This is one of his better performances in a long time which reflects really good direction on your part. Was it typical, without giving anything away to the readers, to leave his part when it was time for Dustin Hoffman?

I wanted people to really be sad about it and to be kind of a little shocked but this is, of course, this is the dark humor that the novel has that we wanted to capture in the film too. You smile about it even though it’s really horrible, but you know it’s this kind of doom, the idea of fate that’s haunting Jean Baptiste. I liked that. I liked this whole part about it and of course, it’s good that Dustin was able to pull off this whole irony part about it too. You know, when he’s lying down for his last sleep and he seems to be so satisfied. This is typical Dustin that he pushes a moment like that because he knows that the next scene is going to show that the entire house is collapsing. He’s acting with the knowledge of this even though of course that was shot in a completely different…

Can you talk about touching a book that so many people love and the fans of the book will come to see the movie and judge it?

You know, of all the challenging parts about this production, this was the one thing that I was really very carefully keeping in mind the fact that it’s not only a best seller, like I mean there’s lot of best sellers that people just read away like some blockbuster movies you just watch them and then, as we said, we shower them off, but some books they stay with us and this is one of those books that people so much loved and had a personal and intimate relationship with that it seemed like a very strong responsibility that we are taking over because I really wanted to make it work that people are not disappointed and at the end feel like, you know, it’s not the book that I’ve read but at the same time I think everybody expects from an adaptation that it both stays as faithful as possible to the material, but it picks up on a very individual and specific and subjective point of view so it is definitely our vision of the novel but I think what we really tried hard, hard, hard to achieve is that it stays very close to the realm that the novel has designed and this whole idea of a quite dark and unusual atmospheric approach to the 18th century. The way that we will let ourselves be influenced by paintings was very much driven by the feeling that we all got from the book which I wanted people to get a color and density and texture quality experience from the film that resembles the one from the book.

A lot of people don’t realize the smells from that time without the modern technology that we have now with sewage.

Yeah, it’s incredible.

What it smelled like then.

Exactly. And it’s something absolutely unexplored, of course, in literature as much as in films. Life, in fact, was a nightmare for 95% of all people because you were literally wading through the mud and filth of the shit that was thrown out of the windows. You know, people were throwing all their garbage through the windows with no sewage system whatsoever so you know this stuff was rotting on the streets.

How tricky was the orgy scene in terms of directing because you have 750 people out there? Was it any different than say directing a fight scene or something to that effect?

It was unlike anything I’ve ever had to do. Yes. I mean everything about it was as complicated as you imagine (laughs) and of course, it’s not like you invite crowds and then tell them, ‘Okay, go for it.’ I mean you have to really make them…

It’s choreographed.

…understand what’s going on. You have to really…yeah, it was a long way to choreograph the entire procedure. But I felt like, okay, I can’t pick up on this material and not take that challenge as seriously as possible. I mean I have to make… we have to make this sequence in particular work and make it work in a believable way, otherwise we should not touch this. And so what came to my mind was the idea that it’s basically… I considered this to be something like an emotional choreography. It’s like the way the bodies move is something like a movement also of the senses and of the emotional transition. You know it’s an unbelievable transition. They go from hatred to admiration in a very short period of time and then fall for each other and undress and we always call it ‘the rapture’ sequence. So what helped very much was that I cooperated with the dance theater group from Spain, La Fura dels Baus.

Ahh, I know them.

Yeah, well you should, of course, they’re really famous. They’re great actually.

I went to see them.

Yeah, me too. I knew them from other productions. They’re famous for very physical dance performance theater and they, of course, were also able to help me communicate with most of the extras which were Spanish extras because we shot the film in France and the north of Spain and that was the Spanish part of it and you know the communication process was really important to get them really to understand. Every single one needed to be ready to get a close-up because through their expression and also in the faces the whole transition would have to be told. So after I think four weeks of rehearsals and we put them in a sports hall and we really slowly got them to learn how to get that emotional transition and then we went for the undressing part and even undressing… To get undressed with a costume of the 18th century is really like a spectacular event because they were so complicated and they were wearing like five things on top of each other and all of it was kind of sewed into each other. They had to learn this already for hours and then, of course, the rest of it and it was a very long process but as always, once you rehearse something to a degree that people really understand what it is, the moment you enter the shooting they were completely ready and not worrying and we shot for more than a week and at the end of that week they didn’t even want to stop.

Was there any one where you guys had to be, ‘Hey, hey, you’re going too far?’ Like any of the extras, did they take it a little too far?

Yeah, you had to sometimes be careful with them, of course, and of course you also had to be careful about the fact that … you know, I always thought it was probably good to have a lot of couples and it turned out to be a totally wrong choice, of course, because the idea was of course that everybody is with everybody so all these couples were getting nervous when their partners were going somewhere else and so it was a big singles convention, a nude camp singles convention. (laughs)

Did you shoot 24 hours of that?

Material, 27 [hours] but yes, 27 hours of material only on that. You can fill up a library of DVD’s with all the cut out moments. (laughs) Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that’s not in the film.

Were the girls red heads in the book or is that your choice?

No, they were in the book. I mean maybe it’s a reason why I love the book but if so, it’s totally subconscious. I have no knowledge of a very specific obsession about red headed girls.

Recent Collider Interviews

Children of Men - Clive Owen - Alfonso Cuaron
The Painted Veil - Edward Norton - Naomi Watts and John Curran
Curse of the Golden Flower - Gong Li - Zhang Yimou
Simon Pegg – The one hour interview on Hot Fuzz, becoming a toy and much much more.
Inland Empire - David Lynch and Laura Dern
Ghost Rider - Mark Steven Johnson - Nicolas Cage - Eva Mendes
The Fountain - Darren Aronofsky
Turistas – Josh Duhamel - John Stockwell - Beau Garrett and Olivia Wilde
The Holiday – Jack Black - Cameron Diaz - Kate Winslet and Nancy Meyers
Unaccompanied Minors - Tyler James Williams and Quinn Shephard - Wilmer Valderrama - Lauren Shuler Donner