Interviews
Monday, 25 January 2010 Written by John Berra
Shadow Play: An Interview with Josh Whiteman
The celebrated photographer Anton Corbijn has shot portraits of such icons of the music world as Bono, David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Elvis Costello, Miles Davis, Iggy Pop, Frank Sinatra and Michael Stipe. Now, the revealing documentary Shadow Play focuses on the man behind the camera to probe the restless personality of an artist who, through his photographic studies of celebrity, has become something of a star himself.
Born in Strijen, the Netherlands, Corbijn was so inspired by Joy Division's album Unknown Pleasures that he moved to England to work for the New Musical Express; he would soon collaborate with Joy Division and begin an enduring association with U2, designing the covers for their landmark albums The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. Corbijn then branched out into music videos, directing Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence, Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box and Joy Division's Atmosphere, the latter of which accompanied the re-release of the song in 1988.
As a photographer, Corbijn often captures his subjects in stark black and white, but Shadow Play director Josh Whiteman is more interested in the grey area: his film finds Corbijn at a crucial juncture in his life and career as he makes the move into feature films - remortgaging his house to fund Control, the award-winning biopic of Ian Curtis and Joy Division - and dealing with the passing of his father. John Berra met Whiteman at the 2009 Sheffield Doc Fest to discuss Shadow Play and the enigmatic artist at its centre.
What was the genesis of Shadow Play?
I had been interested in Anton since my early teens and I just sent him an email one day; I had never met him, and we did not know anybody in common, but he was coming through Sydney and we had a drink together. I said, 'I think there should be a film about you, but I don't know what the story is.' He said, 'that's interesting, because last night I had a call from an American producer who wants me to make a film about Joy Division.'
So we decided to make that the story and we just started shooting material in a really relaxed way. There was a point when we had to get Anton to sign a release, which was challenging, because he is very protective of his image and he understands his place in the world; he's not oblivious to where he fits in the pecking order and he knows that he is a world-famous master photographer.
In Shadow Play, we see Anton remortgaging his home to finance Control. At what point in the process did he decide to utilise his own assets to fund the production?
That footage was shot in Anton's hotel room, the evening before the start of principal photography. They had two weeks of pre-production in Nottingham and they were still financing the film. One of the first rules of filmmaking is that you don't spend your own money, but he was very passionate about it. As he says in the documentary, his photos of Joy Division made him famous, so he felt like he owed something, not just to the band, but to the fans - and it was gamble that paid-off, because Control has been massively successful.
What was the atmosphere like on the set of Control? How did Anton evolve from photographer to filmmaker?
He was incredibly focussed on the actors. The director of photography that he hired, Martin Ruhe, was someone he had shot videos with, so that side of things looked after itself. It was a very quiet set with very dark interiors, and to come into that environment with a video camera to try and capture his process was not a pleasant experience. All the energy and activity on set goes through the lens of the film camera, and when you bring in another lens, it starts to suck the energy out. So we kept our distance and shot with long lenses.
They needed an Electronic Press Kit, but Anton did not want to have two video crews on the set, so he asked us to do it and we agreed to split the footage between the two projects. People were very kind and they knew why we were there, but at times I did feel like we were in the way, especially during the epilepsy scene and the suicide scene. It was interesting to watch, but I wouldn't do it again.
Was a lot of emphasis placed on recapturing the stark look of Anton's Joy Division photographs?
Anton was very clear about the filming. We show that in the documentary, when Anton and Martin block the shots for the next day, so they were very clear about where they wanted to put the camera. It was not an organic process: it was highly stylised and very deliberate. The homes that these people lived in were incredibly small, so the sets were built just slightly above scale, slightly larger than the actual homes. It was a very cramped and intimate way to make a film but the results speaks for themselves.
As your subject was a world famous photographer, did you feel under pressure to deliver a documentary that had a particularly stylish aesthetic?
I wasn't interested in making a statement about my style; I wanted the interviews and the on-set footage to look very every day. There is a great scene with Anton and his Dutch friend, Bart, which is in black and white. I didn't shoot that - it was actually shot by my second unit guys - and the only reason that it is in black and white is that they shot it in black and white. They said, 'We thought you might like to see it in black-and-white', and I said, 'You could have shot it in colour and I could have made it black-and-white'. But it looks fantastic. There was no intention on my part to try and create a visual style that lived up to Anton's work; I just wanted it to be very simple so that when we cut to his photography, his work would really jump out.
Anton has an iconic presence. Is that something that artists and collaborators respond to?
What they admire and see in him is a fellow artist, someone who is committed to his craft and at the top of his game. The interesting thing about Anton is that the people in his photographs are just vehicles. At one point in the documentary, Bono says that Anton is really telling his own story, and every photo is in some way a self-portrait, even though it is of someone famous. Once you start to understand that, you start to understand that there is a theme running through his work which goes beyond style or the fact that a lot of it is in black and white. Anton is very much in control of his own craft and he knows what he wants. As a man, he is incredibly humble, but as a photographer, he knows how important he is and he doesn't pretend otherwise.
Check back in a few weeks for part 2 of this interview
