"Milos Forman BLACK PETER" "It was in 1938, I was 6." "On Sunday afternoon they dressed me up in church clothes and my Dad put on a tie, people used to dress like that when going to a cinema." "We went to see a silent-screen version of The Bartered Bride." "It was something so special, such an event." "I was so excited about it." "See, there is this curtain and a black-and-white orchestra on screen with no sound..." "And then the curtain opens up and the choir appears..." "And still no sound, nothing." "And suddenly the audience started singing out loud." "Everybody knew The Bartered Bride, see?" "So they were singing along." "That's what film meant to me." "You sit and watch moving pictures and sing along." "Both of my parents died in a concentration camp." "My mother in Auschwitz, my father in Buchenwald." "Neither of them was Jewish!" "My Dad was a member of some illegal anti-Nazi group." "I don't even know what was going on there." "My mother - even stranger case." "They arrested about 20 women who used to go to one grocery, someone foisted some seditious leaflets into that shop so they busted all customers." "They released all of them except my mother." "Later I was told that there was a Gestapo guy who had worked for my parents as a foreman bricklayer and as he got her documents he stamped them , Return Undesirable"." "After the war I entered a boarding school in Podebrady town, even now as I remember it it was a fantastic experience." "The school was largely financed by state funding, it was a charity project for war orphans." "They had enough money so Mr Jahoda, the headmaster could employ the top professors we had all kinds of workshops, blacksmith's, binding etc." "The word got spread about this perfectly equipped school and the potentates were eager to get their kids there too." "So one third of the students were war orphans, the second third were children of big powerful capitalists, like Vaclav Havel, and then there were children of communist potentates." "Our classmate Eda was a son of one of those commies and he was either dim or lazy, ready to fail any subject, but before school conferences his daddy would show up and our Eda passed with A's." "We felt it as such an injustice and humiliation." "How could we dare to protest?" "However, in the showers where Eda'd always soaped himself and as he was washing himself with his eyes closed we would gather around him and mischievously peed on him." "Everybody was laughing and he was laughing along not knowing what was going on." "So one day Eda soaped himself and as he is showering and we are peeing all over him suddenly I see the others stop and act as if nothing happened." "So I turn around and there is professor Masak in the doorway." "He was established by commies as an ideological watch-dog." "Now he slammed the door and left." "Nothing." "The next day a janitor comes to me and says:" "Forman, go see the headmaster." "And the headmaster said:" "Forman, pack your things, don't even go to the classroom, just grab your things and go." "Here are your walking papers." "I said:, Why?" , Don't ask, just leave."" "I was wandering around school trying to figure out what now and luckily I met an older schoolmate, Honza Klima." "And he told me to go and visit his mum who lived in Prague." "I wanted to be a theatre director, you know, a kind of God for soubrettes so I applied for studies at DAMU." "At the entrance exams they wanted us to direct actors, to make a kind of sketch, saying:" "Make these actors walk in woods as blind men." "I could imagine that." "But then it was my turn and professor Frejka had a pipe and said:" "Mr Forman, stage , A Fight for Peace" for me." "I stared at them doing nothing so they thanked me and I left." "Now I panicked because I didn't want to join up." "So I hysterically looked for another university I could try." "There were three:" "A mining one, a law one and FAMU." "I applied for all three of them." "First I went to the exams for screenwriting at FAMU." "The head of the examination board was Milos V. Kratochvil, a refined gentleman and fortunately I passed." "So I started studying at FAMU." "And when you spend four years watching hundreds of films, chatting all nights about films with classmates in a pub, it makes you feel excited about films as such." "The 50's were actually lucky years for us." "Because us students, we were out of sight of ideologists and their ideological rampage so not only they ignored us but we got the best teachers." "They were people who quite annoyed communists, they were kind of suspicious so they couldn't publish but sending them to ditch wasn't the best thing to do so the commies thought:" "Oh well, let them teach." "My professor Milos V. Kratochvil was a great and inspiring man." "It's hard to teach someone how to narrate and make a film but he was very inspirational." "I never distinguished between commies and anti-communists." "For me there were people who I was afraid to talk to and people who didn't scare me." "No matter if they were commies or not." "One thing was interesting about those times." "Now, when I speak to students they get provoked by classics, by the wonderful films they get to watch and want to follow." "Unlike them we were inspired by reacting to the idiocy that was surrounding us." "Meaning cinematography, right." "This empty, naive," "socialist realism which presented life not as it was but as it would be." "It was something so boring and unwatchable and at the same time our greatest inspiration." "Reaction to the boredom of this socialist realism." "To what they fed you with claiming that's a must." "Well, Radok was my God." "He would stage a play at The National Theatre and get sacked the next day and be sent to a Nowheresville." "But actors loved him or they liked to work with him because he made them act well." "He was making wonderful plays and slowly he pushed himself back to The National Theatre." "And soon enough he got sacked again." "Finally they let him make a film, Grandfather of Cars." "Adolf Branald, a great writer." "The dialogues were difficult to act but great to read, see, there's a huge difference between reading and speaking when reading it all makes a wonderful sense but when you say it out loud it sounds like wires sticking out of an umbrella." "Radok was desperate and asked me to talk it through with him." "And so he hired me as some 3rd or 4th assistant director." "I'm still proud to have worked with him." "There's this one shot when he went to spend a penny or what and told me:" "Prepare the scene, the one with the huge tricycle." "It's this huge pedal vehicle and people are gathering around" "I mean the whole nation because they've never seen such a thing so I say:" "Well, you'll set off from here and ride that way and the people will run in here from there and there and stuff." "And as I watch them I wonder what's wrong, it doesn't work." "So we keep rehearsing and suddenly one of those extras gets sick of it all and just walks away from that tricycle towards the camera." "And suddenly it clicked." "It wasn't a uniform crowd, there appeared an individual and the scene became alive." "Those were important lessons." "There is still Alfred Radok's Laterna Magika, a magical lantern attracting hundreds of people every day." "Radok really was a soul of the whole Laterna magika." "But he was told by his doctor that he should take long walks." "So most of the time we were trudging for miles and miles discussing our next work." "We cooperated with this Svoboda who had a great imagination." "The place was always packed." "Each pavilion had its own special show, something unique." "It was interesting to see real people on stage talking to characters on screen and there were awesome tricks like when a guy is playing trombone on screen" "and then there appears another musician and it's the same guy but now he is playing guitar and then a third, fourth, fifth and they're all the same guy." "And suddenly this guy starts playing on stage in flesh." "People just loved it." "After the success of Laterna in Brussels we got an invitation to London and performing the second programme was like an eruption." "We'd immaculately put together the whole programme, built the scene in the workshop and there took place a programme approval." "There came people like the deputy prime minister Vaclav Kopecky, the Secretary of Defence and other three ministers." "Then the show was over and it included my favourite piece." "It was Martinu's The Opening of the Wells." "Jaroslav Kucera was in charge of camera, he did a great job." "The musical piece itself is just so clean, human, poetic because it's about a human life - from birth until death." "In the end there are old ladies in black standing on a hill and the ground is covered with snow - a perfect image." "And suddenly Kopecky stood up and said:" "Radok, why those hags, what are you showing them for we've got all them factories and power plants and aircraft and you show us some Jewish expressionism..." "And when he finished they all stood up and left the building." "Later they sacked us all, one after another." "Semafor theatre was a viva aqua - the only source back then." "Wejust loved it." "I'll never forget those 50's and the ideological fury." "You couldn't even mention the word rock'n'roll back then." "Reduta was packed and Jiri Suchy started singing:" ", Rok"after, Rok" we wonder how we change every, rok"." "And there were two finks right behind me saying:" "Man, he sings in Czech." "The, rok" is Czech, man." "But what is he singing about?" "We wonder?" "We don't wonder, we know!" "NOTE:, rok"=, year"" "Suchy claims that he lent me a 16mm camera but no way," "I bought it, it was a dodgy, loud Zeiss with great optics so I went to Suchy and Slitr and said:" "Listen, I'll shoot a home video for you two so you can see how handsome you were when you're old." "And they agreed." "So I started to shoot these amateur films with this Zeiss and a Grundig magnetophone." "And with Mirek Ondricek we started shooting Audition." " Hi." "Are you here to audition?" " I'd like to." "But this is for girls only." "I might accompany her and possibly try it too." " Can we sing Mary Lou for you?" " Lf you don't mind." "Alright, give it a go." "I thought I was making an epic." "Being young, I was ambitious." "So it was to be a feature film." "However, it's a documentary." "But compared to the pointless, artificial socialist realism" "Audition was way above it." "Seeing a normal human face on screen talking and singing," "I found that fantastic." "Excuse me, can you tell me if I passed or not?" "See, we must listen to the tape we've recorded here, then we'll send you a letter." "See, I need to know today because I ran away from work and I thought I'd give them a notice and wouldn't go back." "Well, that's not our business." "I know, I'm not angry with you but could you play it now?" "Alright, I'll tell you then." "You've failed." "My 16mm hand camera didn't have a synchronous mode so it was hard to synchronize picture with the tape recording when shooting girls singing." "Our editor was a genius, he taught me a lot." "Mila Hajek." "He'd cut out one or two frames and add three black frames with no special technology, he'd scratch it with a razor and glue it together." "If you were to make additional changes, you'd lose two frames." "When you leave you must tell the truth." "Don't do it again." " So where were you?" " At a theatre audition." "Theatre?" "Weird." " Did you pass?" " Yes, I did." "Again, our generation's luck." "2 or 3 years later Khrushchev denounced Stalin and said an important thing:" "Comrades, young people need to be given more opportunities." "There was a creative group Sebor-Bor at Barrandov." "Very nice people." "Sebor was a tough but intelligent guy." "And Bor knew what was going on." "One day I brought them 2 reels of film, they watched it and said:" "We'll give you 60 thousand and you finish it." "Then came an approval meeting with new director Vesely and dramaturge Kunc." "After the screening they left the room in silence." "Kunc started:" "Comrades, this doesn't depict youngsters." "No way." "We don't want to show people something non-existent." "It's just some lampoon." "Ourjaws fell to the floor when director Vesely replied:" ", Oh come on, my son is 16 and he's just like them."" ", You're right, comrade, but some of them..." "It's just..."" "Suddenly it was approved and we got even cheekier." "Especially me and Papousek." "My friend Jara Papousek wrote a book Black Peter, it's a similar story but it takes place in 1945." "So I told him:" "Listen, this story would make a great film." "Because he could write beautiful dialogues." "We were encouraged by the approval of Audition, see." " Where've you been?" " At work." "Honestly, at work." " Where?" " In the shop, where else?" " Do you know the manager?" " Sure I do." "Why was he looking for you here then?" "He doesn't know you!" " He does but you know..." " Well?" "I thought I saw a man stealing so I followed him." "What a detective you are!" "Back then we all knew people were asked to be finks." "Kids ratted on their parents, parents on their colleagues no talks were safe even at home so hence the main character because it was legitimate." "In a shop there must be someone who supervises and looks for thieves." "We brought it to an approval meeting and there's Kunc again:" "Comrades, this can't be." "What is this?" "You are no artists!" "It's so irresponsible, here's a book about year 1945 and suddenly this is presence." "This can't be, honestly." "Vojtech Jasny who was present raised his hand and said:" "See, comrades, the truth is..." "And suddenly he turned it all upside down." "You gotta look at a picture from a distance, a distance." "I forgot my glasses, what do you think?" "Bloody hell, it's nice." "Just look at those eyes closed, she bloody well knows, sir." "Make a little cone of your hand so you can't see the bottles." "Look at that hand of hers." "Sir, that's perfectly normal, you hear, perfectly normal." "I think that my advantage was I'd never studied directing." "Nothing was impossible for me." "Let's do it this way." "We can't." "Why not?" "Do it like this." "I could afford to do anything thanks to my blessed ignorance." "Let's do something I believe in something I like, the truth." "It never even occured to me that I could make up something that would have another effect." "Just look at it." "Look at those eyes." "Pure beauty, aren't they?" "You go here, she's watching." "You go there, she's watching." "What a beauty." "Those people had never read the script, a big advantage because of the athenticity." "I would tell them:" "You sit here and you'll tell him this and he'll answer this and this." "I was actually quoting from the script I knew by heart but there was no way they could remember it all." "So they remembered just the basic plot line." "So after I yelled:" "Action!" "They had to start improvise what I'd told them." "Their own words brought in an enormous authenticity." "A girl's virtue does exist." "If you treat it like that no wonder boys treat you bad." "If you keep swapping them they tell each other." "Your whole life lies ahead of you, you want a happy life." "You want to marry a nice boy who'd love you forever." "But you've got to deserve it." "Once I walked over a bridge by The National Theatre at 2am and suddenly I see a girl with a suitcase, walking alone." "It caught my attention because it was late and she was alone." "Who is she?" "Is she going home from work or going to work?" "None of these seemed to fit." "Or is she about to find a man?" "No, that didn't seem right." "It was mysterious, her pace was not too slow and not too fast she wasn't looking around searching for an eye contact." "So I went and addressed her." "It took some time before she realized I didn't mean any harm and said she was from Varnsdorf which was an industrial town with factories employing women." "There was a real lack of men." "And there she met an engineer from Prague who told her he lived alone and she should come visit him in Prague, Here's my address"" "so she slept with him and now in Prague she found out that the address didn't exist." "This story asked for filming." "Hence The Loves of a Blonde." "Why did you say I'm square." " Did I say you're square?" " Yes, you did." " Well, because you're square." " Why is that?" "Some chicks are round like a guitar and so are you..." "But you're a guitar by Picassa." "This could be a sequel of the film." "There's a pretty girl who plays one of the 3 girls in the film." "And this girl fell in love with a gaffer." "They had a little romance and then she arrived to Prague but he was married with kids and she refused to return home feeling so humiliated." "So she stayed in Prague and became a prostitute." "Sometimes I would come talk to her to hotel Alcron and then she disappeared for about 2 or 3 months." "After about half a year I found her back again." "So I asked her:" ", Where've you been?"" ", I got busted."" "They wanted to set her up with foreigners and rat on them but she refused and got busted." "As I was looking at her I spotted these ugly scars." "I asked her about them and she said just like in the film" "I tried to commit a suicide." "It was awful." "I cut it open and to make sure I'd die I stuck my hand down the loo." "To have it inflamed." "Such tragedies." " What is this, a scar?" " That's nothing." "I have a scar too." "I fell down a tree as I was..." " That's not from a tree." " True?" "From a stone?" "No?" " Not even from a glass?" " From a razor blade." "You wanted to kill yourself?" "See, when you spend hours chatting with your friends all kinds of ideas come up." "He was a real foreman from the factory, that actor." "And he says:" "We've got to get some men in here." "They don't want to build us a factory for male workers." "There's no barrack here..." "Hey, you know what?" "Let's get ourselves an army." "That sounded like a great idea so we set it off." "But then we realized, hang on, it might be fun if they sent some reserved troops here." "That's how you write a script." "Originally I wanted only non-actors because I thought:" "Black Peter proves me right." "There are these long scenes with those 3 soldiers." "I tried Josef Skvorecky to play one of them, the second one was a dentist, the third one a shop assistant." "But their dialogues had to be more precise not so improvised" "so I invited Vladimir Mensik and it was fantastic." "The non-actors led Mensik so he lost his acting mode which is normally great but here he abandoned it." "And he brought in a rhythm." "Non-actors don't feel rhythm, things must have their pace and that's what Mensik could do and suddenly it worked." "Connecting ingenious Mensik with non-actors worked." "Even if I could stake on improvisation skills" "I've always required a precise screenplay." "Because 90% of improvisation are a pure boredom." "Even if those 10% are gold mine which is unexplicable." "So I must have a screenplay and replace the 90% of boredom by what's been written down." "Dad, I swear I never invited her, if I had I'd tell you." "For God's sake, who am I, an idiot?" "Alright, tell me what to do." "What?" "Should I show her out?" " Show her out." " I'll show her out then." "Gee, hi." " I didn't recognize you." "Hi." " Hi." "I couldn't see through the hair come here." "I didn't know it's you." " What did your dad say?" " Oh, nothing." " He did say something." " He's an idiot." " Now you know who she is." " He does." "This is a Czech cultural heritage." "Kafka, Hasek." "Everything you learnt at school or from literature." "Let's say this bed scene where all three lay in one bed." "Again I told them:" "Just play, just speak like you're used to, in your own words." "Go." "And so they did." "Why do you act like an ass?" "Mum, I'm not acting like an ass." "How was I to know she'd come?" " You invited her." " I don't think so." " She arrived with a suitcase." " Oh, stop it, will you?" "Well, it's true!" "Now we're all cramped here, the three of us." " I can go back and that's that." " Don't you dare!" "You wish I'll support you bedding with her." "I'll go sleep in the kitchen to get some peace." "Skvorecky's The Cowards is simply a legendary novel." "A true legend." "That would have been an honour and I discussed it with Josef and if the Russians hadn't come I probably would've filmed it." "We wrote a screenplay based on his Eine Kleine Jazz Music and showed it to Sebor and Bor." "They approved of everything but suddenly we were banned." "By Central committee." "Being young and cheeky I said:" "Let me deal with it." "So I went to the central committee of Communist Party and there was this young man called Vana so I told him:" "Why is this film banned?" "The story took place during occupation, boys playing jazz." "He said:" "I'm sure you heard Mr Novotny deplore The Cowards." "I said:" "Our story has nothing to do with The Cowards." "He looked at me and says:" "Who is to explain that to comrade Novotny?" "Nice, very nice." "But still, we should have given it to him earlier, last year, when he was 85 not now in the eleventh hour." "You're right." "But we couldn't have known he'd get a cancer this year." "Exactly, and now it looks as if we want to reward him before he dies." "And you want him to be happy about it." "Hang on, it's us who know he has a cancer, not him." "So he might be happy anyway." "How do you know he doesn't know?" "Did you ask him?" "And who should tell him?" "We won't tell him, doctor won't tell him, that's a law." "You can get a hell of a cancer and doctor won't tell you." "We came to a rehearsal and I had this fable," "I think it was a good one." "A soldier gets a weekend furlough and goes to Prague." "He is broke, wearing a uniform and comes to a ball in Lucerna." "People eating by all those tables and dancing down there so the soldier's walking around and he spots a couple who leaves their table to dance while a waiter brings their dinner so he sits down and starving he eats it all." "Now he's to leave the place - everyone tolerates a soldier but he doesn't feel like wandering alone around streets" "and he finds an underground labyrinth with boiler-rooms and he moves in there." "In the evenings he walks up to the ballroom for some food and goes back down to warm himself up." "We all liked this story but we needed a quiet place" "where we'd write the script." "So we decided to leave for a small hotel in Vrchlabi." "But it didn't work and we struggled a lot." "Things were getting desperate when we heard about a firemen's ball so we decided to go." "And since the next day we spoke about nothing but the ball." "That's how we got to make a film The Firemen's Ball." "Good evening," "I'm sorry I went home to fetch my bikini." " Fetch what?" " My bikini." "You have it with you?" " Hang on, what are you doing?" " Let her do." "We can't have a girl stripping here." "Wait!" "Hold the door so that no-one sneaks in here." "Mirek's eyesight is a God's gift." "He can see beautifully." "And also the colour, this film was our first colour film." "See, workers usually wear blue shirts." "It was blue and cold." "So Mirek eliminated all blue." "People had to find some white, pink, grey shirts and so on." "There was also this audition room and he had it painted black because it made the faces stand out, it felt so true and human," "nothing was disturbing you." "Mirek is just awesome." "Girls!" "Did nobody tell you to bring bikini with you?" "Why didn't you tell the others to bring bikini with them?" "Nobody told us anything." "Miss, step back a little, ok?" "More, more..." "Stop!" "Enough." "Try to strike a pose." "I never have a storyboard ready because you make things up you imagine a tree here and a car there and so on." "And then you want to shoot and the tree is elsewhere, should you cut it down?" "Replant it?" "No way." "I don't adapt reality to my image," "I adapt camera to reality." "Madam, move away a little!" "I'm blocking his view so that he can't see his house burning." "And you'd let him watch." "At least turn him around!" "This is stupid." "Turn around, grampa." "Sit down, grampa, sit down." "Slowly!" " He's watching anyway." " Why, his house's on fire." "Aren't you cold, grampa?" "Let's move him closer to the fire, shall we?" "There was an approval screening and Novotny arrived and it was really interesting, man, it was all about one sentence." "In one scene a wife of one of them steals a headcheese and he's caught giving it back." "He faints, they carry him away and one fireman tells him:" "Why did you give it back, you idiot?" "And another guy says:" "Shut up, just shut up." "If you had been in his shoes you'd have done the same thing ...because you're honest." "And this fireman answered:" "Never, in such a situation never, remember this, a repute of our squad is dearer to me than my honesty." "This sentence made them angry." "It just got their backs up." "It was banned it right on spot." "But then Novotny resigned and the film was released sometime in July." "And then the Russians arrived and the film was banned once and forever." "Chief, sorry for being late." "But you know what it's like when there's fire." "But it is even more heartfelt now, isn't it, boys?" "I am handing you a gift which you deserve." "Here, take it." "Friends, I'd like to thank our respectable fire department which I presided for long years." "Thank you for your help with all kinds of challenges and various tasks." "You are the reason why I can accept this important award why I've been given this precious gift." "Somehow we suspected it but didn't want to admit that it's a metaphor of the whole society." "Also, the film differs from the screenplay." "I knew we'd shoot things we can't write down." "Being Mr Smarty Pants" "I arranged a coproduction with Carlo Ponti and I thought if we get into a trouble here," "Ponti'll save us because he'd paid 50 or 80 thousand dollars." "They invited him to a screening and after the film Ponti didn't even look at me and left." "The next day they called me saying Ponti wanted his money back." "Strangely enough his reasons were the same as theirs," "that it ridicules an ordinary man and people won't like it." "I got an official letter from director Harnach saying they rendered the case to a court and that I'd be sued for a sabotage of socialist economy and it was in 1967 or 1968 so things weren't so restricted" "and I went to London where I met Ponti and told him:" "If you want us to give you back the 80 thousand dollars you're actually sentencing me to 10 years in prison." "He said:" "No, of course not." "So I call Filmexport all happy that I sorted the money out, after a long silence they said:" "We've just talked to him and he insists on the money." "And it shut me up." "But then - another coincidence because I met this French guy, Jean-Pierre Rassin, a friend of Truffaut and Berry, and they bought me off Ponti." "Back then in August I legally travelled to the West." "Filmexport signed a deal with Universal, a US company and I made a film for them but it was a box office flop" "and my self-conceit prevented me from going back home so I wrote a letter to the Home Office asking them to extend my exit permit." "They answered:" "Sure but you must fetch it in Prague." "And I knew that coming to Prague would be the end." "It was irony of that time." "The communists admired those who succeeded in the West." "But if you'd failed, you were nothing but a piece of shit." "You're never absolutely free, there's always some pressure." "Here it was an ideological pressure, nothing commercial." "If the potentates liked your film you could have spent as much money as you wanted no matter if it was a box office hit or not." "In the USA it's the other way round." "There's no ideological pressure so I've never been pushed into changing a single line." "But the commercial pressure created by investors makes you shoot films which at least pay back the costs." "To be honest I prefer the commercial pressure." "Because in ideology you're exposed to a stupid bootlicker" "while there I'm exposed to a viewer." "This suits me better." "I prefer being exposed to a viewer than to an idiot." "After Taking Off (1971)" "Forman's stay in the USA changed into an immigration." "5 Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)" "And 8 Oscars for Amadeus (1984) Made him a respectable film-maker." "In 2007 he came back home as a theatre director."