Original-Cin Q&A: Rumours' Guy Maddin and Co-Directors Laugh Off Accusations of Comedy
By Jim Slotek
The recent Emmy Awards squabble over whether the dramatic series The Bear belonged in a comedy category could be a warm-up for a headier debate about the films of Winnipeg’s Guy Maddin.
His trademark – I’m going to say quirky - films have been homages to the grainy, often black-and-white silver-screen era, marked by dour characters with era-appropriate makeup. Films like The Saddest Music in the World had Isabella Rossellini straight-facedly playing a brewery heiress amputee with beer-filled prosthetic legs.
And his brilliantly absurdist My Winnipeg still makes me laugh, although I suppose it helps if you’re actually from there.
Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander and a giant brain in Rumours.
In his latest, Rumours (opening this week in Canada), with sibling co-directors Galen and Evan Johnson, he uses a more contemporary style to tell the tale of a G7 meeting at a German resort (with Cate Blanchett as the German Chancellor and Roy Dupuis as the Canadian Prime Minister). Filmed in Hungary, it’s also one of Maddin’s first location shoots outside the environs of the ‘Peg.
In between the world leaders’ schoolyard crushes, insults and hurt feelings, an apocalypse of some kind is taking place, their staffs have disappeared as if by Rapture, and a giant brain is found in the woods, purpose unknown.
I spoke with Maddin and the brothers Johnson during the Toronto International Film Festival. After some hometown back-and-forth with fellow Winnipeggers about the tragic closing of a favourite North End pierogi restaurant, we got down to the question of deadpan humour and other things. Almost every question was an occasion for quips and laughter, which supports the “comedy” side of the debate.
ORIGINAL-CIN: Guy, I should mention the first time we talked was for (1990’s) Archangel, and I’d just been given hell by a publicist for laughing at the screening. I’m still not sure what the proper reaction was. I don’t know, maybe…
GALEN JOHNSON: Chin scratching?
O-C: Yes.
GUY MADDIN: A laugh would saved my life after that screening. I had to phone the suicide hotline after that screening.
GALEN JOHNSON: (To Maddin) And even they laughed at you.
Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson, the minds behind the brain.
O-C: On the other hand, I’ve seen Rumours outright described as a comedy.
EVAN JOHNSON: Someone else put those words there.
MADDIN: Dark, maybe.
O-C: I’ve also seen it described as your most mainstream movie, which is an odd thing to call a movie that features a giant brain.
GUY: Jim Hoberman (the longtime Village Voice film critic) once described me as the most mainstream underground filmmaker, but also the most underground mainstream filmmaker.
I can’t remember the quote exactly, but he perceived that I wanted to be seen and enjoyed by a lot of people, which was correct, but that I was also incapable of creating that.
So, the word “mainstream” has never been a complete insult, but it might seem like it to people who know my work. But I’m happy to reach more people - because, y’know, I need the laughs.
O-C: This is a very of-the-moment mood to the movie, with these world leaders. There’s an element of “fiddling while Rome burns.”
GUY: And I like to think the world leaders are always doing that. So, it may be of the moment, but I think it will always be of the moment - unless maybe World War III renders everything to oblivion. Until that happens, I think it will always be of the moment.
GALEN: And we kind of felt that we were also fiddling while Rome burns. Because we were making an ostensibly political movie and with all this horrible stuff going on in the world and we were just…
EVAN: …failing to address the theories of the moment, so we had this identification with the characters. We probably made them more sympathetic in the end than we would have initially thought.
O-C: How did this movie and its plot come about?
GUY: We sort of collaborated on the story, and Evan went off every night and wrote a scene. But I don’t remember exactly.
EVAN: Who exactly thought the G7 was a good idea for a movie is a mystery lost to time.
One of our other scripts had the G7 as a subplot, but I don’t remember when we decided to make a whole feature out of it.
GUY: I can’t remember the exact moment of conception. It’s like the conception of the baby in Eraserhead. We’re still not even sure it is a baby.
O-C: Was it strange to be leaving Winnipeg to make a movie?
GUY: Yeah, it’s bizarre leaving Winnipeg. Really bizarre. I recommend it.
O-C: And the name actors on board here, Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander. Cate Blanchett looked at the script and she didn’t say, ‘What the hell is this?’
EVAN: She did, but then she said yes.
O-C: So it was like, ‘What the hell is this? I like it.’
GUY: More like that, yeah.
O-C: Does it surprise you when actors of that stature, names people know from the Oscars, say yes?
GALEN: It’s always a surprise when anyone says yes.
GUY: I mean, I knew she knew of me, which isn’t something I can presume. I’m well-known in some nooks and crannies of the film world, and totally unknown in other great vast spaces. But I knew she knew of me. She cites me in a Criterion Closet video that was posted online.
She and (Midsommar director) Ari Aster, a friend of mine and an executive producer on the film, had discussed possibly working together. And then Ari asked if we’d be interested in having Cate. And I did and we exchanged phone numbers.
And Cate and I spoke for one hour and one minute about possibly working together. The first hour was spent talking about other things, and then the last minute was exactly what you said. “Yeah, I’ll do the picture. Let my people talk to your people.”
And they did and here we are.
O-C: People tend to project, and seeing a film about a G7 meeting they might assume that the female German Chancellor is supposed to be Angela Merkel and the Canadian Prime Minister is Justin Trudeau.
(Galen shakes his head)
O-C: You know I’m using an audio recorder here…
GALEN: (Laughs) So, it won’t register my death stare.
O-C: So, they were all created out of whole cloth.
GALEN: Or they had national characteristics or something.
EVAN: We wanted to do a balance. French presidents usually are a certain way, that’s distinct from American presidents.
GALEN: Yeah, they’re philosophical and intellectual.
MADDIN: Whereas, those would be hindrances to an American president.
EVAN: Even if you’re a Canadian, like when Michael Ignatieff who’s like a public intellectual, tried to run for Prime Minister.
GALEN: He was run out of the country.
GUY: He was run out of town on a rail and had to go work at Harvard.
EVAN: People project. They will always project. Cate’s character is a woman and she’s German. That’s it.
O-C: A particularly funny Canadian moment came when the other heads of state tried to wrap their heads around a Canadian scandal, and he was in danger of being prorogued.
GALEN: Which sounds like your head’s going to be shoved into something.
GUY: Things go into various chambers and they’re talked about and then forgotten by the press. Scandals just evaporate in Canada.
O-C: So, was it weird shooting on location outside Canada?
GUY: Weird for me. I’m not a location shooter and I really, even though the very life of our movie depended on it, I hated location scouting. I just found it took too long.
It was hot, and I’m old and I was sneezing. And this is a thing about there being three of us. If I don’t feel like doing something and I’m working alone I’ve got to do it anyway. But when there’s two guys that are very capable and I don’t feel like doing something, I don’t do it.
O-C: Our time is almost up. Quickly describe the nature of your working relationship.
GUY: We all want the movie to be done and we do what it takes to do it. And they let me nap
EVAN: (To Guy) We wake you up for important decisions.
GUY: Like a Governor-General. I put on my sash and perform my official functions and go back to sleep.