- [on the origins of Divided We Fall (2000)] We were inspired in part by the story a friend told us, about a family who hid a Jewish man during the war, and to protect themselves from suspicion they started to collaborate. Their neighbors hated them for it, not knowing the truth. We were interested in the paradox of that situation. The second was the birth of the child, in these very strange surroundings - that actually happened to the son of a famous Czech poet. The third was the German officer, who we learned about from another friend of ours. The scriptwriter, Petr Jarchovský, collected all these ideas together and wrote the story.
- [on Václav Havel's cameo in Up and Down (2004)] The Burmese dissident couple in our film was inspired by my wife's work for Amnesty International. At the time, she was working on an exhibition of photographs on Burma held under the auspices of then President Václav Havel. I knew that his participation in the film could contribute to the believability of this element of the narrative.
- [on English title of Divided We Fall (2000)] Yes, the title is rather different, but I feel it's even slightly better than the Czech one. The Czech title, 'We Must Help Each Other', is quite an ironic title... Though Divided We Fall is in the American Constitution ( "United We Stand, Divided We Fall") - so perhaps the pathos and irony is actually even bigger in this one. Therefore I like this English title very much.
- [on Karel Gott's cameo in Shameless (2008)] When there was a situation in the screenplay where Nora and a colleague are taking photos for a new album, then we were saying what caliber the other should be. And Karel Gott is the most famous personality of local show business.
- [on Emília Vásáryová] Sometimes I'll work with an actor several times before I realize I'm doing something wrong. For instance, I've made four movies with Emília Vásáryová, who's an extremely talented, beautiful woman. In the first three, I cast her as a very sick mother, an alcoholic, and a religious fanatic. In all these roles, she was made to look much uglier than she really is - in real life, she's like Sophia Loren - so I wanted to give her a role where she'd be the beautiful one. In Shameless (2008), she played this glamorous singer with a younger lover. She thought it was ridiculous and told me she didn't feel comfortable in the role at all.
- [on his artistic signature] I see the complexity of my characters as an artistic signature. I studied screenwriting, and screenwriting in Europe is taught on the basis of complex movies, complex characters. In a Czech film academy, they make you analyze a Chekhov play rather than a Batman movie.
- [on his collaboration with actors] After casting a movie but before shooting, I bring the cast together for a read-through of the script. Everybody comes, even actors who never appear together in the film. We all sit around a table and go through the script. I often work with a mix of stars and nonactors, and I think it's important, when you have actors with different levels of professional experience, to talk about the roles. Based on these readings, we might even modify the script. Sometimes we find that something is missing or that we want to give certain actors room to improvise.
- [on The Teacher (2016)] Although the story of "The Teacher" is set during the communist era, we didn't mean to simply reconstruct the atmosphere of the past. The theme of the film is fear and the subsequent willingness of an individual to succumb to corruption - the fact that some people serve those who have power over them, and, hence, get advantages for themselves and their closest ones. Nevertheless, these advantages can turn against them in the long run. The film, therefore, isn't a historical illustration. It tells a story about general human behavior, of situations that happen regardless of the time period.
- [on Josef Abrhám]: "He was from a very good family, he was well-bred, a hugely cultured man, played the piano fantastically, had certain refinement and restraint. But on the other hand, you saw some unexpected sides of him in his crazier roles. But if one's filtering that by hiding behind the character, one's from a small theater, the criteria for his acting is truthfulness, authenticity. Something that came into postwar acting with Marlon Brando or James Dean. He embodied all of that. He was opposed to showy acting, where you use gesture and voice to create something beautiful or compelling, but it's not authentic. He was."
- [on working with Josef Abrhám on Sakalí léta (1993)]: "We started to film Sakalí léta (1993) and Abrhám asked me: "Why did Prokop join the police?" We thought he used to be a racer before, a lot of the traffic cops were guys who went racing on motorbikes. Then he got injured and lost his taste. That's really what Petr Jarchovský and I used to think of as kind of a prehistory of the character. It was to be seen in the set design - we had some diplomas put on the wall, wreaths, trophies and cups. Abrhám was happy that the prehistory of the character was there. And one time he wouldn't come out of the make-up room for a terribly long time, so I went in and he had his scars made up under his shirt! Although they weren't even supposed to be visible in any scene."
- [on Cosy Dens (1999) script development]: "We wrote the first version almost as Sakalí léta (1993) 2. The main characters were the young ones. And when we put it out for grant, we went to Jirí Menzel to ask him to write some recommendations. Menzel wrote a letter saying it wasn't good yet, but it would be someday. I was pissed. And when we didn't get the grant, I went to him to tell me what the problem was. And he told me that the older characters were much better than the young ones. I attributed it to his generation. But I read it and I said, "Right". We turned it around and the young ones remained as observers of the foolish parents. That made it about 80% cheaper and it made the whole thing clearer and funnier as well."
- [on film criticism]: "Film reviews are not for directors, but for the audience. When reviews or critiques come out for my film that is currently in theaters, I strictly avoid them. Mentally, you pass them by, because you are frankly rather tired of the film and after several hard months of working on it you are fed up with it. Of course, you'll be pleased by the praise and annoyed by the bad criticism, but it's simply not the director's place to comment on reviewers."
- [on Sakalí léta (1993)]: "The film was successful in the sense that half a million people went to the cinema to see it and the songs were widely played. But it was expensive, and because of the genre, it didn't sell abroad. The poetry of Ivan Hlas's lyrics was untranslatable, so at the end of the day the film was a flop. We were labeled as 'commercialists who didn't make money'."
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