mark attacks
by mathieu carratier

read the french version here

following his first movie, which disappeared, and a decade dedicated to the directing of music videos, mark romanek makes a comeback to the movies. it was high time.

second film: "my first feature was barely distributed in the united states. the fact that it was perceived as a failure didn't make it any easier to finance the other projects that i had at that time. so, i embraced the making of music videos and for the past ten years i entirely dedicated myself to this. because i achieved a certain amount of success in that field, i did receive regular offers from the studios to direct features, but, these projects, which were mainly big "franchise" films, didn't really suit my ideas of the kind of film i dreamed to make as an adolescent. not that i'm totally opposed to them. some of these types of movies are fun to go to. but, after seeing what an unpleasant experience making "alien3" was for david fincher, who is a close friend, i wasn't particularly encouraged to go down this same road."
 
instantaneous: "i have been told by one-hour lab technicians that some of their colleagues have made doubles of the pictures they thought most interesting. i've even been told a story about a guy who put together a photo album of amateur porn snapshots. he kept it on his coffee table for people to see. i think this sort of thing is a pretty common phenomenon. it's human nature to be curious. I'm sure that people who bring in their film are aware that the person who develops their pictures – and they're sometimes very private pictures – will look at them and could eventually make a copy for him or herself. But this thought is somehow repressed because you have to develop these pictures somewhere. [laughs] i've brought in some intimate pictures of my girlfriend, and i just sort of try not to think about it."
 
from music videos to the screen: "i wanted the style to serve the content. i was careful not to add too much "style" for no reason. Some critics will always find a way to say : "oh, he's just a music video director who's moved into feature film-making." But take scorsese, who is obviously a genius when it comes to technique and who has a very aggressive style. if he were a music video director, the critics would have destroyed him for this. But being that he is scorsese, this aggressive technique is deemed a work of genius. if you've produced just one music video, they say this technique is superficial and aggressive. if it serves your purpose and adds to the resonance of the scene, i don't see the problem with it. there's nothing wrong with being cinematic. i wanted the movie to be visually interesting, which is just a key aspect of good moviemaking, no?"

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