By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Michael Hazanavicius won an Academy Award for directing 2011’s THE ARTIST (which also took Best Picture and three other Oscars), and now is back with a very different movie about movies. His zombie-film-within-a-zombie-film FINAL CUT is now in theatrical release from Kino Lorber, and he peels back its layers in this RUE MORGUE chat.
A remake of Shinichiro Ueda’s international sensation ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, FINAL CUT (original title: COUPEZ!) opens with a single take that lasts over half an hour, following the crew of a low-budget zombie movie as they’re attacked by actual ghouls. The rest of FINAL CUT goes behind the scenes to show how the director of this first-act film, Rémi (Romain Duris), deals with everything from his Japanese backers (who insist on this French production’s characters having Japanese names) to the various foibles of his cast and crew. Co-starring Hazanavicius’ wife Bérénice Bejo and their daughter Simone Hazanavicius as Rémi’s spouse and child, FINAL CUT has many levels of meta, a spirited cast and lots of comical gore shenanigans (see our review here). The following is derived from a Zoom interview and a Q&A this writer moderated at New York City’s Angelika Film Center.
How did you become involved with remaking ONE CUT OF THE DEAD?
It was kind of a coincidence, because I was working on a script at the very beginning of the COVID lockdown, based around a shooting set. It was a catastrophic kind of story like LIVING IN OBLIVION, that type of movie. Because I’ve been working for 30 years now, I’ve met so many people and encountered so many egos, and been involved in many funny, strange and awkward situations. So I started to write that, and then I was talking with Vincent Maraval, the producer, and he had just bought the remake rights to ONE CUT OF THE DEAD. He sent me the link, and I thought it was so fun and clever, and would be so challenging to remake, especially because of the 35-minute opening shot, so I jumped on it.
Had you been a fan of zombie films before, or horror cinema in general?
Not really. There are some zombie movies I really enjoy, but not because they are zombie movies, just because they are good movies. Romero’s films, TRAIN TO BUSAN is great, and SHAUN OF THE DEAD is a very good comedy. My brother is a zombie-movie fan, but I’m not really. And horror movies, I have to say, frighten me. I’m the kind of guy who pretends he’s not scared, so I’m cracking jokes and making fun of the movie, because I’m just scared of it!
In remaking ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, how much did you want to preserve from the original, and how much did you want to make it your own?
I tried to be faithful, while adding some things here and there. I didn’t want to change things just to change them. Usually, when people remake movies, they try to hide the original, and I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to pay homage to ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, but in the end, mine is a very personal movie, and I realized that even if you start from a book written by someone else, or another movie created by someone else, when you direct a film, you make it yours.
How much of your own experience did you bring to what Rémi goes through in FINAL CUT?
I can’t say exactly, but there have been things I’ve heard, some attitudes and behaviors I’ve seen, and not necessarily just from actors–some technicians have egos way bigger than actors–so it’s a lot of things, actually. So even though it’s a faithful remake, as I said, it’s a very personal movie, with a lot of things from my own experience.
One way you made it personal was by casting your family in FINAL CUT…
That’s one of the meta levels I added; I could have done it with other actresses. It’s not my first movie with Bérénice, so we are used to working together, and she’s a very nice person to both live with and work with; she’s very involved on set. But strangely enough, when I started to work on FINAL CUT, I said to Bérénice, “I’m not sure this part is for you, actually.” And she was like, “Oh, OK…” She didn’t really understand, but she said, “Maybe you’re right…” I was imagining a tougher kind of actress, or less of a pretty woman. But then I caught COVID, and I was lying in bed almost dying, and asked her to read the script. And I heard her laughing so loud, and she came into the room and said, “You know, I can do that part!” and I said, “OK, you’ve got it.” And I have to say, she’s really, really good, and did all the stunts and brought so much energy to it.
And as for Simone, it was the part of the daughter of a director, a wannabe filmmaker herself, and this was exactly the definition of my daughter. She’s done some short movies, and she’s now writing a feature, and considering the part and considering her, as a father and as a director, it was obvious that that part was for her, and she was very happy to do it.
For genre fans, the most recognizable face will be Matilda Lutz from REVENGE, so can you talk about casting and working with her?
She was nominated for a French award for REVENGE, and when you’re nominated as a young actor, you have to choose a sponsor, someone who works in the industry, and Matilda asked Bérénice to be hers. That’s how we met, and we spent some time together, and when I had to cast the part of Ava, I felt she was perfect for it, playing it straight with no irony, not trying to be funny, and able to do it physically. She understood where to put the comedy and when to be serious.
You have an additional meta level with the Japanese producers on the set, essentially overseeing a remake of ONE CUT OF THE DEAD within a remake of ONE CUT OF THE DEAD.
Yes, this was on one side a way to pay homage to the original, and on the other a good way to add comedy. The first time my other daughter watched the movie, during the long shot with all the Japanese first names, after 20 minutes she asked me, “Is this supposed to be in Japan?” I thought it was funny to have all those names to create additional awkwardness. One of the challenges during the long opening of the movie was how to create and keep interest from the audience. This was one of the tricks, because you think, “This is not normal.”
A big difference in the movie I did, compared to the original, is that nobody knew the actors in ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, so you didn’t know exactly what you were looking at. But me, working with familiar actors, and also in France people know my work, I couldn’t have that separation, so I had to create something different, knowing that people would not buy it as a cheap, low-budget movie. So I had to create some other way to hold the audience’s attention. And surprisingly, some people have thought it was a real bad movie during that opening, and left after 20 minutes and decided it was the worst film ever made in France!
One of my favorite additions is Fatih, the musician who tries to keep up with the chaotic shoot. How was that character conceived and cast?
I thought this character was missing in the original, and was a good role to add. And also, I think it’s good for the audience; he’s totally lost, the way we are. Jean-Pascal Zadi is a very good actor, and really funny, I’m sure you’ll hear from him again soon.
During the making of FINAL CUT, did any crazy stuff happen similar to what occurs on screen?
Something really crazy happened, actually. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ve seen Bérénice with a bloody face. One day, we invited five or six of the lead actors to come to our house for dinner, and we drank a bit too much and went to bed. Very early the next morning, I heard this boom! I got up and went to the bathroom, and Bérénice was lying on the floor. She had slipped, and I turned her over, and she had a bloody face, exactly like in the movie. And I thought, “This is going way too far!” [Laughs] We had to stop the shoot for one week to give her time to recover, but the good thing was, during that week, it rained every day, and we needed sunshine to match the previous shots, so she actually saved the shoot!
Tell us about the filming of that lengthy opening shot.
The long take was very challenging, because as I said, I had to keep interest, but I also had to respect the script. And in that script, you are looking not at a bad movie, but one where everything goes wrong and nothing goes normally. So the actors were not there to make jokes or entertain the audience, they were not there to tell a story, they were there to inhabit awkward situations with people unable to act because one actor is not there, a prop is not there and so on, and we had to respect that. That was difficult, because when you rehearse for five and a half weeks for a shot like that, you want to make it better, and put jokes everywhere, and for the timing to be perfect and the tempo to be heightened, and that was not the point. I had to resist the temptation to make it better, and respect the script and create that awkwardness.
And also, of course, I had to be very precise, especially because we had blood, stunts, the decapitation, and also the comedy and everything. That’s why we rehearsed for so long, and it was a blessing to have those five weeks, because it created this very special energy between all of us. The actors and crew and I were really like a stage troupe. And then add the fact that we shot just after the lockdown lifted, so we were so happy; we were like kids on the first day of summer vacation, which helped create that positive energy.
When I said “Action,” nothing could happen in those next 35 minutes that was not planned. So we’d get five minutes, 10 minutes in, and I would think, “We’re OK. This is not that good, but I’m sure I can fix it with the sound.” But when we arrived at 25 minutes, I really started praying that nothing went wrong. You know, that sequence was entirely storyboarded; I drew everything. It’s one shot, but I thought of it as a succession of 250 shots, one after the other, with the movement of the camera making them one.
Can you talk about shooting special makeup effects under those circumstances, where you couldn’t cut away for an effect to be set up?
Yeah, it was a very precise choreography. We had to move the camera to a very particular spot, because we had three people from the special effects crew coming in with all this blood, throwing it in the faces of the actors, and then they had to run away. So the sound guy had to be at his exact spot, the camera operator, the actors–everybody had to respect the plan exactly, otherwise it wouldn’t work. And the effects guys were very excited; the head guy who worked with us, Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, who is very well-known and one of the best special effects artists in France, was so happy. He told me, “It reminds me of the very beginning, when we were doing short movies with nothing.”
Did you ever get in touch with Shinichiro Ueda, to talk about how he made his film?
I didn’t want to talk with him before shooting, but once he saw my movie we had a Zoom meeting, as he was in Japan. He was so nice; he really enjoyed FINAL CUT, and he told me, “I think I understood my movie while watching your movie,” which was a very nice thing to say. He was very happy with all the additions I did; he adored the fact that I added the musician, for example, and the way I did one sequence differently from the way he did. It was a great meeting, and I told him I really respect his movie, and once again, I didn’t try to hide the original, but put it in the light. And it’s funny–before I did the remake, less than 2,000 people had seen his movie in France, but once I made FINAL CUT, a lot more people have seen it. I think, in a way, it helped the original to be recognized in France.
