Ameliedirector Jean-Pierre Jeunet reflects on the very French fairy tale he imagined after leaving Hollywood.
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Where didAmeliecome from?I quit Paris for Hollywood when I madeAlien Resurrection.
Then I came back to Paris and decided I wanted to makeAmelie.
I had plenty of notes, but it was difficult to find the main story in them.
I spent a lot of time wondering,Is it a thriller?
Is it a love story?
One morning, I read my notes and came across one small detail.
And I thought, Oh!
This is the main story!
Then it got easy.
Easy to write, easy to shoot not easy to find the money, of course!
What did you settle on for the main story?The story of a girl helping other people.
Like in a western: He was in a box with wheels on it!
Moving around likethis[sweeps both arms downward repeatedly].
And I thought,Oh my God.
Maybe this guy has some friends?
And they form a kind of an association?
And then they help other people?
Because life can be just a piece of shit, you know?
You need help from other people.
What she wins is love.
The most important film in my life for a long time wasOnce Upon a Time in the West.
I saw it when I was 17.
I couldnt speak for three days.
Finally my parents asked me, Are you sick?
I said, No.
You cannot understand!
What doesOnce Upon a Time in the Westhave to do withAmelie?Nothing!
No, no, no …. wait a minute.
Maybe the way you use a long lens to shoot a close-up?
Sergio Leones close-ups at the beginning of that western are incredible.
Also, the films sound design.A Clockwork Orangeis another one that influenced me.
I saw it 14 times in a theater.
At that time, there were no VCRs!
Can you believe it?A Clockwork Orange, 14 times?
Its not the sort of thing you want to see with your family, of course!
Its all a question of style.
Even if you cant see my influences, theyre in there.
I thought ofWings of Desireas I watched it again.Oh, yes!
There are certain details fromWings of Desirein there, exactly!
Rudiger Vogler visits a very old house, and under the house, he finds a box.
So I pay homage to Wim Wenderss homage to Nicholas Ray!
Itsun hommage en ricochet.
Like a bullet?Yes!
[Mimes a bullet ricocheting off the borders of his computer screen.]Tung!
Theres a third-person narrator, like inThe Age of InnocenceorThe Royal Tenenbaums.
And the cuts are very fast throughout, compared to your other films.Yes!
Also, another big difference: I shot a lot of it outdoors.
On a soundstage, you’re free to control everything.
When youre outdoors, there is somebody else who is the master.
[Points up.]
He gives you some clouds or some sun, when you want or when youdontwant.
I dont like that!
People are not very cooperative with filmmakers like they are in America.
One day a guy parked his car right in front of the camera and said, Fuck the cinema!
We had to wait an hour for the guy to leave.
When we were shooting the scene at the magazine store, there was a guy dealing drugs or something.
He had a bike.
Whenever I said Rolling, he went: [Mimes ringing a bicycle bell.]Ding!
Ding!And he kept doing it!
Ding!Rolling!Ding!
Ding!And of course if you give him money to make him stop, another arrives immediately.
John Huston had the same problem in Paris when he shotMoulin Rouge.
Those all had to be fabricated, yes?Thats right!
I love production design.
All of my films were nominated for the French film awards, the Cesar.
We had two nominations forAmeliefor production design, for the Cesar and BAFTA, and we won BAFTA.
The garden gnome that Amelie sends around the world, thats something that you might buy.
But yes, so many things had to be made.
That was another something I had in my collection of anecdotes.
Because youd need to track all those people down and get them to sign releases?Thats right.
We also paid for some extras.
and poke the photo.
It was ridiculous for them.
The locations were part of the production design as well.
I did all of the location scouting myself on a scooter!
[Mimes riding a scooter and makes scooter noises.]
I chose the subway station where so much action happens, the Abbesses metro station.
I visited all the subway stations in Paris twice to double-check I chose the best one.
Amelieis far and away your most popular film in the United States [Delighted] I know!
And your next film isnt just French.
Its super-French!It is!
Is the super-Frenchness a reaction to Hollywood?Youre not totally wrong.
I came back to France after spending 20 months in Los Angeles.
And then I came back to Paris and thought,My God!
This is a beautiful city!
The city was a revelation.
I wanted to show Paris through those eyes.
I got rid of the cars parked on the street.
I got rid of the dog shit on the streets.
We changed all the posters.
We made something a little bit fake.
Can you talk about the influence of fairy tales?
It seems important in all of your work.Do you knowThe Tale of Tom Thumb?
This is a thing in all of my films.
who is fighting against a monster.
Does that make sense?
Amelie has to fight against that monster, and her weapon is imagination.
This is my life, in fact.
What was your monster, if I may ask?I wont tell you what was my monster.
But I will tell you that I saved my life with my imagination.
Thats a lovely sentiment.
Meaning, this has to be a principle for us, to make a positive movie.
Its not easy to make a film thats positive.
Not too much sugar, you know what I mean?
I hope I did that sweet but not too sweet.
If its too much, it can become a pain in the ass, even for me.
Why are upbeat films not taken as seriously as grim ones?I dont know.
Maybe some critics, they prefer especially in France something very dark, something veryuhhhhhh!
[Makes sour face.]
We are so inclined to be negative.
But this one time, withAmelie, I had the audience, I had the awards, for apositivemovie.
The reviews were positive, too maybe 98 percent.
They didnt want me doing it because they said it was too expensive.
So I sent the script and I flew from Paris to Los Angeles to meet with them aboutAmelie.
But at the meeting, I felt something was wrong.
Tom Rothman said, Uh, Jean-Pierre?
The marketing service read it, and they said its notTitanic.
I said, No, youre right, its definitely notTitanic.
Its funny that they compared it negatively toTitanic, as ifTitanicwas a proven formula for success.
They had 800 people and they had to turn 200 people away.
Probably everybody there had seen the film before.
What sorts of reactions do you get from younger filmmakers?
Are they influenced byAmelie?Oh, yes.
Sometimes they come up to me and say, Will you sign my DVD?
And I sign it, and they say, This is the favorite film of my mother!
[Puts face in hands in mock despair.
]But its okay!
The film came out 23 years ago!
But we know that we could never make it as good, so we reject the proposition.
How didAmeliedo in countries besides France and the United States?In Japan, it was a big success.
Same reaction, everywhere,everywhere!
But by the end, the film became something bigger than us.
We even had a screening with the president at the time, Jacques Chirac.
As we say in France, it becameun phenomene social how to say it in English?
A social phenomenon?Voila!
And I never expected that.
I often used to think,Oh my God, I wish I could have a big success someday.
I didnt think I ever would.
But sometimes it happens!
Do you ever worry thatAmelieovershadows the rest of your work?No.
Everyone should have such problems!
