Asia Argento – 23 Minutes with Asia Argento
By:Nicole Holland
Cannes Film Festival alumnus/director/actress Asia Argento is a seasoned veteran to the film festival circuit and indie film scene. Argento displayed a record number of premieres (Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales, Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate, Catherine Breillat’s Une vielle maîtresse) at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Since 2004, Argento has starred in a steady stream of premieres in Cannes which include Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006), Tony Gatlif’s Transylvania (2006), Gus Van Sant’s Last Days (2005) and Argento’s own project The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2004).
This year Asia Argento’s latest film De la guerre debuts at the 2008 Marché du Film and is included in the Directors’ Fortnight 2008. Also Dario Argento’s The Mother of Tears, starring Asia Argento, is included in Myriad Pictures’ 2008 Marché du Film line-up.
IFQ’s Nicole Holland sat down with Asia Argento, who was currently reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in the Excelsior Lounge at Electra Palace during the Thessaloniki International Film Festival (TIFF). In this candid interview, Argento openly discussed censorship, exhibitionism, family therapy through films, Cannes and the number 23.
IFQ: When cinéphiles “Asia Argento,” your name is automatically linked to controversial cinema. You directed two controversial films: Scarlet Diva and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. Also you starred in several of your father’s (Dario Argento) Italian horror films. Can you tell me about your issues with censorship as a whole?
Asia Argento: I grew up with my father and his biggest obsession was censorship and he always feared it. Even with my two movies, it’s something that I had to go through. There’s a board of censors in Italy. You do a movie and then you have to talk to these people because they represent the church, the parents, the associations and you have to explain why your movie is suitable for everyone. I didn’t think that my second movie (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things) was for everyone. I wanted it to be [about a boy who is] 14 years old and abandoned. Because of a different type of censorship, I didn’t want it to be for everyone. I think that maybe some people aren’t ready to see everything. It’s hard to say who’s ready and who’s not.
IFQ: Continuing on the thread of controversy, you directed and starred in Marilyn Manson’s S(AINT) video, which is one of the most explicit music videos in history. Because of the video’s graphic nature, was this the reason why it never aired on MTV?
AA: He (Marilyn Manson) never thought this video would be shown on MTV. He never wrote or shot it like that. This was something that he wanted to be kind of a cult and to be released with his greatest hits DVD collection.
IFQ: From what I understand your new movie The Mother of Tears is like a family reunion—your father Dario, your mother Daria Nicolodi and you. Do you think that now the situations are more mature for you to work as a family on a movie set than in the past?
AA: Yes. I hadn’t worked with him in ten years and a lot of things had happened since then. I directed two movies. Maybe it was my choice to find independence and my voice. When I did, then I wanted to go back and work with him. I proved to myself that I could walk with my own legs.
IFQ: Your family has a peculiar way of dealing with emotions through your movies. All of your movies have biographical elements in strange ways. In Scarlet Diva, you had your mother Daria on screen, and then you have Dario’s films. Does your family feel like dealing with your problems through the movies?
AA: I think all directors do that because we all have personal reasons. I think that even people who write movies about aliens attacking the earth have very personal reasons. My father was someone who always had a very strong dollop of his dark side and his unconscious, and maybe I learned his lesson. But the funny thing about my family is that we never talk about it. We do it.
IFQ: In the movies?
AA: Yes. We do it in the movies. We never ask, “Why do you want me to play this character?” My mother never asks me, and our relationship actually grows a lot from this psycho-drama.
IFQ: It’s like therapy through drama.
IFQ: Is there a film that you admire, like where you said to yourself, I wish I had directed that?
AA: Well, everybody steals a lot of things from a lot of people. Roman Polanski is someone who I studied a lot. I’m obsessed with the movie The Tenant. There’s such a deep dollop with the unconscious and the dark side. These are movies that are an automatic fight on your soul because they are so deep and unexplained. I love his movies, but I could never wish to make a movie like his.
IFQ: In your movies that you directed, it looks like you are always looking for that inner most dark place.
AA: Maybe it’s a lesson that I learned from my father but in a different kind of way. I think I still make horror movies, but mine are more psychological, more into the horror of the every day life, whereas my father’s are more fairytales. I am drawn to this kind of material—the misfits, the people who are different from others, the people who do not need to fit in to have a purpose in life. I always said that it’s maybe something born with my obsession with Tod Browning’s Freaks. I saw it at a very early age and it really had a huge impact on me. It’s one those movies that I know I have watched a hundred times.
IFQ: Continuing on the thread of directing movies, I read an article by Mel Gordon (who wrote The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber) and in this piece, he linked you to Weimar Berlin’s Anita Berber. Can you comment on this and do you have any plans on adapting this into a film?
AA: We are thinking about it, but I think first of all I am too old to play her now because she died before 30. So I couldn’t pass the test. Actually, it was my idea because I love Mel Gordon’s writing and he contacted me about this Anita Berber story. I asked him to write a parallel for this magazine—(“Asia Argento-Anita Berber,” HoBo #2, Summer 2003). He was good enough at writing to make it kind of parallel. I was fascinated by this free woman who would walk into a restaurant completely naked just wearing a monkey and [she was] so different from the women of her time. She was so brave and of course, she died because of it.
IFQ: I have this idea you are an exhibitionist kind of like Anita. However, you are very fragile in pictures and in person, and then in your movies you are naked. Why does that happen?
AA: I wasn’t in my second movie. Well they asked me to do that. It’s kind of therapeutic and I’m so shy, so I use movies to overcome my shyness. Exhibitionists are incredibly insecure people and through their movies they tell you “Hey, this is me” and you have to be really extreme to play yourself. It’s very twisted. I really don’t know why. Exhibitionists are all the people who want to be loved. So you think you’re shit, you show everything that you think is shit, and here you want to be loved. This is why most actresses and actors are the most insecure people. They are people who need to be guided. They do not have a voice of their own and need to be loved for what they represent on the big screen, [even though] it’s not really them. So it’s kind of a lie or you are lied to.
IFQ: I’m astonished because I know your image is like a diva. But now that I’ve met you, you are laid-back and demure. Did you create this kind of diva image? Was it imposed on you?
AA: I invented the superhero of what I wanted to be so I thought I could be loved. Because this very shy person that you see, nobody loved when I was a child. Until my 20s, people despised me. I was very solitary. And then all of a sudden when I created this superhero, the dark bitch from hell, people really loved this person that wasn’t me. So I had to live with this person, the other person, for so many years. Sometimes I thought I was becoming this other person. But still, I find it very difficult to live with this person in my every day life. I’m becoming more and more detached from this person because this bitch was eating my life. [Laughs.]
IFQ: What was the turning point?
AA: The turning point was my second movie The Heart is Deceitful because I played this horrible character and I felt that I was turning into her during the shoot. I was so sad and upset. And then [the other turning points were] after the last movies and after Cannes.
IFQ: Speaking of Cannes, Stu and I are good friends with Abel Ferrara and we were at the Go Go Tales premiere in Cannes. What’s it like working with Abel?
AA: Go Go Tales was a quick experience for me, just a couple of days. I am very grateful for working with him at such a young age. It kind of really changed my way of seeing cinema, acting and what I could get from it, and how I could have fun with it. I’m very grateful for the rest of my life for working with such a great director who was and still is one of my favorite directors.
IFQ: You had three films (Go Go Tales, Boarding Gate and Une vieille maîtresse) in the Cannes Film Festival 2007. Briefly tell me about your experience and will we see you there in 2008?
AA: I don’t think so unless the one movie (De la guerre) that I shot [in 2007] will make it to Cannes. It was so tiring. I had three movies.
IFQ: Yeah, twelve days. Cannes 2007 was the “Year of Asia Argento.”
AA: It was the year where…The moment I went away and I arrived home, the first thing I did was cry because I was so tired. I was so ashamed of myself. At the end of the day and when you speak for ten minutes, you say things that you don’t mean and things that you regret—I kept saying them. I was very honored to have my work there and it means a lot for the movies to be sold around the world. I was there to support it. It was the most tiring thing I have ever done in my life. It was like doing the New York Marathon. It’s a pentathlon.
IFQ: As an independent filmmaker, how important are film festivals?
AA: Film festivals are the only way for a lot of movies to be seen, so festivals mean a lot. Unfortunately, I have been to some film festivals where the public is not going and they are not responding. It’s very embarrassing to see a director who comes all the way from a different country to present his movie and there are five people in the audience. I always feel very bad. I’ve been in the position of the audience and the position of the director. It’s very embarrassing both ways. It’s heartbreaking. But then most of the time, luckily it’s not like this, and there is a huge response. It’s great because movies get sold and there’s a good audience and a good response, so it’s very important.
IFQ: You have been involved in American, Italian and French cinema. Compare and contrast the three. Which do you prefer?
AA: It’s very hard to compare them. It seems like the budget of the movie means more control the director has. Obviously, there are others who can do more expensive movies. When a director has total control of his movies, it’s a much more enjoyable experience on my side to observe a director who really becomes like a cinema lesson for me. I’ve worked with a lot of different kinds of directors. In Italy, we don’t have a lot of money for the movies and I haven’t worked in Italy for ten years, except with my father. So I can’t really make the comparison. In France, I worked with lots of great directors—some more intellectual, some not for everyone, and some that really have a spark of something that is hard to find in American movies.
IFQ: After XXX, which is a mainstream movie with Vin Diesel, you did not follow the typical career path of most blockbuster female actresses. You did more personal and independent roles. Was this your choice or did it just happen?
AA: It was my choice. I handled my career for so many years and I’ve done all sorts of different movies like comedies, believe it or not, before I made XXX. I saw how shallow for an actress it could be just to play two or three of these movies I’ve gotten and do the others. For me, it was a vehicle that I used to make The Heart is Deceitful known in America. Actually, I read the book (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things) when I was shooting XXX. And right after XXX, I got into The Heart is Deceitful and my agent was like “No, you have to shoot this in two years; you can’t shoot this now. You have to live the momentum; we can get you all this money for the next movie.” But I said “No,” and I think this is the best choice that I ever made.
IFQ: What makes an actor a good actor in a movie?
AA: Well, like Abel Ferrara says, “It doesn’t mean shit to be good in a bad movie.” A good movie makes an actor good, but even if you are a great actor in a shitty movie, it doesn’t mean anything.
IFQ: So you should know how to choose your films?
AA: You can’t always. Sometimes you have to pay the rent.
IFQ: What’s your single favorite process during a film [conception to completion]?
AA: My favorite process is staring at the white wall for hours and thinking of the stories that I’m going to write, the dialogue I have when I’m writing, where things finally connect and you have the links, like on the internet—this link goes to this link and everything comes together. It’s not the moments on set or the moments when you have to sell the movie or talk about the movie. It’s the moments when you are lonely— I like personal [moments] or editing with another person. It’s kind of an onanistic pleasure.
IFQ: So you stare at the white walls? Usually, this is a despairing moment.
AA: No. It’s not to me. The most despairing moment is being social. It’s bad.
IFQ: Aside from acting and directing, you are an international DJ and you mainly spin on the European circuit. Who are your musical influences? Peaches? Miss Kittin?
AA: All those girls are great. I’m not a musician, but I have an incredible eclectic taste. I specialize in the weirdest music. Occasions like this one (Thessaloniki International Film Festival’s closing night) like film festivals or some museums I’ve played are my favorite because it’s not a “job.” It becomes something fun for me where I can play really strange music. I’m not going to try and make people dance. Maybe you can dance to this music, but I don’t have to play electronic like when I’m at the Italian discos, where it like breaks my balls, and I do it as a job. I’m excited because I can play the music I love, that I play at home and that I dance with my daughter to.
IFQ: This is off subject and sometimes my curiosity kills me, but what’s the significance of the number 23?
AA: I was obsessed with the number 23. I saw it everywhere—before I even knew that there were books written about it and so many people who were obsessed with it. Robert Anton Wilson wrote some books [about the number 23] and my friend Janice is a great illuminatus. After they did the terrible movie with Jim Carrey, now it’s getting old.
IFQ: It’s time for a new number.
AA: Yeah, now 22 is the new 23.
The Mother of Tears: Cannes Market Screenings
May 14th, 16:00, Arcades 2
May 15th, 20:30, Palais I
The Mother of Tears will be released theatrically via Myriad Pictures and The Weinstein Company. The film will open with select screenings on July 6th in New York and Los Angeles and will open wide thereafter.