http://totalscifionline.com/interviews/ ... e-vampires
TA Interview w/ Click Liverpool.com::09 April 2009
Tomas Alfredson: New Wave Vampires
Considering that the past year gave us the subdued shocks of Twilight it is a relief to report that at least one vampire shocker has stepped up to deliver some serious splatter and top notch tension. That movie is Let the Right One In, directed by Swedish arthouse veteran Tomas Alfredson. The feature tells of a bullied 12-year-old boy who begins to find solace in the shape of a 200-year-old vampire girl – although this relationship is far from frothy and leaves a few torn-up torsos in its wake. Calum Waddell caught up with Alfredson for the following exclusive Q and A.
The world is hardly short of vampire movies. What made you believe you could bring something new to the pot?
Tomas Alfredson: It is probably because I have never been a huge fan of the horror genre so I am not sure what has been done before and what has not! I am actually quite ignorant about it and I have not seen many vampire films – maybe the Hammer Dracula and that’s about it.
I got sent the book that inspired Let the Right One In, which was written by a Swedish author called John Ajvide Lindqvist. When I read it I thought it was a great mixture of social realism and fantasy. It was a very believable story and it focused on bullying as well - which I had sadly experienced when I was just a young boy. That part of the plot appealed to me the most.
You just mentioned that you had not seen many horror movies before making Let the Right One In. Weren’t you tempted to sit down and see some of the classics for inspiration?
Tomas Alfredson: No, I did the exact opposite actually because I did not want to know what other people have done. You see, I think that too many filmmakers watch movies by other directors to try and inspire themselves but, to me, this is totally pointless. I would rather get my influence from art or music. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy horror movies when I see them on the television but I am totally uneducated towards the genre and I never seek them out.
Let the Right One In is not short of stomach churning moments – and it is made all the more effective because it involves children. Considering this, were you always conscious of how much blood you could spill without alienating or sickening the audience?
Tomas Alfredson: Well, first of all, I think that if you shove too much graphic violence in people’s faces it loses its power. It is like striptease – she should not pull off her skirt right away (laughs). You have to balance and pace it and I think the most horrific and scary images are those that are in your own imagination. I think that if you show a lot of gore it is a little cheap – that is an easy shock tactic. I would rather be a craftsman and scare people for real. Yes, there is violence in this movie but we were careful not to show you everything… We want to get your mind working.
However, this is a story about love, sex and violence so we did have to push the envelope a little bit. I actually kept whole parts of the script from the children so that they would also be surprised about some of the plot twists!
Do you have a favourite sequence in Let the Right One In?
Tomas Alfredson: I am very fond of the scene where the two children lie together in bed. It is very tender and intimate and I paid special attention to the dialogue. I think it is a sensitive and sensual sequence but without being sexual.
Can you tell me what the critical reception to your film was like in Sweden?
Tomas Alfredson: It has been fantastic. Not one critic has dared to give it five stars though – I guess you cannot be a prophet in your own country! However, abroad it has been extremely well received – even better than in Sweden.
Would you like to do a sequel to Let the Right One In?
Tomas Alfredson: I hope not! I think this movie has a beautiful ending and I think it would be greedy of me to do a sequel.
That is quite cynical…
Tomas Alfredson: Well the movie business does that to you (laughs). I try to be very honest with the films that I make. I am only interested in experiencing new stories. If that makes me cynical then so be it!
We hear the movie is going to be remade in English by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves. How do you feel about this?
Tomas Alfredson: Initially they approached me to do the remake but I decided not to participate in it. I am too old to make the same film twice and I have other stories that I want to tell. I think that it is a little sad. I wish that American viewers would just see the foreign language version! When I first got asked about the remake I said “Can you not just get everyone to see this one? It is a perfectly good film you know!”
Tomas Alfredson: It is strange because, for a Swedish film, the US release for Let the Right One In was huge and everyone who saw it seemed to like it – the critics and the viewers. I guess if they make a great film with the remake then the audience has a new interpretation on the same material and if it is bad I do not think it hurts my version.
That said, do you see yourself returning to do another fright-flick?
Tomas Alfredson: Yes, why not? This has been a very interesting experience for me. It has allowed me to look at my own fears and why they exist. It has given me a chance to expose the animalistic side of humanity and I think it is a fantastic world to explore. I would love to go back and splash around some more blood…
http://www.clickliverpool.com/culture/c ... rview.html
FirstShowing.Net:Swedish horror Let The Right One In...Director interview
by Nick Webster. Published Thu 02 Apr 2009 11:18, Last updated: 2009-04-02
Beautifully-crafted Swedish horror import Let The Right One In is set to wow audiences with its unique blend of genre chills with genuine feeling. Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a 12-year-old outcast who is frequently picked on by his classmates. He dreams of getting his revenge, but he never stands up to the boys. With the arrival of his new next-door neighbour, 12-year-old Eli (Lina Leandersson), Oskar may finally have found a friend, ally, and first love. But Eli is no ordinary girl: she must keep her pale skin out of the sunlight, she can perform inhuman physical feats, and she has thirst for blood. The bodies begin to pile up, but Oskar can't stay away from the girl who has finally given him courage. We put director, Thomas Alfredson on our couch.
Click: Are you a horror buff?
TA: No. This is the first time I've made a film in this kind of genre, and to be honest I've never been so interested in things that are very fantastic or very unreal. But this book had an interesting mixture between the social-realistic style and the vampire stuff.
Click: How did you come across the book?
TA: It was a friend who gave it to me, and usually I hate it when people give me books or tell me to see films. So, yeah, this one was lying about for quite a few weeks on the table, but then I read it in 48 hours. John Ajvide Lidqvist was in his late 30s when he wrote it, which is quite unusual, and he had been earning a living as a magician – literally, a street magician and a stand-up comic up until then. Which was a pretty strange career.
Click: What attracted you to the book, if you're not a genre fan?
TA: I had some rough times when I was a kid, when I was Oskar's age, so I had some strong feelings when I read it. It's also very interesting when you're at that age – if you are bullied you really don't know where to go with all your feelings, because a lot of anger grows inside of you, and this anger cannot come out, because you are too weak, or too shy. So I suppose, if you like, this vampire girl that Oskar meets could be the embodiment of his anger. And that was my way into the story.
Click: What kind of discussions did you have with John?
TA: He wanted to do the screenplay himself, and the book is something like 460 pages. So to turn that that into 110 minutes of film is quite bloody. But it turned out to be a very good decision. He's a very good screenwriter. I don't know why, because this was his first book and this was his first screenplay. The dialogue in this story is very quiet and it's also very poetic – it doesn't push a lot of information in your face. The film really works even if you don't listen to the dialogue, if you don't want to. John's a very visual writer, and a quiet writer, in that way, which makes him one in a hundred, because everything today is spoken.
Click: The title comes from a Morrissey song. Are you a fan?
TA: I'm a Morrissey fan as much as anyone else, but the writer is a big fan.
Click: Is the setting the same as the one in the book?
TA: Yes. This is a very special environment. After the last war, because Sweden was not in the war, we were the richest country in the world, so the Social-Democratic government really wanted to experiment with society. One thing they did was to build a lot of suburbs around Stockholm, which are very distinctive in style and architecture. First they started building a subway system, all around Stockholm, and after they built that they built the suburbs around it, so it was very Swedish/German planning. The intentions were good, but when people moved in it became something else. So in the beginning, in 1958/59, this housing project Blackeberg, where the book is set and where we shot, was ready, it was a very cute place, but in the late 70s, early 80s, when the film takes place, it was a nightmare. But it was very beneficial for a filmmaker, because everything looks the same. It has the same colour palette. And you have a town in miniature, with this square in the middle and the houses all around it. You get a miniature landscape there.
Click: So it was a negative area?
TA: In those days, yes, over 20 years ago, there was a lot of drugs and social problems there. When I was young it was considered a dangerous place. The best way to see the difference between Sweden then and Sweden now is to look at old pictures of that town square. There used to be a pharmacy, a liquor store, the social security office, a library and a Co-op. Today, there's a solarium, a tattooist and a video porn shop! Which paints a very revealing picture of what has happened to Sweden in those 20 years. Because, really, we were living halfway behind the Iron Curtain then.
http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/10/24/ ... alfredson/
Interview: Let the Right One In Director Tomas Alfredson by Alex Billington
October 24, 2008
There's an incredible little indie horror movie that hits theaters this weekend - Let the Right One In. I've talked about it plenty of times before and featured a few trailers but now I've got a special treat to share with all of you. A few weeks back I had the honor of meeting Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, who directed this amazing movie. It was a very interesting experience and very revealing interview and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with someone who is outside of the North American filmmaking realm. And if you've already seen or are even remotely interested in Let the Right One In, then you need to read this.
Let the Right One In is essentially a vampire film but is so much more about love and humanity than horror. It is actually based on a book written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also adapted the screenplay for Alfredson to direct. I'm sure almost everyone has seen every great review that has popped up for this film, but if anyone needs a refresher you can read my own review or head over to Rotten Tomatoes (where this currently has an impressive 95% rating). Don't forget to actually see Let the Right One In in theaters as soon as hits your area. A full list of cities and theaters can be found right here.
How did you first come across this story and what interested you in it specifically?
Tomas Alfredson: It was the love story that is so unsentimental, this story about the bullied boy. I guess I had some periods when I grew up, when I was bullied, and I think that was the thing that struck me the hardest or hit me the hardest. I read the book three years ago, a friend of mine gave it to me, which I usually hate when people stick books into your hands. That's kind of private — to choose your own reading or viewing or music. But this one was an exception. And the vampire part of it was, well, it came with the other things. I'm not a horror director at all, so I've been mostly been doing drama and comedy before, so this is my first horrifying project.
Did you help with the script at all? Or did the writer just give you a finished script? How did that work?
Alfredson: Well, it was a process. It was the same author that wrote the book and made the screenplay, so that was a kind of dialogue because — have you read the book?
No, I haven't.
Alfredson: It's 360 pages so it has a lot of other subplots and other themes that are left out, so we did this decision to concentrate on the love story. So the book is richer and has more to it, as books often have. When you are going to do an adaptation you have to choose one track or one line.
And how is the filmmaking industry in Sweden, how does it differ from here in America? What is the atmosphere like on set when you're shooting there?
Alfredson: Well, the Swedish film industry is having a tough time now because of the illegal downloading business. We are the most computerized country in the world so everybody has broadband and the fastest computer so everybody is stealing your work nowadays, so that's quite a new and tough situation for filmmakers to deal with because suddenly the business has stopped. And Swedish filmmaking has very old traditions. We started very early making films and have the legacy of the old silent movie makers, Bergman and everything, you know, but now it's a little mixed up. And we don't have so big — in comparison with other international budgets, we have small budgets to work with. But this one was sort of a big budget in Sweden, but yet it was tight because it contains a lot of special effects.
And where did you shoot?
Alfredson: It's set in a suburb outside Stockholm, and it's very, very typical late 1950s suburb. The suburbs of Stockholm were built because Sweden wasn't involved in the second World War, so we were very wealthy in the 1950s and the 1960s, so there were a lot of very special suburbs built around Stockholm with a special look. But we did need to have the cold and the snow, and Stockholm isn't so cold as people might think it could be, but every five or every six years, there is a proper winter. But we had to have to have the cold and snow so we shot it partially in the very north of Sweden, in a town called Luleå — all the exteriors, or nearly all the exteriors.
Obviously the location plays a very important part in this and I was impressed by how vivid it all was. One question I had regarding the actual story is if you felt the film is at all a metaphor for the idea that we need someone else to survive, in relation to the Rubik's Cube and how Oskar couldn't solve it until he gave it to Eli; or how she relied on her father to live and so on.
Alfredson: I think Eli and Oskar are the same character — they are two sides of the same character, so she is the mirror of him, all the things that he needs to be or wants to be. And the film also suggests that she is a fantasy in the end, when she leaves. I don't know if that's your interpretation, but it suggests maybe she wasn't there at all. When he walks around her empty apartment, maybe she was just a fantasy.
But then she comes back in the end, but I think that if you are bullied, the most common — if you see other films about bullied children, they are very sad and they are very Jesus-like. But in this story what is different is that all the violence he is confronted with, it becomes violence inside of him. And I would think that Eli is, she is all that violence that is inside of him that needs to come out. He can't fight back because he's too weak or he's too scared so she becomes that, all the violence inside of him, I think.
That's a very interesting explanation. And both of those actors were phenomenal — how did you find them, was it just a casting process in Sweden?
Alfredson: Yes, it was a long casting process, over a year it took. And we went all over Sweden to find those two. And, as I told you, I thought that they were the same character, so thinking about them as two sides of the same coin, so that was not just finding one boy and one girl, it was to find the perfect match. So, yeah, it was a long process.
I understand you have two kids, right?
Alfredson: Yes.
Has that experience at all brought anything to this film or the filmmaking process?
Alfredson: I don't think so, but I have been working a lot with children's actors through the years so I'm quite experienced with that. But really, I am, myself, I grew up with my father is a film director, and I was a lot on his sets and he was always talking about his work and his work was a very big thing in our home and my aim is not to be bringing my work into my home and to my children and they hate to come to the sets and they get bored in two minutes. So I don't think they have influenced me at all or been participating at all in this process.
Were there any vampire films that you were referencing or influenced by–
Alfredson: No.
So you went in completely blank?
Alfredson: Yeah.
And if I must say, I think that's actually what made this so unique.
Alfredson: Yeah, maybe, yeah.
Because a lot of people, in addition to myself, think that this is a very fresh take on the vampire genre and I guess that could only happen when you haven't had those past films in your history to reference.
Alfredson: Yeah. But that's a silly thing, really, because, you get this job to do, this comedy about dogs and then you watch every dog comedy in the world, and that's a silly thing to do. You should do the opposite; you should do something else to inspire yourself. So everybody is doing that nowadays to watch other things that are similar instead of clinging to– I listen to a lot of music when I work and I find a certain music piece that I listen to repeatedly to influence me.
And speaking of the music in this film, was the composer [Johan Söderqvist] someone you have worked with previously on your films?
Alfredson: No. He was new to me. He's one of the most experienced composers in Sweden, and he's very good, and he had made some work in the United States too with — do you know Susanne Bier, the Danish filmmaker?
I think so, yeah.
Alfredson: They have been working a lot together and I really wanted something very beautiful. Very, very analogue, too.
I loved the music. I mean, I loved every last aspect of the film… And speaking of influences again, this is just a question I love asking, but what are your five favorite films?
Alfredson: No, I really cannot tell, because they differ from day to day.
I know, I feel the same way.
Alfredson: Yeah? They change, they change, and it's all so very, it's not so very hard with films but with music, I never tell what music I listen to because it's too– it's very private. It's a very private thing to tell other people what you like the most and it would maybe give people the wrong ideas about yourself.
Then in that case — I was also going to ask what you really love about filmmaking, what's your favorite part, if you have one?
Alfredson: There's a lot of things that I like about making films, but, when you have an image inside your head when you read the script the first time, you see this view of four trees, they have snow on them, there's a pink car in the background, the light comes from there, an old man is standing in the foreground, you hear the sound of a dog barking, blah-blah-blah… And two years later, maybe, you could see that image on a screen. It happens once every 100 images, this happens because all the other 99, they will be modified in some way, but this one, when it comes back, that's really the essence of the work, to materialize fantasies. It's fantastic, really.
I also wanted to ask what your take on the American remake is and what your feelings about that are?
Alfredson: I'm not so– I'm not involved in that process at all and, well, the book is very rich and has a lot of angles that I haven't used, so hopefully they will find another angle which is also interesting and relevant. It would be very sad if it came out to be very, what do you say, commercialized or too viewer friendly or too broad, but I don't know what to think.
I guess you probably don't know the answer to this, but are they going all the way back to the book–
Alfredson: Yes.
–and going from there? I was worried that they were going to try maybe a shot-for-shot remake of your film.
Alfredson: I think they are taking it from the book from the beginning.
So they're rewriting the screenplay from scratch again?
Alfredson: Yeah.
How has your festival experience been so far? What do you take away from the independent nature of Hollywood and how that all works?
Alfredson: Well, it has been the film that has traveled the most in Sweden ever. So it has been around all over the world and that's also a thing that is very intriguing with making pictures, that you could do a film in our little community up in the north, far away, and it looks the same in Singapore as it does in New York or in Australia; that's very nice to think of. And what was your question there?
Just how your experience has been with all these festivals.
Alfredson: It's a strange thing going to festivals because people don't — colleagues don't see their films, each others' films, and people have small badges with their names, and they just say, "yeah, I haven't seen your film," they say, "is it on Tuesday?" "Yeah, on Tuesday." "On Tuesday I'm occupied," so, yeah, good luck. And they're eating those small sandwiches and drinking sweet champagne or not champagne, so it's a strange world, but yet it's very nice. And people working their asses off for showing films they wouldn't have seen otherwise, so I really respect those people who work with all these festivals and it has been so nicely treated, this film, so it's fantastic.
Thank you to Tomas Alfredson and everyone at Magnet Releasing for arranging this interview! It's a very rare treat to speak with someone like Mr. Alfredson and after seeing Let the Right One In, I am so glad that I had the opportunity to do so. The film hits theaters this weekend and will spread to multiple theaters over the next month - so please go see it!