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By Devlin Smith, Contributing Editor
2006.04
Ed. Note - In light of the release of "Don't Come Knocking," Interference.com was lucky enough to get two interviews with director Wim Wenders. The first, appearing below, was conducted via e-mail by Contributing Editor Devlin Smith, and focuses on the relationship between music and film. The second, conducted in person by staff writer Matt Anderson, discusses the new film as well as the title track Bono and Edge created for it.
He's been directing movies for more than 30 years, bringing to the screen nearly two dozen German- and English-language full-length features, including 1984's "Paris, Texas," written by Sam Shepard, "Wings of Desire" and "The Buena Vista Social Club." He also brought Bono's "Million Dollar Hotel" to the big screen and transformed the members of U2 into guardian angels for the "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" video.
This winter marked the release of Wim Wenders's 22nd feature film, "Don't Come Knocking." The film is Wenders second collaboration with Shepard and also includes a title song written by Bono and The Edge and sung by Bono and Andrea Corr. U2 had previously brought Wenders the "Until the End of the World" and "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" title tracks, as well as songs for the "Million Dollar Hotel" soundtrack.
Wenders recently answered the following questions for Interference.com, talking about his new film, his relationship with U2 and good film music.
Your latest film "Don't Come Knocking" marks your second collaboration with actor/screenwriter Sam Shepard. What drew you to this script? Also, what made you want to work with Shepard again?
I was simply drawn to work with Sam again. Our collaboration on "Paris, Texas" had just been perfect, as far as writer/director relations go. In fact it had been too good to be true, so to speak, and we had therefore decided not to touch it for a while. You can only ruin a good thing by repeating it too early or too eagerly. But then we met, by complete accident, at a Lou Reed concert in New York and realized how much time had already passed. A few months later I looked at a treatment I had written, by myself, and it hit me—I knew the best writer in the world for that story and for the place I intended it to happen in. It was a family story, mainly dealing with a lost father and an unknown son, and I wanted to shoot it in Montana.
So I called Sam up. He invited me to come and see him. To tell you the truth, he didn't like my story all that much, almost nothing of it remained, but that was fine with me. That paper had been not more than a pretext to see Sam and before we knew it, we were already figuring out another character and a whole different approach. And then we started writing "Don't Come Knocking" together. It took us altogether three and a half years.
This film also reunites you with members of U2. Why did you want to have a Bono/Edge song on this soundtrack? What do you think of the song "Don't Come Knocking"?
Well, it seemed like wishful thinking for a while, and I hadn't exactly asked Bono. He had seen an early version of the film and had just mentioned that he thought it would be fun to come up with a title song. I wasn't sure if that was ever going to happen, after all, U2 were in the middle of an utterly successful and demanding tour, they were involved in Live Aid and The ONE Campaign and what not. So we eventually finished the cut, T Bone Burnett scored the film and when we got it ready for the Cannes Film Festival, we had no Bono and Edge song yet. We put something else under the intended scene and under the credits, but just to hold the place, and kept waiting. Nothing happened. I saw Bono a few times (I saw the Vertigo concert in five different cities and twice at the Madison Square Garden) but he was a bit evasive about the song—yes, he was working on it. I didn't feel like pressing too hard, after all, the man had a lot on his plate and many much more important issues to handle than a song for a movie.
So finally the day came when we just ran out of time. We had to start striking prints, as the film was going to come out in Germany, Italy and France. So my producer and friend Peter [Schwartzkopff] said, "Wim, this title song is a pipedream. In two weeks we'll have to deliver a couple of hundred prints. Let's drop the idea." I asked him for a last leeway, so we set a deadline for a Monday two weeks away. On that day the lab would just start making prints, no matter what.
Those two weeks also went by so I confirmed to Peter to go ahead on Monday. But on the Friday night before, I got an e-mail from Edge with a giant attachment. It took a long time to open it and it was the song. I listened to it, jubilant, and loved it (Bono had mentioned he was considering a duet with Andrea but I had no idea how gorgeous that was going to be). The only drawback, the underlying instrumental music was strictly a temp-track. Edge had laid it down on his computer but they didn't have the time to record it with the full band, the strings and all. So, on one hand, I had the song and, on the other, I was still light years away and I only had that weekend left. So I sent the attachment on from Berlin to T-Bone in LA and told him that he had basically 48 hours to complete it, record the instruments, arrange and mix it. He wrote me back, "Are you out of your mind?" I answered, "No. We have no other choice!" So T-Bone heroically got all the musicians back together that had worked on the score, including Marc Ribot on guitar and Jim Keltner on drums, and did the impossible. He recorded on Saturday night, mixed it on Sunday and Monday morning, when we entered the studio to put the song into the mix and produce a new optical track, the complete song was in the computer. That night they started making prints. Unbelievable but true.
How does the process of commissioning a soundtrack song work? How involved are you in the creation of the song? Do you specify a scene or feeling you want it to evoke or give the artists free range?
As you see in my above account, there is no rule. Bono and Edge knew the film and knew the parameters. With other people, I would have been much more specific but with these guys, you can trust them blindly.
Why do you think you've had such a long, successful working relationship with U2? What is it about the music the band members make that fits so well with your films?
Good question. I'm glad I can't really answer it. I know from my side that there is just a great affinity to their work, musically and spiritually, and an appreciation of who they are and who they managed to remain in spite of all the success and fame. But I'm also glad that part of that affinity will remain mysterious. Of course, I can't answer for them what they feel or see in my films. Hey, I'm just glad I know those guys.
How important do you think songs are in expressing the theme of your films?
Utterly important. For many people, that song will constitute their first encounter with the film.
What qualities do successful soundtrack songs have? What are some songs from your own films that you think best fit that criteria?
I can't find any better examples than a couple of songs that U2 made for my films. The title tracks to both "Until the End of the World" as well as "Faraway, So Close!" were perfect, period. They summed up the climate of the film without spelling the message or the feeling out too clearly. If a song is too much on the nose, that becomes dangerous. It just has to evoke the film and what it is about and it also has to be able to stand on its own. People want to love that song on its own behalf, outside the context of the film.
In addition to working with U2 on your soundtracks, you've also directed several videos for the band. Is a video planned for "Don't Come Knocking"?
No, at least not yet. They need a rest, man.
How are film and video directing similar? How are they different?
In directing a video, you just have to adjust to very different criteria. People who'll see it will not come to a theater and make a choice and pay for it but they see it by chance, on a music channel or as they zap around on their TV. You have to catch their attention in a highly competitive surrounding. Well, that only works if the song is great in the first place. And if you then find a visually compatible way to translate that song back into images (sometimes with a little help from the film's imagery, but not too much).
What do you like about directing? What do you think your strengths as a director are?
When I was a very young director, I asked myself that. Can I do this better than anybody else? Or can I only do it as good as many others? And then I realized that if I stuck to my own guns and not tried to imitate any other movies, then there was some work that only I could do. And ever since I tried to remain true to that notion that I'd never start a project that I felt other directors could do better or just as well. This way, I discovered my weaknesses (which I will not confess to you but one of them, for a long time, was certainly my tendency to put too much into each film so they often were just too long. I hope I have that under control now.) and also my strengths. One of them might be a heightened sense of place. Most of my films start out with a desire to discover a certain landscape or a city and find the one story that would have to happen there with a certain necessity. I hate movies that could take place just as well somewhere else. So "Don't Come Knocking," for instance, just had to be set in this fantastic little town in Montana called Butte. I knew that from the outset.
Do you have any future projects lined up? Do you have any definite plans to work with the guys in U2 again in the near future?
Nothing would be more pleasant than to work with them again but I don't want to become greedy and stretch my luck, they have already given me so much extraordinary music. I don't think they collaborated on so many projects with any other director. Right now, I don't even know what my next film will be. I shot really three in a row, back to back, as "Don't Come Knocking" took altogether five years and as I shot "The Soul of a Man" and "Land of Plenty" in between.
For more information on Wim Wenders, visit his official website or the site for his production company. More about "Don't Come Knocking" can be found at its official site.
Many thanks to Wim Wenders and Pati Keilwerth for their help with this article.
By Devlin Smith, Contributing Editor
2006.04
Ed. Note - In light of the release of "Don't Come Knocking," Interference.com was lucky enough to get two interviews with director Wim Wenders. The first, appearing below, was conducted via e-mail by Contributing Editor Devlin Smith, and focuses on the relationship between music and film. The second, conducted in person by staff writer Matt Anderson, discusses the new film as well as the title track Bono and Edge created for it.
He's been directing movies for more than 30 years, bringing to the screen nearly two dozen German- and English-language full-length features, including 1984's "Paris, Texas," written by Sam Shepard, "Wings of Desire" and "The Buena Vista Social Club." He also brought Bono's "Million Dollar Hotel" to the big screen and transformed the members of U2 into guardian angels for the "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" video.
This winter marked the release of Wim Wenders's 22nd feature film, "Don't Come Knocking." The film is Wenders second collaboration with Shepard and also includes a title song written by Bono and The Edge and sung by Bono and Andrea Corr. U2 had previously brought Wenders the "Until the End of the World" and "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" title tracks, as well as songs for the "Million Dollar Hotel" soundtrack.
Wenders recently answered the following questions for Interference.com, talking about his new film, his relationship with U2 and good film music.
Your latest film "Don't Come Knocking" marks your second collaboration with actor/screenwriter Sam Shepard. What drew you to this script? Also, what made you want to work with Shepard again?
I was simply drawn to work with Sam again. Our collaboration on "Paris, Texas" had just been perfect, as far as writer/director relations go. In fact it had been too good to be true, so to speak, and we had therefore decided not to touch it for a while. You can only ruin a good thing by repeating it too early or too eagerly. But then we met, by complete accident, at a Lou Reed concert in New York and realized how much time had already passed. A few months later I looked at a treatment I had written, by myself, and it hit me—I knew the best writer in the world for that story and for the place I intended it to happen in. It was a family story, mainly dealing with a lost father and an unknown son, and I wanted to shoot it in Montana.
So I called Sam up. He invited me to come and see him. To tell you the truth, he didn't like my story all that much, almost nothing of it remained, but that was fine with me. That paper had been not more than a pretext to see Sam and before we knew it, we were already figuring out another character and a whole different approach. And then we started writing "Don't Come Knocking" together. It took us altogether three and a half years.
This film also reunites you with members of U2. Why did you want to have a Bono/Edge song on this soundtrack? What do you think of the song "Don't Come Knocking"?
Well, it seemed like wishful thinking for a while, and I hadn't exactly asked Bono. He had seen an early version of the film and had just mentioned that he thought it would be fun to come up with a title song. I wasn't sure if that was ever going to happen, after all, U2 were in the middle of an utterly successful and demanding tour, they were involved in Live Aid and The ONE Campaign and what not. So we eventually finished the cut, T Bone Burnett scored the film and when we got it ready for the Cannes Film Festival, we had no Bono and Edge song yet. We put something else under the intended scene and under the credits, but just to hold the place, and kept waiting. Nothing happened. I saw Bono a few times (I saw the Vertigo concert in five different cities and twice at the Madison Square Garden) but he was a bit evasive about the song—yes, he was working on it. I didn't feel like pressing too hard, after all, the man had a lot on his plate and many much more important issues to handle than a song for a movie.
So finally the day came when we just ran out of time. We had to start striking prints, as the film was going to come out in Germany, Italy and France. So my producer and friend Peter [Schwartzkopff] said, "Wim, this title song is a pipedream. In two weeks we'll have to deliver a couple of hundred prints. Let's drop the idea." I asked him for a last leeway, so we set a deadline for a Monday two weeks away. On that day the lab would just start making prints, no matter what.
Those two weeks also went by so I confirmed to Peter to go ahead on Monday. But on the Friday night before, I got an e-mail from Edge with a giant attachment. It took a long time to open it and it was the song. I listened to it, jubilant, and loved it (Bono had mentioned he was considering a duet with Andrea but I had no idea how gorgeous that was going to be). The only drawback, the underlying instrumental music was strictly a temp-track. Edge had laid it down on his computer but they didn't have the time to record it with the full band, the strings and all. So, on one hand, I had the song and, on the other, I was still light years away and I only had that weekend left. So I sent the attachment on from Berlin to T-Bone in LA and told him that he had basically 48 hours to complete it, record the instruments, arrange and mix it. He wrote me back, "Are you out of your mind?" I answered, "No. We have no other choice!" So T-Bone heroically got all the musicians back together that had worked on the score, including Marc Ribot on guitar and Jim Keltner on drums, and did the impossible. He recorded on Saturday night, mixed it on Sunday and Monday morning, when we entered the studio to put the song into the mix and produce a new optical track, the complete song was in the computer. That night they started making prints. Unbelievable but true.
How does the process of commissioning a soundtrack song work? How involved are you in the creation of the song? Do you specify a scene or feeling you want it to evoke or give the artists free range?
As you see in my above account, there is no rule. Bono and Edge knew the film and knew the parameters. With other people, I would have been much more specific but with these guys, you can trust them blindly.
Why do you think you've had such a long, successful working relationship with U2? What is it about the music the band members make that fits so well with your films?
Good question. I'm glad I can't really answer it. I know from my side that there is just a great affinity to their work, musically and spiritually, and an appreciation of who they are and who they managed to remain in spite of all the success and fame. But I'm also glad that part of that affinity will remain mysterious. Of course, I can't answer for them what they feel or see in my films. Hey, I'm just glad I know those guys.
How important do you think songs are in expressing the theme of your films?
Utterly important. For many people, that song will constitute their first encounter with the film.
What qualities do successful soundtrack songs have? What are some songs from your own films that you think best fit that criteria?
I can't find any better examples than a couple of songs that U2 made for my films. The title tracks to both "Until the End of the World" as well as "Faraway, So Close!" were perfect, period. They summed up the climate of the film without spelling the message or the feeling out too clearly. If a song is too much on the nose, that becomes dangerous. It just has to evoke the film and what it is about and it also has to be able to stand on its own. People want to love that song on its own behalf, outside the context of the film.
In addition to working with U2 on your soundtracks, you've also directed several videos for the band. Is a video planned for "Don't Come Knocking"?
No, at least not yet. They need a rest, man.
How are film and video directing similar? How are they different?
In directing a video, you just have to adjust to very different criteria. People who'll see it will not come to a theater and make a choice and pay for it but they see it by chance, on a music channel or as they zap around on their TV. You have to catch their attention in a highly competitive surrounding. Well, that only works if the song is great in the first place. And if you then find a visually compatible way to translate that song back into images (sometimes with a little help from the film's imagery, but not too much).
What do you like about directing? What do you think your strengths as a director are?
When I was a very young director, I asked myself that. Can I do this better than anybody else? Or can I only do it as good as many others? And then I realized that if I stuck to my own guns and not tried to imitate any other movies, then there was some work that only I could do. And ever since I tried to remain true to that notion that I'd never start a project that I felt other directors could do better or just as well. This way, I discovered my weaknesses (which I will not confess to you but one of them, for a long time, was certainly my tendency to put too much into each film so they often were just too long. I hope I have that under control now.) and also my strengths. One of them might be a heightened sense of place. Most of my films start out with a desire to discover a certain landscape or a city and find the one story that would have to happen there with a certain necessity. I hate movies that could take place just as well somewhere else. So "Don't Come Knocking," for instance, just had to be set in this fantastic little town in Montana called Butte. I knew that from the outset.
Do you have any future projects lined up? Do you have any definite plans to work with the guys in U2 again in the near future?
Nothing would be more pleasant than to work with them again but I don't want to become greedy and stretch my luck, they have already given me so much extraordinary music. I don't think they collaborated on so many projects with any other director. Right now, I don't even know what my next film will be. I shot really three in a row, back to back, as "Don't Come Knocking" took altogether five years and as I shot "The Soul of a Man" and "Land of Plenty" in between.
For more information on Wim Wenders, visit his official website or the site for his production company. More about "Don't Come Knocking" can be found at its official site.
Many thanks to Wim Wenders and Pati Keilwerth for their help with this article.
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interference interviews wim wenders?????
congrats too!!!!!
