Cinema Canada (May 1980)

oceanic umepsaneracrenarorerereereemmee ee ae a NC ee a ee ee The following is an interview with Max Fischer, director of the feature film The Lucky Star — which recently completed shooting in Montréal and Holland. Born in Egypt and now .a Canadian by marriage, he has lived and worked in many places. He speaks reasonably fluent English with an accent Henry James would have found charming. We met recently in the building which houses Télé-Métropole and Sonolab’s editing facilities. He was accompanied by his wife, Susannah, and the three of us sat huddled in a corner of the cafeteria trying to look inconspicuous amidst the coffee-breakers. He began at the beginning... Max Fischer: At the outset I was a student of two disciplines — Literature and Philosophy, and at the same time | took a course in the History of Art, which developed into Archeology and then Egyptology — especially the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties, which were my Kevin Tierney is a free-lance writer in Montreal who teaches film and writing at John Abbott College. DEREK SMITH LIMITED Specialists in motion picture editing a change for the better Recent Productions In Your Stride -Adidas Data Centre -IBM Oscar Peterson TV Special -CBC Federal P.C. Commercials address is 409 King St.W. phone number (416)363-6876 or (416) 869-1781 16/May 1980 areas of specialization. At least I tried to specialize ! I was first confronted by the cinema when I was a kind of advisor on certain American super films made about Egypt, like Land of the Pharaohs and The Ten Commandments. My advice wasn’t completely followed, but it was an extraordinary experience for a young man to be involved in these huge productions, with these monsters like De Mille and Howard Hawkes — fantastic, unbelievable. Cinema Canada: Epics... Max Fischer : Yes, real super epics. I was not in Hollywood with them for the interiors, but I was with them on location, advising where to shoot, or making remarks on the designs of the sets — where everything was wrong, of course! Cinema Canada :But they ‘looked’ good. Max Fischer: They looked very, very good; but historically, they were completely wrong. Costumes, everything... But it was exciting! At the same time I was doing that, I was a film critic, earning my living... well, earning my free passes to the cinemas. As well, I created the first Ciné-Club in Egypt in collaboration with Henri Langlois of the Cinémathéque Francaise, who was a very, very dear friend of mine. Later, | was asked to do a series of films on Egyptology for the university and, of course, this was a gift from God. I did twenty-six films on ancient Egypt. Cinema Canada: The Lucky Star isn’t your first feature ? Max Fischer : No, it’s my third. Cinema Canada: Were the other two distributed in North America ? Max Fischer : One was. It’s called — and in spite of the title it is not a pornographic film — Wet Dreams. Actually, it was.a success here in Canada, and received very, very good critical reaction. It opened in France at the Cinémathéque in Paris, and I must admit that most of the major critics were in attendance, and | received unexpectedly good reviews: | didn’t believe them myself. That was five years ago. It was a very strange film, where some of the world’s most famous people expressed their sexual fantasies ; like Nicholas Ray, the great English playwright, Heathcott Williams, Dusan Makajev... Cinema Canada: How did The Lucky Star come about? Is it your original idea? Max Fischer: No. The idea is from an original story called La Belle Etoile by the famous French illustrator Roland Topor. When I first saw it I flipped because I thought the idea was absolutely fantastic. I thought it could be better treated as a film, so I re-wrote it from the original. When I started to get some interest from various producers I jumped to get the screenplay written. I got Jack Rosenthal, three-time Academy Award winner and one of our greatest living writers, to doa screenplay. Cinema Canada: So it’s his adaptation of your adaptation ? Max Fischer: Right, if you describe it that way. Cinema Canada: Well, he’s credited with... Max Fischer: ...Screenplay. They asked me to name my price and I replied that I didn’t have a price. Cinema Canada: Really ? Max Fischer : It is still his screenplay in a sense. Actually, you’ve put your finger on it, because in the film business this is a very strange area. There are certain terminologies which are not very precise, you see. What is a screenplay? People put a credit on a screenplay, but it’s difficult. How do you define a screenplay? I wrote the original 120 pages; then I gave it to Rosenthal and he converted it into 120 pages of screenplay, with dialogue, where the words brought things to life. Mine was, you know, a story. Cinema Canada: So yours was like a sketch and his became a portrait. Max Fischer : Right. Exactly. Then I got it back and did a shooting script out of the Rosenthal version. Cinema Canada: At what point in all of this did financing come in? Max Fischer: All of it, up to script completion, was financed by me. We spent a lot of money, and four years. Three times we had opportunities to do the film, with Americans, with the French, and with the Germans. The Americans were very generous with their offers because they wanted to buy the property. They offered me an incredible amount of money, but I told them I was not interested in selling. I wanted to direct the film, and as I was unknown, and still am, they wanted someone else to direct. In effect, they wanted to pay me a lot of money for not directing— and I refused. They asked