Cedrick Eymenier

Interview with Lodge Kerrigan
By Cedrick Eymenier
Deauville festival (F), Hotel Normandy
September 9, 2005
Edited by Jeff Rian, 2024

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Cédrick Eymenier: Do you listen to a lot of music?

Lodge Kerrigan: [laughs] All kinds of music: Charlie Parker. I listen to a lot of JS Bach, a lot of cello, Rostropovich…A lot of different music…I like Johnny Cash.

CE: Where do you come from? What’s your artistic background? How did you come to cinema?

LK: I was always envious of people and had romantic stories about how they started to make films. Like their uncle gave them a Super 8mm when they were seven and they ran around making little movies. But that never happened to me. I wish it had, but it didn’t. When I was in university I thought I’d go into journalism. But at the last minute I decided I would go to film school instead. I was accepted into the graduate film program at New York University (NYU). I had a very naïve idea that fiction was more interesting than real life. But as I’ve grown older and matured, I’ve realized what a fallacy that really is. If I had to do it all over again, I’d be a photojournalist.

CE: And what brings you to art?

LK: It’s an excellent question, but it’s a very hard one to answer. I think it comes down to trying to articulate certain ideas and emotions and there is some exhilaration in that. There is real power to that but really, it’s just the need to articulate ideas and feelings. I’m repeating myself to some degree, it’s a really good question but it’s just hard to answer.

CE: You said articulate ideas, you studied philosophy, is there a link with your films?

LK: I think that a lot of times it’s very reductive to try to find such links. I think there is a link, certainly, but I think the reasons why people do things are very complicated and are the result of years of cumulated experiences and decisions and it’s very hard to pinpoint one. So, yes, definitively they related, but I would be very hard-press to tell you how. I remember when I studied philosophy and the reason I stopped. I was in a senior seminar and the professor was talking about Wittgenstein in the context of a New York Yankees baseball game. He was a huge baseball fan and I remember it was a sunny afternoon in May and I kept thinking how much more I’d prefer to be at the baseball game than be stuck inside a classroom. That’s when I realized that an academic life was not for me at all. It’s like Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy: concrete action is more important on some level. I do believe that although I’m not a Marxist by any stretch of the imagination. But I really do believe…I mean I’m repeating myself…given enough time, and thinking about Nietzsche… Do you know the theory of eternal recurrence? He believes that given enough time, everything will repeat exactly as it occurred… well given enough time. So, I will repeat myself and say the exact same thing over and over again.

CE: Yes but maybe that’s what most artists do?

LK: I think it’s striving to articulate something clearly and specifically, and kind of excise it from yourself.

CE: Keane and Clean, Shaven are very similar.

LK: Yes, but I think there are a lot differences between the two. With Clean, Shaven I was trying to create a subjective experience in what it might be like to suffer from schizophrenia, and to have the audience really experience that, and to be in the position of somebody who is suffering from schizophrenia, and who suffers from different symptoms, like auditory hallucinations, dissociative feelings, increased paranoia, increased anxiety, blunting, (which is a symptom where you don’t feel pain in the same way). In the scene where Winter rips out fingernails, there are close-ups of his face and he’s not reacting. The idea was that an audience might understand or experience what it would be like to have those symptoms, for 80 minutes, then to also imagine what it would be like to live one’s life that way. So that they might as a result feel compassion. With Keane, even though I still deal with a character who is mentally ill, my real concern was to focus on how one could try to cope with the abduction of one’s child. That was the primary focus. So I decided to make the character suffer from mental illness. And again, you’re right: it’s a common theme and a cliché with friends who’ve suffered from mental illness. I think we are living in a critical time and it’s important to have some compassion. I was really interested in this idea that in Western society we have the assumption of health and we all expect to be healthy, but there is a thin line between mental health and mental illness, and health and illness in general. I’m kind of amazed, given the way we are wired, that we work as a well as we do. I find that amazing. And I think part of it comes from a fear of having mental illness or we fear of suffering from it. So, trying to have some sense of compassion for it is important, and, therefore, trying to understand what it’s like. I live in New York. I see so many homeless people, and I wonder what I would do if I were homeless and had no one to talk to. How long would it be before my mental health started to deteriorate? Would it be many weeks? One week? 2 weeks? If I talked to no one and had no interaction, or if no one would deal with me, would and everyone rejected me? That would definitively start to affect my mental health. That’s why I continued with that theme. To be honest, and I think it’s true for people who create music or films, or for writers, they all deal with common themes in their work. For myself, it’s a way to find the right way to articulate it.

CE: You often mention compassion. Does it have something to do with religion?

LK: No. I’m not a believer.

CE: To me, Lodge Kerrigan sounds Irish, and I wondered?

LK: Yeah, and I lived in Ireland for six years as a boy. But I’m not religious.

CE: So you aren’t concerned with it?

LK: I’d like to say I’m an atheist, but I’m not. If you say you are an atheist then you are taking a definitive position, which also suggests that religion has some significance in your life. Religion has no significance in my life, so I don’t even spend the time debating if there is a god or not. I don’t believe in a god. It’s not significant to me. And that’s not the point.

CE: So your viewers are witnesses and have to be their own judge to elucidate. In this last movie, we don’t know if Keane has ever had a girlfriend.

LK: In Clean, Shaven, I think it’s suggested very strongly by the end of the movie that he didn’t kill the girl. What it definitively suggested was that the police detective had no real evidence for it.

CE: Yes, and the spectator is put in the same situation as the policeman.

LK: There is a prejudice against the mentally ill and there’s a bias particularly in the media where you read so many stories about people who suffer from mental illness and it’s always in connection to a crime or an act of violence. Statistically, mentally ill people are no more violent than anyone else in society. So why is that the case? By putting an audience in that perspective of questioning, I wanted to address any feelings of bias or prejudice they might have. The audience has to confront that. If they think that Winter killed the girl. Why would they think that? There is no evidence for it, and in a court of law you have to have definitive proof. But here, the evidence is completely circumstantial and really doesn’t hold water at all. And in making Keane, I’ve had a lot of interactions with people who suffer from mental illness and they tell me stories. But I’m never totally sure if what they tell me is true or not. It’s not that they are lying or being deceitful. But I think that fabrication and delusion are also symptom of illness. In that regard, I wanted the audience to be in the same position: How do you know? How could you know? So you have to decide for yourself because it is more real.

CE: In Keane, it’s almost funny, or at least very coincidental, that the woman with her daughter is living almost the same story as that of William Keane. They seem to complement each other, or even worse: Keane could be her husband. Why did you choose to make that very explicit kind of Yin-Yang relation between Keane and the woman at the Hotel? It’s obvious. But why?

LK: Because his overlying need is to find a replacement for his daughter. He’d suffered the worse possible loss: the abduction of one’s child. No one can never really come to terms with that. It’s an incredible void you can’t fill. And I think it’s the same way people suffer from reoccurring nightmares. You suffer a traumatic event, you dream about it over and over again. The subconscious wants to change the event, to change the outcome. Your mind wants to change the event, so you dream about it over and over in a way to try to change it. I think that’s what Keane does in the movie. He’s searching for a way to change what happened to his daughter: the abduction. And the ways he goes about doing that is that initially, he tries to find a substitute for his daughter.

LK: It’s really amazing in life that wherever you go, people kind of show up. Have you ever noticed that? Have you ever gone out in the street just look at something and all of a sudden you turn around and four other people are looking at the same thing. People never leave you alone, never! [laughs] …But in the same way, the woman and the daughter become like a ready-made substitute family for him so that he can start over. But then, when it turns out that the mother is going to leave to reunite with the girl’s father, he decides to abduct Kira, the woman’s daughter. He goes to the bus station and literally recreates the abduction. He gives her money for candy like the kidnapper must have given to Sophie, Keane’s daughter. And he watches her, and this effort changes the outcome… with Kira, but unfortunately not with Sophie.

CE: Like what you said about having a nightmare every night.

LK: Yeah. Life runs in constant cycles, which goes back to Nietzsche and the eternal recurrence.

CE: Claire in Claire Dolan says, “I wanna be inside of you.” William, in Keane, says, “I wanna be inside of you.” Was that pure coincidence?

LK: [laughs]

CE: Because the subject of the movies seems to be this relationship between a daughter and family dealing with difficulties.

LK: I hadn’t really thought about that. I take your interpretation. It seems fine. Perhaps I should branch out and write different dialogue? [laughs] I think in part, it’s just the directness. Claire is working as a prostitute at that point and for her the phrase was a form of seduction: “I want you inside.” It’s a way to make the client feel wanted and needed. When Keane says it, it’s sexual aggression. The meanings are different. I had not thought that the lines were identical. You know when I get to the end of a movie and then I finished it, I never ever watch it again. I leave it behind. It’s like gone for me. Like I got it out of me and I’m finally done with it, so I can move on. Maybe I need to look at them more and make sure I don’t write the same dialogue in every movie.

CE: Keane has no added music, which seems like a very radical if not also efficient decision. The soundtrack is rather raw and brutal, which is quite new compared to your two previous movies.

LK: There are two reasons. First, Clean, Shaven is subjective. It’s trying to explore a world through different auditory hallucinations, which are the major symptoms of schizophrenia. In Keane, it’s objective. And even though the camera is with Keane all the time, there are never subjective shots, and there is never room for a subjective play. But a second answer is that the older I get, the more noise there is, which is everywhere. And it’s harder and harder to get away from it. It’s like here it comes and here they come: the city or people with their cell phones. You can never get away from it. The environment is becoming louder and louder, and more oppressive, which is reflected in the work.

CE: What’s interesting is that with a good sound system for the projection, when the soundtrack is loud, and sometimes almost unbearable, one hears so many things.

LK: You know, it’s economic, too. I mean, if you’re poor, you have less ability to shut out the noise. Especially in New York City, where there is less and less space and more and more people. And I’m sure it is the same in other urban environments. You simply cannot have any personal space. The only way you can do that is to drown it with more noise, music or something. But if you want silence, it’s almost impossible to find. But I don’t want silence either. Some sounds are really beautiful, just quieter and calmer.

CE: What I wanted to say was that, in a way, such real sound contains so many things. Do you mix all these sounds on purpose?

LK: Sure. There is a lot of sound work in Keane, a tremendous amount. But from a subjective versus objective perspective, it’s what you would hear in the environment. The sound is layered, and there is a lot going on if you pay attention to it. Keane used Surround 5.1. Clean, Shaven was mono. Ultimately, I think I prefer mono — I love mono. I really do. I think “surround” and stereo are just grossly overrated. There’s something great about pure mono, with the sound coming from just one source, and right at you. I really like that. In the US, the Criterion DVD collection is re-releasing Clean, Shaven. They’re doing a whole new video and sound mastering, and we went in to listen to the original mix on the original 35mm mag… and they said, “Oh, it’s mono… You know, we could re-do the sound and it could be in stereo.” I looked at him and just thought, “Why would I want to do that?” I know the reason they wanted to do it: because they wanted to get the job and to be able to bill all the new sound work. But why? It’s so beautiful like this. You know all those old records in mono are fantastic. I said, “No I’ll just keep the mono.” You could see the guy’s face, quietly going, “Arrgh.” [laughs].

LK: Returning to religion and compassion: the two are not connected. You don’t have to believe in God to be compassionate. Perhaps from a philosophical point of view it’s more meaningful to be compassionate, especially if there is no reward for it. Most religions are reward-based systems. If you behave that way, you’ll be rewarded. But that devalues your act. You should do it because there is no reward. Isn’t that more pure? But who gives a shit about purity anyway? There is a great line in Arab Strap’s song “The night before the funeral”: “there is no such thing as sin.” I agree with that. Morality is a human construct. There is no such thing as morality outside of the human experience. The only things that exist are action and behavior. That’s it.

CE: In Keane, there’s a beautiful shot when Keane lies down on the grass, stuck in a traffic jam. Would you comment that shot?

LK: That’s my least favorite shot in the movie. I think it’s the least sophisticated of all. I think beginner filmmakers starting out in filmmaking are really concerned about the image and the frame. To me, it’s less sophisticated. I think the more I make films, the more it should be about how you don’t notice the image and how it doesn’t stand out. The whole purpose is to have it be part of a whole and have it fit so you don’t notice it. That shot completely opposes every other shot in the movie because it stands out. And as a result of standing out, it is not sophisticated at all. I think it is the most obvious shot and the most nicely framed. As a photo it would be fine, but in a movie it feels staged or composed. You feel the photographer. You feel that presence too much. So it’s my least favorite. If I did it again, I’d change it. Ànd that’s the only shot in the movie I’d change. I like him lying there but there’s something false… not in the performance and not in the action, but in the representation. People love that shot but it’s my least favorite.

CE: It reminds photograph by Philip-Lorca diCorcia.

LK: Oh I love that. As a still photograph it would work beautifully, but in the movie, it’s different.

CE: Have you made photo work?

LK: I used to shoot some for Purple, and I would love to do more of that.

CE: But don’t you do it on your own?

LK: I do. I took a lot of pictures where my mother lives in a fishing island in the gulf of the St Lawrence River in New Brunswick, Canada. It’s a small fishing community where she was born and grew up. She moved back 20 years ago to teach and now she is retired.

CE: It sounds like the decor of Clean, Shaven.

LK: It’s exactly where I shot Clean, Shaven. I take a lot of photographs there because the island is changing. It’s becoming more and more modern and so I wanted to record the sense of that life.

CE: In Clean, Shaven many shots remind me of some of the wooden houses photographed by Walker Evans in the 1930s.

LK: That’s exactly what I’m recording. Those houses are being replaced by cheap aluminum siding. It’s interesting because it’s pretty much a working-class community. A lot of people in the middle class want to appear to be poor in terms of style. They wear ripped jeans. Kids look like they live in the streets. It’s a hip thing for the middle class, but the working class and the poor always want to look wealthy. Right? They never want to look poor. So they take these beautiful houses and they attach aluminum siding to make them look new. But for me, aesthetically, I hate the aluminum siding. I’m trying to create a photographic record of the houses on the island, and the way it was for decades, which is now rapidly changing.

CE: Walking around Deauville, one finds luxurious shops like Louis Vuitton and so on. It’s the same in Cannes.

LK: Deauville is like Cannes but without the people. There’s no one here. [laughs]

CE: How do you live within the stark dichotomy of the subjects of your films and all these fancy festivals?

LK: It’s surreal.

CE: So how do you react to it?

LK: It’s life man! But what do you mean? How do I live it? I just get up and I do it. [laughs] Although, I think about it all the time. It’ so surreal. But when you think about your life in that abstract way, no matter who you are or where you are, it’s very surreal. I think, “How the fuck did I get here?” Right? Where am I? But it’s fun. It’s enjoyable. It’s a trip. And it’s important to enjoy it because it’s great. Where else? I’m at the beach. I get to eat well, drink lots of wine, and talk about movies. It’s fun.