BOP Interview: Julie Delpy
By Ryan Mazie
July 11, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Just as the interview was about to begin, Delpy briefly excused herself for looking at her cell phone to send a text to her boyfriend looking after her child, laughing as she said “irresponsible men,” a fairly common theme in her films. In New York, Chris Rock plays Marion’s radio personality boyfriend. Both characters have kids from previous relationships.
Delpy’s real-life father, Albert Delpy, plays her character’s dad in the film; a jolly brute who accelerates most of the film’s cultural clash conflicts along with Marion’s nymphomaniac sister (co-screenwriter Alexia Landeau) and her guileless, creepy boyfriend (Alexandre Nahon).
When prodded about her father’s frank, sexual dialogue in the film, Delpy defensively asks, “What age do you think sexuality stops at?” before admitting this is something from her real life. “France has a thing where you can be smart, political, and intellectual and talk about sex all of the time,” Delpy smirked.
Delpy on 2 Days in New York’s open dialogue about sex:
Julie Delpy: “You can speak very freely about sexuality and not watch pornography everyday. I think there is a difference between being free-spirited and expressing your mind without actually being dirty and obsessed with sex and doing nasty things all day long… I feel like I am a person who jokes about a lot of stuff, but in the end I am an extremely romantic person that would never go to an orgy or do crazy, disgusting things. I am very straight. But I can joke a lot about sex, because I am stable on that level. I never watched pornography… (thinks) well, only as a teenager just to see how it worked. I was like ‘ugghh,’ it didn’t seem very exciting or nice.”
Another part of Delpy that she seemed to have let sneak into her film is the tricky experience of dating an American while being from a French family and the inherent misunderstandings, which 2 Days in New York’s humor and plot thrive on. “First of all, most families and couples misunderstand each other when speaking the same language,” said Delpy, “Then you add in people who don’t speak the same language, it multiplies by 20 all of the confusion, which is fun to me.”
The miscommunication situation jumped off screen as well. Working with a largely American crew, shooting the film in the titular city, she kept French director of photography, Lubomir Bakchev, to keep in the stylistic theme of her first film which he also DP’d. While admitting to the language barrier, she said, “Sometimes I would talk to [Lubomir] and Chris wouldn’t know what I had said, but sometimes it is good not to have the actors know everything you are saying.”
Keeping Rock in mind for the lead, Delpy said that he appreciated how little of a part being a mixed race couple played into the script and that it wasn’t even a subject Delpy even thought of while writing.
On making the characters a mixed-race couple:
JD: “To me it is important to make sure that them being a mixed-race couple is not a problem. They don’t give a shit. Their friends don’t give a shit. The dad doesn’t give a shit. His parents don’t give a shit. That time is over. To me it is refreshing and I hope people will say, “Who gives a shit?” Nowadays to me it seems like in the real world it is not a big deal.
“For someone with really racist parents I could see it being a big deal, but with normal thinking people, you just want your child to be happy. I hope this movie will make people feel that way. Throughout the entire film, I don’t want people to go, “Oh, he’s dating a white woman.” “She’s dating a black man.” I think after five minutes… hopefully, right away you don’t even think about it. … Even an older woman with a younger guy, even if they are four years apart, that’s the subject matter of the film. It is so annoying. I am so sick of it.”
Delpy was also sick of the portrayal of French people in mainstream films. “Americans have this idea the French people are Chanel commercials, but we are not.”
On dispelling the “Chanel commercial” perception of France:
JD: “It’s funny, because I made a movie before called Le Skylab and some Americans who’ve seen it were totally puzzled by it, because I described a French family in the ‘70s who barbequed for 18 hours. So it’s a white trash version of a French family, which is part of my family and is the reality of France. 0.02% of France is Chanel.
“The culture is different. We don’t have guns. The white trash culture is more provincial (laughs). They are kind of dumb and listening to really bad music like Johnny Hallyday.”
The last thing that I noticed about Delpy that is reminiscent of her character in the film is her slight neuroticism. Going off on a few tangents about France’s politics (as well as sexual politics), when told that the press notes had a critical excerpt calling her a female Woody Allen, she laughed, “I don’t know how I should take it. I mean, he is really neurotic; but he is very talented and if I have a tenth of his career, I’ll be very happy and very lucky.”
Delpy called him one of her biggest film influences, along with Robert Altman for his naturalistic approach to acting.
On why she shoots in a French New Wave Style with plenty of jump cuts:
JD: “I love jump cuts and I love the energy of camera movements that give it a feel like you aren’t watching a movie, but are just in it. What [Jean-Luc Godard] did with the jump cuts, which is like a transcending narrative, gives you a sense of time that flows differently and I’ve always liked that. It also gives it rhythm. If it weren’t for the editing in this film, it would be kind of dragging. It has a lot of energy, because the editing is very boom-boom-boom-boom-boom which gives it a sense of chaos. But that is really created in the editing room and mixing room, because people talking on top of each other doesn’t happen on set or otherwise you couldn’t edit a film.
“I put the sister fighting on one side of the room and then the dad on another side and you jump cut back and forth – it’s a lot in post-production that creates the chaos I want.”
On writing the film after her mother’s death:
JD: "When I started writing the sequel she was alive. Then she passed away after I had a baby, so I put the film on hold. 'Forget it, I’m not writing it.' But then there is this side of me that said she always wanted me to write movies and so I decided to write the film with her in mind and very subtle with her death as a little line in the film. But the film is very much about the loss, even with the comedy; I didn’t want to make it all doom and gloom, because my mother was a very happy person with a great sense of humor until the very, very end. She would even joke about the terrible state she was in until there was no joking for anybody anymore. It’s always better when you think of a happy thing, even when people are gone."