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15 MINUTES WITH TONY PALMER

16.03.2010

With a career sprawling in four decades and films which amount to 100 +, Tony Palmer is still fascinated by interesting people who happen to be musicians and keeps on making films about them. Bulgarian audience had the rare chance to see one of his early works, the crazy journey of Frank Zappa and his band 200 Motels, the peculiar yet maybe veritable account on Chopin’s relation with a Polish countess The Strange Case of Delphina Potocka or The Mystery of Chopin, and his latest controversial portrait of the Greek composer Vangelis, Vangelis and the Journey to Ithaca. If you have seen the last you are among the few lucky ones, because the future of the film and its release is uncertain, since Vangelis himself is not happy with the end result.

Tony Palmer gave a series of interviews during his last day in Sofia and here’s what he said for the festival site. I might got some of it right, but I also might got some of it wrong. In 15 minutes, as he pointed out, it is hard to tell whether you got the right impression for the man in front of you.

I read about the film Vangelis and the Journey to Ithaca that it is the only authorized biography of him.

Tony Palmer: No, it’s not authorized by him. It was made with him but he hates it. He’s done everything possible to stop it. He says it gives a bad or wrong impression of him. I’ve just completely lost patience but I am not going to give up. If he wants to go to court in England, he’ll lose. At some point he was signed up by Sony Classics and they asked me to make a film in order to promote him within Sony Classics but they didn’t have any money. So I found the money through a friend of mine and the movie was produced by Greek ship magnates.

The sad thing is, I don’t know whether he knows it or not, I suggested the film to various broadcasters, I suggested it to the BBC, to American TVs – they were not interested. We made a lot of compromises just to keep him happy, but he’s still not happy about it. And I am a director with some reputation after all, I can’t let him dictate me everything.

But there are so many famous people in the film, like Hugh Hudson, Ridley Scott, Oliver Stone, Roman Polanski, Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, who pay tribute to him. There are segments on his early career, on his latest compositions, he’s also presented as an artist. It seems like a thorough movie about him.

Tony Palmer: I agree with you but he thinks it damages his reputation, which is nonsense. He thinks it diminishes him. This is one of the reasons I accepted Stefan Kitanov’s invitation here because I got so sick of Vangelis telling me that he hated the movie that I became very worried that the film is not good, so I wanted to see it with an audience. Well, people stood up and cheered, I was very moved, I was in tears. In the end, if you want to have a film about you made exactly as you see yourself, you should be the one producing it.

So, how do you draw the line between what your perception of the person you’re making a film about is and the face they want to show?

Tony Palmer: I’ll tell you this – Serge Lifar, the last famous choreographer of Dyagilev, when we were interviewing him he told me a wonderful story about himself. How in 1929 he went to Venice looking for Dyagilev. He knew that Sergey Pavlovich was very ill. I personally remember the date he said because it was my birthday. So, he claimed with tears rolling down his eyes that the same night Dyagilev died in his arms. Terrible story.

The trouble is there’s no word of truth in it. It was not in Venice, it was not on 29 Aug and Dyagilev didn’t die in the arms of Lifar but this is the story Lifar wants to tell me. With living people you’ve got a problem, because they’re not going to tell you the truth.

It’s an extreme case I told you about but it is often the case. Dead people are easier a subject because they can’t answer for themselves. But then off course there is this public image. People have an image of what Chopin was like, for example. So when you make a film and you chose a completely different kind of person – and my understanding of this person comes from my listening to the music and trying to understand what kind of person he was, what is he trying to tell me with his music – this is not the kind of film in which a feeble old man speaking with the kind of voice I am speaking today, this is the music of a man who’s passionate and angry and furious and full of energy and guts!

People say, “This is not the image of our god Frederic Chopin.” So with the dead people is not again as straightforward as you would think it could be. And what I am always interested in is people, I am not interested in Maria Callas because she was a great singer, I am interested in her because she was woman in a hell of a mess who happened to be a singer, rather than a great singer who happened to be a woman in a hell of a mess.

Karl Orf, for example, was also not e very bright figure. He was a terrible man. I interviewed his three wives and his children, and they all said terrible things about him. Still, this doesn’t make him a worse composer than he was.

So you’re not approaching them because you like their music.

Tony Palmer: I am approaching them through the music. And it is a kind of a journey and exploration and trying to find out what really made them those human beings that they were. Off course I am guessing. On the whole, I think I guessed more right than wrong. It happens that sometimes people accused me of guessing wrong. I made a big film about Brahms, for example, and I was absolutely determined to do in the way that I did it. It is called Brahms and the Little Singing Girls. When I was asked who those girls were I had to explain that Brahms grew up in the brothels in Hamburg and when in the end of his life, the last 15 years actually, he lived in Vienna, we knew that he was looked after by the city’s prostitutes. They did everything for him. They were his family and they looked after him. This was deeply offensive to Brahms’ purists. We did the film in 1992-93. In 2001 came out a book about Brahms and it had a whole chapter about the Little Singing Girls, and it was written there that the first who realized this story was the British director Tony Palmer.

You’re taking risks all the time. For example, what if I go home now and write a few paragraphs about you. And that would be my guessing, it’s not going to be the truth about you. I might get some of it right, I might get some of it wrong. If I spend a month with you than there’s a better chance that I get more of it right and less of it wrong. So when I start to make a film about somebody I will spend a year, or 2-3 years just listening to the music, talking to them, gradually getting to know them, interviewing them several times.

But your filmography consists of more than 100 movies. How do you find a time for this long process of researching?

Tony Palmer: I am very old and I lived a very long time!

Out of your movies do you have a personal favorite, a film that you’re more satisfied with the results?

Tony Palmer: No, I don’t have a favorite. It’s like a woman giving birth to her new child. It’s my favorite child. I also have 3 other children but this one is the best that I like right now. The most recent film is always the one that I feel is the most wonderful. Some come very close to what I think philosophically. The film I made about Parsifal for example (Parsifal, 1997). Or the film that I made for the Miss World Contest comes very close to what I think about women and beauty. Not really the same as my favorite film but I am aware that some of them I got right and some of them I got wrong.

Why did you start in a first place making movies about musicians, composers, singers? Why did you choose this particular genre?

Tony Palmer: When I joined the BBC I was asked to make my first film Benjamin Britten & His Festival. Unfortunately it was not bad and they said, “That’s what he can do.” I tried several times to escape but never really for good.

You received here the Sofia Municipality award.

Tony Palmer: Yes, I was amazed. I don’t know what I did to deserve it. You know what I mean – I am enormously flattered, and very proud of it. I honestly, genuinely don’t think I did anything to deserve it. I am always a bit surprised about awards. And what is really the case is that sometimes I think a film is really good, but it get’s ignored. And a film that I am not really happy with gets an award. One knows oneself which is good and which is not good.

How did you meet Stefan Kitanov?

Tony Palmer: He invited me at the Rock Film Festival because I made a lot of rock and roll films as well. He made me feel incredibly welcomed and I liked him enormously. When I came the second year I told him I have a film that I need to find some big locations and I asked him whether he would like to be the co-producer. He said, why not. What I didn’t realize was that he never produced a film. That film, Englang, My England, started his career as a producer. And he did a wonderful job! And later on we collaborated on The Strange Case of Delphina Potocka or The Mystery of Chopin.

Lora Traykova

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LESS THAN A MONTH TO SUBMIT YOUR FILMS TO SOFIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2011.

11.11.2010

The 15th Sofia International Film Festival will be held from 4 until 20 March 2011 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Deadline for film submissions: December 1, 2010