The Talks
Dennis Muren: “There’s a magic to it”
Mr. Muren, as a nine-time Oscar-winning visual effects artist and a pioneer in the industry, how would you define visual effects in filmmaking?
A very easy way to explain it is that it’s all the magic inherent to filmmaking. Visual effects get used when it's impossible to do something another way. The best way to do something is always if you can do it for real, with real actors on a real location, with a real crew, the real performances, whatever it is. But a lot of things are impossible — spaceships flying, dinosaurs — or too much danger, that's when effects come into it. Sometimes we’re adding a visual effect to a real scene in order to augment it, like a creature or a background or a character. But there’s been such change in the industry in the last 20 years that now entire movies can be shot on another planet, and that was never possible before.
What were the effects like back then, for example when you first became interested in this field in the sixties and seventies?
I actually got started even earlier than that, when I was a little kid, probably six or seven years old. I was interested in the stuff that I saw in the theater, you know, these spectacles with a giant creature or an invasion from Mars or something! I remember walking out of the theater and thinking, “I want to see that again.” So I’d go out to our backyard and in our garage, and I would recreate those moments that I just loved seeing in films using film cameras. As I got older, the quality got better, but it was still always hard. There was no digital in those days, and so everything took a week before you could see it.
“I have to free myself from my creation, I have to send it off, I have to give it up. And that is also the beauty, that you pass on something, that you let something live, that you allow it to confront. To get in contact with others.”
“Of course we all do stupid things when we're young, but that's your way to find boundaries, you know. Have I done stupid things I regret? Yeah. But I can learn from those mistakes and grow. That's what it’s all about.”
“Follow the things you love! Follow the things that you are intensely passionate about. Follow the things that you like to do, which often to others might seem unimportant.”
“I have a tattoo that goes around my right wrist that looks like barbed wire, but it’s actually ANDAND linked together, which stands for “A New Dawn, A New Day.” It’s about waking up every day knowing that you have a chance to start again and forgive and be forgiven and to let go of yesterday.”
“One of the reasons why I have this much success is because I’m hard on myself. Until now, I never really saw myself as a talented chef! I don’t take the easy way. I put in the time. From the age of 17 until 23, I didn’t take any vacations, I had almost no days off.”
“You better make every moment count. Live your life now; start in the morning. You mustn’t sit around waiting to die.”
“I think that when you’re a creator, you set out to create the perfect thing, but the idea of reaching that kind of creative nirvana — that’s something that you should never quite reach.”
“I think when you’re an artist who’s been around for a while like I have you understand that it’s almost impossible to make work that is unanimously loved or understood! You can’t please everyone, and that is a great realization.”
“I’m doing things more personally than ever before because that’s what my project is based on, that’s who I am and I have never been this happy my whole life — but it was a long road to get here.”
“I think as you are growing up, deciding what you want to do is really the process of elimination rather than gravitating towards something until you land on what really makes you happy.”
“My work is integrated completely into my life and vice-versa – I’ve been working since I was sixteen and my work is my life and my life is my work. It made me who I am.”
“Right now we are 40 people working in Osteria Francescana, for 28 or 30 covers a night. So, it’s totally the opposite of a business. You cannot survive with that. But we believe in those kinds of dreams and so I keep investing, and reinvesting, and reinvesting.”
“Risks are very important to me. It’s the only thing that will define the next career move or else I’ll be plateauing. I’ll be completely stale if I don’t take risks. And that’s not just my career.”
“I feel very lucky. There is luck behind me, there’s luck in front of me, there’s luck ahead of me. But that is a perspective that requires a lot of work. It doesn’t come naturally.”
“Everyone’s life comes to an end. We’re all going to come to the same fate. So you just keep going while you can, doing what you like.”
“I just want to do everything as good as I possibly can but it is also good to act on an idea and fail — and then you get something out of it. I think it’s really important to not be afraid of failure and to push yourself to try things and jump in the cold water.”
“Writing itself should be so extreme, so wild, and so much fun that it doesn’t matter whether or not you ever sell the book.”
“If I knew that tomorrow a meteorite would destroy our planet, I would start shooting a new film today.”
“The more experience you have, the more time you’ve spent on this earth, the more regrets you accumulate. It’s normal. You can’t do everything right, nobody’s perfect. But if you think too much about that, you’re not here. You have to make some efforts to stay open-minded.”
“I used to tease the other kids because I played better than them. Then my father said, ‘Come here. Don’t do this with the kids, because God gave you the gift to play football. You didn’t do anything. You have to respect people, be a good person. From now on, you must be this example.’”
“I’ve been very lucky — I took the risk to do the things that interested me, so I could have no possible complaints. There’s nothing else I could ask for, really, and if I drop dead tomorrow, I would have had a terrific time.”
“I learned by doing. The rest is doing experiments and testing and not giving up. If something is not satisfying start again, turn everything upside down and find a new formula for printing. Everything is learning by doing.”
“If you work with somebody for a long time, you have to challenge them otherwise you jeopardize your relationship. You have to constantly reinterpret your work together and provide a new vision of your relationship.”
“It’s been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to make the films I really dream of making. It’s heartbreaking when that happens, but it’s all okay. It requires patience.”
“I always try to concentrate on the process and where the real goal is, which is trying to get up every day and be the best possible version of myself and do the best work I can do.”
“I have a moral standard of my own. I know the difference between right and wrong, I know what I feel comfortable with. And if you live up to your own moral standard, you’re going to have a more comfortable life.”
“I don’t want to be good. I want to be the best. Even in failing that, you’ll hit a higher mark than if you never tried.”
“I can’t make people happy if I’m not happy myself. That applies to anyone who tries to achieve something in their life: if you’re not happy, you can’t transfer any happiness to anyone else.”
“Just about anything is possible if you can find the map or the blueprint to get there. I think you’re only limited by your imagination.”
“I have an irrational fear of boredom. That’s why I now have this tattoo that says “Carpe Diem.” That’s what we should live by!”
“To be an artist, you must start with a considerable drive; in my case it was a fierce madness, a wildness. I think that’s the mark of an artist, actually, that they are rebellious, unruly… And I was one of them myself.”
“Part of being a designer is to fail every day, to try things that don’t work out. In a way, every project fails every day until it succeeds! That’s what the iterative process of design is about. Timing in many ways is key.”
“I don’t want to be pigeonholed — it’s important to keep evolving, experimenting and reinventing yourself, otherwise it’s like hitting a drum, the same note over and over again. I think you should want to change, to try different things.”
“I think the final circle in being an artist is connecting, making some conversation to the world you’re in. I think if you have that feeling of why you need to do something, you’ll find a way. And I think that really takes you forward! If you’re feeling that, maybe other people need that to.”
“If you are ambitious, you are running in a tunnel that never ends. You will always find something new to go after.”
“Each of my projects is kind of a marathon run. A lot of them won't make it to the finish line and the only reason they make it is because I go back and nurture them and try to figure everything out.”
“You have to open yourself. Just as in life you have to be open to other people, to other perspectives — it’s the same thing when you write. That’s what religion’s about, that’s what literature’s about, it’s what life’s about: the stories that you build.”
“If people don’t like the pictures, I don’t care. To me, there’s only one point of view: that’s mine.”
“It all comes down to realizing how good you are and really consciously working with that. I think as an artist we always try to hide the imperfections. But the imperfections are there because we’re all humans, and this is what makes us interesting.”
“When I was training as a ballet dancer, I know that I was often tired or in pain, but you just work through it. You go home crying and your parents almost want you to quit but then you just do it. And I use that stamina now as an actress because it’s normally quite uncomfortable to make films.”
Rob Marshall: “There’s nothing like it”
Mr. Marshall, how did people react when you first told them your plan to make a film version of the hit musical Chicago?
I was told a million times, no one's is going to see this movie because musicals are dead. At that point in the early 2000s, animated musicals were very successful, but live action musicals on film were nowhere to be seen. But I believed in the genre! I never think a genre is dead, you know, they say things like, “Oh, the Western is dead,” I never believe that. I think it all comes down to how it's done. Musicals are very delicate, they can go off the rails like that. It can turn into a Saturday Night Live sketch... We've all seen musicals where they start to sing, and it feels embarrassing, like, why are they singing? I'm always very aware that the song has to be earned, it has to come out of the story seamlessly, like there's no other choice but for them to sing. That's how I approached Chicago.
Did it feel like a validation when Chicago went on to win six Oscars, including Best Picture?
It was such a surprise, all of it. I have to say the whole ride was insane, because I honestly didn't think it would be seen by that many people, I thought it'd be more of a niche piece. So when it was embraced the way it was, and it was my first movie, it was an overwhelming experience. I feel like we did open the door for other musicals to be made. It was a combination of Moulin Rouge and Chicago, they happened almost simultaneously and started to breathe life into the form again.
