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KINEMATRIX
Our first meeting was in Locarno, 1999, where you had that fantastic
retrospective and I was working for the Flesh Out Magazine: the published
interview was very successful.
I think that we happen to have an increase of horror moviesī production during
every period of war in the world, such as the Second Post-World War, when you
were born, the Vietnam period, when you started your career as a movie-maker,
and obviously now.
Do you agree about the "link" between a certain rage, or anger that people need
to exploit in some way in those particolar times of crisis?
JOE DANTE
I think thatīs probably true... You may remember that in the 1930īs, when the
big horror-boom began in America, people were angry about the Depression, so now
I think you see... filmakers have always tended to be people who want to change
the world and I canīt imagine a time when the world needed to change more than
it does now but usually the threats came from overseas! In my country now...
aggression, in my view, is now coming from my country and I think there are a
lot of filmakers who feel that they can channel their anger at the
Administration through horror films. I think that horror films are getting a
little more over-literally political than they were, but unfortunately movies
canīt change the world, because if they could, DR STRANGELOVE would have
transformed everything, but it didnīt, and so we express ourselves and we try to
get our ideas out and we try to influence the people that we can but
unfortunately itīs a little bit out of our hands...
KINEMATRIX
You seem to me a little bit more pessimistic than the first time we met.....
JOE DANTE
Well, I didnīt have George W. Bush in the White House when I first met you, did
I? Ah ah ah !!!
KINEMATRIX
Itīs a big issue, a big problem, in that sense, now that weīre in election
time...
JOE DANTE
Well...you know, we have the country split in the middle! I find it hard to
believe that this could be, because itīs so apparent to me that the people who
are running the country are incompetent and greedy and donīt give a shit about
the average person but there are a lot of people who vote against their own
interest, a lot of people who have been brainwashed by our media...You know,
there used to be a myth that the media were liberal in America, but thatīs
completely changed! The Corporations own the media, the media is now right-wing,
Disney has a talk-radio station in New York that does nothing but spew hate 24
hours a day and yet they have said they didnīt want to release FARENHEIT 9/11
because they didnīt want to be political... well, I mean...I think this tells
you something: itīs very hard for the truth to come out in America now.
They used to be... Reagan did away with a law called "The Fairness Doctrine",
which said that if you had someone on radio or tv who was espousing a particular
political point of view, then you had to have the opposing point of view
represented as well and so now all we get is right-wing propaganda almost
unchallenged by anybody and it works... you know... "mudslinging works", the "repeating
lies" gambit works and a lot of people just donīt want to be bothered thinking
about anyone else's views. Well, they say, he is the president and we should be
doing what he says! I never imagined how large a group that was, but it is
indeed, quite a big group.
KINEMATRIX
So, what you think now in America, the best people can achieve is the Democrats...
JOE DANTE
The best they can achieve in America now is to get rid of the people who are
running it now ! No matter who will replace them. These people aren't Real
Republicans, or honest conservatives, the Repubican party has been hijacked by
an arrogant, almost fascistic group whose aim is to, as they like to say, spread
their own brand of Freedom around the world, whether it's wanted or not. These
people have had a plan for years, they want to topple all regimes that they
donīt like. "Do as we say or we'll invade you."
KINEMATRIX
And what about the younger generations? The so-called "No-global" culture,
coming up long after the No-Future punk culture, always trying to be on the
other side, the "right" side, to fight the new world order, even in a cultural
sense? Do you think that they can get, that they can understand the subtext
between the lines when they see movies like MATINEE, SMALL SOLDIERS, THE SECOND
CIVIL WAR or even LOONEY TUNES BACK IN ACTION ?
JOE DANTE
It depends on how many of them they are and it depends on whatever theyīre
activists, you know! The reason why we have the government that we do in America
is because most people donīt vote! Most people are uninterested. Theyīre constantly
trying to get out people who ordinarily donīt vote. Itīs a major problem. I mean,
to be in a country where you can determine the people who lead you and then not
take advantage of it is tragic and it can only be that they must be jaded from
all the years of plenty that theyīve had now they just figure "Well, you know...so
what? Who cares? Itīs all about me, you know...".
They suffer from a lack of interest in the rest of the world. I mean, the
president himself lacks intellectual curiosity, you know, he just wants to go
back to his ranch and clear brush!!! There are a lot of things going on out here
in the world and I think that... to not be engaged by the problems of the other
countries in the world is a big mistake, it is a big mistake. People used to
look up at our country and they used to say "Well, boy, America... they have
their ups and downs, but we admire America. THEY DONīT ADMIRE US ANYMORE!!! I
mean, weīre using up half the worldīs resources and weīre giving back nothing.
You know, itīs an embarassment for all of us, and we want to change it! And I
donīt know whether we will be successful or not...
KINEMATRIX
How hard is to work for you and all those directors who make a movie every two
or three years? Whatīs the big thing with the Studios?
JOE DANTE
The business has changed. There are less movies made, more people, more
directors who want to make them. The competition for every movie is large, the
business is now run by giant corporations of whom the studios only own a small
part, and the question tends to be: how can we make a so-called "tentpole" movie
that we can make twenty more of over the next twenty years? You know, we donīt
wanna just make one-little-movie, we wanna be able to make a "series", we wanna
be able to make a "franchise", we wanna be able to make SPIDERMAN 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
10! Ah...which is ok, you know, weīve always done that...thereīs always been
series-movies....but thereīs really not much real interest in cinema in the
studios right now. I think itīs all about business. Itīs all about "whatīs gonna
sell", itīs all about "how can we get the kids in to, you know, watch people
FUCK PIES, or whatever it is they do in these movies... Compare this with the
60īs, or even the 70īs, when the movies were content-oriented, they were about
things, people were excited about the filmic possibilities and I see now the
people who control the pursestrings are kind of giving up on that.
The independents are still interested in making movies about "ideas", but now
even the independents are owned by the Studios! So, itīs not a great situation,
creatively. You know, itīs hard... For Jonathan Demme to be able to make THE
MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE for Paramount (!)... for a big Studio...itīs a miracle...
unfortunately it didnīt do very well in America, and the next time somebody
comes to them with another political picture, theyīre gonna say "Well, you know,
I think weīre gonna make another action-job, a Morgan Freeman-Ashley Judd
vehiclewith some murder...".
KINEMATRIX
We were having an interview with JONATHAN DEMME, just the other day, and his
american press agent from Paramount was fiddling around... and listening to us
being critic while asking questions about the election time, George W. Bush and
stuff....
JOE DANTE
No, no, no...exactly! They donīt want to be "controversial" because somebody wonīt
go to the movie! You know, itīs all about: how can we get the most people to go
see the movie ?
Well, this is THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE: they were hoping they could have a big
wide audience for it and I think it was perceived as too serious, too political,
and I donīt think the title, frankly, is very helpful. I donīt think most younger
audiences remember the Frankenheimer picture - which I think is a slightly
better movie because itīs not trying so hard to be the only political movie out
there as Jonathan has to do now because he has to represent all those movies
like THE PARALLAX VIEW (Alan J. Pakula, 1974, with Warren Beatty, N.o.A.), THE
CANDIDATE (Michael Ritchie, 1972, with Robert Redford), all those political
movies that used to get made in America and now donīt! Itīs like everybodyī s
looking at him, he has to carry the banner, his picture has to work or else...
and itīs a big burden to carry. So I wish it were otherwise, but I just donīt
see a change in any time soon...
KINEMATRIX
Back to KINGS OF THE Bs, do you think that there could be something linking you,
J.Demme, the whole New World experience, and Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Sergio
Martino and, at last, Quentin?
JOE DANTE
Quentinīs like a "living link" into these periods, because heīs seen the movies
from all these different periods and he embraces them all. As far as... you know,
influences go ...usually in America we never got much more than, you know, the
major art-films and the occasional Dino DiLaurentiis spectacle kind of movie
with an American star like Kirk Douglas... Then when Pietro Francisci's Steve
Reeves HERCULES came out and was a huge success, the flood gates opened and a
lot of movies from overseas suddenly started coming to neighborhood theaters in
America and these genre-movies influenced Roger Corman, they influenced Hammer
Films, Hammer Films influenced them...I mean... everybody took from everybody
else and I thought that that period, from the late 60īs to the mid-70īs, was one
of great international creativity because very few of the films were strictly
italian or strictly spanish or whatever... they were all co-productions, they
had different actors from different countries, you know, to sell in different
areas... There was a feeling of international cinema, a feeling of the whole
world being Hollywood, you know, and now thatīs gone... itīs completely gone...because
/the american audience has stopped accepting dubbing, one day they just stopped
accepting dubbed pictures. All of a sudden you couldnī t sell those movies in
America and they went right to television and then eventually there was no
market for them at all. I think the world lost a kind of film-making we will
never see again. I miss the knowledge of who the character-actors are in Germany
and France and Spain and Italy now, because so few movies make it through the
little pipeline to get it to the Art theatres. There are no commercial movies.
They recently tried to dub Benigniīs PINOCCHIO in America with like... you know...
famous names and even then it was not accepted. But you canīt sell that movie
with subtitles because itīs for a broad family kind of an audience so the result
is, we just donīt get enough movies from Europe anymore, except for the
critically-approved Art-movies. And, as you know, these genre movies in the
Venice sidebar were never critically approved anyway. If they were reviewed in
America at all, it was as "drive-in" movies. Nobody felt it was important to
review them except the "trades", but the major outlets didnīt take these
pictures seriously and so this is the result: we now are embarked in a period of
rediscovery, we have to try to rescue these pictures because the state of
Italian film restoration is not very good, some of the movies here are playing
only in video copies. Nobody knows where the negatives are and itīs almost too
late for some of these films. These pictures are not old! They were made in the
Seventies, you know, but yet... theyīre... theyīre.. some of them are gone, of
some of them they donīt know where the negative is, such as DANZA MACABRA.
"Negative? No, no we have the print, we donīt have the negative...???"
KINEMATRIX
Just call Scorsese, maybe he just can do something about it...
JOE DANTE
Martyīs got his hands full! Heīs got the whole of Italian cinema to deal with!
When he did his documentary he didnīt really have room for these pictures! But,
you know, they canīt disappear, they canīt fall by the wayside, I mean, I think
that you never know until twenty years after a movie is made what its impact
was, what it was about, how it stands up, what does it tell you about the times,
you know, I think film history is very rich, but itīs not rich if you canīt see
the movies... So, the nice thing about DVD is that there is an incentive now for
people to find a way to restore the movies at least in video and to get them out
there where people can see them.
KINEMATRIX
What about MOVIE ORGY (JOE DANTE movie, see "I FIGLI DI CORMAN" Venice section
of KMX, N.o.A.)? How or where can we see it?
JOE DANTE
Well you canīt see it !!! I was told by a guy that he saw the picture in Greece
(?!?), that there was a bootleg version of it in Greece... I think he said he
saw it in theatres... When I ran it in Locarno I made a tape and I think that
maybe somebody duped the tape, so it may be floating around somewhere, but I
donīt own the rights to any of those clips, so I donīt have the legal rights to
show the movie... We never had the rights, that was the whole thing, when we
were showing this movie it was an outlaw movie, we could have been shut down by
anybody who said "Hey, thatīs my movie! You canīt run that, you have to pay
me!", and so we were flying under the radar with this thing... so, how do you
get to see it? I donīt know!!! Do you know how many different pieces of other
people's films there are in this movie? There must be a thousand! And I donīt
even know who owns that stuff...some of the stuff I donīt even know what it is
!!! I just had a funny clip and then put it in... So... I... unless you saw it
in Locarno, I donīt think youīre gonna see it... DID YOU MISS IT IN LOCARNO?
KINEMATRIX
Yes
JOE DANTE
Big mistake !!! Eh eh eh !!!
KINEMATRIX
Do you think that there's a director, style, genre or period in the history of
American cinema that deserves to be rediscovered as it is happening now with
Italian genre movies?
JOE DANTE
You'd be surprised how active the American DVD companies have been in trying to
get these obscurities distributed on video. There's a company called "Something
Weird" which specializes in strange sexploiters, horror pix, crime movies, movies
made in Texas, movies made in Florida, regional movies that never left the place
they were made. Whenever they can find something obscure, they put it out.
There's a lot of material that no one has never seen before. Movies that haven't
been seen outside grindhouses in Pittsburgh. I know that there are huge
libraries, like the United Artist Library, The AIP Library, which are owned by
big companies. Time Warner alone now owns half of the movies ever made. They
only have one video label and they control thousands of movies going back to the
20s. How many of those movies do you think are ever gonna get to DVD when they
have flashy modern stuff like Swordfish and Batman to put out first?
KINEMATRIX
They just own them to make them die?
JOE DANTE
They do spend the restoration money and know it's important to save them, but
they sit at the bottom of the vault and they never get seen. They're officially
missing, unless the owner decides to make a deal with some other company to
license the movie. For a while Anchor Bay was getting a lot of material from
other companies with no plans to release the stuff themselves, which is fine.
But if they'd rather not be bothered, they just don't make the deal and say "go
away, forget it. We don't care about that movie, nobody wants to see it". If
they don't know the movie, they assume no one else knows the movie; these
corporate entities have a lot of movies from the '50s and '60s which are really
good, that I guarantee no one will ever see legally. They do sell them in
packages to cable-TV and if you're dedicated you can tape them, but for the most
part, distribution of these movies is very sparse, especially anything from the
'30s.
KINEMATRIX
Do you think there could be an interest from the young audience for these
movies?
JOE DANTE
Not in America. In America there's no cinema scholarship. There is an audience
that can keep a cinematheque alive in big cities like New York, Chicago, L.A.,
but in Kansas, the local Blockbuster video store is all they have. There's
satellite TV if they want, but they don't run a lot of b/w movies on satellite
except for Turner Classic Channel. But other studios like Universal and Columbia
don't have their own channels yet, so too many movies ,especially the
lesser-known ones, are effectively suppressed. I think that's a shame, i think
those movies should be made available.
KINEMATRIX
What do you think about downloading films?
JOE DANTE
Michael Moore said he didn't care if anybody downloaded his movies as long as
they didn't sell them. I find downloading very difficult: it takes a lot of time
and the quality is not very good. Eventually in the future things will get
better. I don't think watching movies on your computer screen is quite as good
as watching them in a theater, but it's better than nothing...
KINEMATRIX
What about movies you can't see in any other place, but you can download?
JOE DANTE
Is this a piracy issue? Is it because studios will lose money? Do I disapprove?
I don't give a shit.
KINEMATRIX
Rare movies, disappeared movies; who is profiting from them anyway?
JOE DANTE
There are movies called "public domain movies" in America; nobody owns them, so
anybody who has a copy can release it. And there's a video label called Alpha
that puts out nothing but movies that nobody owns. Unfortunately most of them
are mastered from crappy tapes or 16mm dupes; they're fuzzy and hard to
watch. Sometimes they steal from somebody's good laser disc, but for the most
part they look awful. However, often there's no other way to see these titles.
So you sit there, trying to make out what they're saying through the hissing
soundtrack, after the movie you go: "Ok I've seen that". But did you really see
it? Anyway it's better than no movie, at least most of the time.
KINEMATRIX
There's a young generation who is now in their twenties who seem to have
forgotten about cinema history...
JOE DANTE
They never knew. And they won't watch black and white, because nobody taught
them that it is an art form. They don't know Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney. Or
even Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster. They don't know who they are, so how can
they be interested in their movies?
KINEMATRIX
Quentin Tarantino belongs to a generation of people who saw those movies on VHS
and studied them...
JOE DANTE
He was motivated to do that. If you're motivated, the material is there, you can
find it. You can teach yourself cinema history, but you have to be interested.
Even the young people i know who want to make films, they go back to Kubrick or
Citizen Kane because they're too famous not to know about. But they don't know
Raoul Walsh, they don't know Howard Hawks, or Anthony Mann or Michael Curtiz -
they're irrelevant because they're old. They know more about
American Pie than
they know about Casablanca. They don't know who Peckinpah was.
KINEMATRIX
There's a big responsibility coming from the Universities...
JOE DANTE
They do teach, but the kids skip the classes. If they're there to make movies,
they don't wanna watch them. There's certain people who wanna be scholars, and
write about movies, be critics and they watch the movies. But the kids who want
to make the movies, they just want a camera to go out and make their movie, they
don't want to talk about who did it thirtyfive years ago. Fine! People make
movies in Beirut without seeing any Hollywood movies, but I think there's a lot
to learn. I think you deny yourself a certain facility by not acquainting
yourself with the works of the past.
KINEMATRIX
I've been in the UCLA library and took some books which are used during the
lessons and i was surprised that the main question was: "How to make a big
selling movie".
JOE DANTE
I went to the UCLA library to look for some old reviews and the pages were all
ripped out, cut with razorblades, scribbled on in pen. There's a lot of
vandalism in there. So go figure.
KINEMATRIX
Don't you think young people should get together and find something like the New
World...
JOE DANTE
Those days are gone! Those movies were made because there was a market; there
were double features downtown, grindhouses and a foreign market for those
movies. So you could make them and hire new people to do them because then you
were able to sell them. Now there's no place to sell them, Roger Corman is
retired. Now where does a kid go to learn how to make movies? They make a music
video, get hired by a major studio, which will then push you around, tell you
how to make the movie and fire you. That's what happens. If you worked for
Roger, you'd made four women in prison movies no one ever saw, but that
was where you could learn your craft. You can't do that now.
KINEMATRIX
What about digital? Digital allows people to make really low budget or even
no-budget movies..
JOE DANTE
Digital is great, but there's got to be some content. Nobody's ever going to see
the movie if it's not half decent. You can't make movies if you don't have a
point of view, you've got to have something to make the movie about. It's easier
to make your movie, harder to get it seen. You can make the movie, edit it, make
a nice DVD, give it to people, but they have twentyfive other DVD's--- how are
you going to get them to watch yours? Distribution is still a good thing; get to
a festival, have people see the movie, have opinions, that's paying attention.
But having a stack of twentyfive DVD's, putting them in and taking them out
every five minute is different. It's hard. It's easier and it's hard.
KINEMATRIX
Moreover, in the US you don't have a good festival; you used to have Sundance,
but now it's quite gone...
JOE DANTE
There's the New York festival, but that's not very interesting. In Los Angeles
in the 70s we had FILMEX, but it's long gone. Yeah, there's Sundance, but all
they want to do is sell movies there. What about just watching the movies? What
about just talking about them? Arguing? That's the main reason you go to a
movie, but something you have to do on your own.
KINEMATRIX
But you, Jonathan Demme and some other people from the school of Roger Corman,
are still "alive and well", making movies every two or three years; in Italy
it's not the same, the generation that made movies in the '60 and '70 are all
retired, not only because they're old, but because they suffered from the
condition of being marginalized by the productive system. Some of them started
making "commercial" movies trying to keep their subtext alive, but it looks like
there's no way. Is your way the best one?
JOE DANTE
The achievement is just staying in the business. Sergio Martino works frequently
for television. He's working, he has to make money and put bread on the table...
KINEMATRIX
I know, but movies like
Small Soldiers (which i consider a great movie), they
just have the typical "Joe Dante subtext"...
JOE DANTE
Those movies don't come around often. I get offered movies, I'm not a pariah.
But most of them are lousy; I get scripts I don't want to do, movies I wouldn't
go see, movies somebody else should make. I try to make movies I would go see,
even if it's a good script, i sometimes say "I'm not the right guy". Hire the
guy who really likes this, a guy who's passionate about it. I want to be able to
say "I'm the best guy to do this movie, this is my movie", but there aren't that
many opportunities.
KINEMATRIX
How hard is it for you to say the things you want to say in a big movie, dealing
with majors and people with lots of money who think it's their movie because
they're paying...
JOE DANTE
It is their movie, they're paying. They often don't agree with you and you have
to fight with them and it makes it very unpleasant. My last several movies
haven't been much fun to make, it's been very contentious just getting my views
across. There's a lot of people telling you what to do and most of theme didn't
even read the script. It's a difficult way to keep your personality alive,
because they don't want it. They like directors with no personality so that
every movie will look "generic". That's not the way I look at it, i see movies
as an extension of myself. In the last movie it was very difficult, but it's
still a Joe Dante movie, maybe it wasn't as good as it should have been, but
still it's recognizable. When i won't be able to do it anymore, I'll just quit.
KINEMATRIX
Can you tell us about some of the projects you rejected in the last few years?
JOE DANTE
They wanted me to do The Flinstones, but I never liked the cartoon, so I said:
"I could do this movie, but you should find a guy who loves the Flinstones". I
did Looney Tunes because i loved Looney Tunes. So they found i guy who loved the
Flinstones and had Flinstones toys, Flinstones soap in his bathtub and so on. He
was the right guy and he made the best Flinstones movie he could make.
KINEMATRIX
So it's still about art and expression for you...
JOE DANTE
It is expression, if you're not expressing yourself, then what are you doing?
It's hard making movies: you have to wake up early, fight for what you want. If
you can't get you point of view on the screen then you'd better stay home.
KINEMATRIX
What's the next work?
JOE DANTE
Don't know. I have a script about Roger Corman making
The Trip which I'm trying
to get funding for, it's been a rocky road trying to get the money, but I'm
working on it. Anybody out there want to invest?