Jean-Jacques Annaud: Mountains, Mantras, and a Movie Star

Seven Years In Tibet director Jean-Jacques Annaud discusses the challenges of making a $70 million movie about a westerner's encounter with the Dalai Lama, disses "Hollywood buddhists," and praises the passion and patience of Brad Pitt.

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When European directors become a Hollywood flavor, they inevitably get trapped into doing studio fare. Witness the examples of Paul Verhoeven, who once made films like The Fourth Man but segued via Hollywood into Robocop, Basic Instinct, etc., Wolfgang Petersen (_Das Boot_ to In the Line of Fire), and Luc Besson (_La Femme Nikita_ to The Fifth Element). Not Jean-Jacques Annaud.

Annaud began by immersing himself in Africa to make the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar-winning Black and White in Color, and went on to make the austere, dialogue-less prehistorical human drama Quest for Fire; the arty, heady medieval drama The Name of the Rose; the live bear adventure The Bear; and the exotic, erotic The Lover (for which he became the first non-Asian in 50 years to shoot Vietnam with anything other than live ammunition). He also wrote and directed the first IMAX 3-D fiction film, the 40-minute Wings of Courage. Each time out, Annaud seemed to climb some personal Mount Everest. All of that set him up nicely for Seven Years in Tibet, a $70 million film based on the autobiography of Austrian mountain climber Heinrich Harrer, who crossed the Himalayas into Tibet during World War II and spent seven years in the company of the then-teenaged Dalai Lama.

In making Seven Years in Tibet, Annaud was struck with the same mix of good and bad luck that always accompanies projects as ambitious, complex and just plain odd as the ones he takes on. First there was the good luck of having box-office golden boy Brad Pitt as his star. Then there was the bad luck of having India deny him permission to shoot the picture in the Himalayas. Then there was the good luck of a successful, if difficult, shoot in the Andes. Then there was the bad luck of having Heinrich Harrer's past as a card-carrying member of Hitler's SS hit the press just as the film was being completed. Annaud dealt with questions about both kinds of luck with calm and humor, and seemed just the sort of person who could actually have directed both live bears and giant movie stars with equanimity.

MICHAEL FLEMING: You've specialized in stories set in exotic, remote locations, like Africa, Vietnam and the Andes. Did _Seven Years in Tibet _attract you initially because of its setting?

JEAN-JACQUES ANNAUD: The passion I had acquired for Vietnam while filming The Lover made me absolutely certain that I wanted another experience in Asia, and Tibet had been in the back of my mind for a very long time.

Q: So when the script based on Harrer's memoir Seven Years in Tibet came along, did it just grab you?

A: I got a very, very bad script, just this stupid Hollywood thing. It's the first time it happened to me, that a terrible screenplay can lead somewhere. It was so appalling. The Chinese were bombing the city and Harrer was rescuing the Dalai Lama on a rope. It was an action movie. I decided to go back and read the original material.

Q: What did you think of Harrer's memoir?

A: I was interested in what was missing from it. I was amused to see there was no character. I said to myself, This is a man who can explain seven years of his life without ever revealing how he feels about it. He describes the size of his blisters, but what about his heart? What is it that he doesn't want to talk about? It's because something's wrong. Let's explain what is wrong.

Q: What did the book give you to run with?

A: I realized that I'd found my favorite theme in the book: a European being transformed by a foreign culture. That's what happened to me when I went to Africa [for_ Black and White in Color_]. I was a typical little Frenchman from the university, very convinced of what I knew. After three days in Africa, I changed my values. It's a theme that never ceases to haunt me. I return to Africa every year, back to my roots, to feel the forest and the smell of charcoal.

Q: During the time you were first looking at Seven Years in Tibet, weren't you trying to make Mistress of the Seas, a big-budget, costumed pirate movie?

A: On Mistress of the Seas, I felt there was a great story of two really young women, 16 and 17, who had great lives. They were kids, but they frightened the empire. They were rebellious, like in Rebel Without a Cause. But as soon as you're talking sea and ships, the budget goes mad. You cannot make an $80 or $90 million movie with 16- or 17-year-old heroines--that I didn't know. To make the movie possible, it became the story of the guy, it was Master of the Seas, not Mistress of the Seas, and I didn't like it anymore.

Q: So Cutthroat Island happened instead, and flopped miserably?

A: Sure, and they pushed ahead because they were afraid of us. I'm not in the sport business, I'm not worried about being first. I just want to make a proper movie. While I was seeing this movie going the wrong way, Becky Johnston's first draft of Seven Years in Tibet came back and was very close to what I wanted. Usually, when I read a first draft, I must admit I go downstairs in my country place, open a bottle of wine and get drunk, because usually I'm so appalled. We all know it's a first draft, but it's such a terrible moment to see that what you've been working on for six months or a year just doesn't work at all. This time, I read it on the plane coming from France, and I started crying. I was afraid the stewards would come with aspirin or something.

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