JEAN JAQUES ANNAUD

Interview by Phil Edwards

Starburst: When did you first get the idea to make Quest for Fire?

Annaud: Four years ago, I met a French writer called Gerard Brach, and Gerard normally doesn't want to write for French directors, he doesn't like French cinema. He writes for Polanski and now he is writing for Wadja. The reason he wanted to meet me was that he felt that I was not a typical French director. The producer of Tess, Claude Berry, wanted me to direct a book that Gerard would adapt for the screen. In fact we read the book and didn't like it. When we met we realized we had this common passion for ancient civilization and ancient rain. Within a minute we had this passion - Gerard Brach lives in this very small apartment -he's agoraphobic. All the books he had were about prehistoric man and he asked me if I were interested in that. And that very day we decided to make a film about early emotions, about a man, not yet a man, with two or three key points like discovering of love, discovering of laughter and the idea really excited us. We said to Claude Berry that we had this terrific idea and he wouldn't listen. He thought we were really out of our minds. A few days after that I was in Los Angeles and told Michael Gruskoff about it and he was mad about it and said, "you've got a producer".

Starburst: Was it at that stage that you decided that it would be a film without ordinary dialogue?

Annaud: The very moment Gerard and I decided to write it. It's funny how nearly all the major decisions about what the film would be like were made within about ten minutes at that meeting, the first day we met. After that we went through eight or ten screenplays, adding characters changing locations and so on. But what made the film were those first ten minutes. Deciding on no dialogue and that the behaviour was the key - knowing it had all the potential for a great adventure, as well as an entertainment. It's like a cake. The base is the entertainment and on the top you have the fruit - the anthropological interest we all share, the psychological aspect of fire. This quest for fire is a quest for energy, something we still have today.

Starburst: I found Quest for Fire interesting because it isn't a glamourized version of prehistoric life, with dinosaurs wandering around and so on.

Annaud: Two things were prohibited on the shooting - the word "caveman" was never used by my unit. Honestly, that gives me goosebumps. And -"prehistoric film" was also forbidden. They would use "paleolithic", "primal man", "primeval", "neanderthal man" but no "caveman" ever, because the connotation is The Flintstones. In order to explain what I wanted, I had to carry two big books. They have been made very famous by my producer and myself because we carried them all around the studio. And in one big fat book was everything we could buy in France, Italy, England and America about that period. There are a few good illustrators who have pictured this distant past. We went to all the museums and bought all the photographs of skulls and everything, and that was a book to show what was the look of the people I wanted - the kind of feeling we could get. The other book was primitive tribes today, virgin landscapes today and at the end of all that I had a little section of what I didn't want, and that was the Racquel Welch, 1,000,000 Years BC, the Prehistoric Women and the Flintstone cartoons, I had to explain what I didn't want, because people were so puzzled. They all wanted to see this crazy person with this crazy Michael Gruskoff so enthusiastic about this. That's why I'm so proud for Michael. It's so unusual to find a producer so deeply involved.

Starburst: Yes, with an interest in the unusual and also in new talent as evidenced by his previous films. (Silent Running, Nosferatu etc).

Annaud: An American producer being interested in foreign talent is incredible. This man is trying to help "Koncholovski". He is now starting a picture with this man from Holland.

Starburst: How long did the shooting take?

Annaud: It was an enormously long pre-production. The shooting took, altogether, twelve weeks. Altogether the film took four years. It had a very long post production as it's in 7Omm, six track stereo - we had to do the sound entirely in the studio in Toronto. In Toronto, because they wanted to prove that Canadians would make good sound, they built an entire studio console to make it possible. We had a terrific unit run by an Irishman called Ken Heeley-Ray. We started editing in April and started the sound in July and had the film, as print, last December. We recorded the music here in London.

Starburst: How did you decide on Philippe Sarde?

Annaud: I wanted Richard Rodney-Bennett who I met and whose scores I loved. However we could not have any deal with any record company with him. I have known Philippe Sarde for a long time and I didn't want to make the film too French. There is nothing wrong between me and France but I don't want the film to be labeled as a French film, knowing the situation with French cinema. I was somehow reluctant to have one more French name in the credits, although Philippe Sarde is definitely a very talented musician for cinema. When he likes it and spends some time doing it he is very good and a real professional. But at the same time I was very interested in Richard Rodney-Bennett. We were in touch with all the companies and none would make a deal. Then I went to Paris and I said to my producers "All right, let's try something." I went to Philippe Sarde and said "If you get a deal with a record company I have a good reason to have you on this film." Two days later we had a deal with RCA. I was so frank with Philippe, I didn't hide anything, and we have a sensational relationship now. He wanted to prove that he could do a very big international score and we had a fantastic recording session here. We used the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and The Strasbourg Percussion at EMI studios. I was very confident with him. I told him what inspiration I wanted. Definitely Stravinsky and Prokofiev. When I was writing here in London I had this little Walkman and had Ivan the Terrible in my ears all the time and also The Magnificat of Penderecky the Polish composer. In order to edit with my editor I said we'd better do it in front of music because that gives a different mood and rhythm. In Montreal we tried all sorts of music and only four things worked - Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Penderecky and Japanese percussion. We did a temporary score, just from the records. I showed it to Philippe Sarde and he liked what we did. We took a very early decision that as the story is the emergence of man we would have the melody emerge from rhythms as the film goes on. We started with rumbles and percussion and go into more melodic music. We decided to use a solo pan flute because at the beginning it can be used to represent the wind and more and more go into classical flute. The progression of the score was very interesting. I think the score makes the film work the way I wanted it to work.

Starburst: I think it pulls the film together and adds much to the narrative drive...

Annaud: Exactly…You know some people with a very intellectual approach said to me why don't I use more primitive music and stay with the sound of nature. I think I have a film that's different enough. If I have to be different on each level it may be artistic but I wanted to have the simplicity of films like Gone With the Wind. It's true that it's simple but it has the virtue of emotion that I wanted in this film. I didn't want to make an anthropological piece. Of course I have all those interests, that's obvious enough but I wanted the music to tell the story, to tell who's the bad guy and who's the good guy, when there is danger, when it is humorous, because people would be totally puzzled otherwise - should they laugh or should they cry. Sometimes you don't know, you don't have the subtitles. And music to me helps to have this subtitle quality. Actually Philippe doesn't want to make another French film.

Starburst: I found the audience at the screening I attended quite extraordinary for the first ten minutes they weren't sure whether they should laugh but once they relaxed into it they realized that it was basically an adventure film.

Annaud: This reaction is absolutely universal. For the first ten minutes there is a tension.

Starburst: The opening is so savage isn't it...

Annaud: Yes, the fight. Something else I felt when we were editing… normally on a film you've got twenty minutes of goodwill from the audience. My editor and I felt that twenty minutes was much too long on this film, then we said we have to do this whole presentation in less than ten minutes. I went for a very tough battle for another reason. I wanted to grab the audience somehow. I couldn't grab them with humour because they would not know if they were allowed to laugh. I thought it was too early for romance or emotion. The only thing was to go to the guts, and then of course you run the risk of disturbing people. But what I know is that at that point people are not sure that they are going to like it but after the battle they saw that somehow it's a normal film. The battle is savage and strong but it's normal story telling. After that there is some emotion and the film starts for the audience with the scene with the lions. There is humour, and then they understand the kind of balance. From that moment they go with the film. Until that point they're not sure.

Starburst: I found it extraordinary that the audience sat there absolutely gripped watching a film without conventional dialogue. I found that on a second viewing I was actually understanding the sounds and what they meant How did you involve Anthony Burgess?

Annaud: We wrote the screenplay without dialogue and it had to work with only descriptions of visual and sound and then we added dialogue with what we call in French "charabia" - you know, a "wadda wadda wadda" kind of language. Then, I wanted a linguist to help me. Sandy Lieberson who was the president of Twentieth Century said to me one day as a sort of joke "Did you know that Anthony Burgess wrote the first Indo-European dictionary, not to mention his dialogue for Clockwork Orange was also brilliant". I understood that to mean I should ask him. Then I asked him if he was serious and he said yes, that Burgess is a brilliant man. So I sent him the screenplay. Then I got a phone call one day from Anthony Burgess from Monaco. "ARE YOU THE DIRECTOR, ARE YOU THE DIRECTOR? THIS IS BRILLIANT, THIS IS BRILLIANT! I'VE NEVER READ ANYTHING LIKE IT! THIS IS BRILLIANT, THIS IS BRILLIANT! THIS IS FANTASTIC-THIS IS FANTASTICI! COME, COME-WE'LL WORK, WE'LL WORK. IT'S BRILLIANT!" I went to see him in Monaco and he said something like "This is the kind of thing I would love to do. You're going to be in trouble because they're too stupid in the studio, they won't let you do that. But DON'T CHANGE THE SCREENPLAY! DON'T CHANGE THE SCREENPLAY! DON'T CHANGE IT, DON'T TOUCH IT! DON'T TOUCH IT IT'S GOOD. IT'S GREAT, IT'S GREAT-BRILLIANT!" It was just terrific to work with him because he has a creativity. He gave me his comments on the screenplay, on the anthropological aspect and the whole invention of the language. Then I became ambitious. I called Sandy and said "Sandy, it was so good to work with Anthony Burgess, why don't we think about Desmond Morris to help me with the body language and all those attitudes" and he said "Great". So I sent my screenplay to Desmond Morris and had the same kind of response. That to me was the most pleasant and exciting period of the entire film.

Starburst: So did Desmond Morris actually work with the actors?

Annaud: With the actors and with Anthony Burgess. They all came to London. We hired a bunch of mime actors and we sat at a desk and said "Okay, this is the word 'give'," for example. Anthony had a few words - we worked together, and Desmond Morris had a few gestures. Anthony said I propose "Gis" and that was not really terrific, so we said okay, "Doh." Desmond would say "Today when we say 'give' we do this" (indicating a hand gesture). Apes also do this, but with more tension. "Or we could do it this way, or this, the Italian way, or also some apes do this" (indicating more hand gestures). Or we could do it the African way (slapping back of right hand on palm of left) - ok, this is it. Next word is "water." It could be aqua or aga". Would they say "arg" as we would, or are they still at the stage of development where they would go "ugh, ugh, ugh" (similar to the noise an ape makes)? When they're thirsty would they go "ugh, ugh" or put their hands to their mouths in a cupping gesture. And so on for four hundred words. The interesting thing is that all the gestures we are using, most of them are not gestures that we use as such today but all of them are gestures we understand because ours are derived from those attitudes. For instance, if I'm doing this to her (touching Press Officer Sue Blackmore's thigh with the back of his hand) you understand what I'm doing - I'm just reassuring myself, or just feeling good being next to her. The fact that I'm doing it this way, you don't know why, but for some strange reason it rings a bell. The reason is that all apes have a sensitivity in the back of the hand. This is from Desmond Morris. At the end of the film they would use the palm of the hand because they're more human, but the transition between the two takes an hour and a half, because this is what it means. The eye contact is something we worked on tremendously. At the beginning nobody looks or stares at each other. At the end they do. They look at each other, they share.

Starburst: You can't actually look at a dog. You can stare a dog out quite easily.

Annaud: Yes. He gets disturbed. Eye contact is something which is human. Like reading feelings through the face is typically human. Even the big apes would prefer to look at the position of the tail to see if the other is furious or happy or what. You can realise how long it took, because the dictionary that we published was very thick. All the actors had to learn it by heart and be able to improvise this way.

Starburst: Did the actors have any difficulties learning the language?

Annaud: No. I picked people with good body co-ordination. That was the key. Those actors that I picked clicked into it very, very easily, and were able to interpret their emotions through those attitudes. An intelligent person with good co-ordination, if you explain that for instance pride would be showing how big you are (pushing his chest out), which is very much an ape thing, they would know what you mean, because today, Margaret Thatcher or General de Gaulle would do much the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. It's a little nuance that makes a terrific difference But at the same time, those people could get into it very easily. Fury they would express like this (beating a cushion with the back of his hand). Those people I picked felt it was very close to them. You know, most gestures are cultural. If you go to the basics - if you wash off the surface, the coating of civilization, you would find yourself with very, very strange reactions. You would want to bite, or bang. If you said to yourself. "How would I behave if I was born in the forest, if I didn't walk erect, if I had been raised by wolves. How do they behave?" And you would realize that you would get furious immediately anything went wrong. You could jab with your fist, but that is totally contemporary. What you should do is beat with the back of your fist. The natural thing is to use the fist as a weapon and you would use the back because this is the strongest part. If you are told to do that, then you translate immediately very easily. Those actors were terrific, plus they had six months training.

Starburst: They must have had to get into great physical shape because it's obvious that they play very demanding roles physically. What sort of training did they go into?

Annaud: We had six months training for the main characters and I had them every month here in London for a week and they would go back to Scotland or Manchester or America, and the first session was to explain to them what was primitive life. Then I gave them lectures and showed them a few documentaries about primitive tribes living today. I wanted them to know a few things because it was easy for me. I lived in Africa for such a long time. I did some of those documentaries so I know about tribal life, I've lived in villages so it's very clear to me. But I know people who have never seen savages in their life, so they don't know what it is to be primitive. I'll give you an anecdote. The first casting session I had was in London with a very talented English actor from the Royal Shakespeare Company. I remember my casting director was not on the right track. This man sat down and he said to me very politely "I understand perfectly well what it is to be a savage. AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!" And I said "Omigod! Not at all. To be primitive is to save energy."

Starburst: Ron Perlman plays Amoukar the supporting male lead. I found his performance extraordinary however, it's likely, because of the nature of the film that he won't receive the recognition due to him.

Annaud: In Los Angeles I saw people who were very impressed with him. You are right. What he did was so absolutely amazing-so perfect. Back to the training. I showed them over and over again two films that Twentieth Century-Fox bought, and one of them was called The Feast, a documentary shot in 1965 in Venezuela. It was so primitive I thought to myself "Oh, I'm never going to get them to that point." In fact I did. Another film was called Dead Birds shot in New Guinea. And also I screened for them all the Jane Goodall films about chimp behaviour. That was the first session, to make them understand. Then they started getting fit, running barefoot in New York - with shoes without soles, to get some callouses. Next time they came, they went to the zoo, and I explained to them that as the film was showing the emergence of man and man becoming erect I would take them back to apes and it would be very easy then to go back to man. It's of course a very Darwinist approach. So they were chimping around, so to speak, for a week, and then they did the chimp back in their houses. After that it was very easy to put them right. Just before they were totally right I stopped them. This was when Desmond Morris and Anthony Burgess came. Then for the next four months they were training in basic behaviour.

Starburst: How difficult was it to keep the make-up consistent throughout shooting?

Annaud: It was very difficult because each actor had several make-up appliances on at the same time. Each makeup took four hours to apply and two hours to take off. Each piece had to be destroyed because you could only use them once. Each piece took five hours to make. It was a nightmare. The make-up budget was three or four million dollars. We had an enormous limit.

Starburst: Christopher Tucker was in charge of the unit but how many people did he have working with him?

Annaud: About thirty people. We did the research with him, and the concept was developed with him and the texture, and after that he was manufacturing the pieces and had another unit to apply them, under his supervision. He just went casually to the shooting, he was basically in charge of the making of the pieces of the conception of the whole thing. It took us a year, taking polaroids and finding the right faces. The casting sessions were incredible as you can imagine.

Starburst: You had makeup on the animals as well. It must have been quite difficult to make up an Indian elephant to look like a woolly mammoth.

Annaud: For the elephants and the tigers, what we had to do first was to get the right concept, which was very difficult and try it on a real elephant. I did casting sessions for elephants - I know all the elephants in England, personally! With Garth Thomas (Associate Producer) we spent days and days with blankets to test whether or not they would rub it off. We had to find calm ones. He went to Ireland. I went to the Welsh parts. I went to Bristol and Manchester to find them. Jimmy Chipperfield coordinated the whole thing. Then after that we tried to make up one. It was fine and than one day I received a beautiful telex in Los Angeles from Garth Thomas. "We have entirely mastered the situation, elephant looks great. We have a mammoth". I flew back to London and they took me to Liverpool, I think, to a circus. And they said "you'll see two elephants". They said they had one in one tent and one in another and they were perfectly happy. So I waited for five hours till they were finally ready and they opened the first tent. There was a magnificent mammoth, very calm, very happy, very proud to be a mammoth. They opened the second tent. There was another mammoth-very calm, very proud to be a mammoth. Then the two elephants looked at each other and say "Who is that?!" And they were totally scared, ran away, destroyed the tent. One was so frightened that he started eating his make-up. The precious horse tail and yak hair. That was a disaster. The elephants were quite happy in the make-up because it was warm and comfortable even on their faces but they were frightened of the others. Then we had to face another problem when they discovered they had tusks. Normally in a circus they have their tusks cut and suddenly they had tusks again and they wanted to play and fight. Every day there were two or three pairs broken. We would have to go back to the Natural History Museum and take new moulds and manufacture more tusks. That was one of the major problems we had to face with the elephants. After that, when we were in Scotland they went the wrong way and ended up in the marshes. They were cold and they wanted to go back to their tent so they took a short cut. It was like a prehistoric scene. The Mammoths in the bog with all those people around. In prehistory they would kill them. Now they were trying to pull them out.

Starburst: I think one of the great strengths of the film is that the landscapes that you've used, which I'm sure took a long time to find, make it apparent that there is no fakery. You know that the mammoth is a made up elephant, and the same with the lions but the effect is almost one of a time machine because it captures an immediacy. In many ways the film has the look of a documentary.

Annaud: The locations took us a year to find. Very early on with Gerard Brach we said we wanted to shoot an adventure film, a love story, a romantic story, as we would shoot a documentary. The whole technique that I used was very much that of documentary filming-long lenses, hand held camera, practically no lighting - sometimes a few reflectors, sometimes a Brute, but mostly not. We tried to find the right location with the right lighting. We felt that that was the taste we wanted and it appeared to be essential for us. I'm very pleased that you said that because that is exactly what we intended. We did a little page to present the film. Gerard wrote it and it said at the end "and we will shoot this adventure as if a camera could have recorded it 80,000 years ago."

Starburst: One of the things I found interesting was that you have various tribes in it at different stages of evolution. Is this feasible?

Annaud: Yes, it is feasible. It is a point on which there is no controversy at all. Human evolution is not like a man's dream. Even if you take today, you have aborigines in Australia, Pygmies in Africa, Eskimos, and Japanese living in skyscrapers with computerized elevators. Today we are all homo sapiens. At that time there were Neanderthals who were structurally different and homo sapiens. They were different species, like tigers and lions. They don't look alike. I insist on that point. Today we are all homo sapiens, Neanderthal disappeared. Scientists are happy on that point. They are happy that a film shows that evolution is not like one single thing. You've got all kinds of attitudes. Just think about this. When Captain Cook discovered Tasmania in 1820, they didn't know how to make fire and they had only three different tools when here in this country we had machines and steam engines. There is a fantastic documentary called "The Lost Tasmanian". Wide audiences ignore this, they think that a single period everybody is the same. Today we are not the same. One century ago, think about the difference between the Welsh and the Italians, the differences in culture. Or a man living in London and a man living in Ghana. Plus it's a fact that during 70,000 years Neanderthal and homo sapiens were living on the same territories. For instance, in France we've got some caves with beautiful paintings. a homo sapiens cave. Next door, about a mile away there is a Neanderthal cave with some tools, no paintings, different skulls. In fact that's why I picked that period, so I could have this confrontation between two different species, two very strong cultures. It also reflects a situation we have today. I was so impressed when I went to Africa to see that people could have a culture that was so different to what I knew. I thought there was only one culture-mine. Such a mistake!

Starburst: You've got an extremely successful film. What are you going to do next?

Annaud: I don't know. I didn't want to make a decision before the film opened. I didn't know where I would stand.

Starburst: You don't forsee a Ouest For Fire Part 2?

Annaud: No. I would be totally unable to do that. It's not my style. ·

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Starburst magazine, issue #46

 

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