The concept of making a movie in which the director dictates is kind of exotic - and absolutely not truthful. Directing means allowing a great deal of collaboration and listening and having the ability to change your mind.
In 1993, my first documentary was about the civil war in Algeria. That was in French and in Arabic. Another short film I did was silent. What I'm trying to say is that, yes, I'm Italian, and yes, I make films with Italian money, but personally, I've always been invested in the broader world of film-making.
I only cast the actors and actresses I fall in love with - truly having an emotion for them, an anticipation and enthusiasm when seeing them - and I believe that my emotional confidence in them blends into chemistry. It's always been like that, and I hope I won't be wrong in the future.
As a director, what matters is how you penetrate the soul of the person in front of the camera and let the actor blur the boundaries between the character and the person themselves. In order to achieve that, I try to make people feel at ease, to be mindless of problems and be skinless and give everything to the camera.
I am more interested in revolutionary beauty than in the great beauty, to be honest. Italian cinema is now mostly a bureau for tourism. We have given up that revolution of the contemporary.
I need to have a great deal of control and the ability to share my control with my collaborators and grant them the freedom and the quality of work I think these people deserve. If I don't have those elements, I walk away.
Everything that goes outside the rules of Italian cinema has always been cursed.
I grew up with a concept of cinema as a directorial thing, meaning the director is allowed to sail the ship. Not a dictatorial thing.
The concept of muse is alien to me. To speak of a muse implies there is a couple in which one person is the objectified passive element - there to help the creative, active, often male part of the duo to create. A muse is very passive. Who wants a muse? I don't want a muse.
My father is a teacher; my mother was a telecom employee. I come from Palermo; I was raised in Ethiopia. I am homosexual. I didn't go to film school.
I think we shouldn't be shy of thinking that we can interpret text like a movie again, depending on the point of view and what we do with it more than anything else. Of course a lot of remakes of important films, particularly of horror films, they suck.
The point is that filmmaking is a collaborative effort; it isn't about imposing your vision on other people. It's about the talking, you know?
Moviemaking is a dirty, tiring affair. The joy comes from the possibility to be free on set and really let loose.
Making movies is about control. You need to control your narcissism in the first place, and you need to be disciplined enough to understand the reason for the film. You need to follow the agenda of the film, not a personal agenda or that of the studio. Or, worst of all, of the actors.
When people think fashion is just the surface of things, I disagree very politely.
I am a Hitchcockian - I still believe that 'Psycho' sets the standard for mother/son relations.
I don't much like post-modernism, because post-modernist has become the basket in which every mediocre person can shuffle things and pretend to do something significant, and we could also mention who use post-modernism in this way - maybe we shouldn't.
You know when they say you need to put people who go well together? I much prefer to put people who fight at the table. Then you have some sort of sparkle at the dinner!
