'Dear Wendy' - Thomas Vinterberg Q&A

The co-creator of Dogme discusses the making of his provocative new film.

Aug  5 2005

Thomas Vinterberg, director of current Time Out film of the week 'Dear Wendy', talks to Chris Tilly about playing with guns, working with Lars von Trier and why he declared the death of Dogme.

How have people been reacting to 'Dear Wendy' thus far?

I tend to show the film and then run and hide. And I don't read reviews. What I've heard is that they're primarily very good, and then there's a bunch of hostile reviews, so it seems to divide people. But I think the majority are very happy about it, which is good. This film is for young people. I had young people in my head while I was doing this film, so that's what I'm interested in – to get them to see it and see what they say. Every time I meet a 12-year-old – I met Atom Egoyan the other day, and his son was crying and loved it – then I get happy. But I do think we could run into some problems with the American press. I've tried to avoid finger-pointing, and what they call being anti-American, which is a word I'll never understand, but there might be some issues there. I'm not sure how bad it's going to be, but maybe it's going be bad.

It's quite a political film. Clearly your scriptwriter, Lars von Trier, has big ideas about America?

But are his ideas about America that clear? I'm not sure. I think he's deeply fascinated with America. You know, America's the frontier of Western living, for good or for worse, no matter how much we don't like to admit it. I grew up with a basketball and a Coca-Cola in my hand, watching American television, and so did he. It's obvious we all want to debate that place, we are all very curious about the place, fascinated by the place, and angered by the place – it's an important part of our lives. And for Lars as well.

How did you end up directing Lars' script?

It was written for him, to start with, then he got obsessed with drawing lines on the floor. Then he wanted to do a trilogy out of that, which he actually gave up on after 'Dogville' and 'Manderlay', so he asked me and said, 'I think you can bring life to this, I want you to bring life to it.' And he sort of wanted to join forces. We're so ultimately different; we couldn't be more different. His characters are chess pieces on a board and he's very precise, provocative, political, philosophical – it's always moral dilemmas of a certain grandeur. Whereas I'm occupied with everyday life; I'm a confused, intuitive, emotional human being, seeing my films through the eyes of the actors. And I'm always starting with them, their fragility, then I try to build up to a concept. And he starts it the other way round, trying to come into the spine of the character. I thought 'that's a great idea, let's try it, let's see how it works.' And I was also fascinated by the script.

So the fact that your personalities are so different helps the partnership?

Obviously. That's why he's been inspiring me all the way back since we did Dogme together. You know, rules like that are a gift from God when you're as confused as I am. It's like having a good assistant – everything starts to work.

What was Lars' involvement after he'd written the script and you were shooting? Was he around much?

No, it was the normal writer-director kind of thing – I was in charge. I called him, though, and we had editing rooms right next to each other, so for that part of the process I quite often took him into the room to show him stuff. If he had not been in that room, I might have asked someone else. But it was really good that he was there – he's a very precise, great filmmaker. He was very helpful, and sometimes he very much disagreed. He was a bit larger ego-ed than me, normally, but it worked out really well and he claims that he likes the film a lot, and that it would have been completely different if he had done it.

How did you decide on Jamie Bell for the lead?

I saw 'Billy Elliot', as everyone else did, and I was a great admirer of Jamie's from then on. I met him quite a few times, saw some of his material, and found that he's a brilliant guy, a fantastic actor. Then I found that he's really a fantastic combination of being vulnerable and young, and yet still a very complex person. I don't know if it's because of his stardom or just because he's bright, but he's got the mind of a grown-up. He's a clever boy. And I felt this film needed that. I feel Dick is a little bit of a self-portrait and I thought it would be interesting to contradict that by finding such a mild person.

Someone likeable?

Yes, he's got this fantastic combination of being British, well behaved, well trained, well prepared, humble, and then again being a star. He's got this thing that you really want to point the camera towards.

The young actors in the cast are all quite experienced – was that helpful?

Oh, totally. It's like working with professionals. They were so playful in the evening – one night I tried to open my hotel door and couldn't because all the furniture was in front of it in the hallway. Then the next morning they were on their marks, well prepared, knew their character. I'm impressed by that. You know if there's something that America really can produce it's young actors. I mean they're doing commercials from when they're two years old. They just have a whole system there which can produce really good, very young actors. So it was fantastic to work with them.

Would you like to have made the film in America?

No, I mean I had the option, but I thought it was so much a part of the identity of this film, to be shot at home, pretending to be America. I think I wanted to make it more realistic. That was sort of my job – realism. Lars' version would have been sort of staged. This is still a staged version, but dragged in a more realistic direction. I was thinking of going on location but, thought, 'well, that would be like changing the name of the main character.' Like going against the whole base of the idea of the project.

That's the attraction of the film – it's a real story but with a sort of superficiality behind it.

Yeah, hopefully not too much. I know there's some. Also, you know it's one of those arrogant Danish projects where you fly them in rather than flying there. We've been doing that since Dogme, so we thought, 'let's be bolshy again and do it that way.'

The town square location gives the film a real sense of claustrophobia. Was that intentional?

Well, that's the kind of choice that comes out of circumstance, because Lars can't fly. He wanted to make a film about America, but we can't afford to build a whole country. So we worked by the same system that we used on the rules of Dogme. It's like 'these are your constraints, play with them', and that's what's so funny, and actually liberating. It's like, 'this is the place, this is the square, now here's the story'. But it's also what makes it easy for an American to butcher it – saying it's obvious that it's not America. But the thing is that the houses on the square are copies of existing houses in West Virginia. It actually looks like that.

So what happened to Dogme?

Well, Dogme, for me, and for Lars as well, started in 1995 – then after the big success in Cannes, and it selling all over the world, it was dead for us, or for me anyway. Suddenly Dogme was a safe place, it was a commercial place, it was even trendy. For me it was no longer rebellious, or a renewal. So at that time, or actually a couple of years later, I declared a death in some interview. And I got some really aggressive reactions from people involved with Dogme films. I realised very quickly that this was a very selfish thing to say, because we started it, and the wave, or the splash, or whatever you want to call it, had moved on to someone else. So it seems to be alive still. But it became so fashionable in Denmark that they even talk about Dogme in architecture. And you get like, a boxful of vegetables with a lot of things in, and then there's the Dogme box. They call it that. So at the age of ten – when Dogme became ten years of age – we put the certificate and the vow of chastity on the internet for everyone, so we ultimately democratized it. Feel free – if you feel that in good conscience you can say that you followed the rules of Dogme, then put it in front of your film. And it seems like Lars is going to do a Dogme film again, and I think I will, but not for my next film. I still feel like I'm on the tailwind of success of Dogme and want to completely abandon that, but I will do one at some point.

Do you enjoy following the Dogme rules?

It's fun.

Do you think there could perhaps be a new set of rules?

No. I see no reason for that.

Are you happy with the rules then? You don't think they need to evolve or change?

Some of the rules are a little imprecise, I'd say. Like you're not allowed to do a genre film – for me that's very complicated. What is that? But I think they're set in stone. If you start changing them, it's no longer Dogme – you have to start calling it something else. But it was the easiest thing I've ever tried, doing a Dogme film.

Coming back to 'Dear Wendy', is it influenced by the saying 'guns don't kill people, people kill people'?

I haven't heard that, that's a good one.

Is it the gun driving them to kill people?

I don't think so. I think this film actually emphasises the beautiful quote that you said there. It emphasises for me that a gun is a beautiful piece of mechanics, whereas the hand that holds the gun is the one that really has to be in control. I also think that we claim in this film that you can actually have a very sensual feeling holding a gun, almost sexual. But the moment fear steps into the picture in this film, represented by Clarabelle, things go wrong. Fear or greed, or power or pride – these are the matters that drive people to kill, and to kill the wrong people. The weapon itself is harmless.

Finally, are you happy with the film?

Me? I'm never happy. There are many things I really like. I really like the characters and their vulnerability, but I'll be sad if we fail to communicate with the Americans, which I think could be the case. Then I'll feel we have failed. But there are many things I really like about the film, but I'm too humble to brag about them!

'Dear Wendy' is released nationwide today.

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