Reykjavík Grapevine - 23.05.2014, Page 26
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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 2011
How did you transition from mak-
ing commercials to feature films?
I was always making short films, showing
them in the local theatre and on a local
television station. My commercial career
got started when I got a chance to direct a
commercial for Norðurmjólk in 2004. Then
I moved to Denmark with my wife and two
kids, intending to go to the film school
there. I didn’t get in though, so I applied
for jobs here in Iceland and got a job offer
from a production house. We moved back
home, but the company folded almost im-
mediately, as this was in 2008. I was pretty
much ready to throw in the towel and ac-
cept that this wasn’t going to happen.
I had applied to the Icelandic Film Cen-
tre with an idea for a short film, and had
gotten turned down three times. They rec-
ommended that I revise the whole thing,
as it was simply too expensive of an idea.
So I went home and wrote something new
in a fit of rage, in two hours, and sent it
in. And finally I got a green light [this was
for his short film ‘Hotel Earth’]. I made
that film with Ingvar Þórðarson and Júlíus
Kemp [Baldvin’s producing partners at
Kisi Productions]—who’ve stood by me
since I first sent them an e-mail about the
idea back in 2005. We finally made the film
together in 2008, and it did very well in
festivals. Soon after the possibility of mak-
ing ‘Jitters’ came up, and everything since
then has just been an incredible amount of
luck, it feels like.
The film’s Icelandic title is ‘Vonar-
stræti.’ Why did you decide to re-
purpose the title of a Maus song,
‘Life In A Fishbowl,’ for the English
title of the movie?
The film’s Icelandic title, ‘Vonarstræti’
[“Hope Street”], reflects both the film’s
location and its theme. When we were
thinking about English versions of the title,
they all seemed sort of hopeless. Móri
[Þorsteinn Bachmann], the drunken writ-
er in the film has written two books. And
so I took two songs
by Biggi [who sings
and plays guitar in the
band Maus] and used
them as titles for these
books. The first one
is called “Lof mér að
falla” [the titular track
from Maus’s 1997 al-
bum ‘Lof mér að falla
að þínu eyra’] and the
second one is called
“Lífið í fiskabúrinu”
[Icelandic for “Life In
A Fishbowl” from their
2003 album ‘Musick’].
In reality though,
“Life In A Fishbowl”
is very much a theme
in the movie as well. We live in this sort
of fish tank, swimming round and round,
meeting the same people over and over
again. So we decided to use it as a title.
Biggi wasn’t very enthused about it to be-
gin with, but I got my way. [He laughs.]
Hammering It Out
Where did these three stories
come from?
The story of Eik [Hera Hilmarsdóttir] is
based on two people, one of them very
close to me and the other one I sort of
know from afar. I thought it would be inter-
esting to tackle the subject of prostitution
because it’s not really discussed openly
here in Iceland. When Hera first read the
script she called me up and said, ‘This
doesn’t happen here, Baldvin.’ But then
she did some research and uncovered a
report called “Prostitution in Iceland and
its social impact [commissioned by Min-
istry of Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs
in 2001]. We looked it over together and
agreed that, yes, prostitution is actually
very much a reality.
I got the idea for the washed up writer
from a woman I had known all my life. We
were having coffee and she asked me if I
wanted to have a cigarette with her. I was
kind of taken aback, ‘you smoke? I had
no idea you smoked.’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but
only on the bad days.’
That day, twenty-five
years after losing her
child, she felt just as
bad as she had the day
she lost her child. I felt
drawn to that, having
just had my first child.
Then in 2008, on
March 18 to be pre-
cise, I looked at the
paper and it just so
happened that I was
one of the ‘Birthdays
of the Day.’ And on
the same list was Jón
Sigurðsson, director of
[financial company] FL
Group. And I thought
to myself: ‘We are both the same age,
to the day, and I don’t know him at all.’ I
just looked at this dude and thought to
myself: ‘Wow, interesting that this young
whippersnapper has found himself in that
position.’ I wanted to find out how he’d
gotten to that place with an astronomical
income in such short period of time. He
was one of ‘those guys’– and at the time
it was insanely cool to be one of ‘those
guys.’ Later that year everything crashed
and he became vilified like so many oth-
ers. But I always liked this idea that these
were essentially ‘good kids.’
How did you and Birgir collabo-
rate?
I had been carrying all these ideas around
for a while and had the worst case of writ-
ers block. So I gave him what I had and
asked him to write a two-page synopsis to
see if he had a way of mixing all the stories
together. And he managed to open all the
doors somehow.
We sat down for three hours every
morning for about three months, ham-
mering out the first draft. He’d sit at the
computer while I stood beside him, act-
ing out characters. We didn’t really know
each other when we started. I knew him
through his wife, who’s a childhood friend
of mine. Today we’re the best of friends,
and we’ve started working on another
script.
Did you look to any particular film
for inspiration?
I am a big fan of films with more than one
storyline. Alejandro González Inárritu is
one of my favorite directors. His films ‘Ba-
bel’ and ‘21 Grams’ are both spectacular.
I really dug Paul Thomas Anderson’s film
‘Magnolia.’ And ‘Crash’ (directed by Paul
Haggis in 2006) was an especially well-
crafted film.
Amateur At Heart
Is there a core philosophy that you
work from?
No (laughs). Doesn’t that answer suck?
Look, after I made ‘Jitters’ [2010] I got all
these scripts sent to me. I’d give notes and
take meetings, but after going through
four or five scripts I realised that if I’m gon-
na keep making movies, I have to make
them on my own terms. I have to do what
I WANT to do. If I start doing this just to
make a living, jumping on some get-rich
bandwagon—I’m not gonna enjoy doing
the work. I have to do what I’m doing on
my own terms. Which I guess is what will
eventually end up ruining my career. [He
laughs.]
Did you learn anything new mak-
ing ‘Life In A Fishbowl’?
So much. I feel like an absolute amateur
as a filmmaker. I go 100% off of feeling
and human interaction. I never went to
any school for this. I don’t know if I like the
idea of being a professional. Of course,
you want to be, you know, accountable
and well prepared. But there’s something
about being an amateur that enchants me.
THE NUMBER 1 MUSIC STORE
IN EUROPE ACCORDING TO
LONELY PLANET
SKÓLAVÖRÐUSTÍG 15, 101 REYKJAVÍK AND HARPA CONCERT HALL
Vonarstræti premiered in theaters on May 16.
‘Life In A Fishbowl’ tells three distinct stories of people liv-
ing in pre-crisis Iceland. It stars Hera Hilmarsdóttir as Eik,
a down on her luck kindergarten teacher who struggles
to support her daughter; Þorsteinn Bachmann as Móri,
a troubled writer; and Þorvaldur Davíð as Sölvi, an ex-
footballer on the fast-track working for a bank doing some
shady business.
Director Baldvin Z teamed up with writer/musician Birgir
Örn (of the band Maus) to write the screenplay for ‘Vonar-
stræti’ (“Life In A Fishbowl”). It’s a follow up to his debut
feature ‘Jitters’ (2010). Even though Baldvin has directed
commercials, two feature films and produced three seasons
of the television show “Hæ Gosi”—which was shot on loca-
tion in his hometown of Akureyri—he’s still very adamant
about keeping the amateur filmmaker within him alive.
Words
Óskar Bragi Stefánsson
Real ‘Life In A fishbowl’
A triptych of Icelandic lives
in disarray
26 Th Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 06 — 2014FILM
“Of course you want to
be, you know, account-
able and well prepared.
But there’s something
about being an amateur
that enchants me.”
INTER
VIEW
INFO
"Life in a Fishbowl" is Director
Baldvin Z's second feature-length
film following 2010's "Jitters,"
about a teen boy exploring his
sexuality.