Attila Szasz: Director
Interview: Attila Szasz
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Cinescare got in touch with Szasz between shoot in Budapest. He talked openly and intelligently about the balance, the genre, and the audiences that help young filmmakers who dabble in darker stories.
Cinescare: Is "Now You See Me, Now You Don't" an independent production?
Attila Szasz: Yes, absolutely. Basically, every production in Hungary is independent. Most of the films are being supported from governmental funds, which we applied for - and have not received. So, ours is even more independent, as we had to get the money on our own. It took us a few months, but the main factor was that we could snag our crew and equipment for a very discounted price, because we are providing them constant work on commercials.
Cinescare: The film looks like a big-budget production. It's clear you worked with a very experienced team. I've noted that you do a certain amount of commercial work, which seems to inform and augment your purely artistic efforts. How do you balance the commercial work with the personal projects?
Attila Szasz: Our crew was the best you can get in Hungary. We have worked on a lot of commercials together. Regarding the balance between personal and commercial work, directing commercials is the best film school. It also makes you a great living and forces you to be as prepared as possible. And it can also finance our personal projects, too. "Now You See Me" was my first short film and I'm already working on the screenplay of my first feature.
Cinescare: Do you have to work faster to stay in the loop with your commercials schedule? I see it took only six days to film, six to edit. Is that simply how quickly you work, or was it a function of working on "Now You See Me" in between the money projects?
Attila Szasz: We are usually forced to work this quick. But in the case of "Now You See Me", it was a question of money. We only had the budget for a six-day shoot and we could only get the editing facilities with my editor for free, if we finished with the editing in six days. The seventh day would have cost us.
Cinescare: Let's look at the film itself. You wrote a directed something that is at once a ghost story, a love story, a tragedy and a mystery.
Attila Szasz: Yeah, those are my favorite genres. I wasn't thinking in terms of genre when I wrote the story. I just wanted to tell a drama with the tools of a thriller/suspense with a little supernatural element thrown in. I wanted to see if it works. I was glad to see that it did.
Cinescare: The ghost story seems eminently ripe for expansive storytelling. Talk about your use of the ghost in "Now You See Me." Were you intending a pure metaphor, or a literal supernatural element in your story?
Attila Szasz: I don't want to give too much away, so I'll be enigmatic. I wanted to take the audience in a certain direction. I wanted them to follow me. And then I gave the story a new light, a new point of view and wanted to let them explain the ending the way they want. It turned out that almost everyone went my way and then their heartbreak was real. It was a cathartic experience for me.
Cinescare: It's important to the story that Alex also exists purely as a concept of loss, a place the mother and father have to fill in with new love for each other - and forgiveness.
Attila Szasz: Exactly. That's one way to interpret it, but it is something that I had in mind. The other thing was that the mother truly sees her son. Because she doesn't want to face the reality.
I received an email from someone who experienced a similar event in her life. She wrote that the film nailed the exact coping strategies she went through with her husband.
Cinescare: You implicate the audience at the end, when the camera turns into, presumable, Alex's POV and pulls out of the house and lifts away. In a sense, you and Tomas seem to inject the audience into the story as a lingering presence itself.
Attila Szasz: Yes, we had a lot of discussion about Alex's POV. Which shot is really his POV? Which one only suggests that it's his? And we listened to our guts and came up with the shots we thought would pull the audience in the most effectively.
Cinescare: Erno and Dora deliver intense performances. Are they known actors in Hungary or Europe?
Attila Szasz: Erno was a well-known actor, but only on stage. Lately, he's getting more and more offers in movies. Dora had some minor roles in some movies earlier, but she became an overnight sensation a few months after we completed shooting, when she took a role in a daily soap. She graces the cover of every single fashion magazine ever since. But basically, it was very important to me to work with new, fresh faces.
Cinescare: When you work with supernatural themes, do you worry about the genre and the stigma it can carry? Do you perceive a stigma in the first place?
Attila Szasz: Yes, I can sense the obstacles this genre has to face. The cliches are very difficult to avoid. And I think credibility is a very important factor. Supernatural themes build on the audience's faith. If they don't believe what they see, you're fucked. If they want to believe it, you have a chance. If they believe, you just hit a homerun.
Cinescare: Have you received a significant amount of support from genre audiences?
Attila Szasz: In Hungary this genre simply doesn't exist. Overseas, many festival people considered it as an artsy drama. It was rejected by most of the genre festivals. Only Shriekfest and DragonCon took it, the latter even gave it an award for Best Thriller.
Cinescare: Interesting. Do you think the whole concept of "genre," and when we say that we mean of course "horror," is limited by its adherence to certain rote aesthetic devices? Only lately, when I started sending the DVD out to review sites, I start to realize that my genre sites champion it and consider it as a genre piece and show my incredible support.
I think if it scares you, you can consider it horror or thriller. And the way it makes you afraid, are achieved by aesthetic devices. You don't have to show zombies, vampires or serial killers to make an audience shiver. That's the beauty of it.
Cinescare: An element of the supernatural is a powerful tool for opening stories up to psychological and spiritual interpretations. Will your next film include such elements?
Attila Szasz: Yes. It will be very similar in tone to "Now You See Me". It will again build on audience perceptions. But deep down it will be another domestic drama. Even if it will contain more thrills and chills. And yes, a ghost will have a very important role in it. If it's a ghost...
Cinescare: Talk about your personal history in film.
Attila Szasz: I graduated as a producer in film school. Then being a long time movie maniac, I started working as a film critic. I published reviews in more than a dozen magazines and even had my own movie review show on TV. Then I founded a distribution and production company and started visiting every major film market in the world and buying licenses for films and TV series. Later I became the editor-in-chief of Hungary's biggest movie magazine. And then came a possibility to direct. Music videos, commercials. That was my second film school. And then came "Now You See Me". And hopeful, next year, I can start shooting my first feature.
Cinescare: If there was one moment during the making "Now You See Me" that you would characterize as the most challenging - what would that be?
Attila Szasz: Working with actors on their characters was a major challenge and the most exciting part of the filmmaking for me. But I don't think I can recall a scene which would have been a greater challenge than the others. Waiting for the rain to stop, finding the right angles in a very small room, convincing the father of the six-year-old Vitez not to take his son home before we have the shot in the can, and fighting with neighbors because of the noises at nights - these are just your average tasks when you face the beautiful, exciting and exhilarating process of burning your dreams onto celluloid to unleash them on the world. Beautiful, beautiful job. I can't imagine I could do anything else in the world.
