Julian Schnabel: a movie about a man who couldn't speak, directed by a man who has found access to all forms of expression

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INGRID SISCHY: Painter. Sculptor. Furniture designer. Even, now, building designer--some might say that all those things would keep a guy busy.

JULIAN SCHNABEL: I guess they have.

IS: Were those things not enough? Or is there something special for you about making movies?

JS: Well, I never thought I was going to be a movie director. Or maybe I might have wanted to do it when I was young, but I got so involved in painting that I just didn't think that was my calling. Then, when Jean-Michel Basquiat died, a man came to interview me about him, and I thought I could help him or enlighten him a little bit to what his subject was. But ultimately [I realized] it wasn't going to work out. So after spending a lot of time trying to get that project made, my first movie, Basquiat [1996], became sort of a rescue mission. I ended up doing it because I started something and I had to see it through.

IS: Did you start with the fact that movies have always shown artists in some kind of picturesque way, and have never really gotten to what makes the whole thing tick?

JS: I'd never seen a movie about an artist that seemed to be accurate. I hadn't seen a movie that looked like it was made by anybody that knew anything about being an artist, with two exceptions. [One is] Andrei Roublev [1966], where [Andrei] Tarkovsky really described life in what was 15th-century Russia, in black-and-white. More than about being an artist, the movie was about the world that the artist lived in. The other movie was The Horse's Mouth [1958], with Alec Guinness.

IS: Earlier you said you didn't think that moviemaking was your calling. Does that mean that you no longer think being a painter and sculptor is your calling?

JS: Definitely not. The core of everything that I do comes from being a painter, and probably the reason for whatever qualities my movies have comes from my perspective as a painter--and what that means, probably, is that I see images. So in telling a story, it's not about explaining what's going on in my brain and making a literary analogue or interpretation of that. It's that if I've got a Whitmanesque attitude toward everything in the world--meaning words, recognizable images, nonrecognizable images, sounds, silence--then, accumulatively, I feel I can tell a story with all of these different elements. And because I don't have hierarchical notions about those things, it seems that my way of telling a story is open to something particular--I don't know if somebody would call it style. I have a different MO, I guess, than most directors.

IS: Let's go quickly to your second film, Before Night Falls [2000]. Why did you feel you had to make that?

JS: I saw Reinaldo Arenas on IV in a documentary; he was sitting in a crummy hotel room in Florida. He said some things in this interview that made me feel that I needed to know more about him, and I thought if I told his story, I could tell the story of the Cuban Revolution. I had always wanted to go to Cuba--and so I did. And when I went there, I felt that it was difficult for me to hang around there, because even though there were many things I loved about it, the people around me were having a very, very hard time, and I felt uncomfortable about my privileges there and their lack of them. I had read Before Night Falls before I went. Arenas wrote around 14 books, I think. With Before Night Falls, I could make a film about something that I thought was an important issue to address. I felt it was my responsibility to do it.

IS: What was that issue? Freedom of expression in Cuba? What gay men were put through in both Cuba and New York City?

JS: Well, it was that freedom wasn't for everybody in Cuba. This was a man who was for the revolution, who was educated by the revolution, who wrote his book and was honored by the revolution, but once he didn't sing a hymn to the regime, he was ostracized. When people would go to Cuba and ask for Reinaldo Arenas, they were told that no such writer existed. There was something so human and funny about him--likable and personable and modest.

IS: With your latest movie, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly--which is your third feature--you have made a film about a man who physically lost his voice, but found it again through true human ingenuity and connection. Voice is a big subject for you.

JS: Yes. Communication. What goes on inside a human? What is that thing that makes a person human? What's good about being human? The fact is that this man, Jean-Dominique Bauby, was reporting back from a very unique place. I don't know that anybody has ever reported back from that place before.

IS: He'd always worked with language.

JS: Well, he was an editor of a magazine, French Elle. But once he ended up without a body and without a voice, he just had his inner voice. IS: He ended up literally without a connection to a body?

JS: Before I get into that, let me mention some context. I knew Fred Hughes, who worked for Andy Warhol, really well. Fred Hughes had multiple sclerosis, and he had had it for many years. But he got progressively worse, and after Andy died, it sped up. Fred ended up living in a bed in his living room. I would go there and read to him--and he was stuck inside of his body. His nurse, Darren McCormack, gave me this book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, written by Jean-Dominique Bauby. I didn't read it right away. I was really thinking I knew all this stuff about Fred's life, and I thought, Well, maybe this is a movie. Here is the tragedy of this man who had such a full life and was so smart, and I could see how to tell Fred's story somehow. Then, after a while, Fred died, and my father became ill. My [youngest] kids, who were 11 at the time, were off school for Christmas, and I was going to take them to Mexico. And I had taken my father with me the year before, but I couldn't take him now. I needed somebody to take care of him, and the only person I could think of was Darren McCormack. So I called Darren and asked him to come down and see my father. This was in December 2003. While he was in the room, I received this script from Kathy Kennedy, written by Ronald Harwood, of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I thought it was particularly peculiar that Darren was in the room with my father, and I started to read this book again. I read the script right away, and I reread the book.