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Having lunch with a French filmmaker is hardly an everyday occurrence, unless, of course, you’re in the biz, or in Cannes in the spring, or maybe living in L.A.
Somewhere between the chicken Caesar salad and the Rothschild’s Mouton Cadet Bordeaux, I realized I was still here in the middle of our California hi-desert, sitting on the deck at Chuck and Holgie Caplinger’s dome house.
The world had, once again, come to us.
In light of the influx of artists, musicians, and increasing film activity over the past couple years (e.g. Chris Copolla’s film shoot last summer, in which Holgie Forrester Caplinger captured a few scenes), I shouldn’t have been surprised that our desert was now playing host to a French art film.
When I arrived, they were downstairs in Chuck’s Desert Art Studio. Film producer Jean Brehat was picking up the painting he had commissioned Caplinger to create for the movie poster. It was a
portrait of the two leading roles in the film, male and female standing in gothic pose--full frontal nudes against a plain sand-colored background.
“Of course, they’ll only be able to use the poster in France, not in the United States,” Chuck said with a laugh. “I’ve been commissioned to paint a lot of portraits before, but this was a first.”
Brehat promised to send Caplinger one of the finished posters for his collection, then proceeded to carry the valuable canvas outside and stash it in his van, where it would make its journey back to Los
Angeles, then on to Paris at the end of the week.
Upon his return, we made our way upstairs to the main living quarters of the dome and out onto the circular deck, where Holgie joined us for lunch. Between bites of food and several cell phone calls, en Francais,
the cordial and unassuming 49-year-old producer talked about his film.
The title? “29 Palms”--produced by Brehat’s 3B Productions and Tadrart Films, and directed by Bruno Dumont. “It’s an art film,” he said.
The 29 Palms project began a year or two ago, Brehat explained. “We were supposed to shoot in December of last year.”
In fact, he had temporarily moved his wife, Isabelle, and three daughters from Paris to Los Angeles, to a place on the beach in Venice. The girls spent the past year attending school in L.A., while dad handled business and made treks to the desert. After various delays, casting calls, and waiting to find the right female lead, the film crew finally arrived here in September 2002.
“We have been shooting for two months in different locations,” from the windmills east of Whitewater to Joshua Tree National Park to downtown Twentynine Palms. Scouting was the longest part, working “one year
with the location manager,” he said. Brehat commended the community for their help and cooperation. “Everyone was very nice--the City and the Park.” Maybe it was easier, because “we’re small,” he said.
As independent movies and art films go, they were specifically looking for actors and actresses who were non-professionals, he explained. “The lead is an American, David Wissack.
He’s not really an actor. He made a TV movie a year or two ago, but his desire is to be a professional gambler! I met him in Venice. We ran ads in the paper for non-professional actors, and he came.” The lead actress is Katia Golubeva. “I was looking for a French-speaking European girl living in L.A. ... Katia is actually Russian, and married to a cinematographer.”
The movie?
“It’s a love story--an unfortunate love story. He’s very attracted to her because of the sexual energy, the sex connection. She wants more, and she’s a bit crazy. They come to the desert because he’s a photographer.” The movie is “based on the atmosphere of the desert,” Brehat said. “When you’re a stranger, it could be frightening … a lone road …then the houses, the dogs … it’s intimidating. The movie is based on this impression of desert, and these two who are crazy and separating, in a bad way.”
Working with unknowns is an interesting challenge, Brehat said. “We’re a little fed up with ‘actors,’ because they’re all the same. They’re too focused on technique.
In our movie, even the fight scenes were real--she really beats him up!” he said, describing a few unexpected bruises.
The “former math teacher turned filmmaker” has been in the film business for 15 years, based in Paris.
A previous film produced in the U.S. a few years ago was “Little Senegal,” shot in Harlem in New York. Brehat’s upcoming projects include a movie on the African Army of WWII, the soldiers who liberated the south of France and were forgotten by history. Then there’s a story he’s been working on for two years based on the Arafat and Bush (“the father”) conversations regarding Israel, a controversial movie in which he’ll team up with Ziad Doueini, “a Lebanese/American cameraman who worked with Tarantino on every movie” and is now a director.
“I’ll also do another movie with Bruno, and he wants to shoot here,” he said of the award-winning director. In fact, Brehat produced the first two features Bruno Dumont ever made. “He’s from the north of
France.
A friend of mine sent me a script--it was very good. Not really a script, it was a novel. Powerful. I met him, and he was powerful himself. The most important thing is the connection, the identification with the maker. I’m finding that the film is always exactly like the director.” In this case, powerful. “It’s so difficult to make a movie, so expensive. You have to trust.”
With Dumont, his trust was rewarded.
“Almost every movie we’ve made, we’ve won all kinds of awards,” Brehat said. Taking “Le Vie de Jesus” to the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, Bruno Dumont received a director’s award--the Golden Camera award, presented to talented young artists for best first-time feature film in any category. In 1999, “L’Humanite” won the Grand Prix, as well as best actor and best actress awards. Both films were produced by Brehat’s 3B Productions and Tadrart Films.
Now, “29 Palms” is destined for Cannes. “The movie will be released first in Europe, in June 2003 because of Cannes, then in the U.S. in September 2003,” he said. With any luck, it, too, will garner some
awards for the Brehat-Dumont team.
On this Monday afternoon in November in the desert, he was preparing to return to L.A., finish some business, pack up his family and return to Paris.
“We have to wrap, and we’re leaving on Friday. Then we’ll be editing for four months in France,” he said. “And we’re going to do a ‘making of’ for the DVD version.” Surely that trailer for the DVD could feature some familiar sites and faces of our hi-desert, including the dome?
Brehat promised he’ll be back to visit. He’s a desert lover. “I’ve crossed the Sahara five times!
It takes one year to cross,” he said. “I love the desert. You can be in the middle of something and feel you are really nothing. Here you at least have some civilization, to remind you where you are.” On the other hand, he said, “You can’t have ‘nothing’ here. In the Sahara, you start on a road, go for one week and see nothing. I love it because of the feeling that you are this small ... you are lost. You can die.”
(Stay tuned for news on the release of the “29 Palms” movie in the U.S. We’ll keep you posted.)
Writer Vickie Waite is Publisher/Editor of The Sun Runner Arts & Entertainment Magazine in Twentynine Palms, California USA.
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