If you follow film festival news you know that there's been a movie (ahem) rolling around for some time called Rubber. It is about a sentient abandoned tire leaving a path of bloody destruction through the California desert. It is also a striking expose on voyeurism and audience expectation. it's bloody, it's shocking, it's hilarious and anyone who ever got a kick out having a bizarre, useless argument just to hear themselves talk HAS to see it.
It finally makes its way to theaters in select cities this Friday (info here) and is also available on VOD.
I had an opportunity to speak to the man behind the mayhem Quentin Dupieux, who is better known in the DJ community as Mr. Oizo (funky sample here). Here are highlights of that conversation.
Jordan Hoffman: I saw Rubber and I loved it. It was at Fantastic Fest, a non-stop film festival, so I was a little tired when I saw it. But it has sort of a dream-like quality to it.
Quentin Dupieux: Yeah, you need to be in a good disposition to watch it. If you are expecting too much you will be disappointed, so we should ask everybody to be tired.
Jordan Hoffman: Did set out to a achieve a stream-of-consciousness, or is that something that occurred in the writing and you just rolled with it?
Quentin Dupieux: I started to write the story about the Tire. Then I got bored. It was not enough. Like, I don’t want to do 90 minutes around the Tire. So I had an idea to create some kind of layer, something to play with. I had this idea of people watching this thing going on...it was a good way to make fun of myself. It was a good way to insist on the absurdity. Because, yes, it was an absurdity. A living tire with psychokinetic powers – that’s absurd. But suddenly, it was even more absurd if people were watching with binoculars in the desert.
Jordan Hoffman: You knew that you wanted an inatimate object that came to life and was evil. Was it always going to be a Tire?
Quentin Dupieux: Yeah. I’m saying this now because I’ve had time to think about it and everybody’s been asking me. The tire was good because it has motion. It’s supposed to roll. The same movie with a TV – ok it’s absurd, but you have to deal with how it is going to move? It’s not incredible – it’s a tire, rolling.
Jordan Hoffman: It didn’t look like there were many computer-generated effects.
Quentin Dupieux: No. There was no CGI, nothing with a computer.
Jordan Hoffman: So there must have been people with wires pushing that tire back and forth. Are there outtakes of the tire going where you didn’t want it to go?
Quentin Dupieux: We had one puppeteer. The guy was always operating the tire to appear on frame. And we had other people for the wide shots. The first two guys that did the explosion, they were terrible. Each time they were moving it was a drama. The head explosion was so bad that you cannot imagine. The first explosion was so funny and everyone was excited for the first day of shooting, everyone was waiting for the head explosion, it was so exciting. And the for the head explosion, once they had the dummy in the car, it was like, “1...2...3!” and nothing happened.
Jordan Hoffman: You didn’t just direct, you also wrote and were the cinematographer, the editor, and even did part of the music. Don't like to let other people do the work, eh?
Quentin Dupieux I enjoy doing all of it. Like taking care of the cinematographics, that’s just pure joy. You know, finding the right angles to shoot a scene, and then writing a line of dialogue. I just enjoy it. I did a few commercials, and that was two days of shooting, and it was like extremely boring. It was really boring, being on the shoot. You cannot touch the camera, and you have 3 technicians...
Jordan Hoffman: Are you surprised that directors don’t shoot and edit their own work? It’s not all that common.
Quentin Dupieux I think some directors just like to make final decions. That’s a different way, you know. You can direct movies just being seated and answering questions. "This one or that one?" "I choose that one." You can direct a movie just like that, and you can make a great movie just like that. I’m just suggesting I need to be in the action. I need to push the camera, I need to be close to everything. I don’t want to wait. That was part of the excitement around Rubber, and that’s quite funny actually. Everybody told me, the technicians and the actors, that we love it because we never wait. We are just doing it.
Jordan Hoffman: How many days was the shooting?
Quentin Dupieux Fourteen days.
Jordan Hoffman: It’s not just a comedy, there’s some intelligence to it. How would you describe the film?
Quentin Dupieux For me, it’s a bit like a movie that is trying to forget about all other movies.
Jordan Hoffman: It definitely has that "beamed down from somewhere else" quality. It’s a text about movie-making in general, but not in a pretentious way.
Quentin Dupieux No. In a very humble way. I honestly, when I was shooting Rubber, I was lying on my knees in the dirt with my camera. I was ten years old with the purpse of, “OK, make the tire drink water! Funny!”
Jordan Hoffman: Do you have a definitive point of view on the society's culpability toward violence? Or let the film speak for itself?
Quentin Dupieux I’m not that specific about violence. I think people cheat and they ask for more, and I think I was just making fun of this. I don’t want to. . . . you know . . . I want some tasty, nice yoghurt (trails off.) I recognize your voice now. You were the one who filmed yourself in the hotel room?
Jordan Hoffman: Yeah, those videos are usually 90 seconds, but that one went about 4 minutes, I was so excited.
Quentin Dupieux We were very proud of your video. That was one of the first screenings in America, it was super-exciting for us to see that other people in other countries were excited by this.
Jordan Hoffman: Is it a success over in Europe?
Quentin Dupieux The buzz around it is usually good, but it’s still slow. We are not Spider-Man. The movie exists and it’s already a miracle.
And if you want to see some of Quentin's day gig as the turntabalist Mr. Oizo. . .
