Thefrenchy
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last part...
- INTERVIEWMAGAZINE.COM
FORD: You know, I used to always be hungover until I quit drinking.
VAN SANT: Yeah, I should quit drinking.
FORD: I don’t know. If you don’t need to quit drinking, you shouldn’t quit drinking. I used to really love to drink, and especially living in London, you know, it’s just built for drinking. . . . [laughs]
VAN SANT: A Single Man is a beautiful film. Was it all shot in Pasadena?
FORD: It was shot in Los Angeles, from Malibu to Pasadena to Glendale. And because it was in L.A., it was a larger crew than I would have liked. It seemed like an army of people with vans and trucks. It was a small budget but a lot of people.
VAN SANT: That’s a strange experience, isn’t it? I’ve learned to live with that. You have tons of people who don’t have anything to do with your film. They’re just kind of on the set of a film. When I first experienced that, I really wasn’t sure what was going on. But you’ve done a lot of photo shoots. You’re probably used to something like that.
FORD: I am. Even in fashion, it’s become ridiculous—60 people to take a still photograph. I’ve started taking my own because I got so sick of all of that. I work with my one photo assistant, and a model, and hair and makeup, and that’s it. And, you know, I worked a good bit with Helmut Newton and with Richard Avedon, and the other day with David Bailey. For that whole school of photographers, it’s always been one assistant, one key light, one camera, one backdrop. And these guys worked on film. No one works on film anymore. I don’t shoot on film: That’s the only reason I can be a photographer. To be a photographer now, you just have to kind of catch a base image, and then you can rebuild it, rework it, recolor it. Those old guys like Newton and Avedon—and [Irving] Penn, who just died—were just incredible in the way they could pull off the images they did on film, with no retouching. They truly understood the mechanics of their craft. For most photographers today—I won’t necessarily mention names—you see a picture of 10 people in a magazine, and none of those people were shot together. They take the best head from here, stick it on the best body from that shot, move that over there, and you fill in, which is fine, but that’s a different kind of art—an impressionistic way of interpreting something. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing, but it’s a different way of working.
VAN SANT: So, what are you doing today?
FORD: I’m getting ready to take a bath and go out to dinner. My day is over.
VAN SANT: Where are you going to dinner?
FORD: I am going to dinner at a place called Mark’s Club [in London].
VAN SANT: Mark’s Club. Is it in the same area as The Groucho Club?
FORD: No, it’s not. It’s in Mayfair. It’s owned by the same guy who owns Harry’s Bar and Annabel’s. It’s very old-fashioned. I love Annabel’s, actually. Where else do you see those kinds of people dancing around on the little disco floor with lights in the ceiling, and all those cute military boys coming through in the nighttime, after all those debutante parties?
VAN SANT: Debutante parties?
FORD: They’re all still going to Annabel’s!
VAN SANT: I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other place with the kids, like 18 or 19, who are all dressed up and going out. You just don’t see that anywhere.
FORD: They’re in London, still dressed up and going out—and more drunk and taking more drugs than just about anywhere. I mean, the surface is polished. It’s the other things that are going on that are less than polished.
Gus Van Sant is an Award-Winning writer, producer, and director based in Portland, Oregon.
- INTERVIEWMAGAZINE.COM