| Director's Statement
Lars von Trier and I have worked together since 1995, since we formed Dogme ’95.
We are the ultimate opposites when it comes to our work and form, and it is therefore inspiring every time we collaborate.
Lars is precise and systematic - almost mathematically exact - especially in the way he continues to experiment with a film’s form. I, myself, work more intuitively and searchingly, endeavouring to do what I can to create life and humanity on the screen.
The thought of uniting these qualities in the same film was appealing and, when the opportunity arose, I basically said yes before I’d even read the screenplay. I have, since then, gone to the trouble of doing so.
DEAR WENDY is about a group of young people in a poverty-stricken coal mining town somewhere in the American southeast. They remove themselves from their surroundings by forming a club in which they can carry and worship their handguns while remaining true to their pacifist views. A classic, thought-provoking drama, I thought. Pacifists with weapons is what most of the western world consider themselves, I thought as well. I reduced the characters’ ages by ten years and did everything I could to work against the stylized story – the sense of being on a stage. I have tried, throughout the entire project, to anchor the film in a form of reality and recognizability and thereby remain true to the film’s unusual and fascinating storyline. Since I began work on DEAR WENDY I have found myself facing a series of disturbing thoughts and emotions regarding the love of weapons.
Thomas Vinterberg
November 2004
With the provocative DEAR WENDY, the highly acclaimed Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg (THE CELEBRATION, IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE) sets his sights on a universe in which a group of young, peace-loving misfits in a poor mining town in the American South unexpectedly develop a passion for guns. In collaboration with fellow Dogme 95 creator Lars von Trier (DOGVILLE and the forthcoming MANDERLAY), who wrote the screenplay, Vinterberg has conceived an incendiary and illuminating depiction of gun lust and its ramifications on modern American life both at home and abroad.
The film features a powerful international cast that includes the young British talent Jamie Bell (BILLY ELLIOT, UNDERTOW, the forthcoming CHUMSCRUBBER) in the leading role of sharp-shooting pacifist Dick Dandelion; Bill Pullman (LOST HIGHWAY, INDEPENDENCE DAY) as the small-town sheriff Krugsby who tries in vain to maintain law and order; and a rich supporting cast of up-and-coming and already-established young actors including Michael Angarano (ALMOST FAMOUS, SEABISCUIT), Danso Gordon (AMERICAN HISTORY X), Chris Owen (SHE'S ALL THAT, AMERICAN PIE 1 & 2 and HIDALGO), Alison Pill (PIECES OF APRIL) and Mark Webber (THE LARAMIE PROJECT, STORYTELLING, BOMB THE SYSTEM).
Reuniting with his previous collaborator Lars von Trier, Vinterberg was intrigued by DEAR WENDY in its initial script form for its political allegory as well as its politically incorrect spirit. Most of all, he felt himself drawn to a story about being young and disappointed with life and trying to create something larger for one's self as an outsider, misfit or loser. Although von Trier receives full credit for the screenplay, Vinterberg found himself toning down his colleague's notorious provocations, as well as his plan for a minimalist stage-like setting that recalled DOGVILLE and MANDERLAY in its use of characters as quasi-chess pieces.
"I think Lars went out hunting one day and found it interesting and amusing to conceive a love story about a man and a gun," Vinterberg says. "Primarily I changed the age of the young characters - his characters were initially fifteen years older than they are in the film. But a lot of the script was already there. I tried to develop the part of the script that was about being young and disappointed with what life puts in front of you -- the idea of born losers who want to become something else. For me there was this very touching story hidden in the script about some young people who have to make a choice in their lives, between going into death together or going back to a normal, grey existence."
Vinterberg recognized this youthful longing for escape and transformation in everything from the Columbine High School massacre to the tendency for misfit teenagers to form rock groups and create art in a certain manner, or take drugs to escape the typically humdrum nature of daily life. "I felt in some way that this film was related to what happened at Columbine - a comment on it," Vinterberg insists. "I think we are discussing issues related to Columbine - the idea of having to choose death in the end. That's a parallel to Columbine. But there are a lot of other parallels and allegories in the film. When I started thinking about the concept of pacifists with guns, I also thought about peacekeeping missions of the Western world and the escalation of arms in order to maintain that peace. (In Lars's microscopic way of thinking), he was talking about world politics in his script. But at the same time he was talking about the refined, psychological and inexplicable thing that happens when a man holds a gun in his hand. It almost becomes something erotic. On a very refined level, the film explores peoples' attraction to firearms in an almost sexual way."
Vinterberg himself is a self-identified pacifist who was taught growing up to despise guns. Yet he admits a keen fascination with firearms, something he shared early on with von Trier. "One of the things that doesn't irritate me about Lars is that he is so up front about the fact that people do feel attracted to firearms," says Vinterberg. "That itself was so provocative that I wanted to step in and see where I could go with that. I think what the film says is that it's not the gun itself that is evil. What we should focus on is the hand that holds the gun. It's the moment when fear or greed or desire or power enters the picture that the concept of firearms turns ugly."
Considering its provocative subject matter, DEAR WENDY emerges as a surprisingly playful and even romantic film, particularly in the filmmakers' choice of soundtrack music and stylistic conceits. Several key songs by the Sixties' British Invasion group The Zombies take center stage in the film - von Trier and Vinterberg went so far as to incorporate song lyrics from The Zombies' oeuvre as character dialogue. "This had everything to do with the Anglophilia that comes into play with the Dandies," Vinterberg says, referring to the 19th century British tradition of flamboyant men in ornate finery wielding sharp tongues -- sartorial icons like Beau Brummell, Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde, who transformed Victorian England with their audacious wit and style. "The ritualism of the Dandies in the film sort of steers you back to England," Vinterberg continues. "For a cult, you need trademarks. And one of them became the music of The Zombies. The script was written around the songs - and the use of lyrics as dialogue was even more obvious in earlier drafts."
It's an odd parallel - the dirt-poor American South of the present day and the Edwardian Dandies - and it's one that Vinterberg has tried hard to conjoin into one film. As the director explains, "many scenes in the film are intended to be satiric - a portrait of America and its gun culture as seen in an almost clichéd manner, with Bill Pullman's Officer Krugsby character as a clear example. But there's also a commentary on the overly snobbish and ritualized European behavior of the original Dandy. There's a conflict in this film between the man of action and the man of the spoken word. I wanted this to become a big discussion in the film, the same sort of conflicting dynamic the United States and France have had over the issue of the Iraq war, even though this film was written before the U.S. invasion."
Of course some of the subject matter in DEAR WENDY will come across to certain viewers as anti-American. Vinterberg counters: "I don't understand the word anti-American. I find it a terrible generalization and I could as well say that I love America. There is so much great art in America; my ten favorite movies are American; and New York is my favorite city. Sixty percent of my upbringing is American and it's the same for Lars. It's the frontier of Western living. In Europe, we have McDonald's, basketball, American television, American films. We've grown up in the suburbs of America. It's very obvious that people in our countries are curious about America. They feel an urge to debate its power. And they have the right to be provocative about it and at the same time remain deeply fascinated by it. It's not like we're sitting on the other side of the ocean finger pointing. We're a part of your community."
When it came time to compile DEAR WENDY's young ensemble cast, Vinterberg took four trips to the U.S. for casting sessions, casually grouping actors in different ways in order to find the ones that worked best together. After he had settled on the young cast that would comprise the Dandies, Vinterberg held a three-week rehearsal period during which time he encouraged his young actors to improvise as a group in order to help each one better find his or her specific characters. "I also wanted them to get to know their firearms," insists Vinterberg. "Not to mention also indoctrinating them in the ritualistic behavior that goes along with being a Dandy." The director held dinners with the young cast during which each member was required to appear in character for an entire evening in order to make him or her comfortable handling whatever situation Vinterberg threw at them. "If they could improvise so well it was because they knew everything about their characters, adds Vinterberg. "I could say to them, while the cameras were rolling, Talk to your firearm! And they knew exactly what to say. This sort of character work is what I like best about my own work. It wasn't difficult for the actors because they were all so good."
The casting of the young British actor Jamie Bell as head Dandy Dick Dandelion was a long-time dream for Vinterberg, who insists that he wanted to work with the British-born Bell from the moment he saw his debut performance in BILLY ELLIOT. "I thought he had this great vulnerability and childishness in his face which contradicted the less sympathetic character of Dick," Vinterberg explains. "It created this layer of softness that I really liked. Dick was a bit of a demon when I first read Lars's script. I thought it would be more interesting to have a demon with some softness and purity to him - Jamie had youthfulness but he also gave off this well-educated Britishness. He was this tremendously complex, almost grown-up person that I felt really fit in with the character. The fact that he's British but happens to be growing as an American movie star was for me the ultimate conglomerate."
Internationally renowned cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (RUSSIAN ARK, 28 DAYS LATER) brings an invigorating look and feel to DEAR WENDY, after collaborating with both von Trier and Vinterberg on several disparate projects, including THE CELEBRATION, DOGVILLE, and IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE. "You can't find two more different personalities," Mantle says of his colleagues. "The script is so Lars. I'd just come out of DOGVILLE and in DEAR WENDY I (detected) echoes of his voice - his direct style, his irony and lucidity. Thomas I associate more with an actor's sensibility. He's a very emotional director and an emotional person. Coming from IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE, which is a much more tender and lyrical film, with an entirely different filmic language, I found DEAR WENDY to be much more direct - packed with words, sarcasm and opinion. It was very clear to me in terms of what it wanted to do."
Having shot several of Vinterberg's previous features, including THE CELEBRATION, Mantle was well aware of the director's working methods, praising him for knowing what he wants. "This is a script that was really there, so it enabled Thomas to implant his directorial touch," Mantle says of his friend and neighbor. "And it wasn't an easy read. When I read THE CELEBRATION and DOGVILLE, those were easy reads. DEAR WENDY intrigued me with its sexual allegory and the weapon fantasies. I thought it was an interesting new look at a subject matter we're very familiar with in film. Also that strange amalgamation of weapons and the dandy environment was intriguing. Thomas likes to work with emotions. He's not scared of melodrama or sentimentality - and he has humour as well." Mantle compares his work on DEAR WENDY to THE CELEBRATION: "Thomas has this combination of humor and satire going on in his work, but at the same time there's something emotionally disturbing going on underneath the floorboards," explains Mantle. "On the outside he's a smiling, good-looking lad. But there's anxiety and concern going on underneath. He's very much concerned for that other side of life, with all of its traumas."
To prepare for DEAR WENDY, Mantle went back to what he calls the anthropological camera effect that was so prevalent in his art-house sensation THE CELEBRATION. "Not in terms of camera format," insists Mantle. "But the kind of inquisitive camera effect that THE CELEBRATION employed. Coming from IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE, which was an epic attempt at glorified visual images, this was more back to the life and vitality of THE CELEBRATION." Interestingly, Mantle's principal visual influence for DEAR WENDY came from the imagery of still photographs - not just from the past, but from the present day; specifically, the war in Iraq and the photographic style of embedded photographers in war zones. "I wasn't interested in the Dogme approach for this film," Mantle adds, " but we got serious about the (world) we're living in, in which the camera is always close and alive. DEAR WENDY is a very old parable about the dangerous effects of weapons. But it's also very nostalgic in terms of the dandy world. When I started seeing the set decoration it struck me as a series of monuments in time that don't change much, like (the cinematography style employed in) Bogdanovich's THE LAST PICTURE SHOW."
Mantle also looked at the portraiture of still photographer Abel Curtis, whose portraits of cowboys and Indians and the Old West Mantle found "absolutely beautiful," especially the formats and shapes of his Western imagery. Unlike the epic, widescreen nature of vintage Westerns like HIGH NOON, Mantle opted for something more squarely, in an effort to emulate the visual monuments and still photographic style of Curtis's Old West portraits and horizons. "I come from still photography and I still look at more still photographs and paintings than I do cinema," says Mantle. "I've moved away from widescreen and traditional cinematic tools because I felt like it was an old story." So it was no stretch for him to shoot in a 1:6:6 aspect ratio, considered an old-fashioned format.
In terms of the camera configuration, DEAR WENDY was one of the biggest challenges of Mantle's illustrious career as a cinematographer. "Eighty-five percent of the camera work was achieved on a rig that I configured myself," explains Mantle. "I wanted to be able to move all the time, as I did on the set of THE CELEBRATION. We didn't have the money for a Steadicam due to economic constraints. I wanted a rig I could carry myself while still having Thomas and the actors in my ears, as well as my HD backup in a van behind me and my lighting guy nearby so I could grade scenes while I was shooting. So I put transmitters all over my body and wore this camera rig that made me look completely absurd. If I was going to be the operator, it needed to be as light as possible. I configured the camera so that I could move around free and easy. I had five people behind me holding tapes and moving cables so I could (get my shots)."
"It's one of the oldest stories in the books," Mantle says of DEAR WENDY. "These young, beautiful faces heading down the wrong mineshaft. There are thousands of kids today in all sorts of cultures who are on the same path. I despise arms - I don't even like touching guns. One of the reasons I was drawn to the film was that it commented on weapons possession."
DEAR WENDY was shot on location outside Copenhagen, where the buildings of a disused military base were transformed into the provocative snapshot of the rural American life in the South that is Estherslope. For the underground scenes in The Temple, where the young characters come to worship vintage firearms, the film was shot in a deserted mining area in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Vinterberg insists that DEAR WENDY is intended to be set in the present day, but with its stereotypical characters and retrograde depiction of small-town life - juxtaposed with late-model automobiles and semi-automatic weapons - the film feels oddly out of the past, exuding a fascinating sense of disconnect. "We threw in a lot of things, like the Zombies' music, the character of the police officer and the black maid, that create a sort of timelessness," insists Vinterberg. We wanted it to feel like a piece of theater - the sort of vision of America that you might see represented on the theatrical stage. The timelessness came out of that by accident, to be honest, but I saw that in the towns I visited in West Virginia and I thought it fit fantastically into the greyishness of being a loser. We wanted the young characters to show off their loser status as much as possible. Those old mining towns sort of looked like that." |
