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Saturday, March 27, 2010

La Vie En Rose














Photograph: Emil Cadoo/PR


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM945FbjDOE

From the film...
Journalist: Hello, they said you were on the beach. Thank you for granting this interview.
Edith Piaf: My pleasure.
Journalist: It’s odd to see you so far from Paris.
Edith Piaf: I’m never far from Paris.
Journalist: I’ve a list of questions. Answer whatever comes to mind. Well…what’s you favorite color?
Edith Piaf: Blue
Journalist: What’s your favorite dish?
Edith Piaf: Pot Roast.
American Journalist: Would you agree to live a sensible life?
Edith Piaf: It is already the case
American Journalist: Who are your most faithful friends?
Edith Piaf: My true friends are my most faithful.
American Journalist: If you could no longer sing…?
Edith Piaf: …I could no longer live.
American Journalist: Are you afraid of death?
Edith Piaf: Less than solitude.
American Journalist: Do you pray?
Edith Piaf: Yes, because I believe in love.
American Journalist: What is your fondest career memory?
Edith Piaf: Every time the curtain goes up
American Journalist: Your fondest memory as a woman?
Edith Piaf: The first kiss
American Journalist: Do you like night time?
Edith Piaf: Yes, with lots of light.
American Journalist: Dawn?
Edith Piaf: With a piano and friends.
American Journalist: The evening?
Edith Piaf: For us, it’s dawn.
American Journalist: If you were to give advice to a woman, what would it be?
Edith Piaf: Love
American Journalist: To a young girl?
Edith Piaf: Love
American Journalist: To a child?
Edith Piaf: Love.
American Journalist: Who are you knitting for?
Edith Piaf: Whoever will wear my sweater.


Directed/Screenplay by Olivier Dahan
(excerpts from Ion Cinema interview)
Q: Did you map out how you wanted to structure it?
OD: No, no I wrote straight from the first page to the last. I didn’t have any plan, I just wrote. The structure came naturally. The first ten pages I wrote in Los Angeles over two years ago. I really didn’t want to write the film myself, I wanted the producer to hire a scriptwriter, but he wanted me to do it and I just wrote the first ten pages and went from there.

Q: Why Edith Piaf?
OD: At first it was a photograph, a not well-known photograph so I don’t think you’ll know what I’m talking about. I often go into bookstore just to flip through books, I’m not an avid reader but I keep buying books. I was just looking through this photography book and I just fell on this special photo of Edith in her early years. She was about seventeen and looked like a punk rocker! It was so different then this iconic image most people have of her. The next page had a more traditional picture of her in a black dress and everything. It was the mix of the two pictures that really struck me as powerful.

Q: You say you don’t like to rehearse, how do you prepare for shooting?
OD: I don’t prepare really because I trust my intuition for a lot of things and I don’t have the actors rehearse because I don’t like to use the actors minds before we film. I don’t know, when I’m on the set I don’t have a sense of abstraction, I point the camera and its either right or wrong. I don’t use any storyboards for that reason, I don’t think about what I’m going to shoot the day before. When everything comes together, it just works.

Q: What interests you the most about filmmaking?
OD: I don’t think it’s an interest in one thing or another. It’s my way of talking; it’s just a question of communication. I don’t like to talk so much in life, I’m more comfortable with pictures. When I’m on the set I don’t feel like I’m working, I just feel natural.


Marion Cotillard
(The New York Times)

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