Writing & Directing – Love Affair or Crime Scene?

Im Rahmen der Akademie Breaks während der Berlinale sprachen Florian Gallenberger und Ivy Ho am 10. Februar 2009 über die Vorteile und Herausforderungen, die die Personalunion von Drehbuchautor und Regisseur mit sich bringt. Der OSCAR©-Preisträger Florian Gallenberger arbeitet sowohl als Drehbuchautor wie auch als Regisseur. Sein neuer Film JOHN RABE, der auf der Berlinale 2009 im Wettbewerb außer Konkurrenz lief kommt im April 2009 in die Kinos. Die Drehbuchautorin Ivy Ho lebt und arbeitet in Hong Kong. Bei ihrem Film CLAUSTROPHOBIA, der auf der Berlinale 2009 in der Sektion Panorama lief, hat sie sowohl das Drehbuch geschrieben als auch Regie geführt.

Florian Gallenberger: Is the screenwriter and the director Ivy Ho the same person?

Ivy Ho: Two persons, one is slower, not experienced. I’m more eloquent as a writer. I direct so I can continue writing. Sometimes my scripts don’t get the execution they deserve – pompous to say, I know.

Gallenberger: Did you know you were going to direct the movie when you were writing the script?

Florian Gallenberger & Ivy Ho

Ho: No. I originally wrote the script for Johnny To. He wanted a low budget love story in five acts. Without specifying anything! Just a couple of visuals like “Woman going to a pier to meet a man, wo did not show up” or “Taxi gets stuck in flood and cannot move”. The whole connection between these scenes was completely up to me! That’s what attracted me most to the project.

Gallenberger: Do you write differently knowing it is going to be you directing?

Ho: I’ve never really had a script I was aware of it was meant to be directed by me. I might try to do that in the future though whenever I get another chance to direct. So far I usually think of the director being another person. Of course it’s nice to think of ways to execute a scene when writing it, but you know how they say ‘you must not costumize a script to suit your need’, because that would be like limiting your own range of creativity. I also don’t think a unity of writer and director is a good idea in terms of the necessity to constantly think about the costs. How do you do that in Germany? Sticking to a budget?

Gallenberger: Acutally I have never shot in Germany! I’ve been making films in India, China or Mexico. But I suppose it’s the same problem anywhere. Not being able to do something that you’re supposed to do in the script and then facing the the choice on what to sacrifice. I agree that that’s the major conflict of being writer and director in the same person.

Gallenberger: Is it common to be a scriptwriter/director in Hong Kong?

Ho: A number of directors are originally writers. The tendency however is to appoint assistant directors as a writer. How about in Germany?

Gallenberger: It’s kind of similar. In Germany we have a wide variety of films and projects with bigger budgets. Also we’re lucky to be able to execute projects on a very high level by now. This is very important for a ‘healthy’ film industry.
Ho: In Hong Kong we used to have about 300 projects every year, but unfortunately it has decreased to 50 last year. In a way that is due to China. In order to show a movie in China it needs to be a collaborative film. And a collaboration does entail its problems. For instance the moral standards applied: ‘Cops’ need to be the good ones and ‘criminals’ have to be the ones to get caught in the end. So there’s a lot of things we can’t do. Another problem is that we have got to cast a certain number of main-land actors in collaborative productions between Hong Kong and the main land. So the dialogue becomes the problem! We’re having a vast number of different dialects. In Hong Kong Cantonese used to be spoken so the main-land actors are being dubbed.

Gallenberger: So you do have to get authorisation for shooting by the film bureau?

Ho: In order to qualify as a ‘collaborative film’ you need the approval of the bureau. It’s a very lengthy process and you have got to make a lot of compromises.

Gallenberger: I was really surprised when we were shooting for our Chinese coproduction JOHN RABE and it turned out we wouldn’t be bothered by them!

Ho: Really? That’s so not fair!

Gallenberger: It did take us 1 ½ years to get the authorisation though and get all necessary permissions.

Ho: Did you read the book by Iris Chang? I feel so sorry to hear of her suicide! Did you incorporate any of her elements into your film?

Gallenberger: I did as a part of research prior to shooting.

Ho: To a Chinese the Nanjing massacre is something very scary. As there are so many movies about the Holocaust we really need something similar for China as going-on’s in China during the war in fact were similar to the Holocaust. A lot of people disagree with that, claiming the Holocaust had been a genocide. I’m aware of the sensitivity of this suject and I hope I didn’t touch on this subject in a bad way. Please forgive me if I did! I just can’t help but wonder why a massacre this big hasn’t been touch on by the movie industry yet.

Gallenberger: Probably a permissions for such a project would be denied anyway. Although we haven’t had trouble with the bureau, we did run into problems with the Foreign Ministry, which feared diplomatic issues with China.

Ho: Is the movie going to dubbed?

Gallenberger: No, everybody will be speaking in their original language. Although in Germany we will have to dub the movie in German. It’s difficult to present a subtitled movie to a wider audience in Germany – which is a pity. It is losing content in the process.

Florian Gallenberger

Ho: So you shot scenes in Nanjing?

Gallenberger: We did! But it is difficult to find any authentic spots, showing the ‘old’ China. We shot a couple of things in Shanghai.

Ho: It’s definitely become more difficult to shoot period movies in China.

Gallenberger: Almost impossible. You’d need studios.

Ho: Maybe the situation is a little easier for non-Chinese filmmakers. For example LUST, CAUTION has received a lot of backfire.

Gallenberger:The problem is that the Nanjing massacre has been used for propaganda purposes a lot. You said you were wondering why there wasn’t any film on it. Why don’t you give it a try?

Ho: We are too pragmatic. A Hong Kong person always is that. Bringing this up would make you a laughing stock. Nobody would take you seriously. A lot of China’s 20th history has to be re-written.

Gallenberger: But that would be a task for a filmmaker, wouldn’t it?

Ho: The trouble is to use it in film mechanics. A possibility is to use it as a sort of backdrop. It’s very hard to put your hands on history as such. Also making a period drama has the costs sky-rocketing. E.g. the head of the ‘puppet government’ is a very controversial person. A patriot. It feels like he is in office because there isn’t anybody else wanting to fill in. I would love to make a movie on him! It’ll be the centennial of the Chinese revolution soon. That’d be a good time for a project like this.

Gallenberger: Do you think you could do a project like this in China at this time?

Ho: I don’t believe this would be possible in my life time. I am a pessimist.

Gallenberger: Tell me about the difficulties with financing. You’ve mentioned the decrease from 300 movies annually to only 50. What happened to the money? What’s the impact on the industry and scriptwriters?

Ho: Most go to China because it is better paid and there’s a much higher demand for filmmakers. And you can’t blame them! It has become to be filmmaker in Hong Kong. My budget for CLAUSTROPHOBIA was around $500.000. The average Hong Kong production’s budget varies from $1 million to $1.5 million. 2 million US-dollars being a huge budget.

Gallenberger: How do you raise the money? Investors?

Ho: Thirty percent were funded by the government, which tries hard to seem supportive of media and film. Also I’ve had only 16 days to shoot. A very short time that forced me to skip shots I wanted to make. To me the whole thing seemed like a nightmare, a daze.

Gallenberger: Would you have done anything differently?

Ho: Maybe not the same way. A couple of scenes would be longer though.

Gallenberger: Do you think your writing would be different after shooting the film?

Ho: I try not think about that. I’d still try to avoid writing differently, in order to make it fit the budget for example. I’m basically still in shock from this one! (laughs) I’ll always be a writer. That’s for sure. When writing there are no disappointments because in your head everything just turns out right, a perfect world.

Audience: How does it feel to be a writer/director and seeing your ‘vision’ dismantled?
Ho: The worst that can happen is to lose your vision! You can only try to stay on the course you’d set out to take. About this movie I can say: It has stayed on course. The message remained. This is one of the worst things that can happen to a writer. Losing your message or not recognise in the finished product. So my merit out of this film is that the vision, the message, stayed intact and it didn’t become something else.

Gallenberger: Looking at the process you see your personality changing. Writing is very slow, but as soon as you step into pre-production everything you envisioned becoming reality. Although at this point in your mind everything still works perfectly. However as soon as you start the shooting many unforeseen things happen, things don’t work out and you find yourself unable to do those things you wanted. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re loosing your vision, but you have got to come up with yet another idea then. The best ideas arise from solving problems! Many of these moments of frustration has taken the film into a whole other direction. I think you have to take leave of your writer-self and concentrate on being the director while bearing in mind what the writer wanted.

Audience: Can you give us an example from your work?

Gallenberger: There was a short film I did back in film school. We couldn’t take a particular shot. So we had to turn the whole thing around and it was thrilling. That’s when I started to believe that whenever something doesn’t work out, it’s the film asking you to get a better idea. Every problem tries to help you improving the film.

Ho: Sometimes you stepping away from things on your list and outside of your agenda and something great happens. Also miracles can be done through editing. The creativity goes on there. I find it a very interesting process.

Gallenberger: I usually get very emotionally involved in my writing. When it comes to shooting I know how something is supposed to fell and I don’t have to get emotional then. Writing is like dreaming your film. It gives you a certain security when shooting.

Ho: Some people say ‘you don’t need a well structured script, it’s old-fashioned and what counts is the visual’. These are commercial or music video directors. I don’t want to discriminate anybody here. For example Ridley Scott is a great director.

Gallenberger: I think it isn’t a problem of the directors’ but rather of the producers’, who are less interested in stories.

Ho: I think it’s right for action films who do the storytelling through visuals. But still it needs a good story and a great script makes shooting so much easier.

Audience: On what you said about commercial directors turning to movie directors: They tend to forget about the emotion and concentrate too much on the visuals, not caring about the actors. It depends on a director’s character.

Ho: When I was a writer I was often presented to these bright new directors who were really good at visuals. It was suggested that working with them would bring the best of both worlds together. I usually thought that was the beginning of a disaster. Having a story is sometimes seen to old-fashioned.

Gallenberger: How much time did you spend writing for CLAUSTROPHOBIA?

Ho: A long time. Like a year. I’m able to finish a script within a few weeks sometimes. Mostly the first draft is finished very quickly. If the pace is sluggish there is usually something wrong with it.

Gallenberger: Interesting. A korean author told me the same. But what’s wrong with me then? I need a year to finish a script!

Ho:Were you a writer before?

Gallenberger: I never was for anyone but me.

Ho: Well, on a 100 minutes movie you’d need 100 pages. If there’s something wrong you usually know it after the first 15 pages, when your characters don’t take you to any places.

Ivy Ho

Gallenberger: So you let yourself getting taking along with your characters.

Ho: Yes. They usually take you to places you don’t want to go, but you need to follow them!

(laughter)

Gallenberger: So if that doesn’t happen is it yours or the character’s fault?

Ho: It's yours. Sometimes you need to shelf it, put it on hold. So you can revisit it after a while. Mostly you can’t do that though, because people call you and ask you where their script is.

Gallenberger: So normally your scripts are commissioned?

Ho: Yes, I’ve only once written a speculative script. And I encourage people to do that so you know what you want. It’s dangerous to show around speculative scripts in Hong Kong though, because someone might steal it. That's not the case in Hollywood where you normally have enough agents to protect your interests.

Gallenberger: Has it ever happened to you that you regretted shelfing a project?

Ho: There’s always a chance for that!

Audience: Being commissioned for CLAUSTROPHOBIA how did you wind up directing it?

Ho: One day Johnny To came up to me and said he wanted to direct a low-budget romance. He did not have the story, only these visuals of a woman standing on the pier waiting for her boyfriend, etc. and he wouldn’t tell me what wasgoing on but ‘you decide that!’. So I spent half a year deciding that and so I decided to do this Hong Kong roadmovie. Something unusual in Hong Kong. That was the premise I came up with. So I went on writing a second draft and decided I would have to direct it after having put a lot of time and energy into it.

Audience: Do you have a ‘masterplan’ when writing? Do you know the ending? Or do you let creativity take you places?

Ho: I tend to have an open end. When I was a child watching a movie with a happy ending I thought to myself ‘give me one more scene! I want to see the divorce! Just one more scene to ruin the whole thing!’. I don’t refuse to provide an ending. I refuse to define what is happening in the end. Which is not that good from an audience’s perspective as it leaves them unsatisfied with the last 2 hours they have spent. I feel that open endings are more challenging. This is not the case with criminal stories. Here you pay to get that ending!

Gallenberger: Back in film school I remember we’ve had to write the exposé and the treatment… and by the time you got to the treatment you were just bored to go on.

Ho: I’ve never written a treatment.

Gallenberger: I think it’s very stringent, you put so much work into it but without the dialogues it is no fun. So I stopped writing treatments….

Ho: … which is good! I’ve never figured out what treatments are for!

Gallenberger: Maybe you should do a script writing course in Germany. Probably the idea of a treatment is not to get lost. I don’t feel it anyway. I understood that writing is mostly waiting. The art of waiting for something to come.

Ho: Yes. You’re waiting for the characters to speak to you.

Gallenberger: If you don’t have the guts to wait and forcing things, it won’t turn out well. My apartment is furbished for waiting: No phone, no internet, no TV. You can easily sit there and wait. How do you judge your work? When do you know it’s commercial?

Ho: I know what I’m doing and I know that most of work cannot be employed as a commercial vehicle. I know it probably won’t see in a big way and will have to live with a small budget. I wouldn’t know how to write a really commercial film. E.g. the whole open ending! How I refuse to let it got. In a commercial film you have to constantly meet expectations. There is no not knowing where a commercial film takes you. You know! You’re actually relieved to find that you are going the expected path. So I know my films could never be commercial.

Ho: On the pain of writing a treatment: How do you make sure you get paid for your film without it?

Gallenberger: True, in Germany the treatment is the base for further financing. I must say it’s better to find people believing in you instead of your product only. I was lucky with JOHN RABE. I didn’t like the script, so I re-wrote it and offered it to them…

Ho: … I always wanted to do that!! ‘Listen, I give you 20 pages…’ I never tried that! A great chance to start a project though.

Gallenberger: The producers were very happy with that, because they get a feel of where the whole things goes with the dialogue… It’s too difficult to get the feel of a movie solemnly on the basis of a treatment.
I believe that ‘commercial’ does not necessarily mean ‘low quality’. It is not a synonym!

Ho: Yes! Now commercial film means a lot of different things: Romance, Comedy, Action.