The British censors don't like him, and neither does Fidel Castro. Danny
Leigh meets artist-turned-director Julian Schnabel
Danny Leigh. Tuesday June 12, 2001.
The Guardian.
Here he comes: Julian Schnabel, film-maker, artist, all-purpose renaissance
man. And he's singing Danny Boy. "The pipes, the pipes are calling,"
he croons, with the proud conviction of a man who truly believes this is the
first time anyone has ever sung it at at a bloke called Danny. And then we talk.
Or rather he talks. He talks about the endless promotional jaunts for his
movie Before Night Falls, an acclaimed biopic of late Cuban dissident and
novelist Reynaldo Arenas. "It's been a whirlwind," he mutters, his
ursine frame draped over the soft furnishings. "The Oscars, the Golden
Globes, the this, the that ..." Then he talks about his ardour for painting
("It's like being under water"); the ephemeral thrill of the creative
process ("The warmth of the embrace gets distilled with every day");
his fondness for watching his own film ("It's like looking at a painting -
you're computing the information differently each time"). And then he talks
some more.
There's time for just one question before he starts: "How are you?"
Still, who could be surprised at Schnabel proving so loose-lipped? This is
what he does when he's not before the canvas or behind the camera.
Self-mythologising, navel-gazing, the gentle art of bigging oneself up - his
speciality back when he was the toast of the cash-bloated early 1980s New York
art scene - is apparently still Schnabel's party piece as the eminence grise of
American bohemia.
Before Night Falls is an impassioned portrait of the much-vaunted Arenas, a
self-proclaimed "hick" who joined Castro's 1958 revolution only to
find himself persecuted for his homosexuality. The film is evidently driven by a
profound personal commitment: besides casting his wife Olatz Lopez Garmendia as
Arenas's mother, Schnabel made the film with his own money. The result is an
intelligent, frequently moving character study. Visually inspired, blessed with
a remarkable central turn from Javier Bardem, and politically charged enough to
have enraged many on the international left, it's not a film short on talking
points. Whether Schnabel will let anyone raise them is another matter.
There is, I suggest, a certain irony to such an intrinsically Latin American
project being made by ... But he's off again. "Well, yeah, I mean, why does
a Jewish guy from New York City make this movie? Maybe it's my parents' fault.
Who knows how you get educated, what you notice for yourself, what's pointed out
to you so you see things a certain way?"
Leaning in, brow furrowed, he races ahead. Two minutes later he's dissecting
his relationship with Bardem: "He said I made him feel like he could fly."
By minute five he has moved on to the appeal of Mexican technicians: "Great
men and women." Minute nine, and he is hoping Before Night Falls could
spark a reassessment of his other work: "I mean, maybe now people will look
at my paintings and think, 'OK, I didn't get this guy properly.' "
Thirteen minutes in, he notices something is awry. "It's funny - you're
not saying much."
For all the self-aggrandisement, Julian Schnabel has genuine insight. That
may shock anyone familiar with the Schnabel of popular repute, whose name became
synonymous with 1980s excess through his vast assemblies of broken crockery and
public declarations such as: "I'm as close to Picasso as you're going to
get in this fucking life."
Schnabel's art still routinely sells for six figures, but he has cast
himself in a lower-key role. With Before Night Falls and 1997's Basquiat (a
biography of his deceased Manhattan peer Jean Michel), Schnabel appears to have
set up stall as a kind of latter-day notary, lionising the artistic dead. If
this is a logical extension of his ceaseless namedropping ("So, Bertolucci
said to me ...), it is also a strange evolution for such an arch-iconoclast. But
- and you sense this is vitally important to Schnabel - it is a move that has
finally brought him the kind of critical kudos that would have seemed
inconceivable when he was daubing on plates.
And yet controversy pursues him still. There has been the selfgenerated
variety, of course (not least after Bardem's fruitless Oscar nomination, when
Schnabel described the competition as "fake" and "idiotic").
Less predictably, there has also been a stern ticking-off from the British
censors, who recently demanded the removal from Before Night Falls of a scene in
which chickens are lassoed ("The bird was not hurt. I did not hurt the
bird.") And then there has been the Cuban problem.
The irony of Schnabel making what is, in essence, a loud denunciation of the
Castro regime isn't confined to his being a "Jewish guy from New York".
The Cuba Solidarity Campaign, among others, has argued that as an American
making a movie about a country habitually bullied by his own, Schnabel cannot
simply claim the apolitical refuge of the artist. Particularly since Schnabel
shows Castro's apparatchiks as little more than grinning sadists but fails to
make a single reference to a healthcare and education system that puts the US's
to shame.
"Listen, people can construe things any way they want," Schnabel
bristles. "The fact is, I'm not from the right and I'm not from the left.
And I think the US has behaved idiotically towards Cuba for 40 years. But it's
too easy to use that to evade the fact that people are not free over there. They
can't see this film, for a start." There's a pause that, in the context of
what came before, lasts an eternity. "I'm not trying to sell crumpet and
tea here. I'm trying to tell one guy's story." It is, he says, "a
Schindler's List for Cubans."
The audience seems to be drawing to a close. He clambers to his feet. "You
know, I'd say this film is pro-rhythm and poetry. And anti the drums of
militarism. So, anyway, you must have a ton of shit now ..."
Is that it? Interview over? "Yeah. I mean, I don't know how interesting
this whole political thing is ... I mean, what are we supposed to do here? Say
we don't like the US government so let's make believe this never happened?"
And then it dawns on me that he's upset. Not angry. Just upset, and
entirely, enviably sure of his own moral authority. The photographer has
arrived, but Schnabel won't let up.
"I mean, you're a writer of sorts. How would you feel about knowing the
only person who ever read your stuff was your prison guard, because they keep
confiscating everything you write?" And, between the snaps of the
photographer, there's still no end to it: by the time I leave, he has given me
what amounts to an exhaustive reading list on modern Cuban history and a
thorough talking-to on the nature of postmodern politics.
"You know, I'm not going to be anyone's pitbull. That's not who I am. I
am unco-optable." And then, having talked until he can talk no more, Julian
Schnabel wishes me luck and does the other thing he does best: slowly and
studiedly turns his face toward the camera.
Before
Night Falls opens on Friday.
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