We start the week with a TNMC exclusive interview with Shadow of The Vampire director E. Elias Merhige. Special thanks to Q-Brick for conducting the interview and Mr. Merhige for allowing us to quiz him. Hopefully we'll have more interviews in the future. If you work in the film business don't be shy and email me.
Interview with Director E. Elias Merhige
Edmund Elias Merhige is a New York native who holds a Fine Arts Degree in Film Direction from New York University at Purchase. He also has an extensive stage background but came to the notice of film fans with Begotten, which made Time Magazine's Top Ten list. Since then he's directed music videos for the likes of Marilyn Manson. Now, in his late-30's, Merhige has directed Shadow Of The Vampire for Nicholas Cage's Saturn Films.
Elias, as he's called, is relaxing in the glow of a late autumn afternoon. His hair, speckled with premature gray, tops a face that is somewhere between rugged leading man and tough-guy character actor. When we talk, Merhige has already braved the rigors of a press round-table and TV interviews but his responses are enthusiastic. His soft-spoken manner reveals a broad artistic background.
Your first feature film Begotten made quite an impact. Why did it take so long for you make another feature?
It was a combination of things. It's very difficult to find really great material..to find something that really speaks to you, on the deepest of levels. Also, it's really hard to simply get a film off the ground. I was involved in two or three development deals that fell apart like a house of cards. That's just part of the business. What's important is to be infinitely patient.
How instrumental was Nicholas Cage in getting this project started?
He was the one. He read the script by Steven Katz first and wanted to produce it. He'd gotten a video copy of Begotten as a present from a friend and thought it was remarkable and exciting. He contacted me through his company, Saturn Films. We just talked at first. We talked about everything from Leonard da Vinci to Nikolai Tesla. We clicked and three days later they sent me Shadow of the Vampire. I immediately fell in love with it. I knew I could do something exciting.
What were the elements that appealed to you?
It was everything. The possibilities were there to be original in terms of style and aesthetics...to tell a story in a unique way. I could explore humor in a way, that I like. Smart humor. Not silly humor.
Luxembourg was an interesting choice for the location and it certainly gives the film a very unique look. Were there other reasons for shooting there?
There were tax incentives, of course. But it also has a great blending of Eastern and Western architecture. One of the castles that I shot in, Chateau Vienden was one that Victor Hugo loved very much. It hasn't changed in the last hundred-fifty years. I know that it has been there since the 11th Century. To work in that kind of extraordinary atmosphere provides a great place for your actors. You know, the shooting of Murnau's Nosferatu was very different for it's time. In that era, it was very unusual for a production to travel very far. Murnau took his cast and crew...practically to Transylvania.
By the way, you've got some great faces in this cast. Were Malkovich and Dafoe your first choices?
I went straight to them with this script. If you look at Dreyer's Joan Of Arc it's full of fantastic faces. That's what makes that film so profound. It has faces that you just don't forget. That's what I wanted to evoke in this film.
How did Willem Dafoe prepare for the role of Max Schreck?
Willem is a very tactile actor. He would say, 'Just put in the teeth...put on the mask...get me in the costume and let me rip.' In many ways that was the point at which Willem would begin to work from. Of course, I provided the broad brush strokes of the, sort of, tragic Byronic figure that experienced the full spectrum of a life lived over hundreds of years. Schreck was supposed to be playing Dracula. He's a figure who was once a nobleman but now he's reduced to living a rat-like existence. He's a thing that no one wants to love. I wanted that sorrow...that monster who wanted to crawl back to life.
How much is known about the real Max Schreck?
Very little. But that allowed the film to become such a launching pad for my imagination.
What about John Malkovich?
John's very different. He's very cerebral. Months before we started shooting he invited me to Paris to meet with him. He really worked on who Murnau was and that helped me to know where to take that character. That was possible with someone as talented as John. Working with John and Willem is like being given two rare pigments of paint. You can use them to either broaden and deepen the landscape you want to paint or you may not use them at all. I spent a lot of late nights thinking how I could use these guys to tell the story I wanted to tell.
You seem very interested in the Silent Film era.
I walked into this film with a rich background, not only in film but also Philosophy, Painting, Poetry and Novel-writing. I do hope that this film might invigorate and interest people in the work of Murnau, Fritz Lang, Pabst and Griffith. They were creating a medium that has become one of the most powerful of art forms.
Was this an expensive picture?
It was made for way under ten million. That's everything...the costumes, lumber for the sets...housing the talent, travel....everything.
That's nothing.
Right. That amount is like the catering tab for most Hollywood films.
Can you talk about your next project?
Not too much. I have been doing research into the Knights Templar. I'm interested in the idea of how they brought knowledge from the East and introduced it to Renaissance Europe...then having that knowledge go underground because of the Inquisition....then having that knowledge surface as the scientific revolution. I'm very interested in that.
Shadow of The Vampire Review
"After reading Steven Katz's screenplay for Shadow of The Vampire, director E. Elias Merhige knew he could fashion something unique and original. To his credit, Merhige has kept his word. Some of the credit must also go to Producer Nicholas Cage. I'm sure the concept was close to the actor's heart....remember the wacky, over-the-top Cage in Kiss of The Vampire? He shows real savvy by recognizing a great idea for a movie and perfectly matching it with the right film maker.
Merhige's movie faithfully recreates the era of silent films when visionaries like F.W. Murnau and others were creating their own vocabulary in dramatic and very stylized ways. The great German director made the very first and also very unauthorized screen version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Changing the count's name to Orloc, he employed actor Max Schreck (which means 'shriek')for the pivotal role. And though Schreck's frightening visage still shocks, very little is known about him.
Shadow of The Vampire allows screenwriter Katz and director Merhige to pose two questions: What if Schreck were really a vampire? And to what lengths will a director go to see his vision intact, on-screen. But this is not some dry philosophical exercise. It is a genuinely entertaining and thoroughly engaging journey into lunacy as Murnau declares to his crew that they can only shoot Schreck's scenes at night. He impresses on his crew that the actor has studied the methods of Stanislavski.
And what a terrific looking film. Shooting in Luxembourg textures the story with the unearthly. You can almost feel the chill of the stone...smell the rot. Whatever the film makers saved on shooting there, they gained in atmosphere dripping with decay. The casting of John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Schreck is so rich with possibility and Merhige takes full advantage.
Malkovich seizes the role of Murnau who burns with artistic pretentiousness. They are not making movies...they are making science. But Dafoe will have jaws dropping in theaters across the country with his grotesquely comic take on Schreck. You simply cannot wander off when he's in the frame. Katja Reinert's make-up is a scene-stealer in itself. If Dafoe gets an Oscar nomination for his portrayal...he might need to share it with her.
(Note: following may contain Spoilers)
Film fanatics and industry types will relish exchanges such as one that finds director Murnau and actor Schreck declaring that they don't need the screenwriter any longer. Schreck decides that the writer would serve the film better if the author were simply served to Schreck.
I don't know if Shadow of The Vampire will become a classic but there is one sequence that I've already had to inscribe as one of my favorite moments in the cinema. It is simply brilliant. Schreck discovers a projector near the set. It's there to view the rushes of the previous day's footage. As he cranks the vitascope, an image of clouds floats on a sheet serving as a screen. Fascinated, he turns and stares directly into the lens of the projector. This new invention allows him to see, on film, an image he has not viewed in hundreds of years: a sunrise.
Shadow of The Vampire has been added to this reviewer's list of Top Ten Films for the year 2000. This is one vampire movie that doesn't suck."
(Interview conducted and review sent in by 'Q-Brick'.)
Stay tuned...
That's all folks...
DeadPool
