Nicolas Roeg

[SiliasRuby]

'The Man Who Fell To Earth' is fan-fucking-tastic. Enjoy bethie.

some parts really frightened me. i'm going to have to dig the night light out of my drawer. i swear.

That good, huh?

[Bethie]

yes. fantastic. love it.

[Gamblour.]

Ok, so I caught a glimpse of the Criterion set for Man Who Fell to Earth at my friends' place, and it's one film I've been wanting to see for a while. I decided to read the book and then watch the film.

I'm kind of, hm, really surprised there's so much love for it here, because it's pretty awful. Is the love for how rough around the edges it is? Because it's got plenty of that. I don't understand how someone could be such a clumsy film maker. Even Rip Torn is pretty fucking terrible. "I'm gonna just guffaw at everything!" Ideas are halfway setup and then poorly executed. It's edited ..... I mean, it's just fucking atrocious. And the overuse of the zoom lens was KILLING me. Let's zoom in on Farnsworth's glasses YET AGAIN to point out the manifested flaw in the character. Egh. This was so poorly executed AND it was boring.

I'm gonna need more than "fantastic" to understand the love for this film. Unless it's because it was so ridiculous, because I get that it's ridiculous. It's really poorly made. It reduces everything to one-dimension. And I'm not even talking about in comparison to the book, which just happens to be VASTLY superior and way more interesting than this film.

[Tortuga]

Bump, because I'm interested in some of the questions from the post above (from some two years ago), and possible responses.

Just saw Man who fell to earth for the first time. I don't think I understand the film (I didn't get where it was going, or why, perhaps, it wasn't going anywhere in particular), but I know I really liked a lot of it. 

I think the editing was excellent. I'm almost certain it was edited by the same guy who did Don't Look Now, just because of that unforgettable sequence in that one, where shots of the main characters having sex are intercut with them getting dressed again.

[Bethie]

and
Just saw Man who fell to earth for the first time. I don't think I understand the film (I didn't get where it was going, or why, perhaps, it wasn't going anywhere in particular), but I know I really liked a lot of it. 

I still think of The Man Who Fell to Earth possibly everyday. the line towards the end where he tells her, "I asked for you and a gun." why this line plays in my head throughout the day, I don't know.

Over the past couple years Nicolas Roeg has become one of my favs. I watched Insignificance for the first time recently. I was asked what I thought about it once it was over....speechless. Maybe how you felt about man who is how I felt about Insignificance, not sure where and it was going and why (why not, I say) but I know I really liked it.

[socketlevel]

you should check out all jim o'rourke's albums named after early roeg films, they're all pretty great.

My fav roeg is bad timing.

[MacGuffin]

Bowie's in space: Nic Roeg on film
By Andy Morris 

Interviewing Nicolas Roeg is akin to watching twelve TV screens at once - you catch fascinating fragments but it's difficult to maintain focus. The 83-year-director is responsible for one of the most stylish films of the twentieth century in 1976's The Man Who Fell To Earth, the trailer for which promised "a shocking, mind-stretching experience, in sight, in space, in sex". David Bowie starred as Mr Newton, the extra-terrestrial businessman with a gift for inventing futuristic technology, and his redhead locks, jaunty fedora and wide lapels have proven a recurring catwalk inspiration ever since. ("Even the dyed hair they're ripping off - it's amazing!") Wary of over-intellectualising his work (he once dismissed a question about Don't Look Now's famous sex scene as follows: "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to shoot a f***"), here Roeg discusses Bowie's taste for the supernatural, listening to Low for the first time and why drugs affect everyone differently...

GQ.com: Bowie kept you waiting for hours at your first meeting at his apartment. How did you pass the time?

Nicolas Roeg: I passed the time wondering how much longer he would be! He was doing a recording and I arrived at around six in the evening. I just sat there, made the notes and had a look round the kitchen. I didn't go and check out the house - he was renting it. He finally got back about two in the morning, by which time I'd made a lot of notes. I'd never met him before but I'd seen [1974 Bowie documentary] Cracked Actor. He arrived and he was terrific. He's an amazing man, quite extraordinary. He said, "Hello, sorry I'm late. I think I'll do it. What do you want me to do?" That was the entire conversation!

How was Bowie on set?

When he arrived, his caravan [trailer] was full of personal things - virtually between takes he'd go back there. That sort of [detacted] attitude was not conventional or clichéd - it was real with him. He wasn't putting it on, it was who he was. It just confirmed more and more how right he was for the role. I remember the producer at one point said, "I'm a bit worried about the performance" - they didn't see how good it was. Mr Newton was trying to be mingled with and not noticed, [but kept revealing] some extraordinary flaw. For example, Bowie has a marvellous laugh. It was just left of centre. It was like [Bowie had thought], "Isn't that how they laugh on Earth?"

How did you deal with Bowie's interest in the occult? You had to move his trailer because it was on an Indian burial site...

It's OK. We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism. Think about it: maybe they are right? Who knows? I wouldn't like to be a non-believer in anything.

Do you remember when Bowie brought his son Duncan Jones to the set?

I must confess, I don't. Funnily enough, a son of mine knows [Duncan] as well. I liked his approach to his movie and Moon was terrific. Maybe we will meet [properly] some day. He's a great success.

Bowie kept mentioning Howard Hughes as an inspiration for Mr Newton. Was that a comparison you found helpful?

I was satisfied if he thought that and I didn't want to disturb that. I had a different thought about a company director, funnily enough. We wanted something he could invent that was a silly impossibility. I forget who it was - it might have been my idea - but we thought maybe it was a camera where you take the film and throw the camera away. Something insane! Within four years of filming it, I was at LA airport and saw a Fuji disposable camera. I didn't get a penny. [chuckles]

What became Low was originally going to be the film soundtrack - how did it feel when  Bowie sent you a copy?

I enjoyed it tremendously. I think it was terrific, because the cover of Low was so good.I can understand why he didn't put himself. It wasn't out of resentment - it  would have got in the way of being Mr Newton. He was wiser. I respect him tremendously. I'm glad I never felt bad about it - I pondered it and thought, "It belongs to Mr Bowie."  The only people who were complaining were saying, "We could have released the soundtrack. That would have been fantastic!" F*** it, I know it's right.

In a number of subsequent interviews Bowie has discussed how he was on drugs at the time...

He lived very separately. He had his caravan. He was a very controlled and highly intelligent man. That's not a flattery thing - intellectually he was very focused, very sharp. People get stoned in different ways - if they're nervous or worried or upset, they're looking for happiness. I never questioned him on the reasons. It stepped up after the film was over and when we went to see him during post-production he was heavily getting into it. After all, at one time people used cocaine in a very general way - in Victorian times, they used all kinds of drugs and things. I've known alcoholics and drink doesn't have the same effect on [everyone].

Bowie told NME afterwards that he was was considering moving to New Mexico. Did you feel that he was enjoying himself?

I couldn't tell that. We seemed to be very close and separate at the same time. We had one purpose, which I liked very much. Very often one has to reassure the artist about their nervousness of becoming a different person. With him it was the reverse effect - it happened to me more than him! He did understand the character and it's reflection of the extremes of behaviour we all go through. When Mr Newton came to a strange place, he spoke language in a weird way like a foreigner. Bowie was a foreigner, a stranger in a strange land - he was an Englishman in New Mexico. The locals probably thought of Englishmen completely differently...

[MacGuffin]

Roeg readies First World War romance
Source: Screen Daily

British director Nicolas Roeg is developing a First World War romance revolving around an affair between a young, British Army sniper and a wealthy, French landowner behind enemy lines.

The project - originally called The Sniper but recently re-titled At Sunset - reunites the film-maker with British writer Dan Weldon and Canadian producer Martin Paul-Hus of Montreal-based Amérique Films.

The pair collaborated with Roeg on 2007 supernatural tale Puffball, for which Weldon adapted his mother Fay Weldon's novel of the same title.

Producer Paul-Hus told Screen: "It's the tale of a torrid affair between a woman in her late 40s, early 50s and a young lad from Yorkshire. She is a wealthy landowner, he is a former labourer on a big estate... the madness of the First World War brings them together.

"The script, written by Dan, is completed but we're starting upside-down: we want to cast the female lead first and then we'll tap into our network in Germany, France and Benelux for co-producing partners."

Paul-Hus has his sights set on one of France's top female actresses for the lead role.

It will be the first film in six years for the 84-year-old director of Walkabout, Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth, who told The Guardian newspaper in an interview in 2011 that he still had three or four films left in him.

French-Canadian Paul-Hus, who specialises in international co-financing using the backing of the Quebecois SODEC and CanadianTelefilm funds as well as Canada's generous film tax incentives, has a raft of co-productions due out this year.

They include German director Wiebke von Carolsfeld's Stay about a pregnant woman who returns to Canada from Ireland after her partner says he does not want children. The picture, starring Aidan Quinn and Taylor Schilling, is a co-production with Dublin-based Samson Films.

"We've yet to set a sales agent yet but the hope is that we will premiere the film at Toronto," said Paul-Hus.

Other future releases include Tony Pemberton's Buddha's Little Finger, an adaptation of Russian novelist Victor Pelevin's novel set at the time of the 1991 coup against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

It stars British actor Toby Kebbell as a young gangster who loses his memory during a KGB interrogation and believes he is a revolutionary poet during Russia's 1919 civil war.

It is a co-production with German Rohfilm and Cine Plus with the support of theMitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM), Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB), Quebec's cultural fund SODEC, Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Media Development Programme.

Upcoming French-language pictures include French director Christophe Cousin's Deux temps, trois mouvements, about a Parisian teenager getting to grips with life in Quebec after his mother decides to move there following the death of his father.

Amérique Films also has a minority stake in Philippe Kotlarski and Anna Weil's Friends from France about two French youngsters who travel to Leningrad in 1982 to give support to a group of Jewish dissidents – or refuseniks.

The picture is lead produced by Paris-based Les Films du Poisson (producers of Oscar-nominated documentary The Gatekeepers), Berlin-based Vandertastic and St Petersburg-based Rock Films. Pyramide International is handling sales. Set for a June release in France, the picture could be a potential candidate for a Croisette premiere.