Mark Romanek helped elevate music videos to the status of art, yet ’Never Let Me Go’ will only be the director’s third movie in 25 years. So, what’s with the decades between projects?
MARK ROMANEK doesn’t look much like Mr Cool. Slightly rounded, possessor of a big bushy beard, he appears to be cultivating the look of a moose herder or a tosser of cabers. But make no mistake, the 51-year-old American director is among a small bunch of professionals who defined the way contemporary moving pictures operate.
True, he has made only three features. Way back in 1985, he directed Static, a very entertaining, very cheap film about an eccentric working in a crucifix factory. It took him another 17 years to follow that up – an underground hit in Europe, barely released in the US – with the superbly creepy Robin Williams thriller One-Hour Photo. Another nine years elapsed before his next film emerged. Featuring Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, Andrea Riseborough and Domhnall Gleeson as young people raised as organ donors, Never Let Me Go, an impressively gloomy adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's dystopian novel, finally mopes onto screens this week.
“I wish I could say I am so selective,” he says in a quiet, studied voice.
"It's just that I tried to make a bunch of films and they never quite came off. I was working on The Wolfmanfor ages and then I had to bow out on that. I was also involved with a film of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces." Ah yes. The misery memoir that – to the disgust of Ms O Winfrey – turned out to have been largely made up.
"Yes. It's a great book. But really it's a novel. When he got outed, that all fell apart. So here I am." So in what sense is Mr Romanek a key innovator? Well, in the years between Staticand One-Hour Photo, he became one of the most admired music video directors of the age. That absurdly expensive, wildly spooky video for Michael Jackson's Scream was one of his. He also directed the overpoweringly sombre promo for Johnny Cash's Hurt. Romanek wasn't quite there at the birth of the form, but he helped elevate it the status of art. Given that he was born when Eisenhower was US president, he must have been surprised how his career shaped up.
“Yes, of course,” he says. “When I was a kid, my idols were Fellini, Kubrick, John Cassavetes and Hal Ashby. My dad built me a darkroom and I started making these little films on Super-8. This was years before MTV was invented, so I could never have imagined the path my life would take.”
Mark Romanek was raised in Chicago. Fired by a passion for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, he went on to take a hatful of film and photography degrees at prestigious colleges. Eventually, in the mid 1980s, he knocked together the money for Static. Some years back, when we met to discuss One-Hour Photo, he expressed mild surprise that so many British and Irish journalists had heard of the thing.
“Did I? Well, it was a funny thing. It seemed to register in Britain and in Spain. It did well in a few other places. But it just didn’t register in the United States.” At any rate, Mr Romanek fell on his feet. MTV constituted a kind of virtual boomtown for young film-makers in the 1980s. By the end of that decade, Romanek had become a pillar of the industry. When the directors who came up via the video route – colleagues such as David Fincher, Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze – eventually made it into movies, some critics were a bit snooty. One was reminded of the mild disdain directed at the previous generation that had emerged from commercials. To this day, we still mention Ridley Scott’s Hovis ad and Alan Parker’s beefburger promos.
"Look. There's going to be as many visual styles as there are people expressing themselves. A Spike Jonze film and a Spike Jonze video are very different things. What does Fincher's The Social Networkhave to do with the video for Madonna's Express Yourselfapart from the fact they are by the same guy." Critics do sometimes detect an excessive degree of control in films made by former video directors. The art design in Fincher's films can be overpoweringly conspicuous. That level of rigid image management – perfect lighting, homogenous costume work – is certainly apparent in One-Hour Photoand Never Let Me Go.
“I don’t know,” Romanek says suspiciously. “It’s different kinds of control. I think that a John Cassavetes film is every bit as ‘controlled’ as a Stanley Kubrick film. It is still a visual medium. I like films that are pictorial. Of course I do. I don’t deny that.”
One would guess that moving in the world of music videos teaches you how to massage troublesome egos. In Never Let Me Go, Romanek does get to work with a host of very hot upcoming actors. But the likes of Knightley and Mulligan must, I would guess, be pussycats when set beside the supernovae that are Michael Jackson, Madonna, Keith Richards, Jay-Z and Lenny Kravitz – all former Romanek clients.
“Ha ha! Yes. It does teach you about dealing with egos – your own included. Those pieces are different to features, because they are vanity pieces. Now, I don’t mean that in pejorative sense. But it does involve marshalling resources and ego is part of that.” How was the Knightley ego by comparison? “She’s horrible. I’ll never work with her again,” he laughs. “No. I know it sounds like I’m crawling, but she honestly could not be more down to earth. The surprise is that she’s a nice, ordinary woman.”
Never Let Me Godoes not sound like an obvious choice for somebody with Romanek's background. True, the book is, in some senses, a work of science fiction. But, far from taking place in the gleaming world of that scary Scream video, it plays out in an England of the quasi-past. Brown cardigans. Cracked wooden school desks. Towering estates with broken windows. The unfortunate heroes, ever fearful that a kidney or lung will soon be plucked from their unhappy sides, occupy a distorted version of the post-war years.
Was that what Ishiguro expected?
“The most gratifying part of the job was his reaction,” he says. “After the screening, he turned to me with tears in his eyes and said: ‘I just have to run.’ But later he said that he couldn’t be more positive about it. He was happy that it was very much its own thing. There was nothing slavish about it. He saw it had a life of its own.”
Now resident in London, Romanek has recently embarked on belated fatherhood and sees “being a good dad” as his most overpowering ambition. He does admit, however, that the leisurely pace of his career as feature director has been something of a disappointment.
“I’ll see you again,” he says with a wave as I lurch out to the London streets. “Let’s hope it doesn’t take another nine years though.” I hope so too. He seems like a nice fellow. Don’t get distracted Mark. There are films to be made.
Romanek's vision
Closerby Nine Inch Nails (1994): Okay, both the song and video are a bit juvenile in their desperate efforts to shock. Look, a monkey on a crucifix. Yonder, that nude lady is brandishing an animal skull. But, as such things go, it's very well done.
Screamby Michael Jackson (1995): The song's not very good, but the video is absolutely extraordinary. Featuring a scarier-than-usual Jackson messing about in space with his equally pale sister, the promo, costing some $7 million, is allegedly the most expensive ever.
Little Trouble Girlby Sonic Youth (1995): A terrific mid-period song from America's greatest experimental rock group gets a suitably spooky treatment. Kim Gordon and Kim Deal warble while a young alien - with really big hands - investigates strange architecture.
Hurtby Johnny Cash (2002): A premature obituary to the great singer and songwriter, Romanek's video weaves images from Cash's past with shots of the older, creased incarnation. Moving, even with the sound turned down.
99 Problemsby Jay Z (2004): Former pharmaceutical professional Mr Z, shot in elegant black and white, wanders about a particularly disadvantaged part of the 'hood. He must be lost. Somebody phone his driver. Quick!
Never Let Me Gois on general release from Friday.
