Movies Features
The Fall – Part One: Director Tarsem Singh
By Maura Reilly
May 10, 2008, 12:17 GMT

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I thought about attending a press roundtable with director Tarsem.  Based on what I’d seen of his work, including his haunting new film, The Fall, opening May 9th, I thought for a moment that he might be brooding and self-absorbed.

Well, contrary to my preconceived notions, the charming gentleman had the group in stitches as he talked at length about his current project and the unwritten future. 

The Fall is essentially two movies in one.  The main story is about Alexandria, a young Romanian girl living and working in the orange groves of 1915 Los Angeles with her family.  She has fallen and broken her collarbone, and while convalescing in a hospital, she meets Roy (“Pushing Daisies’” pie maker, Lee Pace,) a Hollywood stuntman who has similarly had a fall and now cannot walk. The charismatic Roy begins to tell Alexandria an, as he describes it, “epic tale” of heroes, villains, action and adventure.  The second part of the movie is the fantastical world Alexandria envisions, using people she interacts with at the hospital as characters in the story. 

Tarsem was asked how the story for the movie evolved. “I’d seen a film about 23 years ago [the Bulgarian film Yo ho ho, 1981] that touched on a subject matter that I was very interested in and that was the idea of storytelling, pre-recording.” Tarsem was fascinated with “the idea that when you tell a story to somebody, the story that they hear and the story that they remember in twenty years are three different versions.”  It is that element of misunderstanding that gets a lot of play in The Fall. “If you tell one story and you mean Red Indian they think Indian from India.  That kind of thing I wanted to [work] into the [girl’s] interpretation.”

The director sees this as something that happens commonly.  “When you remember a movie 20 years from now, you meet people and you tell them ‘I’ve seen this phenomenal film’ and you take them to the cinema where you saw it 20 years ago, it’s absolute shit and you’re embarrassed.  Because what you remember it being is a completely different film than what it is.  You have changed.  In the 20 years you have put in experiences that were never in the film.  You’ve given it a certain benefit of the doubt that never existed.  It had become what it has.” 

“I wanted the situation to be such that a person was telling a tale to another person, was using their body language to tell them what they wanted to tell them.  But of course it’s a two-way street, which is not true with cinema or if you don’t play live music. You put it out there and people come to terms with it, however long that take.  That’s it. And it doesn’t change, you change.”

So the question now becomes: how do you turn this concept into an interesting screenplay?  “I flirted with the idea of what if I played it that there was a person from America and a person from India. This person is telling her a cowboy story but she keeps making them sing and dance and a lot more comedy. [It would be] a lot more contemporary, probably a bigger audience.  But it didn’t let me go where I wanted to.  I just figured: ok give it up, make it a period piece,” which was something he was reluctant to do.

But that wasn’t the half of his problems: “It was very difficult to get financing because what I had made I kept saying was a draft.  These were the situations I wanted.  They’d ask, ‘When will the script be ready?’ I’d say, ‘Actually the script is going to be written by the 4 year old. So there is no script.’ Try getting money with that.  It wasn’t going to work. In the end I just said, ok it’s my money and we’ll go off and do it when we find the girl.  I didn’t know if we would or not.”

Traveling from country to country over the next 17 years in his professional capacity as a commercial and music video director provided Tarsem the opportunity to scout for his dream project. “I had been putting together photographs of locations because I wanted to shoot in a style of filming that I didn’t think had been exposed to too many people. I decided that it was not going to be a piece that was CGI’d.  The style of fighting that’s in Crouching Tiger [Hidden Dragon] couldn’t make it in. It had to be dated, for the lack of a better word.”

With these majestic back-drops to work with the next task was to find the child actor.

For 8 years, Tarsem searched: “I couldn’t think that anywhere on the globe I could find a child that had not been exposed to cinema. Every year when I did commercials: Scotland, Ireland, and India I was sending the casting scout with a camera to go to children and just film them. Tell them a tale and see what their response is like.  Pick out a few kids and see how it goes. I realized the transparency that I needed in the child.  Best case scenario would be something like The Little Princess and otherwise it’s just shit most of the time. I got this tape from this girl in Romania that just blew me away.”

“I flew to Romania, and the best misunderstanding had happened.  [The casting director] had assumed that it was going to be like Superman, Christopher Reeve, a real handicap telling tales to children.  I said: ok that can work.  Just single this girl out.  Then I told my brother, [producer Ajit Singh] ‘We found a girl but she’s six and she doesn’t speak English.’ I was getting the right amount of misinformation because I talked to her for a little bit, and her English was very basic.  I said: don’t put her in English school, leave her how she is.”

“I came back and told my brother: Complete change of brief, we can’t shoot this in the studio. We have to go to a real location. I found this hospital in South Africa, a lunatic asylum.  We took one wing of it that they were using for printing presses or something.  We dressed it exactly correct so I could always explain to her things visually: you are here, he’s here, you’re bored, you throw this to him.   Every scene I told her things in sequence. The first time she saw him is the first day she sees him.  The second scene is the second time she sees him.  I said: she’ll write the script.” 

Any time you’re working with children you have unnumbered challenges.  But what about when the child has had no exposure to films or acting at all? 
“I wanted a style to be very much like Ponette (1996) which was very realism based between the two people because the other side of the curve was so theatrically over the top, gay kitsch, you could almost call it. I love that style and did not want to compromise. I did not want to bring it down.  I’d rather take the hospital and make it as real as I could.” 

“So to contrast those two I decided to keep the camera still, which was a real problem.  I think in today’s world the hip new thing, which our professors in school 15 years ago thought wouldn’t last more than 3 years but is unfortunately is the norm, to make anything real you just kind of shake it around and voilŕ, you can make a cupboard act.  I do it all the time in advertising.  When an actor shows up and he’s shit you go: ‘Ok, just pick up the camera’ and somehow he’ll give you something that will work.  I wanted to create a situation where I didn’t want to get out of the hole.  The people weren’t working? Then my ass was on the line.”

Remember how the Romanian casting agent thought the actor playing opposite “Alexandria” was a real paraplegic?  Well in order to maintain the illusion for the junior actress the entire company would also need to think that the actor was unable to walk.  A new crew was required as well as an unknown person to play the injured stuntman. Tarsem went so far as to create a fake persona named “Roy” complete with a classically trained background and information available on the internet.

“When I came out [to Los Angeles] I thought I’d have to go to Julliard or somewhere like that to find a student that no one is familiar with that I could pull this bluff off.” The casting agent gave Tarsem a copy of the acclaimed “Soldier’s Girl” and told him to especially watch “the girl.” Once the confusion of who was what went away, Tarsem was heartily impressed with star Lee Pace.  “I loved his voice.” 

“I came straight to him and I told him ‘I’ve completely made a deal with everybody that if you break one second off we can’t do the movie. We’ve made it into completely communist style. The loader, the camera man, the DP, everybody was the same pay rate. Everybody travels equally, everybody stays equal and I can’t afford to make a different deal. We’re going to shoot the movie in sequence. You’ll be the only person who’s going to be kept separate because everyone thinks you’re handicapped. 

You play that and in the end when we’ve shot the hospital out we’ll tell them that you can walk.’ I laid it all out for him and I just said, ‘If you can do all that and answer one question you’ll be ok.’ He asked, ‘What’s the question?’ and I asked, ‘Do you have a penis?’ He said, ‘I’ve got a penis.’ I said, ‘You’ve got the part. Call your agent and tell him there is no negotiation because if it blinks, it’s gone.’” 

“There’s certain stuff that Lee will never be credited for that is so difficult.  But yesterday I was watching just Lee and it’s so generous and unrewarding what he did. When the girl’s in front of him, you see her move; you see him move.  Because he’s lighting her, he’s talking to her and the worst thing that children do: he’d come up with a good line and the next day she’d take it. She’d just take the best line, the best situation, the best light for her[self] and Lee was choreographing everything around her. It kinda goes un-credited when you act against children or animals because you look and at the animal and go, ‘Oh my god’ and there’s Lee, who’s just left hanging.”

When you see this film you will witness the undeniable chemistry between Catinca Untaru who plays Alexandria and Pace.  The hospital shoot yielded some amazing footage.  “Magic happened between the two of them. I almost decided not to go and shoot any of the fantasy stuff after it happened. I thought it was a complete film.” But a personal hardship changed the affable director’s mind: “My whole life fell apart because [I and] my girlfriend separated. I’d been with her eight years. 

I decided to go on a magical mystery tour.  I called my brother and I just said, ‘Sell everything. I have no idea if this little light I’m seeing at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train or what but we’re going in it. If you have to sell the home, call me.’ I left and 24 countries later, 4 ˝ years later I called him and said, ‘I’m almost done,’ and he said, ‘The house is almost up for sale,’ and I said, ‘I’m finished.’”

Colin Watkinson was the Director of Photography on this project and his task was daunting, considering his prior experience: “At the last second I used Colin.  He hadn’t done a single thing. He was my loader for 17 years.  Right before shooting I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t use my camera man (Paul Laufer).  [Paul] was my college professor, the guy I worked on The Cell with and [who] shoots a lot with me. 

I could feel a little bit of resistance and here I was looking for, apart from the actors [who] could beat the shit out of me no problem, from the crew it had to be unconditional.  I could see Paul asking some questions that were a little off.  I said, ‘You know what?  Eight days into to shooting, Paul we’ll meet again.’ And I turned to Colin and I said, ‘Let’s go and do an ad in two days and see if you can take it up.’ Colin rose to the occasion.”

“The person who’s un-credited and is brilliant is a guy called Lionel Kopp. He’s the guy who did the post.  He probably has an aesthetic that I trust so much. He came in at the end and made the images exactly the hues, the colors, everything that I wanted.”

With the progression of his second film taking so long from idea to release what is it that drives and inspires his vision?

“I’d say it’s quite a personal journey. I hope I don’t get bit by the monkey soon enough.  I’m bloody happy to leave it how it is.  But for me, on a visual style to go out and make a film it has to be some sort of passion.  I wouldn’t have done The Cell actually if I’d found the girl.  I just said it’s an open ended ticket.  I might never find the girl. 

But at the end pressure came from [David] Fincher and Spike [Jonze] who were saying, ‘You’re refusing to do the Hollywood films b/c you keep talking this one film that you’re refusing to make.’ Well the person hadn’t shown up.  The moment she did I just knew.  My brother said, ‘We’re going to be two old guys with money who are talking about the film we never made. Either piss or get off the pot.’ It was a decision I had to make right then.  I don’t know if there is a pattern for me to follow.”

“In ads, it happens all the time.  They’ll give me something, I won’t have the style for it, and I’ll be walking and I’ll see a dreadful picture or something and I’ll say I know exactly how to do it. I like solving things visually. It’s my background.  I just stay true to it.  Now, I think I’m probably getting bored with it.  I think I’ve blown my wad, for lack of a better word.  I’ll go where the road takes me: the long, the winding, and the yellow.”

“I’ve got a lovely new girlfriend.  I’m nicely in love with her. Life’s too wonderful and too short for me to rush into anything else.  The cliché I use is: I love advertising, I’m in it and I use it to learn things.  Very few people (I’d say .00001) in the world can say that they are doing something that they absolutely love.  I do it every day.  If they didn’t pay me I’d do it for free.  I keep saying I’m a prostitute in love with their profession.”

Coming up: Part Two with leading man Lee Pace