Moviegoing Memories is a series of short interviews with filmmakers about going to the movies. Radu Jude's Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is MUBI GO's Film of the Week in the UK and the US for November 26, 2021.
Radu Jude on the set of Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. Photo by Silviu Ghetie ©microFILM_3.
NOTEBOOK: How would you describe your movie in the least amount of words?
RADU JUDE: Humorless comedy.
NOTEBOOK: Where and what is your favorite movie theater? Why is it your favorite?
JUDE: "It seems to me that to call a movie house a theatre is the same as to call an undertaker a mortician," wrote Nabokov in his essay on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I am not picky, I am used to so many cinemas offering horrible cinema conditions, so that any decent one would do. I can maybe choose according to the programming: for instance, the Austrian Film Museum is doing interesting things, and La Cinémathèque française as well. I like cinematheques, I like to watch old films. Sometimes the critic Andrei Rus organizes interesting things in Bucharest.
NOTEBOOK: What is the most memorable movie screening of your life? Why is it memorable?
JUDE: The first screening I attended in 1993 at the Romanian Cinematheque: Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) by Norman Jewison. I still prefer Ian Gillan as Jesus, but nevertheless the film impressed me so much (they had a great 35 mm color print, God knows how, because the Cinematheque was quite poor and most of the copies were black and white). I became hooked and started to attend the screenings regularly. Maybe I can pay an homage to the people who made the quite good programming of the Cinematheque in those difficult times: the film director Savel Știopul and Mihai Tolu.
NOTEBOOK: If you could choose one classic film to watch on the big screen, what would it be and why?
JUDE: A film made and screened in 70 mm—I never saw one like that. I would choose Cheyenne Autumn (1964) by John Ford.