Lol – also self-disembowling ones.
“Well, now that he has got the publics attention he should start making some decent films.”
^ Word on that…
Midway through the press conference, Von Trier just went on a roll with his annoying self-absorbed persona and started speaking all sorts of bullshit. He even called Dunst, almost directly, a fake, as opposed to Gainsbourg. I suppose this will get cheers from many Mubians, but one just doesn’t do that to the actress of your film, who had been praising him during the conference.
That and the Hitler bit are enough offense for me to reject him (not sure about the ban, though). But on top of that, he made that odious piece of mediocrity called Epidemic.
^ Didn’t he originally want Penelope Cruz instead of Dunst? I suppose he was imagining Cruz all the time during shooting, heh…
I don’t know, if Epidemic is mediocrity, then what shall we say Manderley is?
^ would Penelope Cruz and Charlotte Gainsbourg have been sisters then? Weird! Just thinking about the accents is overwhelming…
“I don’t know, if Epidemic is mediocrity, then what shall we say Manderley is?”
Shit.
Trier is such a scumbag. Making fun of Udo’s homosexuality is one thing, but calling Skarsgard a drunk is just heinous. Burn his films! He should’ve acted like a gentleman, like Polanski for instance.
Mary: This thread is such a bore as are most of these responses. Clearly, he is poking fun and confronting a very ugly and taboo subject. When people are silent about something they are prisoners to it in a way and then it has power in a way.
Please. Can I get an LOL? Actually, I’ll be using a lot of LOLs in this post. He wasn’t poking fun and confronting a very ugly and taboo subject as a way of actually bringing something of substance to the issue. This wasn’t exactly Lenny Bruce using epithets in a funny and provocative way to think about the nature of certain ugly words and rob them of their power. It’s one thing to try to defend Lars, it’s another thing to elevate the crap he said to some kind of meaningful challenge to a taboo subject.
Matt Parks: Stoopid question, stoopid answer.
Sure, and I don’t think anyone is denying that what he said was stupid and in poor taste, including von Trier himself. On the other hand, the question he was asked was (implicitly if not explicitly) “are you a Nazi?,” which is really the kind of question one asks “at the expense of” the person to which it’s being asked, and clearly the question provoked, after an initial WTF moment on von Trier’s part that can be clearly seen in the press conference video, the kind of reaction that the asker was hoping for.
Lars is not exactly stupid enough to be a victim of the press. He’s always fed off the media, and vice versa. He baits the media all the time, and they eat it up. The media threw a bait at him, and he had the choice to bite or not. What cracks me up about this whole deal is that LVT’s apologists and fans are trying to diffuse the blame—on the press, on Cannes, on Mel Gibson!!! lol. No one else is responsible for the shit he said. PERIOD.
Doctor Lemonglow: Post-Kyo: part of the point behind my first post was that I was NOT being edgy.
I thought it would be apparent that I was suggesting that there would be no such thing as
“edgy” speech if offended parties would not lend it such power by proscribing that speech.
That’s apart from living in a free society.
Umm, this has nothing to do with free speech. LOL. Don’t turn LVT into Jafar Panahi or Mohammed Rasouluf. He can say whatever he wants and does. Cannes has no obligation to provide him with a forum if they don’t feel like it. I mean, I want to show my crappy short film at Cannes too, but if they “ban” me from doing so, that isn’t an infringement on my right to free speech. LOL
Deckard Croix: Because this is a commercial world. The artist must give interviews if he/she want to reach a wider audience. Not all artists thrive on fame, but all artists require some form of appreciation of their work – this is the artist’s dilemma. Why must he/she lie and say they’re enjoying themselves when they’re not? For some artists, giving interviews is an obligation and not all artists are great actors.
Yes, poor little Lars who must give all these horribly taxing interviews. Umm, LVT thrives on the attention, claiming himself to be the best filmmaker in the world and so on in interviews. Lars chose to engage a stupid question in his typically flippant distasteful and obnoxious manner. Well, if you’re constantly flippant, distasteful, and obnoxious, you’re eventually going to fall out of favor with some people. That’s his choice. The idea that LVT is some poor hapless manipulated victim of the system is laughable.
Look everyone, all of this has been generated by LVT himself, no one else. He is the one who over the years has chosen to put the spotlight on himself and not his art. He has deliberately manipulated the media to court controversy for himself and to create hype for his films. Well, sometimes when you fashion yourself to be an agent provocateur, you’re going to provoke people into being pissed off at you. The only real question that remains is whether the old saying about no press being bad press will indeed be true in this case. If LVT’s career spirals downward after this and he has problems getting funding, it will be because of LVT himself.
“Lars is not exactly stupid enough to be a victim of the press. He’s always fed off the media, and vice versa. He baits the media all the time, and they eat it up. The media threw a bait at him, and he had the choice to bite or not. What cracks me up about this whole deal is that LVT’s apologists and fans are trying to diffuse the blame—on the press, on Cannes, on Mel Gibson!!! lol. No one else is responsible for the shit he said. PERIOD.”
Why are you directing this to me? It’s not addressing anything I actually said.
_"The media threw a bait at him,"
Stoopid question . . .
" he had the choice to bite or not. "
. . . stoopid answerWhy are we still talking about this if you don’t have anything new to say?
An LOL attached to a comment does not, at this late date in internet history, strike me as a withering riposte,
but I’ll be charitable and just say that I’m glad you entertain yourself.
But entertainment is not as rigorous an endeavor as logic.
To wit:
“I mean, I want to show my crappy short film at Cannes too, but if they “ban” me from doing so, that isn’t an infringement on my right to free speech.”
If the reason for not screening that film has everything to do with something you stated in an interview,
but nothing to do with the content or quality of the film, then something has impacted your ability to
express yourself, and I wouldn’t call it freedom.
No, the government has not stepped in and censored remarks in that instance, and thus in the
legal sense a right to free speech is not infringed. But that in no way suggests that the folks at Cannes
allow freedom of expression, or, as you put it, LVT “can say whatever he wants and does.”
At Cannes, he quite plainly can NOT say what he pleases, otherwise what are we discussing here?
Then there’s this: " when you fashion yourself to be an agent provocateur, you’re going to provoke people into being pissed off at you…If LVT’s career spirals downward after this and he has problems getting funding, it will be because of LVT himself."
If people refuse to fund LVT solely because his remarks “pissed them off,” or if audiences vanish and distribution goes away for the very same reason, then all of those folks have indeed fallen into a fascist groove thang, as I mentioned before. In my view, cultural integrity dictates that we judge the art, not the artist.
What the hell is he even saying? It’s like what came first, the chicken or the egg, the moron or the smug douchebag?
Trier wishes he was as funny, edgy and perceptive as Zizek but he can’t pull it off.
On the other hand, the question he was asked was (implicitly if not explicitly) “are you a Nazi?,” which is really the kind of question one asks “at the expense of” the person to which it’s being asked, and clearly the question provoked, after an initial WTF moment on von Trier’s part that can be clearly seen in the press conference video, the kind of reaction that the asker was hoping for.
@ Matt, you say the question “clearly provoked…the kind of reaction that the asker was hoping for.” That implies that Lars was manipulated and the person who asked the question shares the blame in this. He doesn’t. Lars Von Trier is responsible for what Lars Von Trier says. PERIOD. Which is why I said the following.
Lars is not exactly stupid enough to be a victim of the press. He’s always fed off the media, and vice versa. He baits the media all the time, and they eat it up. The media threw a bait at him, and he had the choice to bite or not. What cracks me up about this whole deal is that LVT’s apologists and fans are trying to diffuse the blame—on the press, on Cannes, on Mel Gibson!!! lol. No one else is responsible for the shit he said. PERIOD.
And @ Lemonglow,
No, the government has not stepped in and censored remarks in that instance, and thus in the
legal sense a right to free speech is not infringed. But that in no way suggests that the folks at Cannes
allow freedom of expression, or, as you put it, LVT “can say whatever he wants and does.
At Cannes, he quite plainly can NOT say what he pleases, otherwise what are we discussing here?
First and foremost, since there’s some confusion, (maybe not on your part but in the thread itself) let’s clarify this point. The ban appears to be a personal one: Melancholia is still in contention for all awards, including the festival’s most prestigious, the Palme d’Or, which Von Trier won in 2000 with his film Dancer in the Dark. This is very simple. Cannes Int’l Film Festival as a private organization reserves the right to revoke its invitation to someone who they don’t feel carry themselves in the spirit of what the festival represents. They also have the freedom not to invite him to its future events. And Lars, in turn, can take pot shots at the festival and the French people in general. As he has already done. “I think one of the reasons is that the French themselves treated the Jews badly during the second world war. Therefore it is a touchy subject for them.” Good for Lars. Good for Cannes. Nobody’s free speech is being violated here.
I’ll go with douchebag. Obviously the guy is not a moron. But those comments are definitly douchebag.
“you say the question “clearly provoked…the kind of reaction that the asker was hoping for.” That implies that Lars was manipulated and the person who asked the question shares the blame in this.”
So . . . he would have answered the question the same way if no one had asked the question? Is that what you’re saying?
Why would he have answered the question if no one asked him the question?
^ That.
So . . . he would have answered the question the same way if no one had asked the question? Is that what you’re saying?
Dude, of course not. What are you even saying? That’s an impossibility. But obviously, he had an infinite numbers of possibilities in how he would choose to answer the question. The particular way he chose to answer the question wasn’t some inevitability just by the virtue of the question being asked. He could’ve answered it in a billion different ways. He could’ve just told the guy to fuck off, for example. Christ, talk about twisted logic, come on, man.
Am I the only one here who’s not even offended by what he said? Has anyone else actually gone to the Cannes page and seen the actual press conference? Seen the words coming out of his own mouth within context?
I think you need to before you make judgments, because the context is important and there’s a lot being left out in reporting.
Jason Solomons, chairman of the Film Critics’ Circle in London, said in Cannes that he supported the decision, and argued that organizers should have gone further.
“I think the film should have been thrown out as well,” he told Reuters.
Solomons said there was a tendency to look at the art not the artist, but that in this case the two things were inextricably bound.
This is also absurd, as are the requests that he apologise for his comments about Albert Speer. People who can’t separate the spectre of Nazism from Speer’s work or even Riefenstahl’s work don’t deserve to be film critics. It’s all in the name: “film critics”. They are there to critique films, not people.
He could have . . . and then we would all be calling him a douchebag because he told a journalist to fuck off. Are there really an infinite number of ways to answer the question “so . . . are you a Nazi?”
@ Matt,
He could have . . . and then we would all be calling him a douchebag because he told a journalist to fuck off. Are there really an infinite number of ways to answer the question “so . . . are you a Nazi?”
Umm, I dare say that if he tells a reporter to fuck off as a response to the question “so . . . are you a Nazi?” people would be able to make better sense of it than the answer he gave.
And how could he have answered the question? Let me count the ways… Umm, how about, “no, you’re confused, I was merely stating my view on their aesthetic sensibilities and not morality”???
But actually on second thought, I can’t do this anymore. LOL. You’re absolutely right. The way LVT chose to answer the question was the only reasonable way he could have answered it. The media got him. You win.
John Hurt, Udo Kier, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgaard, Lars von Trier and the rest sitting at the same table, all available to answer questions… and they end up talking about nazis. What a wasted opportunity. The press asked some pretty lame questions overall.
Yes, I saw the whole conference and it only worsened my view of Von Trier.
Pity all this overshadowed the Cannes 2011 debuts of Almodóvar’s film and Panahi’s as well.
Btw, I was curious about the reception of Naomi Kawase’s film, but haven’t seen anything.
“Umm, I dare say that if he tells a reporter to fuck off as a response to the question “so . . . are you a Nazi?” people would be able to make better sense of it than the answer he gave.”
Would the question even have been reported, though? It went virtually unreported even with the response that he did give. This was the point I was actually originally making.
“You’re absolutely right. The way LVT chose to answer the question was the only reasonable way he could have answered it. The media got him. You win.”
As I sure you realize (because you read what I actually wrote), this is not what I said.
@ Ralch
What I’ve seen about Kawase’s film has been lukewarm to negative.
Thanks.
I’ve heard Kawase’s film referred to as The Shrub of Life by quite a few journos. There have been some positive reactions out there too, though – they call it plotless but mystical, pensive, meditative, etc.
As for Lars, I do think it’s a little bit silly. His comments, if we look at them in context, were not exactly laudable – although it’s only the tongue-in-cheek understatement “He is not what you would call a good guy” that really bothers me – but we know who we’re dealing with and although it may well be what was coming to him after all this time, it’s an oddly low-key statement to be the straw that broke the camel’s back and attract such a vicious media storm. I think it speaks to some less-than-admirable aspects of contemporary society.
Anyway, too much time and attention has gone toward this. I want to hear more about Hong Sangsoo’s newest instead.
Unfortunately it seems as if Kawase has lost it, her recent works that I’ve seen had little to do with the transcendental beauty and intimacy of her earlier works, thus the reactions to her latest film come as no surprise. Anyway, even the worst Kawase film features a few breathtaking moments that make it worth watching, so I’m also looking forward to the new one. Though I’m much more looking forward to the latest Hong Sang-soo.
I’ve been trying to get some insight on the latest Hong Sang-soo film in the Korean media, but there has been nothing except for inane articles about the official poster being released.
There is this intriguing trailer though.
The trailer is indeed awesome. Such a brilliant idea to make everything move backwards.
My opinion on this whole thing can be summed up by a line spoken by Richard Widmark in ‘Pickup on South Street’. “Who Cares?”
I just wanted to come in here and say the thread title made me laugh. :)
Blue K, Custodian of the Cinema
Antichrist should’ve been banned period as it was a terrible offense to talking foxes.