via other filmmakers. But it's taken until now to really become even part of it!
When I saw Last Year at Marienbad, as I was coming out of the screening, I heard a producer say, “These guys, Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet, they don't even know how to make a movie! You see a guy go upstairs in a sports jacket, it's daytime. He goes into his room, slams the door, the door opens, it's nighttime, and he's in his dinner jacket!” Within three years, there were commercials where a cake is put into an oven, a woman shuts the oven door, then a kid looks up as she puts the cake down in front of him, baked and ready to eat. If you had her opening the door or starting the timer, etc., you'd have the same producer who didn't understand the construction of Marienbad saying, “You don't need that shot, that's shoe leather! Cut straight to the cake and the kid.”
Read the complete interview excerpt...
MINDFLOWING WITH NICOLAS ROEG
By Nile Southern
(This interview originally appeared in STOP SMILING The Auteur Issue)
The ultimate outsider inside the citadel of moviedom, Nicolas Roeg makes films his own way. But that wasn't always the case. He began working as a camera assistant and focus-puller in the early Fifties. He soon advanced to camera operator, and by 1961 he'd begun a 10-year career as a cinematographer for some of the most influential directors of the time, working with David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia), François Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451) and John Schlesinger (Far from the Madding Crowd).
His breakthrough as a director came with Performance (1970) — a hallucinatory account of an on-the-run assassin (James Fox) drawn into the bohemian world of drugs and eroticism in the home of Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg. Walkabout was released the next year — an awesome cinematic opus (which Roeg also shot) in which a depressed father drives his children to the Australian desert and tries to kill them before he kills himself. They survive the outback thanks to the intervention of an aboriginal tribesman who is on his own rite of passage.
Roeg continued to work as a director (and occasional producer), developing his distinct vision. He is currently working on the film Adina.
Stop Smiling: You're really stretching the medium in your films. Sometimes you use stills, backward motion, superimpositions, voiceovers, flash-frames, slow motion. You pull out all the stops.
Nicolas Roeg: I don't think of it as technique. It's how we think. I find human exchange very difficult. I listen to the radio a lot. Often the phrase “What I mean is” comes up, or “Do you understand what I'm trying to say?” Certainly in our language, English — it's so vast — the meaning changes. It's a living beast. Your grandfather coming back would wonder what people were talking about. In every sort of human exchange, there is the difficulty of being understood.
I try to use as many emotional and visual sound links as I can to make words understood. We're stuck in all kinds of forms. The retained image is a marvelous thing, because it has nothing to do with literature. I've always thought that documentaries are even less historical than dramas. There's always someone selling you a political program with documentaries.
When you ask about technique, I like to think that cinema is totally undiscovered so far. Someone said to me, “I don't understand all these flashbacks and flash-forwards.” But that's how we are in life. I tried to do this in Bad Timing. When the lovers meet again, their thoughts are different from what they actually say to each other. That's a marvelous thing to be able to do, but it's not a technique. It's trying to establish a cinematic understanding. In terms of business and marketing, and trying to get a lot of people into cinema, I've seen that form coming via other filmmakers. But it's taken until now to really become even part of it!
When I saw Last Year at Marienbad, as I was coming out of the screening, I heard a producer say, “These guys, Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet, they don't even know how to make a movie! You see a guy go upstairs in a sports jacket, it's daytime. He goes into his room, slams the door, the door opens, it's nighttime, and he's in his dinner jacket!” Within three years, there were commercials where a cake is put into an oven, a woman shuts the oven door, then a kid looks up as she puts the cake down in front of him, baked and ready to eat. If you had her opening the door or starting the timer, etc., you'd have the same producer who didn't understand the construction of Marienbad saying, “You don't need that shot, that's shoe leather! Cut straight to the cake and the kid.”
Read the complete interview excerpt...
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