Quentin Dupieux Talks About Directing Rubber -- Yes, the Movie About the Killer Tire

French filmmaker and DJ Quentin Dupieux directed a movie about a killer tire. I repeat: Quentin Duplex -- who also goes by the name Mr. Oizo -- created a full-length movie about a tire that kills people. A lot of assumptions could be made about Dupieux's feelings toward the American film audience -- who, in the movie, are obnoxious and are eventually poisoned -- or Hollywood in general. But! As Dupieux explains, he's just making fun of himself. OK?

Movieline met with Dupieux to... well, there's really no real way to fancy it up: Discuss a movie about a killer tire.

OK, What the f*ck was that?

Maybe... I don't know. The magic of it is related to the simplicity of the movie. Because the movie, if you watch carefully, you'll see that it's really simple. It's like a cartoon. It's very basic: It's one action, one frame. We're so used to movies that are formatted, we watch so much stuff -- TV, movies -- we are used to some kind of... I don't know how to explain. The fun with Rubber is that it's like it's shot by a nine-year-old kid. It's really simple. It's like I have this idea and I want to do it. A tire rolling on the plastic bottle? It's a good way to keep you interested, in a way. When everything is fast in today's movies, editing is quite fast. There's a lot going on so you never feel bored because it always, "something new, something new" and your rain is following the structure like this. So I think the fun with Rubber is that you have some time to watch. That's probably why you feel like that, you know?

But if someone goes to see this and just thinks that it's going to be about a tire running over some bottles, it's going to be a lot more complicated than that. There's a fake audience in the movie.

Yes, but that's also part of the magic. Let's say a 9-year-old kid wrote and directed it. So this kid knows nothing about structure and knows nothing about climax or creating some kind of structure that make you feel good when you watch it. So the way it's done, you know, one plus one plus one plus one plus one... I don't know how to explain how I feel about it. I think I'm quite a good technician because I know how movies are made and I did everything by myself. I did the framing, I did all of the camera stuff, I did the editing -- but I decided to go back to the '20s, do you know what I mean? So that's why I did all of the special effects without any computers. It's just what you saw has been shot. There are no wires, there's no CGI, we shot it for real. And probably that started the magic and, yes, it's a little bit more complicated than just a tire. But it's more the way I did it that makes it special. Because with this stupid pitch -- a living tire killing people -- you can make a big Hollywood movie. You can make a popcorn movie with this plot. It's just more the way I did it that makes it special.

You've now said this a few times, so did you approach this movie from the mindset of a 9-year-old?

A little bit, yes. Maybe without knowing it? That was not like a choice. I was looking for pure pleasure, like I was almost doing the movie for me. You know directors, even the big ones, have [to act like] kids, in a way. To make movies, you have to believe -- it's like playing with dolls, in a way. "OK, this is the bad character, here's the nice one..." And you create some kind of story. It's the same. Even if you're 50 years old and smart and you make a movie about something political, very serious, you're still kid telling a story. You know what I mean? So there's nothing special about approaching a movie as a kid. I just realized at some point that I was doing it.

There's an opening monologue that states that every decision in every film is based on "no reason." Is that what you believe?

Obviously it's a joke. But, yeah, if you start thinking like this, there's a lot of no reason in the movies. It's like in real life. It's a joke; I turned it into a joke. It's funny, but in a way it says something real. Yeah, movies, there's a lot of no-reason stuff, even in very classic films. So, yeah, that's a half a joke and half the truth. But, obviously, I did this monologue to take people's hand... like, "OK, come in. Come in, it's going to be funny. If you don't like it? Go away now." It was like a warning.

I will say that after that monologue I never gave too much thought to why the tire has powers.

When I wrote the story of the living tire, obviously I had to think like, "OK, do I have to explain why the tire is alive? Should I start the movie with the tire or do I have to show like the first moment of life?" And so, yes, I thought that was interesting if it's just a tire and it suddenly comes to life. But why? If you think about that, you think about sh*tty movies where, I don't know, there's a storm and then, suddenly, the tire is alive. But that's bullsh*t. That's why I decided to put this monologue in there. You're going to see something, but there's no reason.

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