ARCHIVE
The Movie That Changed My Life
CHRIS MILLER on Woody Allen's Sleeper
Friday, September 18, 2009
Interview by Robert K. Elder
Somehow, it all comes back to giant food.
Chris Miller (Clone High, How I Met Your Mother) makes his directorial debut with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs this Friday. Below, he talks about the film that turned him on to directing, Woody Allen's Sleeper, which also, ironically, features massive, out-of-control food.
Rob Elder: How would you describe the film to someone who's never seen it? And that’s basically a brief plot synopsis, statement, and themes.
Chris Miller: It's a 1973 Woody Allen movie in which he is cryogenically frozen, wakes up several hundred years in the future and gets into a bunch of mayhem and involved in a plot to overthrow the government.
RE: When did you first see it? What was your experience to it?
CM: I was a freshman in college when I saw it, and it really did change my view of film and comedy. For me, Sleeper was a great balance between physical comedy — slapstick humor — and clever savvy social satire. At that point I'd never really seen a film that has really balanced both of those elements. It was kind of like … You know how Rubber Soul and Revolver are the best Beatles albums because they're sort of somewhere between "She Loves You" and "I Am the Walrus"? They have elements of catchy pop songs, but with experimental stuff in them? I kind of felt like Sleeper was not just a silly goofy comedy like Take the Money and Run and not like Hannah and Her Sisters, it was a sort of a middle phase for Woody Allen. Those were two things I was very interested in: having something interesting to say in a movie, but also not taking yourself too seriously and really making the kind of gut laughter that you get from pure physical comedy.
RE: It's interesting that you had that reaction. Sleeper, Allen told biographer Eric Lax, was his first film where, "I started to get interested in my profession." It was the first movie that wasn't a series of sketches and was his first full narrative.
CM: Yeah, I like Annie Hall better as a movie and so does everybody in the universe, no big whoop there. But again, this was near my heart, Sleeper, because it was one of the first movies that I'd even seen where he was just unabashedly funny, but still caring about things like art direction and what kind of shots he makes.
I took a lot away from that movie as far as cinematography. I still believe that long, wide setups are good for physical comedy. And when you get too tight with too many cuts, it often ruins the joke. It was definitely the case in Sleeper. There were lots of big wide shots where he just lets himself do all sort of physical antics.
RE: What scene sticks with you when you think bout the film?
CM: I think about the whole series of things where he is impersonating the robot. It’s the first thing I think of. Then, there’s the giant food and slipping on a banana peel — a really classic, old-timey, cartoony gag. And it's kind of interesting now thinking about how we just made this film also with giant food and lots of physical comedy in it. We don't have a banana peel guy — we probably should have. It would've been a rip off of the rip off.
RE: But how did Sleeper actually change your life? Did it spur you to do something or go one direction or the other?
CM: It was a real inspiration with me doing my earliest student films. I made a student film that was called Sleazy the Wondrous Squirrel Goes to France in which I had this comic strip character that I drew for my daily paper in college called “Sleazy the Wondrous Squirrel,” which is already obviously not the most pretentious thing.
He had a talk show with an Ed McMahon-like hamster, and they had talks about film which I want to say were not that great. Ah, the wisdom of several years. But the idea was that he had booked Godot to be on his talk show and he never showed up. And so they said, "We’ll go to France to find him and kick his ass."
And it was all about the adventures they had in France. And so for me at the time, I was trying to do what I felt was being done so well in Sleeper, which was trying to make some commentary about America and France. There were a lot of people getting hit by giant toilets and that sort of thing as well. I was really trying to marry the high and low of art. That’s been something that, to the less obvious extent, I’ve been trying to do ever since with Clone High and How I Met Your Mother. Especially with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, where we really wanted it to be a really emotionally compelling and very cinematic movie. We also wanted it to be a silly cartoon at the same time. That constant tug of war between silly and meaningful is something I've always been intrigued by ever since I saw Sleeper.
RE: How do you think your life would be different have you not seen that film?
CM: (Laughs) I would be penniless and drunk on the corner, begging for cash if I had not seen the film Sleeper. I guarantee you.
++
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs opens Sept. 18
Read the entire interview in the forthcoming book The Movie That Changed My Life (Chicago Review Press).http://www.robelder.com