1 week Ago By Brendan Kelly, Montreal Gazette
Article content Denis Villeneuve is one of the good guys. I was standing with him in the lobby of the Henry F. Hall Building of Concordia a few days back, alongside Martin Lefebvre, chair of Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.
Villeneuve had come to talk with film students and almost 400 of them had packed into the Concordia Theatre. I was there to do a question-and-answer with Quebec’s most famous filmmaker before the students began peppering him with their queries. The filmmaker behind the two recent Dune blockbusters was here because Lefebvre had invited him.
Villeneuve had been given a honorary Fine Arts PhD in June and when the Cinema School chair suggested it would be cool if he’d come back in the fall to talk to film students, he quickly agreed. That’s just the kind of dude he is. He didn’t even go to Concordia.
He studied cinema across town at Université du Québec à Montréal. But he came because he cares deeply about his roots in Montreal and Quebec. Pretty impressive when you think just how busy the director must be.
He didn’t talk about future projects that afternoon but he has previously confirmed that there are three possibilities: Dune Messiah, which would be the third film in his Dune trilogy ; Rendezvous With Rama, an adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, a project that Villeneuve has called Arrival on steroids; and the big-budget epic Cleopatra. Denis Villeneuve told Concordia students: “We applaud the people who ask the questions, not my answers.
Because if it’s the answers, don’t applaud.” Photo by Cedric Ribeiro / Getty Images for Warner Bros. Pi But there was Villeneuve on stage for a couple of hours, generously answering whatever question came his way, never losing his cool or good humour, even when I tried to bait him by asking him what he thought of Quentin Tarantino’s recent comment that he couldn’t be bothered going to see the Dune movies.
The Pulp Fiction auteur said he’s seen David Lynch’s Dune so didn’t need to see any more spice worms. “I don’t care,” said Villeneuve, and the whole room erupted in laughter. “It’s true.
I agree with him that I don’t like this idea of recycling and bringing back old ideas. But where I disagree is that what I did was not a remake. It’s an adaptation of the book.
I see this as an original.” Then he paused and added the punchline: “But we are very different human beings.” Given that the critically acclaimed Dune: Part Two has grossed more than $700 million at the global box office since its release in March, you can forgive Villeneuve for not much caring what Tarantino thinks of the film.
The students were a lot more enthused than Tarantino. They greeted Villeneuve like a rock star when he first walked out on stage and when Lefebvre had to end the student question period after more than an hour, there were at least 20 more students lined up to seek advice or insight from Villeneuve, who also directed Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, Sicario and Incendies. Two students asked if they could be his intern.
When people began clapping after every answer, Villeneuve quickly deflected the attention. “I just want to make something clear,” said Villeneuve. “We applaud the people who ask the questions, not my answers.
Because if it’s the answers, don’t applaud.” One of the better questions was how he kept the balance between pleasing himself as an artist and making something that would fill seats in cinemas. “If we knew the recipe, we’d all be billionaires,” Denis Villeneuve said when asked how he balances making choices as an artist and filmmaker.
Photo by Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette files “Honestly I don’t compromise and just make sure that I’m happy,” said Villeneuve. “You cannot know if it’s going to work. If we knew the recipe, we’d all be billionaires.
It’s an art form, so you go with your gut and intuition. What I’m saying is that when I make a film, the first person I’m trying to please is me. I made the Dune movies for myself.
” He had some real straightforward advice for young filmmakers. “Every day that I open the door of the car and go on set, I remember that intimacy with the camera,” he said. “When people ask me, as a young filmmaker, ‘What should I do,’ I always say the same thing: Take your phone and go outside and shoot.
Just create an intimate relationship with reality and it belongs to you. So when you work on something bigger and you have a lot of pressure, you’ll keep that signature of yours.” I’ve known Villeneuve for nearly 30 years.
We met at a party on the beach at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, where he was accompanying the multi-director Quebec film Cosmos. I asked him how he’s managed to remain the same down-to-Earth guy I had a drink with all those years ago. “I’ve done a lot of introspection, a lot of therapy, in order to go on being a good human being and maybe a better filmmaker,” said Villeneuve.
“Being a father, there’s something about that that grounds you. But it’s true that Hollywood can drive you crazy. Some people lose it.
I love to work there. But when I come back here, there’s something about Montreal, the creativity. Theatre, dance companies, music.
Maybe it comes from the fact that there’s not a lot of money. “It’s a very vibrant city and every time I come back I feel that and it nourishes me. I made the decision at one point to stay here and it might be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
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