Julian Schnabel on Miral, Tough Critics and Trimming Down With Harvey Weinstein

Your last two narrative films received Academy Award attention; this film was on that track last year before falling off a little bit. How do you think that would have helped spark the dialogue you sought, and were you disappointed when it didn't happen?

I think that this is not the easiest film to deal with. A film like The King's Speech is much more easy to compartmentalize. All of the movies, in fact, were much more easy to digest, in some way. This is much more disruptive. At the time these awards happened, I think there were a lot of battles that needed to be fought and solved, and at the same time, if you're in business -- if you're distributing films -- and one film is an easier sell and people are responding to it, then you don't shoot yourself in the foot and say, "The hell with it! I'm really interested in this one. This is difficult, but I'm going to push this down their throat." So I understand what was going on.

But the thing is that art lasts a lot longer, and art and life are not always congruous. But what's interesting is what's happening in the Middle East now -- this revolution that's going on, this non-violent revolution, people wanting democracy -- it's kind of in concert ith this movie. So I think the m
ovie comes out at a time now in the United States... Well, I think the movie should have come out in the United States before it opened in Europe, because I think Harvey actually knows how to put out a movie like this. And we need to develop a language and get a group of people together who are willing to work on this particular topic -- where we can usher this thing into the public and create a way they can have a dialogue about this. I think that's why I wanted to show the movie at the United Nations.

How is Harvey Weinstein as a collaborator? Because he's not just a distributor -- he's an editor. He's a story guy.

Well, he saw the movie after it was finished, and he loved the movie. He and Bob [Weinstein] loved the movie, and they wanted to be involved. And you're absolutely right: He had some ideas about the film that would make it less confusing and more accessible -- more emotional. And he wanted to know what I thought about that and how I felt about that. Was [the UN premiere] the first time you saw the movie?

Yes.

I think he had some very good suggestions. Sometimes I might demand too much of my audience. At the same time, that doesn't really bother me. I have final cut on all of my films, and so every decision that's in the movie is mine. But he did have some good suggestions. I did have the movie start closer to the moment when you first see Hind. What used to happen is that you'd see a body wrapped up and put in a station wagon. It was beautiful. The camera was the point of view of God, and it pushed through the window, and you hear, "My name is Miral Shahin; I was born in 1973..." But that being said, later, when you see Hind in the station wagon, you think, "Ah, that's what I saw at the beginning." Now you think, "God, she's dead." And it's more emotional because you didn't know that was going to happen.

And at the end, there used to be Palestinian and Israeli flags, and you'd see [assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin, and it said what happened to Miral. Now it just pans up from the cemetery and goes to black and says, "The Oslo agreement was signed; it hasn't been honored yet. This is dedicated to the people on both sides who think peace is possible," and then my name. And the credits are at the end instead of the beginning. The movie gets going quicker. It had a nice rhythm to it. Obviously there are moments that are slowed down, which is the way I like to make a movie -- like when they're driving in the car. The scene where they knock the building down was actually longer. But... [Pauses] This end is something I actually thought about. You know, I had plenty of time to look at the movie and review it. I watched it a lot. I spend a lot of time in the editing room on all my movies; there's nobody with a gun saying, "This movie's got to be out at a certain time." So I think the film's in excellent shape. I love the way that it played, and he was very constructive in that way. I think he was surprised that I actually liked his ideas.

Really?

He couldn't believe it. But the point is that if I didn't, then I... And the thing at the end was something I thought of anyway. But still: To say, "Go in there and put in the money and the time to do it," is nice. I think he's a real believer in the film. But I think he was kind of daunted at first by the reception. We didn't get good reviews, but I don't think the reviews had anything to do with the movie somehow. I think it was [about] the movie people would like to make out of it -- whatever their political predisposition was. You tell me.

You've made four narrative films, all based or partly based on four true stories. What is the appeal of real lives?

If I'm painting a portrait of someone, I look at them. I don't look at a photograph of them. I look at the person. I look at the way the light hits their face. I'm looking at that shape that's between your nose and under your eyebrow. I'm not thinking about something else. I can look at that, and when I start painting on it, something will happen between my eye and hand coordination. What happens there is something that deals beyond logic. And these paintings, if you look at them, I like working on a dirty canvas. I'm not working on a white canvas. So if I'm working from somebody's life, there's something I can see, and I'm responding to that. Maybe I need that.

On the other hand, I wrote a script to [the novel] Perfume, by Patrick Süskind. It wasn't used, but I thought it was pretty great. I used part of it in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, because [Perfume protagonist] Grenouille could travel with his olfactory sense, and [Diving Bell subject Jean-Dominique] Bauby with his imagination. I thought, "Grenouille can smell all the way to Egypt, to Alaska." So that thing where the ice shelf is falling down, I had it in my other script. And I thought, "I can use that here." That was the key for me in making that movie: I was playing these images of the ice shelf falling in Alaska, and when it hit the end, the videotape rewound. And I'm watching all the icebergs go back into place and listening to all this Bach and Glenn Gould, and I said, "I understand how to make this movie."

So you can figure out the answer. For me, they're usually about artists, these movies -- about somebody trying to communicate something. I think the fact is that Miral didn't just leave; she went away and wrote a book about her experience there. The fact that she did that was a healing tool and something she could share with others. Because these small stories, these personal stories, are something that can heal the larger "we."

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