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WSWS : Arts Review : Film Reviews

An interview with Jesse Peretz, director of First Love, Last Rites

'To see, learn and understand the importance of everyday things'

By Richard Phillips
2 July 1998

Richard Phillips: How did you choose this story and why have you set it in Louisiana?

Jesse Peretz: The story is from a collection of the same name by Ian McEwan. When I came across it, which incidentally I first read here in Sydney, I had been looking for a script idea that would reflect on some of my own experiences. I wanted something that dealt with these issues and McEwan's story had all the things that I was interested in. It seemed perfect for expansion into a full feature, so, before I had even finished reading it, I decided to try and make it into a movie. Of course the process of doing that took some time.

I relocated the story from England to America because I knew that I would make mistakes in my first feature film, so the last thing that I wanted was to make any major cultural blunders. Obviously you can make cultural blunders with any film, no matter where you set it but I wanted to minimise that.

Why Louisiana? Well, it had the right natural resources for the story -- a fishing industry and some operating factories -- and this state has always fascinated me. It is so different from the rest of the South. There are so many mixtures -- Cajuns, Creoles, Spanish and French. Culturally and visually it is lush, dark and mysterious. When you drive through it is literally screaming to be photographed.

RP: Can you describe social conditions in the town where the film was shot?

JP: There are sugar factories and a little bit of fishing, but oil is the major industry. The town is a socially depressed area -- the conditions fluctuating in line with world oil prices. In 1973 things were booming and everyone was employed, then there was a downturn and there were some really depressed areas that you get some sense of in the film.

RP: The film appealed to me because it is about ordinary people -- a contrast to the subject matter of most mainstream films coming out of the US today.

JP: My pet peeve with American film-making is the conception that people will only spend time in a movie theatre if you show them something completely out of the ordinary. You can take Good Will Hunting, which I find quite offensive, or Titanic as examples.

The attitude in Titanic is that you cannot make a movie about two people falling in love. The heroine can't just be an ordinary person, she has to be super-rich with a million dollar pendant and her lover has to be super-poor.

What irritates me are those films motivated by the bag of money or someone being murdered. Unfortunately, these two things account for the major plot thrust of 95 percent of the movies made in America today.

As far as I am concerned the stories of everyday life are worth people reflecting on. I want people to see, learn and understand the importance of everyday things through film.

RP: While the film has a simple plot there are some underlying tensions and unanswered questions. Can you explain this?

JP: My aim is not to make a completely bland film about everyday life, it has to have something special or unusual about it. There has to be something unique or different about the characters.

Everybody has darkness, passion, sensuality, sexuality and even boredom. These normal human states are potentially a gold mine for artists to explore and that is my goal in this film, to explore these emotional and psychological questions.

At one point Joey says to Sissel that he feels that when they make love they create something, not a child, but some strange presence. This is only one of the fantasies or the confusions that start to destroy their relationship and is one of the interesting components of the film.

My next film, which is about a 19 year-old French girl who is obsessed with the culture of 1960s France, will be a step towards a slightly bigger story, but there is no bag of cash or the threat of anyone being murdered.

RP: Could you explain how the soundtrack was produced and transition you made from a musician to director?

JP: There really wasn't a transition because I've been making films since I was fifteen. Being in the band was just a glorified hobby. I went to college and studied film and photography while I was in the band but the moment the band was going to become a full-time job I got out. My aim was to make movies. I tell my friends that you can only rock until you are 30 but you can produce art until the day you die.

With the soundtrack, there are two friends of mine who are in a band and we set out to do original songs for every major scene in the film. By the time we began shooting the film I had their demo tracks of everything.

It was only after we finished shooting it that we went to some of the bigger names in music and had them record the music. It was also important to have a diverse range of singers to make it feel that it is music from all over the place. The Jeff Buckley song in the film is the last song he recorded before he died.

RP: What directors have influenced you the most?

JP: The two movies that made me obsessed with becoming a director were Win Wenders' The American Friend and Truffaut's Jules and Jim. So my big favourites are early Wenders, Truffaut and Godard. Todd Haynes is also a special filmmaker for me and I have been influenced by Mike Leigh: the acting is so real and convincing in his films. I also like Ken Loach very much and the films produced by Jane Campion.

RP: What would you say about state of the film industry and the problems that face young film directors in the US?

JP: It is hard to raise money to make a film, especially for young directors, but I find it difficult to argue that society should give me half a million dollars so that I can express myself artistically. I feel this more so when living in a world, or a city like New York, where people are starving in the streets or cannot get proper medical care or a roof over their heads.

Many people will complain about funding but it is a huge privilege for me, as a 32 year-old, to be able to make movies, or be flown to foreign countries for film festivals and the like. I can't say that I deserve this more than anybody else, so I embrace whatever obstacles that are necessary to produce my movies.

This doesn't mean that I am onto a commercial streak or that I support the government cutting money to the National Endowment for the Arts. I certainly don't agree with the screwed up expenditure priorities pursued by the government -- the massive money spent on military and so on.

I recognise that my artistic aims are not completely marketable in the American system and therefore it is more of an uphill battle but you will never hear me complain that James Cameron got $200 million to make Titanic. That's his problem. Ultimately he is stuck in a world that limits him entirely to the market economy. In the end, he is much more restricted than I am.

See Also:
First Love, Last Rites, directed by Jesse Peretz, from a short story by Ian McEwan
A refreshing change from Hollywood's image of youth
[2 July 1998]