Olivier Assayas: “Clean” “NOISE”

Well, yes! Sure I can. (he laughs)

Well, the film was, from the start, was written for Maggie. It was a film that was inspired by her. And I had the basic storyline and the idea for a while before I sat down to write it. But I think what got the project moving, and gave me the desire to write it, was some sort of frustration after making “Irma Vep”. It was like in 1996. And it was a movie where I had been using Maggie as this sort of icon of Hong Kong cinema. She was like a movie star, and being herself, I put her in a weird context of French independent filmmaking and turned it into a comedy. But ultimately she felt, and I felt, in that movie, in which she only had to be herself that she didn’t have much space to explore. We didn’t have the space to explore together, the human aspects of her acting. And the character of Maggie in “Irma Vep” was---I am very happy with what we did, but it was extremely limited in terms of what she had to do, in terms of her acting, in terms of her emotions, in terms of expressing universal emotions. And the feeling of that idea stayed in the back of my mind. I always thought that one day I should write about and for Maggie, which was not some token Chinese in a western film, but to write for her a part, that any actress, be it Asian, European, Middle Eastern, African, or whatever she could play, a character that would deal with universal emotions. And which would allow me to use the complexities and ultimately the modernity of Maggie herself is split between cultures. She is Chinese. She is a Hong Kong Chinese raised in London, who lived at the time, living most of her time in Paris. Because at the time, we were briefly---well not so briefly--- married. It was an important factor in both our lives. So she was someone who, in her everyday life, was speaking three different languages in three different cultures, which is Cantonese, British English and French. I thought there was something strong and original. So I started building the film around that. And also because Maggie has always wanted to be a musician, a singer, and it ultimately never happened. So I kind of used that longing in the film. Whatever the film became, it really very much started on the desire I had to make a movie with Maggie again.

It is in many ways, the way I structured the story, the way it took shape, it’s like starting a film within some kind of bubble. It’s the bubble of drugs. It’s the bubble in the rock lifestyle. And also it’s eventually the bubble of the stereotypes that are connected to both those notions, but in the sense that every so often musicians are attracted to stereotypes. A lot of the lifestyle of rock bands is so much about adapting to completely stereotypical notions of how they should live, act, think and move. But ultimately, it creates a completely protected world separate from reality. So to me, it was very much about starting with a character that is completely cut off from reality, which would become a caricature of her---she is even seen that way from the others around her---and how to gradually allow her to come back to herself, and to come back to reality and become a human being again. Ultimately, she would not only accomplish that, but she will also find a path to some kind of self-realization through music, but from a completely different path. It’s not music as some crazy abstract notion that allows you to live in crazy way, but more like something that comes from the heart that has the kind of genuine human dimension. So that’s how I imagined the story and the character.

Sadly, I have never had the gift for it. (he laughs) I never had a very good ear for music. I have a good ear in a sense that I know how to use it for my films which is extremely important. But in terms of playing an instrument, or hitting the right note on the piano, it is something that I have never been remotely able to do. So I am lucky not to have any hope or theories to become a musician myself. But because I’ve always loved music, it has always been an important part of my life. I have always hung out with musicians. When I was a very young aspiring filmmaker, I would hang out more with rock bands than with aspiring filmmakers from my generation. I always felt that rock music had some genuine connection to some kind of core poetry of the modern world. And I think that my writing, my cinema has been inspired, to some extent, by the energy of rock music, modern music, or electronic music, and the emotion they expresses. It is often when I’m filming a specific scene and want to hit a specific note, what inspires me is the emotion I felt when I listened to a specific music, to the specific song, to the specific band, and it gives me the correct pitch for that scene. So to me, music is more like an inspiration, and a very important source of inspiration.

Well, there are two aspects about it. One aspect is obviously the difficulty in recreating that ambience. Because in cinema, it always looks fake, and so when I understood that the indie rock scene would become some kind of background to the story, I was a little nervous, because I had the feeling it was extremely complex to make it believable, make it real, so that’s why I used a lot of real life musicians, in all the specific scenes that deal with music, because I constantly use them as technical advisors. I mean, when I am with Tricky, or when I am with David Roback, and with the guys from Metric, I constantly ask them, would you do this, would you do that, how would you do this? How would you interact? How do you walk from the stage to the backstage room? What kind of mic would you use? How would you speak to each other, to journalists, to fellow musicians? To me, it is extremely important to be as accurate as possible. I think I need all the help I can get. The other aspect is, of course, the international dimension of the music industry and of my story. It is, I think the way culture is becoming global is the most interesting and fascinating factor of modernity. I think it is one of the most exciting contemporary themes, and ultimately there are few filmmakers who deal with it. And to me, it is endless. The fascination. I think it’s one of the major ways. The world is transforming, and it is transforming in front of our eyes. And it is interesting to kind of document it in a way. It’s really interesting to travel those routes, and to explore the new stories that can be inspired by this new logic in our world. So yes, of course, it is a theme I go back to every single time I have the opportunity, because it is the fabric of the modern world.