The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Kings of the Road
131
Chick: Oh, you know what I just realized? I actually have an ex-girlfriend
who worked with Wenders. Her name is Alexandra Auder. Her mother was
Viva, of the Andy Warhol Factory days. And Viva was cast in The State of
Things. I believe she played the wife of the director or something. And Alex,
who was her daughter in real life, played her daughter in the movie. And the
film is about a crew who are in some small town to shoot a film and they run
out of money, and the producer runs off to try and get money so they can
continue shooting. He goes to Hollywood where he ends up getting killed
by gangsters.
A lot of the movie is the crew hanging around waiting to resume production,
and it’s the interpersonal stuff that happens as the crew is basically
killing time in a small town. And Alex was nine, maybe ten, and there was
another kid on the film, and she told me that she and this other kid would
be playing during the day and that Wenders would come up and tell them,
“Remember what you’re doing right now, because tomorrow we’re going to
shoot it.” He’d see them playing a game, and he would add it into the movie,
incorporate it into the following day’s shoot. He was always looking for the
material of his film, even right there on the set of their shooting.
Is that a lesson you’ve incorporated into your own filmmaking?
Chick: I think so. Making films in the United States, in the current environment,
you can’t be that open to everything. You have to have a script,
and I don’t have the luxury to be able to raise money to shoot a film without
a script. Everything comes together around a script. I do feel like I have
tried to as much as possible to be open to those things that can happen on
a set, when you’re in production. I think that those are the most interesting
things and the most surprising. Whether it’s working with actors in a way
that allows them to feel like they are really in control of where the scene
is going, that there’s room for mistakes or surprises. The most interesting
stuff happens when you have a plan, but you don’t have blinders on, and
you’re able to sort of see what’s different, recognize what’s exciting about
and different from the plan and incorporate that.