Original subtitles

In 1990, I graduated from film school in Paris with a dream:

to one day make videos for my favorite bands.

I spent nights watching music channels

where the British and Americans reigned supreme.

Then one night, I discovered the band Oui Oui.

Sung in French, their childlike pop was zany enough,

but I was captured by the screen: I'd never seen a video like it!

Who could have imagined such a phenomenon?

I decided to go film a Oui Oui gig in the secret hope of meeting them.

We hit it off immediately

and I asked who made their videos.

The shy drummer in the background answered: "I do."

I realized I'd never make their videos,

but I had just met Michel Gondry.

That meeting would change my life and lead me to work with pop stars

and movie stars.

Part mad scientist, part musician,

and a large part dreamer.

Yeah!

He has a unique style.

If you copied it, it would be obvious.

I'd been an admirer of his videos for years.

I was like, 'Uh, I wish I had a video like that.'

Michel is such an original.

He's like a cult guy.

I would never like to get inside Michel's mind.

How would the young drummer of Oui Oui quickly become

one of the stand-out creators of the day?

How did this self-taught filmmaker take Hollywood by storm

without ever abandoning his inimitable style?

MICHEL GONDRY DO IT YOURSELF

VERSAILLES, FRANCE

All members of the Gondry family are musicians.

His mom's a pianist, his dad, a jazz and R&B fan, is a guitarist.

His brother Olivier plays trumpet

and his elder brother François, the guitar.

Aged 14, Michel chose drums "to have a better chance with the girls".

"A total failure," he later confessed.

My dad ran a music store in the center of Versailles,

and he gradually brought me home parts of a drum kit.

Michel was a music fan but had a second passion: Drawing.

He graduated from high school and entered art school,

but to him, the classical training was outdated.

And no wonder: At the time the Paris culture scene was in the throes of punk,

with "do it yourself" as its watchword.

Marked by this independent spirit, Michel quit art school

and put on a show of his own paintings of punks and rockers.

That same year, with his old school pal Étienne Charry,

he co-founded the band Oui Oui.

Oui Oui did everything themselves: words, music, photos and posters.

And to make the band's first video, Michel bought a second-hand 16mm camera:

a Bolex, to which he'd remain faithful all his life.

For my first film, Bolide, which I made in 1986,

I saved up 2,000 francs (333 USD) to produce it.

I went to an art store to buy paper, glue and so on.

When I got home with all the gear,

I thought, "Doing this for a living would really suit me."

Cutting things up, making the sets and handling the camera,

I felt free, free to do what I liked,

without asking anyone else.

A childhood world handmade with simple tools:

Gondry's stamp is already in this video.

Michel wanted to do it and did it for the love of art,

because the stop-motion animation took ages and ages.

So putting so much energy into it really says a lot.

Michel continued to give music videos his personal touch.

Not by filming musicians,

but, like the Czech and Russian filmmakers he admired,

by inventing a world animated by his own hands.

With Ma Maison, he began mixing live action and animation

and blurred the boundaries by sending Oui Oui underground like insects.

And for La Ville, he experimented with early digital effects

and invented a New York backdrop in electric pop colors.

I kept filming the band's gigs and became president of their fan club.

We published the first edition of the fanzine: Oui Oui Are The World.

Here's Oui Oui Are The World, the special first edition.

We hope there's a Number 2.

There never was Number 2.

Because after 3 videos, 10 years of gigs and 2 successful albums,

Oui Oui split up.

It was Michel who kind of brought an end to the band.

I don't think he really wanted it to end,

but he had better things to do, and that was great.

Although Oui Oui's audience was limited, their videos really stood out

and other artists asked Michel to make their videos.

One day I came across a video by L'Affaire Louis' Trio,

an animated film with a passing train.

"Wow, who made this? It's incredible!"

"I've absolutely got to find the guy who did this!"

That was in 1989 when there was no internet.

So it wasn't easy to track someone down.

The next morning,

the doorbell rings.

I open the door and this kid says to me:

"Are you Georges Bermann?"

"That's me."

"I have something to show you."

Super-8 and VCR.

Look, Michel made this to get himself started.

With his phone number.

He was going to see...

Georges Bermann.

I put his tape in and what do I see? L'Affaire Louis Trio.

The producer immediately hired him and introduced him to record labels.

I told the label that they had to work with Michel Gondry,

that he was an absolute genius, and I showed them Oui Oui's La Ville.

The guy from Virgin said, "This thing is so fucking ugly!"

And...

Not everyone liked Michel but the producer persisted.

His videos didn't sell a look or an attitude.

He delved into an artist's mind and put it on screen.

Some of them understood,

and Michel gradually became a name in the music video world.

And meanwhile, what happened?

One artist shut herself away at home

with 150 video cassettes

and watched them all, checking the filmmakers' names

to see who would make the first video for her first solo album: Björk.

The former singer of Icelandic band The Sugarcubes

was looking to affirm her unique personality through videos.

Björk loved the Oui Oui videos.

She was in Paris for the cover of her first album.

We went to a local restaurant

and bombarded each other with references and ideas.

We had similar backgrounds, although in different countries.

We both had hippie-ish parents who left us to our own devices.

Me and Michel both had kind of hippie parents,

especially hippie moms.

They were a bit... not very organized.

And we would have to be young kids that were sensible.

We had a great sort of symbiosis.

I wrote a story about our conversation,

with a beginning and an end, albeit a bit abstract.

I guess we just remember when we were doing it.

It felt amazing, and I had a very great feeling.

And you really felt that you were doing something that nobody had done before.

It was for this video that I became Michel's assistant director.

My job was to explain what he wanted

to often-incredulous technicians.

The story is shit!

Not always an easy job, but very exciting.

The first thing he ever said to me was:

"We'll cut some branches in the forest,"

"collect old roots and dead leaves,"

"hang the branches from the lighting stands,"

"fix the roots to the wall, do a dolly shot"

"so it looks like she's falling from a tree."

I didn't understand a word, but it was great.

We didn't have a clue if people were gonna like it or not.

You don't even go to that level of thinking:

"Will it be successful?"

It's stupid to think things like that

when you're lucky enough to be part of something so magical.

I popped into the editing suite when it was almost finished

and thought, "Wow, what the hell is this?"

"This is just incredible. It's totally revolutionary."

A quick history recap! In the 80s and 90s,

the US music channel MTV had a virtual monopoly on videos

which were mainly promotion tools to sell records.

The main visual trend was a flashy commercial-like esthetic

with singers filmed like they were sex symbols or gods.

We had to make these things for commercial reasons.

Record companies needed them.

MTV is where people discovered music.

Music videos were so important

and just got bigger

and they really mattered.

So it was this amazing opportunity

to try to make something art and sneak it into the mainstream,

bringing cinema into music videos.

With eight films, Björk and Michel changed the music video

and co-wrote a long-running story.

One day I found a big book buried deep in the ground.

I opened it, but all the pages were blank.

And to my surprise, it started writing itself.

The story of a young woman going back to nature

in search of lost innocence...

aware, well in advance, of the ecological emergency...

who leads her life without being dominated by men.

Björk was a leader in terms of feminism.

She's a great example, because when she started

her second album, some wagging tongues said

that Nellee Hooper had done 75% of the work on the first album,

just because she was a woman.

When in fact, as she later demonstrated,

she did everything, and not him.

As a youngster, I thought about Janis Joplin

and how strange it was for someone so small

to have such a huge impact on millions of people.

For Björk, it's the same.

I think Björk gave him self-confidence.

And this self-confidence enabled him

to let out things he would never have let out before.

He was sensitive to the sparkle in Björk's eye

and that removed the limits he set himself.

It changed everything.

I went from one offer a month to five a day.

I was even obliged to turn people down.

I'd never said no to people before.

Then he started working with The Chemical Brothers,

Beck, Kylie Minogue... And it's still ongoing.

Lenny, can you move a little bit to your right?

Do you mind me saying I think you're great?

No, I like it, but I don't think people should say it too often.

Why not?

Well it might alter my ego or something.

A period of intense creativity began for Michel

as he revolutionized the music video.

All the top bands wanted to work with him.

He began a long-standing collaboration with the stars of techno:

The Chemical Brothers.

Michel has always been on the end of the phone really.

We've never met in real life, face to face,

but he's always a phone call I look forward to.

You know, when we have an idea, we send him some music,

and he goes away and thinks

and then he'll call you up and go, "I have an idea."

I remember showing it to my mom:

"Oh, that's a nice video: just looking out the window."

And I was like, "No, Mom, look a bit closer."

"You can see that with this pylon, there's this sound, or..."

And then she's like, "Oh, there's something else going on here!"

It's an original, simple idea

of your point of view looking out of the train,

with the sounds of the song mirrored in the landscape.

I remember seeing it and thinking:

"That is so cool!"

And it's interesting that Michel was a drummer.

The rhythmic and hypnotic trance-like quality

that he can bring to videos, and it's really evident in Star Guitar.

You have this simple idea that feels new and original.

And then you probably work out

what has to happen to realize this idea

for this 3-minute pop video.

And you might go, "Maybe not."

And it took 8 months to make it.

To create a realistic landscape to fit perfectly with the rhythm and tune.

Michel called on his brother Olivier, a special effects engineer.

The first tests for Star Guitar were difficult.

I couldn't find the solution,

we argued over the phone,

I said, "I can't do this anymore. Cancel the video!"

He called The Chemical Brothers to say, "Can we cancel?"

They said, "No way!"

So I had to do it, but only because he's my brother.

Olivier and I are very close. We're a bit like twins.

If I start a sentence, he can finish it.

I don't need to go into detail.

He says we work well together and I can finish his sentences,

but sometimes, I didn't understand a word he was saying.

He had a vision in his mind with a mathematical, scientific form.

And as a rationalist, I didn't understand a thing.

He's like...

Luckily he can share things by drawing.

I could imagine that Michel

is not always

super clear with his...

presentation.

Michel explained to me

the concept.

And I managed to envision...

with a drawing, how this is going to work.

The idea was to ask Kylie to walk around

like she is coming back from shopping, and she walks and walks...

After a while, she reaches the same place that she exited.

But what we do in post-production is put the first time she was here

mixed with the second time, so now there are two Kylies.

There's one point where the four of me,

might even be five, in the end,

all have to find our place around a pole in the street.

He seems to take the seemingly mundane or ordinary, and it becomes surreal.

He was inspired by a magician's trick.

A MYSTERIOUS PORTRAIT Georges Méliès, 1889.

Multiplying a person originates

in Michel's admiration for Georges Méliès

the pioneer special effects magician to whom he paid tribute

in his very first film: Bolide.

Méliès was a magician.

He's a very important figure for me.

All filmmakers agree that he invented fiction in film.

DISLOCATION EXTRAORDINARY Georges Méliès, 1901.

I use my power as a filmmaker to perform magic tricks.

The simplest tricks are the most impressive.

Like this one I filmed in a parking lot

while rehearsing for a Beck video.

The shoes walking ahead of Michel

are, in fact, tied to his feet by fishing line.

The film is played backwards.

A lot of times, he'd come to me with the idea,

and it was so ingenious and original.

He has the whole video in his mind.

Every time he would send me something, it was like a Christmas present.

It was like this big surprise.

I usually string together all my ideas

for a video in my mind.

And as one goes by,

I think, "I won't keep that one, it sucks."

But in the end, I pick it out and treat it a bit like a sick child.

It's something that needs a lot of care and attention

to turn it into an idea that will work.

Michel likes to submit his intuitions to empirical tests,

because his childhood was marked by an extraordinary grandfather.

He makes electronic organs and bells.

The pioneer of electronic music, Mr. Constant Martin.

- I've never seen this clip. - I have.

We were inspired to make, notably for our foreign clients,

musical instruments for making light music.

Constant Martin had a hooked nose

with a 5-centimeter-long hair on it.

He didn't know it was there, but we all saw it.

He was an incredibly prolific inventor.

His best-known invention was the electronic bell.

He also invented the clavioline,

an ancestor of the synthesizer, in 1949.

There's one here...

You can hear one on a Beatles track: Baby, You're a Rich Man...

Our grandfather loved images and was always filming.

He sometimes did things in stereoscope.

One thing was punishment for me:

going up into grandpa's loft where he would show his films.

Landscapes with flowers and things. And after about ten minutes...

There'd be, for example, a shot of a copse.

For 5 minutes nothing happened: "Wait for it..."

And after 5 minutes, a leaf would fall.

His grandfather's influence on Michel was huge.

His craziest ideas are always developed with scientific logic,

borrowing from mathematics, architecture,

and sometimes even literature.

You're crazy, dude I don't fear no mother

I'll take you all here, one by one.

In the early 80s, I remember nights.

Burnin' hot, guys coming in Stan Smiths on their feet, eyes cold.

Scanning the room...

For the group IAM, pioneers of French rap,

Michel used a zoom effect in time with the music,

helping to make the video the group's first big hit.

We met quite a lot of video makers and each presented their project.

They all came with their images and ideas.

So why are we working with Michel Gondry?

Because we liked his idea the most.

He started with the process.

Oh, right, OK...

I think that Michel often arrives

with the technical process:

"This is what I'll do technically to make the video unique."

Michel's concept was inspired by a literary work

which he didn't reveal at the time to the rappers from Marseille.

The IAM video for Je danse le Mia, is inspired by a Russian short story.

It's about a guy who goes to see a notary.

He keeps seeing himself crossing the bridge two hilltops later.

And once he's at the bridge, he sees himself

taking a path.

And these are things you do as a child or if you have an OCD...

Like you!

So I got the idea for the zooms

taking us into the future in the video.

Our director didn't say.

"We'll do something sanitized, very arty, very fashion..." No.

Behind the success of Je danse le Mia lies an intelligent analysis

of Marseille's funk generation of the 1980s.

It's a sociological song. When you scratch beneath the surface,

it's about a generation that went dancing

in alternative clubs, because normal clubs wouldn't let them in.

The clip allowed people who aren't from our culture or funk culture

to understand what those years were like.

I was obsessed with making the next video better.

I put pressure on myself never to make a video

where you could go, "The last was better."

When filming rehearsals, I didn't know I was participating

in what would become THE cult video of 1990s French electronic music.

If I had, I would have taken more care with my camcorder!

I started designing the choreography using the following principle:

each instrument is represented by a group of dancers

who portray the instrument's characteristics.

The bassists are athletes, the drum machines are mummies,

the guitars skeletons, the vocoder robots

and the synths disco girls.

He said, "I wanted the dancing to be what I hear."

"Each instrument, each musical part."

There's this one.

The robot walking,

which everyone did.

Michel, as a musician, visualizes music, which is great.

He's giving a sort of human character to the sounds.

He's giving a humanity to this very...

amazing, functional kind of groove music,

He's making it characters in real life and making us respond to it.

I think that what's funny is that, especially in this video,

we couldn't have thought of a better idea than he did.

It totally matches the music.

He does what's in his mind.

He makes an amazing imaginary world and goes for it.

No questions asked, he goes for it.

And he let me dream his dream.

Despite the group's fame, I remember a low-budget shoot

where once again, Michel trusted his hand and his sense of DIY.

He asked Florence Fontaine to design costumes by reworking everyday objects

and his brother Olivier to invent a lighting programming system

inspired by a memory from their youth.

The lighting we did for a party in 82.

People still talk about that party, it marked minds.

I set up a play of lights on the wall and we programmed the shapes together.

And 15 years later, that became the Daft Punk video.

We had no budget, so I had to make circuit cards, software, cabling...

We were running ten hours late

so five of us were soldering, even François!

What a headache shoot!

But with Around The World, Daft Punk enjoyed global success

and the video became emblematic of a whole era.

Timeless classic. It's still as great now as it was when it came out.

I don't think a lot of videos from the 90s aged as well.

You cannot do videos like that for everybody.

Because you need trust.

Like with Björk, Beck and The Chemical Brothers,

Michel developed a long collaboration with The White Stripes.

His visual lab was working full on to serve Detroit garage rock.

The White Stripes is a funny story.

They had seen a Lenny Kravitz video

with the lights, the dome, which is fantastic.

One of the best ever videos.

And they got mixed up, because I had done a Lenny Kravitz video,

except that mine was awful.

And they called me and we arranged to meet up.

It was only then that they realized I wasn't the right director.

But in the meantime, I had already made Jack's Lego head.

You brought a sculpture of my head, made out of Lego,

put it on the table and you said.

"This is going to be the video."

Inspired by the construction toy, Michel created a minimalist concept

that matched the band's raw energy.

No need for a big budget: a few colored blocks, some 16mm film

and a Bolex camera in stop-motion mode.

Do-it-yourself!

It was a moment where Meg and I knew:

Oh my God, we're actually gonna be in the hands of respectable people!

There are actually amazing artists that we can work with,

that can come up with their own ideas, bring it to our world, and it will work!

When I saw you on the set, at first when I was watching you,

you were smiling and laughing while watching a playback.

I'm smiling because I realize it's working.

And I invested all this money, all these efforts,

with no knowledge if it's gonna work.

And luckily, it has been working most of the time.

And a couple of times, I fucked up.

And every morning, I say a mental excuse to the artists.

So it's like three artists I really fucked up.

They paid for the others!

There was a moment where I went to a family gathering,

and all my nieces, the little girls,

were all watching the Lego video live on television.

When it finished, one of the kids said, "Play it again!"

And I thought, "Oh my God! Something we're doing"

"is not just for garage rockers in Cleveland and Pittsburgh."

"No, my niece likes this now!"

So this was our moment where I had to think of something

that was really popular, that was also really good,

and part of my mind was like, "Oh, The Simpsons!"

"The Simpsons is really good but my nieces and nephews like that."

"It's like that!"

Two years later, it was another video, parodied in a cult Simpsons sequence

that took Michel and The White Stripes into the pantheon of pop culture.

It's my technique I invented there.

I put my best idea if there is a boring part in the song.

And so the idea was they were going into a train,

outside of the train like that.

Then it's fine because you don't get bored,

Sorry, I...

The song is great.

But I forgot why I started to talk about that...

I watched a lot of musical films,

like the short movies by Norman McLaren and Oskar Fischinger...

who, with great discipline,

associated the image with the music.

So that was part of my training and I aspired to that when I started out.

In the mid-1990s, Michel wasn't the only filmmaker

dynamiting the video world with their zany ideas.

Other video makers were making a name for themselves, like Spike Jonze.

The Californian, who started by making skateboarding films,

was the new darling of the top artists.

With cool attitude thrown in!

Rivalry was established between the two,

which evolved into friendship once they met.

It was a concert of Cibo Matto at The Troubadour,

and Spike was there.

I had no idea who he was, but I talked,

because I'm very nice, I talk to strangers.

And he said, "Hola, I'm Spike Jonze, I am a director."

"Ah, Spike, I love your video! I thought you were the bus driver!"

I was excited to meet him, I talked to him for half an hour before he figured out...

He had a little notebook and...

I was like, "How did you do that video? OK..."

When we first met, I asked you about visual effects and you said:

"It's like a magician: You do the trick when they're not looking."

"So when the trick happens, they don't know how it happened."

And I was like, "Ohhh..."

And then I basically changed the way I did visual effects.

Do you imitate my French accent when you answer?

Oh, no, I'd never do that! Why would I do that?

Michel and Spike ended up sharing an office, lots of ideas...

and Björk, much to Michel's displeasure!

Many times, I do ten videos with an artist

and somebody does one video and that's a big hit,

like you did for Björk.

You did All So Quiet, and that's her biggest hit ever.

I was trying to sabotage your career!

No, don't make it funny!

It was difficult for me.

You're making a shadow on my lens!

That's sabotage.

Sabotage!

But in the friendly duel fought by Michel and Spike,

the Frenchie would strike a decisive blow.

The Rolling Stones.

Like a Rolling Stone.

And after that...

you can't go any higher.

In truth, Michel had harbored new dreams for a few years.

So, unable to go higher, he went elsewhere.

We premiered the video for Björk's number Isobel

at the Electric Cinema in London.

All shot and edited with film.

It was the first time I'd had my work projected

on a big screen with an audience.

I thought it was really something seeing your video

projected like that bookmarked by commercials.

So I figured I'd give movies a try.

I was still Michel's assistant, and I can tell you

that despite his highly cinematic videos,

the French film industry kept its doors firmly locked to him.

In France, for independent films, you need to be an auteur.

So I didn't have a rightful place.

In 1997, I decided to move to Los Angeles

in the hope of finding a movie to make.

A great quality in the US is that creatively, there's no prejudice.

Here, you show up with your demo reel of videos

and it doesn't stop the studio people

from seeing your potential as a filmmaker.

Michel rented a home in Hollywood,

the ideal place to work on his American movie dream.

I had an adaptation period in Hollywood,

where I had to get my driver's license...

learn English, more or less...

- With François? - Sure!

We brought an electronic translator with us.

We'd take scripts, read them then translate them.

God knows how long it took to write a script!

After arriving,

my main job was to fix Michel's meetings with American producers.

Impressed by his videos, they offered him special-effects based screenplays.

But it wasn't what Michel was looking for.

The handling's shit!

Yeah, the turning radius is really crappy!

You always said a favorite movie was Back to the Future.

Yes, but there's a difference...

Oops! That wasn't my fault.

When I went to my first meetings with the studios,

I'd give the film as a reference, because I really loved it

and as a way of showing I could do a commercial movie.

Because as a "French director", they imagine the New Wave

and films d'auteurs.

You wanted to make movies accessible to all audiences.

Yes, popular cinema, but which has things to say.

Like the Italian comedies of the 1960s.

In fact, having turned the worlds of others into images,

Michel began looking for himself in chosing his first movie.

But while waiting to be wowed by the right screenplay,

he made a series of commercials.

A chance to make real little films with a big movie budget.

Everything was outsized in late-90s advertising.

For a 30-second ad,

we headed to the mythical backdrop of Death Valley

with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre crew.

Michel used the shoot to invent new special effects

that didn't go unnoticed.

There was the thing like this, with the bullet,

that was borrowed by The Matrix.

Because one day, Joe Silver called me and said:

"Just to tell you we're copying you!"

Despite acknowledgement from the Matrix producer,

three years went by in LA

and Michel still didn't have his first movie screenplay.

I hated every script. So much so, I ended up thinking:

"A script, by nature, is detestable."

Discouraged, I returned to Paris.

Meanwhile, Spike Jonze was making his first movie:

Being John Malkovich.

There's a tiny door in my office, Maxine,

and it takes you inside John Malkovich.

There's no such thing as a hole into somebody's brain!

Yes, there is.

The film came as a blow to Michel.

A multilayered, labyrinthine script with intrigue and broken logic.

Michel had entered the mind of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

Shut up!

So Charlie, how long ago did you write this script?

Who knows.

Charlie is as shy as Michel, but Spike Jonze soon united them.

A decisive meeting.

The first time I met with Spike Jonze, we spoke non-stop for seven hours.

Same thing with Charlie Kaufman.

We shared the same annoyance and frustration with life.

Something I find a lot in Charlie's script

and which I often feel.

And one day, he let me read this script,

which he'd written, Human Nature, and I loved it.

Michel finally made his first movie

from a script deemed "unadaptable".

Which had sat in the drawers of the majors for years.

Shot mainly on studio sets, with added home-made SFX,

Human Nature is a totally eccentric burlesque comedy.

By the time I was twenty, I looked like an ape.

The story of a Bearded Lady turned circus freak.

Human Nature was the fulfillment of a dream.

I finally crossed over into film.

I had a story I loved and actors I loved.

I didn't want to make a movie with the usual rules.

I thought that I could bring things I had learned from making videos

and that it was kind of my job not to disavow myself.

Michel chose the screenplay for his first movie

because of his empathy with a pariah who'll do anything to be accepted.

A tender look at outsiders and the lowly,

which would permeate Michel's body of film work.

For a first movie, everything paid off.

Human Nature was shown at Cannes, and Michel got noticed.

I didn't know about Michel Gondry's past as a video maker

when Human Nature was shown at Cannes.

I thought he was a young filmmaker

with his own unique style.

He was unclassifiable at first,

as he was both original and had a certain classicism.

One of the few to have that.

So how come you got the script?

I knelt down in front of the screenwriter,

did a belly dance for him

and managed to convince him.

He liked my videos and we shared a lot of ideas about life.

There's a kind of humorous pessimism,

a chemical imbalance, that characterizes us both.

Charlie and Michel got down to work on a second movie

with a much bigger budget.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the story of a man

struggling with the most painful break-up of his life.

To stop suffering, he decides to erase from his memory

the woman he loved.

You like?

That's what I love about it.

The basis of the movie, the script itself, comes from such a pure place,

a place we can all identify with,

the idea of lost love, the one you wish you could forget

because it won't let you sleep at night.

My daughter's 16 and she saw it and constantly goes on about it.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was weird and wonderful.

It's like an invitation for us to peek into a different part of our brain.

What's in our subconscious, what happens,

what's real, because it's happened and because we're projecting it

and what would things be like otherwise.

I think it's an amazing concept.

Having, for a long time, put other people's music to images,

Michel turned to composer Jon Brion

to write the score for his movie.

You could see that Michel had

not only an incredible artistic follow-through,

massive creativity,

but the understanding of music,

and more important to me, the understanding of analogy,

which I think is the central artistic, poetic, engine.

Can you see something and represent it with something else,

but represent it genuinely?

Either the feeling of it, the mechanics of it.

If only I could meet someone new.

My chances of that happening are somewhat diminished,

seeing that I'm incapable of making eye contact with a woman I don't know.

It's not just an intellectual or artistic exercise.

Not just "Let's see how far we can go," or "Let's make this jagged."

That's easy as hell to do.

To have the thing have its emotional resonance throughout

is spectacular and makes it singular.

For this film that echoes his personal wounds,

Michel managed to bring on board two very different stars:

Kate Winslet, the romantic heroine of Titanic,

and Jim Carrey, the king of comedy.

To balance the two, I spoke to them at different times.

I'd take Jim aside and say:

"This isn't a comic scene, it's deadly serious."

And I'd go see Kate and say:

"This isn't serious at all, so let yourself go."

"It's a totally comic scene."

That balanced things out so they were in the same tone.

Their first encounter establishes all of the movie's charm.

The harmony of opposites invades the screen.

Hi!

I'm sorry?

I just said hi.

Hi, hello, hi.

OK if I sit closer?

I have some stuff that I probably should..

- I'm writing... - I'm sorry, OK.

- No... - Sure, no, just asking.

I just have, you know, this is...

OK.

- Hey! - Take care then.

Jesus!

I just trusted him and let him be my guide and did what he asked me to do.

He'd say, "That's great, I love this thing you do!"

"This crazy little dance. Do it again!"

I was like, "I didn't do that for the camera."

"No, I love it, just do it in this scene!"

"But she's supposed to be crying!"

"Fuck that! Go on, do it!" Excuse me...

With his second Hollywood movie came consecration.

And the Oscar goes to...

Charlie Kaufman, "Michael" Gondry, Pierre Bismuth,

for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

In a world of glamour and glitter,

an uneasy "Michael" Gondry received the Best Screenplay Oscar

with Pierre Bismuth, author of the original idea,

and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

There's so many people

worked so creatively on this movie,

so I feel like this award is for all of them.

And I most especially want to thank director Michel Gondry.

We brought an idea, a concept,

but it's really Charlie who did all the hard work.

But I'm very honored to receive this award.

After this huge public and critical hit, the Americans urged Michel

to continue in the vein of wider-public film d'auteur.

But Michel never does what you expect.

If you stay in your comfort zone, you can get blocked and screw up.

So I've always tried to do things differently every time.

So my next movie...

The last one went well, so I have quite a few offers.

But I want to do something more personal,

which I wrote myself and for less money.

Whereas logic says do a bigger film.

For The Science of Sleep, Michel returned to Paris.

He set up in the small Montmartre apartment

he had shared with roommates

to shoot an autobiographical story.

A shy young man falls in love with his neighbor.

Incapable of facing love, he escapes into his dreams.

It was the first film he wrote alone: a fable on the difficulties of growing up.

He is someone who has his world,

which I entered and adored.

I'd never worked in that way, with such fun and games.

We filmed all the time, did retakes, laughed a lot...

We played everything at face value

and had to truly believe, in the way that a child

believes in objects,

like putting on helmets and believing you're telepathic.

It really was child's play.

On set, a limited production budget heightened Michel's creativity,

which introduced to the big screen his love for home-made SFX.

So my dad, I remember, my brother and Pierre Pell,

we all collected our toilet paper roll.

It is a city entirely made from toilet paper roll.

We all tend to imagine something maybe naive or...

cute.

But it's not. Childhood can be filled

with drama, darkness and anxiety.

That's the nightmare of Gael's character.

It's someone who's very, very tortured

by nightmares and fear.

Earthquake and fire!

Yes, really, he played Michel to a tee.

I grew up influenced by my mom

who had totally gotten into things

that were metaphysical and spiritual,

and we kind of found ourselves in a sect.

After our folks separated?

- Just before. - Yes, right.

We went to conferences given by this guy,

Mikhaël Omraam Aïvanhov,

very charismatic with a white beard and hair.

Light, light,

death and life,

nothing is more important.

It was both enthralling and totally stupid.

She told us a flying saucer would collect us when the world ended.

That 120,000 of us would be rescued by several flying saucers

and we'd come back to repopulate Earth.

We spoke a lot about reincarnation which created evolution rankings.

If a guy wanted to show he was powerful,

he'd go see someone else and say:

"I've lived 800 lives and you, only 20."

"So I'm more evolved than you."

My mom was in a group of five or six

and they kicked her out because she wasn't evolved enough.

I had to consult with one of the guys

as a psychologist, despite him not being qualified.

And one day, he told me to get out because I had nothing to say.

Michel was more sensitive.

It's possible he was more affected by it than us.

I was more impressionable

and in a formative period.

I feel some bitterness, mainly about what they did to Mom.

I spoke about Dad and his problem with inspiration.

Yes.

Can you tell us about your inspiration,

how you hear music and how you play it?

I'm asking her to define inspiration, how she hears music when she plays it

because she is very inspired, she plays very inspired music.

It's hard to say...

Either I have something in my head and I try to find it on the piano,

or I put my hands on the piano and see what comes.

She wrote poems and songs,

and at one point, I thought:

What she does is far superior

to everything the others around her claimed they could do.

I really wanted her to realize that,

so she didn't self-destruct or collapse inside.

So she at least had...

some gratification for what she was doing.

And that reinforced the idea in me

that it doesn't matter where your idea comes from, it belongs to you,

and if people find it good, then they find what you do good.

And that way, you have the motivation to continue.

Creating without caring what others think, learning while doing,

and taking pleasure in doing it.

That was what Michel would offer people with Be Kind, Rewind,

Two employees in a video-rental store threatened with closure

must become reluctant filmmakers.

Why is it doing that when you do that? What is wrong with you?

- Bonjour, François! - Hi, Jack.

My character, Jerry,

in a crisis mode, came up with this idea

that we would make the movies ourselves

to replace all the movies

that I had accidentally destroyed with my magnetism.

Action.

So that's what "sweding" is.

You take your favorite movies and make a home-made version of them.

That's a "sweded" film.

When you're walking down the street, and you see a little ghost,

what you gonna do about... Ghostbusters.

And in some ways it's better than the original because it's funnier.

And that was the fun thing about the movie: That you can see

that in desperation, just to survive,

there is a creativity that was born

that captures the imagination of the whole neighborhood.

I am Robocop.

I heard there was a disturbance

at Be Kind, Rewind video store.

Mister Robocop, may I have an autograph please?

To shoot the story, a eulogy to personal creation and DIY,

Michel set up far from Hollywood,

in a rundown part of a small town in New Jersey.

It was a working-class area,

and we didn't want to ask people to get out of the way,

so we used about sixty of the residents as extras.

There was a family kind of feeling.

And I think that's what Michel was probably looking for,

because that seems to be the message of the film:

We're not gonna survive without a little bit of magic, right?

Maybe a little bit of creativity can save the world.

We're gonna bring this picture back to Pessaic and you'll see it.

And it will go into theaters and you'll be proud of being in it,

and you'll be proud particularly of Passaic.

After the shoot, Michel projected some sequences

for the residents, who saw themselves on screen for the first time.

He filmed their reactions,

which would become the moving finale of Be Kind, Rewind.

I could feel their pride and joy

in seeing that they were capable of doing something

which had substance and which represented them.

And that moment inspired me to start the Amateur Film Factory.

The Amateur Film Factory was a free installation,

set up in working-class districts, which allowed everyone

to make, in a few hours, a real short film

in a pop-up movie studio.

OK, we need to choose a genre.

B-movie, romantic, absurd, suspense.

With suspense.

I was thinking of someone who sells cleaning sponges to cafes.

Not bad.

The rules say that everyone can express themselves

and no one person can dominate.

We then find a person who didn't speak during the session,

and they have to give the ending.

And very often, people who don't say anything

have lots of ideas but don't dare suggest them.

So they bring some freshness.

Silence... action.

We did a film with my cleaner who said nothing,

so she was designated.

She had a beer and said, "I don't care as long as I have my beer."

At the end, she raised her can: "I don't care as long as I have my beer."

And it was really funny.

For several years Michel set up his "Factories"

in Moscow, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Brussels, New York,

Casablanca, Paris, Johannesburg, Sao Paulo...

Everywhere, he gave people a place promising total freedom.

In Morocco, one guy said it was the only place he knew in his country

where there was true freedom of speech.

So...

As the Amateur Film Factory toured the world,

Hollywood offered Michel a 120-million-dollar blockbuster:

The Green Hornet.

He agreed, on one condition: he could subvert the superhero genre.

I smash window, you shoot in!

Everybody for themselves!

In Michel's version,

the superhero isn't Seth Rogen's billionaire,

but his servant Kato, a genius DIY expert.

Michel also had fun destroying male protector clichés.

You assholes!

The character wasn't a typical female character in an action hero movie

where she had become the love interest

or that she was just the eye candy.

She was sort the mastermind of the whole entire game plan.

It hurts!

OK, I can't do it, take me to the hospital.

Just shut up!

OK, if I'm the mastermind of this,

let me have a second of silence so I can figure this out, OK?

For years, we worked on the screenplay,

and as Michel was saying,

it was kind of a negotiation at times with the studio

as to how weird could we make things and how subversive could we make things

and still have the movie be the type of movie

that warrants the budget that it was given

and that could potentially recoup that budget.

As a kid, I hated superhero comics.

I thought they were ridiculous,

stories of guys in jockeys and capes saving the world.

The idea of someone saving us all from chaos,

as the community is unable to do so,

is the definition of fascism.

What if Michel's superhero didn't wear a cape and mask?

Michel Gondry's new movie.

This year, at Cannes, The Thorn in the Heart,

a film he has dedicated to his aunt,

Suzette Gondry who, between 1952 and 1986,

taught in schools all over the Cévennes.

She's here this evening, with Michel, on the red carpet of Cannes.

By devoting herself to teaching deprived kids

repatriated from Algeria and Indochina,

it's perhaps Suzette who awakened Michel's humanism and social conscience.

A filmmaker who uses a camera

in the way that a great author, capable of writing

a prize-winning novel,

might suddenly use his literary talent

to write on a subject in a 40-page book.

Well that's what he did. And moreover,

the film is not very Gondryesque.

That says a lot about him.

It's as if he wanted to do the opposite of the pure fiction projects

he usually does

and to keep one foot firmly planted in the land of his birth,

or the land that he sows himself.

When someone died, we took them down to the cemetery.

That's why we called this the "Path of the Dead".

So as we go down,

I'm thinking of all the people who lived here, in hardship.

After the intimate and tender shoot of The Thorn in the Heart,

Michel would embark on the most perilous project of his career.

One day, I'm asked to do an adaptation of Mood Indigo.

It's both wonderful and scary.

I'll use all my little visual inventions

and make a free, exploded, colored, dark then black film.

Like often with Michel,

discovering Boris Vian's cult novel was a memory from his youth.

How could he not identify with the engineer

turned writer, musician, painter, screenwriter,

inventor of fantastical instruments

and fascinated by cartoons and American jazz?

Making Mood Indigo was a massive challenge.

Chloé and Colin's love story is surrealist reverie

deemed to be unadaptable for the big screen.

But Michel went ahead, with a budget giving him free rein.

His ambition was boundless.

True, I went further than usual with my ideas.

One idea led to another, then another...

and I really wanted them to take shape.

So it was tough on the others.

Notably head production designer Stéphane Rozenbaum.

What do I have left...

from the shoot of Mood Indigo?

Michel had drawn this, in fact.

So we did it like that.

- Hey, Colin, are you well? - Yes.

- I'm happy to see you. - Hello.

I arrived on set at 7AM.

I'd check my emails and see tons of little drawings.

All to be done in that day's shoot.

It was really hard, because Michel wants all the props to work for real.

When we went home at night, he'd get into his pajamas...

Pajamas with little rockets on here...

He'd take a shower, brush his teeth,

then come back and start work

on the animation scenes, like the moving bells.

He did all the animation at night with a special team.

I stayed there alone on weekends.

I did drawings, sketches, wrote things...

I told myself: Stay at the studio

and dedicate every hour of your life to making this film

in the way...

that's most true to your mind.

He really wanted to make the film and had done for years.

So he put absolutely all of himself into it.

"Adapt a film" means adopt it.

It's a child who's like you and just as stubborn.

So I took Colin and Chloé by the hand

and took them where I thought they should go.

We ran everywhere: Epinay Studios,

Botzaris metro station, first frenetically,

then slower and finally painfully.

Our race slowed and I suffered.

Turning round, I saw Boris' face

watching all we were doing over my shoulder.

I could feel him watching me.

It was very hard to bear the pressure I put on myself.

On this particular shoot,

it felt like he was lacking air.

That was really what I felt, like he was...

a bit unhappy sometimes.

Not another word!

If you say "the other way", we'll all think every which way!

I know it's the other way.

Handlebar there, the other thing there, the chair here and we do it!

I was scared we'd lose him.

At one point,

yeah, he was...

he was gone.

The film earned production designer Stéphane Rozenbaum a César

and drew almost a million moviegoers in France.

But it was shunned by some critics and part of the public.

There are millions of Colins, 75% of whom don't see themselves in my Colin.

And they insisted on writing to tell me.

How do you feel after this film, exhausted, elated?

Exhausted and a little anxious.

This isn't an easy period for me.

You can see that Michel's filmography

is somewhat chaotic.

But I'm convinced he's building the body of work

that he wanted to build.

And not all filmmakers can say that.

In the following years, Michel kept creating as he pleased,

with videos, commercials and movies,

and even tried his hand at a series with old sidekick, Jim Carrey.

Where you never know what's on the plate!

Sorry, but how many years is this film gonna take you?

OK, let's do it in here.

Through successes or setbacks,

there's one thing Michel has never given up:

returning to the colored paper, crayons, scissors and glue of his beginnings.

Yellow's a very a underestimated color.

It's the brightest color in the rainbow.

A refuge that allows him to hand-animate stories

far from the constraints of cinema with imagination as the only boundary.

I mainly make films for my 6½-year-old daughter.

She gives me a title, I write the story, and I think:

"Hang on, this is gonna take me weeks and weeks!"

I start all the same, never thinking I'm going to finish it,

and after a while, I've done 3, 4, 5, 6 shots,

and I want to see where it will take me.

As usual, I start with an idea, and that leads to another idea:

"Oh, I'll use all these backgrounds."

Then I really get into it and I can't stop.

So you make 20-minute cartoons

that take up 12 hours a day for weeks on end,

and all that for one viewer?

One "vieweress".

A film by MAYA'S DADDY.

It's so hard to focus this!

What makes you most proud?

Well, I have a school in France that took my name.

- Really? - Yeah.

Do you have a school with your name?

Yeah, I got three, I think.

No, no!

I put Michel Gondry College into the GPS and that's where it's taking us!

- It's true? - Yeah.

Directions straight to Michel Gondry College.

Michel, Michel, Michel...

In 2019, the film students of Charny College in Burgundy

decided to name their school after the director.

Who gets the best scores?

Me! Me! Me!

And the worst scores?

Me!

Well, it's very honest to say so.

Better to be a friend than the strongest.

What's important, especially in shadow puppetry,

is leaving room in the backgrounds.

You don't want too much overlapping.

When the tracing paper's barely fixed, it gives a cloud effect.

To make smoke, I draw little clouds

on tracing paper, add or remove them, and it makes a cloud of smoke.

OK.

Want to know something?

- Yes. - It sucks.

No, it's great.

Are you happy to come here?

Sure.

I love coming, especially when you chant "Michel, Michel, Michel..."

I feel like I'm being useful.

Thank you.

Thanks.

- Don't mention it. - Drive safely.

Back to the Cévennes!

For his twelfth film, The Book of Solutions,

I find Michel with his trusty crew

and a new generation of actors.

- You know I have a school... - Yes, you told me.

He's shooting in his Aunt Suzette's village

where he spent summers as a kid.

OK, that's a take. It's excellent.

Now for the forward dolly shot

with the boy telling people to move aside.

Michel's very fond of the place.

He took us to the river and said, "That's my river."

He said, "Who'd have ever thought I'd make a film"

"in my favorite place in the world!"

He meant his little study there where he draws.

What's wrong?

Every time I see you, I get annoyed.

Why?

And after an hour and a half, I'm glad to see you.

- Nice to hear it! - It takes time.

It's only natural.

And as we're quite close, it's hard to hide my annoyance.

It's been thirty years since I met the drummer of Oui Oui.

Over the years, he has left his mark

on swathes of pop culture.

But more than his artistic choices,

it's a personal ethic that has allowed Michel to impose his inimitable style.

By revealing the firm beliefs behind his creative process since his teen years,

he offers a method accessible to all.

Lots of people say:

"I wanna make a film, but I don't know if I can..."

And they end up not doing it.

When you have an idea, you've got to get started.

Next it's "Learn as you do."

That means, when you start working,

you don't know exactly how you'll solve the problems.

So you solve these problems gradually as they appear.

So you learn.

Next it's "Don't listen to others."

When you do things differently, someone will always tell you:

"No, not like that, it won't work, do it like this..."

Don't listen.

Keep going your own way and forget the criticism.

And the last symbol is the opposite: "Listen to others."

Once your project is progressing well,

then you can take other people's opinions into account

to have an outside eye that might improve the project.

The return to the previous step: "Don't listen to others."

Because if people start putting down your work,

you stop listening to them again.

- Here you go. - Thanks.

You need some authority in life!

Subtitles - Mark Bryant for TELOS Adaption