French director JEAN-PIERRE JEUNET’s films are known for their distinctive style, from Delicatessen (1991) to Amélie (2001) to his latest work, Micmacs (OUT ON DVD NOW).
The tale of a video store clerk who sets out to destroy two weapons manufacturers, Micmacs is a visual feast with bucketfuls of humour.
Jeunet chats to film journalist Jan Gilbert about the recurring theme of orphans fighting monsters in his films, his visit to a Belgian weapons factory, and the cost of bringing Yann Martel’s Life of Pi to the big screen.
MMM: I’m interested in your writing process. In the past you’ve worked with Marc Caro (Delicatessen), and you’ve co-written Micmacs with Guillaume Laurant. Why is it important to you to have a co-writer?
Jeunet: It’s important because it’s like ping-pong. You have to find the right partner. It’s exactly like in life to find your lover. It’s very important. And when you have that, don’t divorce, keep him or her! And Guillaume Laurant is the perfect partner for me.
When I find an idea, immediately we throw it back and forward, and I couldn’t say whether it was my idea or his idea or our idea. But I need to find the concept first because it’s my film and I’m going to spend three years with it.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet on the set of Micmacs
MMM: So what was the concept for Micmacs?
Jeunet: The concept for this one was a mix between three different ideas: the feeling to speak about weapons sellers, the feeling to have a band of silly people like the Seven Dwarfs in Snow White or the toys of Toy Story, and the first thing was to have a story of revenge because I’m a big fan of Once Upon A Time In The West. So I wanted to meet the three different things.
Then because I love idea of Pixar or Disney movies, I wanted to have one idea per shot. So we opened our box of notes. Because we note down everything we hear we have thousands of notes, of gags, of small bits of dialogue…
When the box is packed with ideas, we start to write. That’s how we have a ton of different details in the film. And when we write, Guillaume writes the dialogue scenes and I write the visual scenes. And by email we exchange scenes and rewrite them.
MMM: You often come back in your work to the theme of an orphan fighting against a monster. What is it about that subject that appeals to you?
Jeunet: It’s the story of all my films, even Life of Pi, which I didn’t do for question of money, but it was the same story of an orphan fighting a monster. In Life of Pi it was a tiger, here in Micmacs it’s weapons sellers, another time it’s a butcher in Delicatessen, or a slimy monster in Alien. I don’t know why. It’s not on purpose. Each time I write a story and I say ‘Oh shit, it’s one more time the same story!’ I hope maybe one day I’m going to change, but maybe it will just be shit!
MMM: Your early films like Delicatessen are rather dark, while Amélie is bright and positive. Where does Micmacs fit in your filmography?
Jeunet: I would say it’s a mix of everything I’ve made… a kind of conclusion. Now I need to make something different. I had some reproaches in France, people saying ‘oh, you do all the time the same thing!’ And it’s true but I was supposed to make Life of Pi and it would have been very different – the sea, the tiger, the kid. But for money reasons it didn’t happen.
Jeunet with the star of MicMacs, Dany Boon
But I still felt like shooting something, so I opened my box and I put everything I love into this film. So if you like my films, Micmacs is OK. If you don’t, don’t go and see this film… my restaurant serves only fish, so if you like meat there’s a restaurant with meat across the road!
MMM: So what kind of audience did you have in mind while you were making Micmacs?
Jeunet: I don’t want to say kids, but young people, because it’s a slapstick cartoon. Ideally I would like to have the audience they have for Pixar movies. I think it could be the same audience.
MMM: When you were working on Micmacs, you researched the weapons industry by visiting a weapons factory in Belgium. Is there any reason you chose Belgium, and what did you find out while you were there?
Jeunet: Just by luck I knew an ex-Minister of Defence in Belgium… just a coincidence. And they were very open. They opened the door, and we could take some pictures and they explained everything. It was pretty weird.
We met such interesting people who had a passion for technology. In fact, it was like a chocolate factory. They have the passion but they completely forget the destiny of the technology they’re making. When you say, ‘But it’s to kill people’, they say, ‘Yes, yes, but you know, we’re on the right side. We work for the Minister of Defence, not for the Minister of Attack.’
They protect themselves like that. And they don’t care because they love technology and they know other people are building something and they have to build something better. It’s a question of money also.
Jeunet loves being surprised by Dominique Pinon's performances in his movies
MMM: You’ve got many of your usual cast and crew on board in Micmacs, including Dominique Pinon. In fact, you’ve said it’s almost impossible to make a film without him now…
Jeunet: I can’t make a film without Dominique. It’s not a question of superstition. It’s just because he surprises me every time. And he has such a beautiful face, for me it’s like an African statue.
MMM: Do you have a kind of a competition with him to see how much you can put him through? This time you fire him into the Seine…
Jeunet: Not really, but it became a kind of game between us. This time we throw him in to the Seine and he had to have an injection against rat pee. And when he was in the water, we had two divers pull him down.
MMM: How did he react when you told him that was going to happen?
Jeunet: He loves that! He pretended to be upset, but he loves that! Maybe the toughest part was when he was inside the cannon, because he stayed a long time in there. And sometimes we told him, ‘OK, we’re going to eat… see you later!’
MMM: You originally wrote the central character of Bazil, the video store clerk, for Jamel Debbouze (Amélie, Angel-A, Days of Glory). So when Dany Boon took on the part, did you need to make many changes?
Jeunet: Not a lot, except that Jamel Debbouze had a handicap because he had an accident with a train when he was a kid. So I changed the beginning of the film because Jamel Debbouze was supposed to have the accident with the mine, so now it’s the father of Dany Boon [who has the accident].
Bear-like Dany Boon as video store clerk, Bazil
This is the only change. They are very different in terms of physical aspect – Jamel is like a shrimp and Dany is like a bear – but in their mind, they’re very similar. They come from the streets, they have imagination, they are very close.
MMM: You had a big Hollywood experience with Alien: Resurrection and you tried to do Life of Pi. Will you do another film in America?
Jeunet: Why not? For Life of Pi, I wrote the script and I had the freedom. The freedom is the most important thing for me. In France I have the complete freedom. By law you have the final cut in France.
For Alien, it was different… the rules of the game were different. It was OK. I used to say that it was the toughest day of my life, but every day! And one day I just missed the gates of the studio with my car because it was a fight every day.
At the end, though, I am proud of the film. I stayed friends with 20th Century Fox and they offered me to make Life of Pi. But I prefer the freedom and I would like to find a compromise because I would like to shoot with American actors.
When I hear my American agent say, like last time, ‘Oh, there is an American actor, he lives in New York, he’d like to meet you. His name is Al Pacino.’ You say, ‘Oh yes, why not?’ And Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman… so many actors. I say ‘why not?’, but with the freedom.
I would like maybe to make a French production like Taken, from Luc Besson, with American actors. Why not? I’m thinking about that. It depends on the subject I’m going to find.
MMM: Have you put Life of Pi completely aside now, or might you come back to it at some stage?
Jeunet: I know they are supposed to make the film with Ang Lee, but I know they don’t have the solutions. You have the three worst elements – a tiger, a kid and the sea. To film at sea for months and months… it’s completely impossible, so we’d have to do everything in visual effects.
In the end, they asked me to produce it myself. We researched the cost and we were less expensive… 59 million euros instead of $85 million… but it worked out exactly the same when we converted it into dollars! In Hollywood, they want to cut budgets now. So I don’t know how they are going to make the film, but I know they don’t know.
I think this is the kind of project we’ll speak about in 10 years. One day the technology will be good enough to make a fake tiger and you won’t see the difference. In The Chronicles of Narnia you see a fake lion, but it looks fake. You don’t care though because it’s a fantasy movie. In Life of Pi, you have to believe the tiger… I wanted a real-looking tiger. We had the technology in our brain but it was very expensive.
