Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily
Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González – Tuesday, 3
December 2013
Stories:
Animating Noam Chomsky: French Director
Michel Gondry on New Film Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?
We spend the hour with French filmmaker
Michel Gondry, the director of a highly unusual new film, "Is the Man Who
is Tall Happy?" It is an animated representation of Gondry’s conversations
with the legendary political dissident, linguist, author and MIT professor,
Noam Chomsky. The innovative documentary introduces viewers to Chomsky’s
theories and ideas through a series of conversations brought to life by
Gondry’s vibrant hand-drawn animations. As Chomsky speaks, Gondry’s rapidly
moving pencil illustrates his words. The men discuss everything from Chomsky’s
pioneering work in childhood language acquisition to his views on education,
religion and astrology. Gondry’s past films include the Academy Award-winning
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," the musical documentary
"Dave Chappelle’s Block Party" and "The Science of Sleep."
He has also directed dozens of music videos by artists including Björk, Kanye
West, Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not
be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Today we spend the hour with
the French filmmaker Michel Gondry, the director of a highly unusual new film
called Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? It’s an animated representation of
Gondry’s conversations with the legendary political dissident, linguist, author
and MIT professor, Noam Chomsky. The innovative documentary introduces viewers
to Chomsky’s theories and ideas through a series of conversations brought to
life by Gondry’s vibrant hand-drawn animations. As Chomsky speaks, Gondry’s
rapidly moving pencil illustrates his words. The men discuss everything from
Chomsky’s pioneering work in childhood language acquisition to his views on
education, religion and astrology. This is the film’s trailer.
NOAM CHOMSKY: How do we identify
something as a tree? You plant a tree, it grows, you cut a branch off it, and
you put that branch in the ground. And suppose it grows and it becomes exactly
identical to the original tree. Is that new one the same willow tree? Why not?
It’s not so simple.
MICHEL GONDRY: As you can see, I felt a
bit stupid here.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Why should we take it to be
obvious that if I let go of a ball, it goes down and not up? Learning comes
from asking, "Why do things work like that? Why not some other way?"
The world is a very puzzling place. If you’re not willing to be puzzled, you
just become a replica of someone else’s mind. Visual experience is just
simulations of the retina, but we impose an extremely rich interpretation of
it. We see the world in terms of trees and dogs and rivers and so on, but then
the question is, "Well, what are those concepts?" People are just not
satisfied to think, "I go from dust to dust, and there’s no meaning to my
life."
MICHEL GONDRY: What makes you happy?
NOAM CHOMSKY: I don’t really think about
it much.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the trailer for the
new film, Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? by filmmaker Michel Gondry. His past
films include the Academy Award-winning film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind; the musical documentary, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party; and The Science of
Sleep. Gondry has also directed dozens of music videos by artists including
Björk and Kanye West, Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones. Nermeen Shaikh and I
talked to Michel Gondry last week when he was in New York. I started by asking
him how he decided to make a film about Noam Chomsky.
MICHEL GONDRY: When I was invited at his
school, MIT, as an artist in residence several time, and I asked to meet with
him, because I was meeting with all sort of teacher, in astrophysics, in
neurobiology and so on, and I was really intrigued by him and fascinated from
his political views to his scientific work. And so I met with him several time
over maybe three, four years. I submitted to him this idea to do an animated
representation of his scientific work.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So why is it that you
chose to focus on his scientific work rather than on his more well-known, in
some circles, anyway, political work?
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, I think he’s very
exposed, he’s very present with his political work, and I think it’s probably
the more—most important work because he’s trying to save—to save lives and make
a change in the world. But I felt that my contribution could be more important
if I would talk about his scientific work. And, as well, I always was in—I have
passion for science. Even though my memory is not great, I have problems to
accumulate data, but I felt it was just amazing to be able to meet somebody of
this kind that is still alive.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So what was it about his
scientific work that you wanted to convey? What is it that you want audiences
to understand about his work?
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, obviously, his
theory on language, generative grammar, his philosophy on the perception of the
world. But, to me, it was important that I could show his human side, because
he’s a very friendly person, and I think he’s very honest, and he lives by his
principle. And I wanted to show that to the audience, because it seems that
they have a distant idea—they have an idea of a sort of distantiated man, and he’s
not like that, so I wanted to convey that, as well as why I’m talking about his
wife and—I mean, he’s talking about his wife, his family and so on.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to another clip of
the film. This is Noam Chomsky talking about his late wife Carol and the life
they shared together.
MICHEL GONDRY: But I think that you had
the perfect relationship, from the outside point of view.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, nothing’s perfect.
MICHEL GONDRY: Yeah.
NOAM CHOMSKY: But it was very intimate,
yeah.
MICHEL GONDRY: I think a lot of human
beings spend a lot of their life trying to solve problems of relationship or
find a relationship and—
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, we pretty much solved
it when we were children. We were children when we got married.
MICHEL GONDRY: Yeah.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Carol was 19, I was 20.
MICHEL GONDRY: And do you think it helped
you in your work?
NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s hard to say. I mean,
Carol was kind of a social butterfly. You know, she was, as a teenager, you
know, normal—kind of parties, dating, this and that. I was very solitary.
But—and for a couple years, we more or less lived her style of life. But, you
know, I’d sit in a corner at the parties. But after a while we just drifted
into a very private life—you know, saw a couple friends. I mean, we weren’t
hermits—like, you know, children, grandchildren, friends and so on, but mostly
we preferred to be alone.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky talking about
his late wife Carol in this remarkable film that has just been made by Michel
Gondry called Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? Talk about the musical track here
that you chose. And also, people all over the world are watching this or
listening to this or reading it, and for those who aren’t seeing it, talk as
well about how you do the work, how you animated this.
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, this song you can
hear is written by Mia Doi Todd, who’s a folk musician. She has many record,
and I love her music. I felt it was—it has a very sweet and unique quality that
could fit with—that’s the only pop music, in a way, that is used in the film.
And the technique I use is very simple, basically. I have a lightbox, and I put
paper on it, and I animate with Sharpies, color Sharpies. And I have a
16-millimeter camera that is set up on a tripod and looks down, and I take a
picture. I do a drawing and take a picture. And generally, I switch to negative
in post-production to get this sort of a glowing effect, but most of the time—I
mean, all the time it’s just a 16-millimeter camera, and frame by frame as I’m
drawing.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And who was responsible
for the music in the rest of the film? It’s an extremely powerful musical score.
MICHEL GONDRY: It’s this English composer
who’s called Howard Skempton, who does this very—it’s sort of the French school
of music from the 20th century. He’s still alive, and I think he wrote some
music for Debussy or one of those guy a long time ago. Yeah, he’s a great
composer. I always wanted to work with him, and that was the first time I could
really.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And the animation that
you describe, the form, the technique, did you know you were going to employ
that form the minute you were going to make a film on Chomsky, or did it come
to you as you heard him speak?
MICHEL GONDRY: No, I had this idea—yeah,
I had this idea before, and I showed to Noam a clip I had done. Actually, it
was a clip that was part of Dave Chapelle’s Block Party. This singer that’s
great called Cody Chesnutt had made a song, and I illustrated with abstract
animation. And I showed that to Noam, because I felt it would work well with
his way to explain the science. And abstraction allows me to still be accurate,
even though I’m not sure I understand exactly what—all the nuances of Noam’s
speeches, but it stays accurate. And sometime I can go to more narrative
animation where it’s more on the narrative subject.
AMY GOODMAN: The famed French filmmaker,
Michel Gondry, the director of Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?, about the life
and work of Noam Chomsky. We’ll continue the interview and then hear Noam
Chomsky respond to this highly unusual animated film about his life and work.
Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "I Gave You My
Home" by Mia Doi Todd, music from the film Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy
Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, as we continue our conversation with Michel
Gondry, the director of this new film, an animated representation of Gondry’s
conversations with the legendary political dissident and linguist, Noam
Chomsky. Let’s go to another clip of the film.
MICHEL GONDRY: I wanted to know if the
education you gave to your children was influenced by what you believe in
language acquisition or what’s going on with the brain.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the education at
home, yes, so, you know, we read to the kids, encouraged the kids to read and
encouraged them to follow their own interests. The three kids were quite
different. My son, from a very early age, was mostly interested in science and
mathematics, so by the time he was 10 years old, we were reading together
popular books on relativity theory and things like that. But we just let the
kids go where they wanted. They went—and encouraged them. You know, they went
in different directions. It was fine with us, and, you know, tried to just
encourage them to do what they wanted.
School was conventional. We wanted them
to go to the public schools, and it worked reasonably well. When one child was
not making out in public school, we moved her to a Quaker school, which was
better.
They essentially picked their own paths.
As soon as they left home, they went off to become political activists. One, my
older daughter, spent a couple of months at college, couldn’t stand it, went
off and joined the United Farm Workers, and ever since then has been very
involved in political activity. Her younger sister went to Nicaragua in the
1980s and stayed. My son went off in a different direction.
But my children grew up in an atmosphere
of extreme political tension. I don’t know how much they felt. For example, I
was in and out of jail and was facing a long jail sentence, enough so that my
wife went back to college after 17 years to try to get a degree, an advanced
degree, because we assumed she’d have to take care of the children, she’d need
a job. And the kids kind of grew up in this atmosphere, but I don’t think they
felt any particular tension. My wife told me once that my probably
eight—10-year-old daughter, I guess, told her when she came home from
school—she asked, "What did you do in show-and-tell?" She said,
"Well, I described—I told them how my father was in jail."
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky in a clip from
Michel Gondry’s Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? I asked Michel to discuss what
Noam Chomsky said about the effect of his work on his children.
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, he talks about how
his kids were not affected. So I was sometime—I always wonder if he tried to
express something different than exactly his word, and maybe what he wanted to
say is that maybe some parents are reluctant to take to the street because they
feel their children will be traumatized or—if there is violence or if there is
danger. And he says that his kids grew up in this tension but didn’t really
felt it. Or it’s simply an observation. I don’t know. I mean, I transcribed his
words. To me, of course, it’s important to mention his activism, and it’s a
great part of his life and his work. And in a way, he sort of—he’s big in
activism like in the late ’60s. And in a way, I—in my drawings of where I have
to illustrate his word by my own drawing, the urgency to finish the project led
to a sort of simplicity, and it reminded me—the work I do reminded me a bit of
the ’60s activism posters. So, I felt really at home. I felt at home with this
part of the story.
AMY GOODMAN: In this clip, Noam Chomsky
uses the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to explore complex notions
of continuity.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Take the Charles River over
there, the river going past the building. What makes it the Charles River? You
can have substantial physical changes, and it would still be the Charles River.
So, for example, you can reverse the direction. Still be the Charles River. You
can break it up into tributaries that end up somewhere else, and it would still
be the Charles River. You can change the contents, so maybe you build a
manufacturing plant upstream, and the content is mostly arsenic, let’s say.
Well, it’s still the Charles River.
On the other hand, there are very small
changes that you can make, in which case it won’t be the Charles River at all.
So, suppose you put panels along the side and you start using it to ship
freight up and down. It’s not the river anymore; it’s a canal.
MICHEL GONDRY: Oh, yes.
NOAM CHOMSKY: And suppose you make some
minimal physical change, almost undetectable change, which hardens it—it’s
called a phase change, undetectable—but it makes it glass, basically, and you
paint a line down the middle, and people start using it to commute to Boston.
It’s a highway; it’s not a river. No, somehow, we—we can go on and on like
this.
We understand all these things without
instruction, without experience. They have to do with very complex notions of
continuity of entities a physicist cannot detect, because they’re not part of
the—I mean, of course, the physical world is part of them, but it’s only one
part. A major part of how we identify anything in the world, no matter how
elementary, is the mental conceptions that we impose on interpreting very
fragmentary experience. And our experience is, indeed, very fragmentary. So,
visual experience is just, you know, stimulations of the retina.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s an excerpt of the
film Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? It is made by renowned French director,
screenwriter, animator, producer, Michel Gondry. Yes, that’s Noam Chomsky. You
spoke to Noam for hours in a series of interviews. In fact, when you started,
his wife Carol was alive, and by the end she had died of brain cancer. Talk
about how you selected the topics you did and how you came up with the title.
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, I talked to him a
lot, but the interviews were about three hours long in all. So, basically, I
took half out, and it’s edited in the order—mostly in the order that he spoke.
And there is subject, like the perception of the world, on which he comes back
a second time. I don’t know if he forgot he had told me already, but his
examples were different, and I think it’s such a complicated subject to
understand, it’s so important, that it was important—it was worth it to show it
twice. But basically I showed—I followed the flow of the conversation.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And the title? How did
you come up with the title?
MICHEL GONDRY: Oh, yeah. The title is a
sentence that—Noam takes sentences to illustrated the generative grammar, and
sometimes they are just funny. It’s about a dog, or sometime you hear about
Nixon. But like the meaning doesn’t have really a great importance. That’s the
construction. And it was interesting because sometimes I gave him as an example
that "A man who is tall is in the room," and he changed it without
paying attention to "The man who is tall is happy." And basically,
you ask a child to formulate the question that gives his response, and the
child picks the right "is" to put it in front. So I wanted to really
illustrate that in a very basic and graphic manner, which is kind of
complicated to do. So I was proud that I did this work, and I thought, OK,
that’s a good reason to pick this sentence. But it doesn’t have much meaning in
itself.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And you’ve also suggested
that there is some connection between your work and the work that Chomsky does.
Could you explain what you mean by that?
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, I felt, of course,
it would be very, very hard for me just to follow up with him—to follow him,
and I felt a little ignorant. But, on the other hand, I thought that if I do 24
drawing per second, I could add in depth and sort of balance out his depth and
complication, the complexity of his purpose. So I thought animation would help
to—help me to feel adequate, basically.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was Noam Chomsky’s
reaction to the film?
MICHEL GONDRY: I think he really loved
it. He never watches movie, and even movies about him, especially movies about
himself, but this one he watched twice already. And he was very happy. And, I
mean, in the film he says he never goes to see any movies, especially since his
wife died, and I got him to go twice in the movie theater to watch this one.
So, in fact, I did that to him.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: In the beginning of the
film, you—there’s mention of Manufacturing Consent, whose director, Peter
Wintonick, just recently passed away. Could you talk about the significance of
watching that film for your interest in Chomsky and his work?
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, it was crucial,
because basically that’s how I heard about Chomsky. I mean, coming from France,
he’s very much ignored in France from some ridiculous issues that they keep
bringing from the ’70s.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Such as?
MICHEL GONDRY: You know, the Faurisson
revisionist book, and they have all these issues with liberty of freedom of
speech in France. They don’t see it the same way that you guys see it in France.
So, I was introduced to him through Manufacturing Consent. And I have to
say—and maybe my generation, we watch a lot of TV, and sometimes such
documentary open our mind. Like recently I watched Dirty Wars, that really
opened my eyes on these problems, or Gasland really changed my thinking about
those issues. And I think those documentaries are really doing an amazing job
in reaching out to my type of people.
AMY GOODMAN: Michel, how does doing this
film about Noam Chomsky, animating his ideas, from his private life to his
politics to his linguistics, compare to making a music video for Björk or
Rolling [Stones] or whoever?
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, it’s—you know, it’s
funny, because I had a project with Björk. We wanted to make a feature film
based on her music and science, and we couldn’t do it. And I think this is a
little bit close. Working with Noam and animating science concept, it’s always
something that I wanted to do. But, of course, the difference is—well, like the
rock 'n' roll, you know, legend and attitude, it’s something that doesn’t
really move me. And Björk is different, because she has—she has a very curious
mind. But like doing a video for The Rolling Stones, it’s not—I mean, of course
it was really important for me, but meeting with somebody like Noam Chomsky is
more life-changing. So, that’s a huge difference. I mean, I try to work my best
all the time, but—and it’s interesting, because I saw him as a father figure in
a way, so I really wanted him to approve of the result, so I was thinking of that
when I was working.
AMY GOODMAN: Michel, you are very well
known for your music videos, also for the film for which you won an Oscar,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Talk about how you got your start.
MICHEL GONDRY: I was in art school for
not very long. We started a band, a new wave punk band in the early '80s. The
band was not successful, but I bought this camera, which is exactly the same
one that I used for Noam's film.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Where were you?
MICHEL GONDRY: In Paris.
AMY GOODMAN: And this was Oui Oui, your
band, Yes Yes?
MICHEL GONDRY: Yeah, Oui Oui, yes, yes,
yes. So I started to do videos for my band, which were animated film. And
little by little, I included people in my videos; it was not only drawings. And
I started to do video for other bands. And like in the late—in the '90s, I
moved to Los Angeles, and I tried to do a movie. That's how I met Charlie
Kaufman, who wrote my two first movies, including Eternal Sunshine.
AMY GOODMAN: Your grandfather was an
inventor?
MICHEL GONDRY: Yes, he invented many
things, like the electronic bell, some miniature transistor on the synthesizer,
what’s called the Clavioline.
AMY GOODMAN: Did Noam remind you of your
grandfather?
MICHEL GONDRY: No, because my—I guess
more like a father, I would say. My grandfather has—he was a bit boring. But he
was—he had great stories. In fact—in fact, I just realized—
AMY GOODMAN: He obviously was a pretty
creative guy.
MICHEL GONDRY: Yeah, he was creative, but
I don’t know. I mean, I kind of liked my grandfather, but I was the only one in
my family to enjoy his stories. It’s like my auntie. She’s a school teacher,
and I made a documentary about her. And I think, from a young age, I always
liked to hear stories about older people. I mean, for one thing, they are close
to death, and they don’t seem to be afraid, and I am very impressed by that.
And I think that if they lived 80 years or so, they must have good stories to
tell.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of which, did Noam
talk about what he was afraid of?
MICHEL GONDRY: No, because he didn’t seem
to be afraid. I mean, yes, he is afraid of climate change. And when I had
finished the first part of the film—between the two interviews, I showed him
the result. And he said, basically, "I agree with it," which was agreeing
with himself. And—but I was still happy he said that, because it meant that I
didn’t distort his words or misinterpret. But he said that it will take a few
generations before people start to really accept those idea on the linguistic
and philosophy. And I asked him if he was upset that he will not be around to
see that. And he said, "Yes, I’m upset because nobody will be
around." And he was talking about the climate change. That was his
main—one of his main concern in the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And this film is playing
now here in select theaters. Has it also released in Europe, and will it?
MICHEL GONDRY: Not yet, no. It’s going to
be in the spring in Europe. I’m curious. Like, the reaction here of the press
was extremely positive. Even The New York Times, who sometimes they get some
friction with Noam, were really adamant about the film. I think in France it
may be different.
AMY GOODMAN: The famed French filmmaker,
Michel Gondry, the director of Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? about the life and
work of Noam Chomsky. When we come back, we conclude the interview and then
hear Noam Chomsky himself responding to the film and talking about his life.
Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen
Shaikh, as we continue our conversation with Michel Gondry, the director of the
new film, Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?, an animated film of Gondry’s
conversations with the legendary linguist, political dissident, Noam Chomsky. I
asked him to talk about the range of his work and how it goes together, from
Dave Chappelle to [Eternal] Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Noam Chomsky to
his famous commercials for some of the biggest corporations in the world.
MICHEL GONDRY: Doesn’t go very well
together. And I have to say, the process of doing advertising sort of sometime
hurts my ethics. On the other hand, it allows me to choose any other project in
feature film. So, when I do a feature film for Noam Chomsky, I am not earning
money, and I pay for the—to start the project, so I don’t have to convince any
producer. And this is because I have done some advertising and earned some
money in doing so. So there is a contradiction with my ethics, because I really
think advertising is—is terrible. I think, for instance, your news is—has
quality because there is no advertising. That’s the main difference—I mean, not
the only difference, of course, but that’s one of the main problems in
advertising. It’s, of course, run by corporation. And there is this advertising
that makes you think, "What am I looking at?" So I have a
contradiction in doing advertising. I try to do as minimum, as little as
possible. But, I have to say, they give me opportunity to make a living and
then to choose projects like Block Party or Noam’s film.
AMY GOODMAN: So, interestingly, you’re
really a master of manipulation. That’s why you’re so successful in
advertising, why they pay you the big bucks to do it, that allows you to do
your other work. So, by being the master of it, you’re an expert in it. Can you
explain it to people? What makes an effective advertisement?
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, I don’t think I’m a
master of manipulation. I think more illusion maybe. And the advertising are
conceived by a team of creative that are not necessarily including me in the
creative aspect. So, I mean, I work for them, and I represent their idea with
my images and so on. But in term of manipulation, I mean, I know that when I
talk about that in the film, that sometimes documentaries, who are made with
live action, when you—real footage of people, you forget that—you just think
that the person on the camera, on the screen, you just think that’s his voice.
But through editing, that is invisible, sort of alter the reality on it. And
then there is manipulation. So, sometime it’s for the best, but it could be for
the worst, as well. So I’m aware of that. And that’s one of the reason why I
thought animation was honest, because it’s—you’re being reminded all the time
that you’re being manipulated. I mean, it’s not manipulation if you see it.
AMY GOODMAN: Maybe I should have said
just, you know how to touch people. You know what affects people. Or is it more
that you just express yourself?
MICHEL GONDRY: Yeah, I think I express
myself, and I don’t think of touching people. I mean, yeah, of course, I hope
to touch people, but I try to touch myself—sorry, it’s—can be used in the wrong
way. But to—you know, to—I cannot find other expressions, because I’m going
to—I was about to say to please myself, but that sounds wrong, as well. But I
do images I want to see most of the time. And maybe I have a sensibility that
can resemble a certain group of people, so they like my work. But I don’t give
too much thought into how to get people to like me, although I’d like them to
like me, of course. But I didn’t study really this sort of manipulation.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I also want to ask about
your 2004 award-winning film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Here’s an
excerpt.
JOEL BARISH: [played by Jim Carrey]
Tangerine.
CLEMENTINE KRUCZYNSKI: [played by Kate
Winslet] Am I ugly?
JOEL BARISH: Uh-uh.
CLEMENTINE KRUCZYNSKI: When I was a kid,
I thought I was. I can’t believe I’m crying already. Sometimes I think people
don’t understand how lonely it is to be a kid. Like, you don’t matter. So, I’m
eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly girl doll
who I call Clementine. And I keep yelling at her, "You can’t be ugly! Be
pretty!" It’s weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically
change, too.
JOEL BARISH: You’re pretty.
CLEMENTINE KRUCZYNSKI: Joel, don’t ever
leave me.
JOEL BARISH: You’re pretty. You’re
pretty. You’re pretty. Pretty. Mierzwiak, please let me keep this memory. Just
this one.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was an excerpt from
your 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which won an Academy
Award for best original screenplay. It stars Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey. So
could you talk about that scene that we just saw?
MICHEL GONDRY: Yeah. Well, first of all,
that the screenplay was written by Charlie Kaufman. The statue goes to him.
But, I mean, I have a statue, too, in my living room, which is great, because I
co-wrote the story. But it was like one page. So, it’s—I have to put things in
perspective.
What this clip was, it’s a key moment in
the story where the character of—played by Jim Carrey, Joel, realize—I mean, so
he’s erasing all his—it’s being erased, all his memories of Clementine, his
ex-girlfriend. At this moment, in erasing them, he relives them. So, in this
memory, he realized how much he loved her, and he doesn’t want any more of the
procedure to happen. He wants to stop the erasing. But it was interesting,
because this scene, the way it was written was about a book, and it was not as
touching as it should be. And we put it together, and we realized that it
didn’t have the impact we were looking for. So I asked Charlie to rewrite the
scene about her youth, something that would have been really touching about her
youth. And I told him, "Use 20 percent of the words you already
used." So, we come back to her lips to mimic those words, because we
couldn’t reshoot it, so we just did the sound again. So we wrote the scene,
like 10 minutes, using 20 percent of the word that were existing, and then we
cut away to Jim Carrey when she speaks different word, and then we come back to
her when she resays the same word. And this scene, who was one of the favorite
scene of most of the audience, was actually completely re-edited and
transformed. So, maybe that’s manipulation. Maybe here I at least tried a sort
of manipulation.
AMY GOODMAN: For people who haven’t seen
the film, this idea of the erasure of memory, I think of Norm Chomsky in
exactly the opposite way: He is the global memory.
MICHEL GONDRY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: He talks about what happens
today and what happened in the past. He reminds us. Can you put those two
together?
MICHEL GONDRY: Well, what—one of the
things that impresses me the most in Noam is that, his capacity to remember all
the data. And that’s why he is very hard to beat. I mean, I’m not trying to
beat, to compete with him, but I can debate. He always back up his idea with
very solid data. And that covers all the subject he can think of. And when he
doesn’t know the data, he is not going to engage in the conversation, or he is
going to admit, "I’m not aware of that." So, of course, it’s sort of
working in opposite direction. Like in Eternal Sunshine, we erase memory, which
is mostly how I feel, because I’m navigating in the fog. And Noam has a very
solid and detailed memory of everything. And it’s interesting because his brain
work by association, so when he start an idea, he is going to lead to the next
one and then to the next one. And if you don’t stop him, he can talk forever on
one question, on one subject, because it’s all—and it reminds me of my auntie
who was schoolteacher, and she had a million stories to say. Each time she
would start a story, it would lead to the next one and the next one, and you
can’t stop them. And I’m really impressed by those brains, who seem to work so
well.
AMY GOODMAN: Did Noam change you?
MICHEL GONDRY: Yes, of course. It’s
life-changing to meet somebody like that and spend—to spend time with him. And,
I mean, the way his ethics are—I mean, the strength of his ethics and his
non-compromising attitude makes me look at what I do and how I can live by my
principles the way that he does. So that’s something I always think of, and I
think it comes from him.
AMY GOODMAN: Michel Gondry is the
director and animator of the new film, Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?
---
Noam Chomsky on Education & How
Manufacturing Consent Brought Attention to East Timor Massacres
At the premier of the new animated film,
"Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?" in New York City, Noam Chomsky joined
filmmaker Michel Gondry in conversation. We play excerpts of Chomsky’s remarks
on his educational background and his reflections on "Manufacturing
Consent," another feature-length film about him from 1992. One of the
filmmakers behind the movie, Peter Wintonick, died last month on November 18.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not
be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Noam Chomsky.
It was the premiere of the film here in New York, and they spoke together at
the—after the film showed. This is Noam Chomsky responding to a question about
his own education.
NOAM CHOMSKY: The truth is, I have
absolutely no professional credentials—literally, which is why I’m teaching at
MIT. They didn’t—that’s absolutely true. They didn’t care. You know, it’s a
science-based university. They didn’t care if you had a guild card, something
or other. So, we saw a little of it there. But I hated high school. It was the
academic high school in the city, the one that all the kids went to who were
going to go to college, so teachers didn’t really have to work very hard,
because we were going to pass the exams anyway. And I couldn’t stand it. And
this is 1945, so there were no questions about going to some college somewhere
else. You lived at home, you worked, you went to the local college, period.
Local college happened to be the
University of Pennsylvania. I, as a high school student, looked at the—looked
through the catalog. Looked really exciting, all these great courses in all
sorts of different fields. I was really looking forward to getting out and
going to college. After my first year of college, each course I took in every
field was so boring that I didn’t even go to the classes. I mean, the way—I was
quite interested in chemistry, but the way I passed the chemistry course was
because I had a friend, a young woman about my age, who took extremely
meticulous notes in red and blue and so on, and she lent me her notes so I
didn’t have to go to class and I could pass the exams. You had to go to—there
was a lab. And I knew, you know, if I try to carry out a lab experiment, it’s
not going to work, period. But there was a lab manual, and it was obvious what
the answers had to be, so I just filled in the answers, and I never even went
to the lab. And then I had my comeuppance when I had to apply the next
semester, because I was charged $17, which was a lot of money in those days,
for lab breakage. And I couldn’t tell them, "Look, I never went to the
labs," so I had to pay them. But it sort of went on like that. I never
really had an undergraduate degree. By the time I was—I started mainly taking a
scattering of graduate courses without much background in them. I then was
lucky enough to get a four-year fellowship, graduate fellowship, just did my
own work and essentially never had—I never had much of a formal education.
It was—one of the greatest educations,
educational experiences, I ever had in those four years was at Harvard. It was
to have a desk in the stacks. In those days, the stacks were open, not anymore.
A graduate student had a little desk in the stacks, and you had the whole of
Widener Library, this amazing library, there. You can kind of walk around and
pick things out from all kind of places, things you never heard of, and pursue
them. That was a fantastic experience. I think it’s a great way to get an
education.
And then I was, again, very lucky. I got
to MIT, which is a research institution. They didn’t care what—didn’t care
about credentials. You could work on what you wanted to. And it turned out very
well. But it’s just a series of accidents. I think very few people are lucky
enough to have an experience like that. So I’m not suggesting that you don’t go
to college and do your work and get your degree.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky at the premiere
of the film Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? He was also asked to talk about his
role in the making of another feature-length film, Manufacturing Consent,
released in 1992. Noam began by talking about one of the filmmakers, Peter
Wintonick, who died last month on November 18th.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Actually, I can’t really
claim to have worked with—I spent a lot of time with him and enjoyed talking to
him—very imaginative, thoughtful, dedicated person, who spent—really spent his
life, not only then, but for many years afterwards, doing very admirable work
of all kinds, often turned out in documentary films, but on serious issues
which were hard to investigate. He was—did a lot of courageous, imaginative
work. As far as that film is concerned, I had about as much to do with it as
the moon has if people take photographs of the moon. You know, I was giving
talks and giving interviews. And Peter and Mark Achbar was—I don’t know what
you call him technically—producer or something?
ANTHONY ARNOVE: Mm-hmm.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Was—they’d come around and
film, and we’d have some interviews, and they put it together. And I have to
admit, I never saw it. I can’t stand watching myself, so I never saw the film.
But I’m told it was a pretty impressive film, they did a very good job.
I know one thing that they did that I was
very pleased about, was to take one issue that I’d been spending a lot of time
working on, and it was a very difficult case. There were a small number of
people working on it. None of us ever thought it would get anywhere. It was the
case of East Timor, which maybe you know about, which was invaded in 1975 by
Indonesia, with strong U.S. support. It led almost quickly to virtual genocide.
I don’t like the term "genocide" much, but this one came pretty
close, maybe 200,000 people killed out of a population of 600,000 or 700,000,
all with full U.S. support. U.S. could have cut it off in two minutes. England,
France, others also joined in to try to pick up a bit of the spoils. Indonesia
is a rich country, lots of resources and a lot of incentive to support them.
And there was very a small number of people who were trying to work on it,
trying to bring some attention to it to see if something could be saved from
the wreckage. Went on for a long time. Amy Goodman here was one of the people
in 1991 who—she and Allan Nairn went and were practically beaten to death in a
demonstration. They got—did some very good work and got some—a lot of important
publicity. And now, finally, in 1999, President Clinton, under a lot of
pressure, international and domestic, essentially called it off, with a phrase.
He essentially told the Indonesian generals, "Game’s over." They
left. That’s what it means to be a powerful state. Now, there’s a lot to learn
from that. But one thing I was pleased about in Peter’s film is that they
emphasized this and did very evocative and imaginative work about it, which I
think probably informed plenty of people about it. So it maybe saved a lot of
lives.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky talking about
Peter Wintonick, the filmmaker who who made Manufacturing Consent. Noam Chomsky
was speaking at the opening of the new film, Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? You
can visit our website at democracynow.org to watch the full video of Noam
Chomsky in conversation with filmmaker Michel Gondry, who has made the latest
film about Noam’s work, and Anthony Arnove. We’ll also post online an
illustration by Michel Gondry, the director and animator of Is the Man Who is
Tall Happy? He did it here at Democracy Now! just after the interview that we
did with him. We’ll post that illustration online at democracynow.org.
-------
HEADLINES:
Thailand: Police Remove Barricades in Bid
to Ease Mass Protests
Police in Thailand allowed
anti-government protesters to enter the prime minister’s office compound
earlier today in an apparent bid to ease the country’s worst political crisis
in three years. The protesters want to oust the government and replace it with
an unelected "people’s council." Their outrage erupted last month
over an amnesty bill that would have eliminated a corruption conviction against
the brother of the current prime minister, who himself led Thailand until his
ouster in 2006. Protests escalated over the weekend with at least three people
killed. Earlier today, police removed barricades near the police headquarters
and allowed protesters to swarm the lawn of Government House in a symbolic
victory that appeared to calm tensions.
---
U.N. Implicates Assad in War Crimes
The United Nations human rights chief has
directly implicated Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in war crimes, saying U.N.
investigators have found evidence indicating "responsibility at the
highest level of government, including the head of state." Navi Pillay
said the investigators have found "massive evidence" of war crimes
and crimes against humanity in Syria. Investigators have also implicated
opposition groups in war crimes, although to a lesser extent. Pillay repeated
her call for the conflict to be referred to the International Criminal Court.
Navi Pillay: "The inquiry into
chemical weapons, which is utterly necessary, should not be used as a
distraction from the fact that more than 100,000 people have been killed as a
result of the use of conventional weapons. Accountability should be a key
priority of the international community, and I want to make this point again
and again as the Geneva 2 talks begin. And I reiterate my call to all member
states to refer the situation to the ICC."
---
Report: Aid Worker Deaths Triple in
Afghanistan
New data shows the number of aid workers
killed in Afghanistan has more than tripled this year. According to the United
Nations, 36 people have been killed in more than 200 attacks through the end of
November, up from 11 deaths in total last year. In some cases, the Taliban has
openly claimed credit for the attacks. Afghanistan is by far the most dangerous
country in the world for aid workers.
---
Biden Criticizes China Air Defense Zone
During Japan Visit
Vice President Joe Biden criticized
China’s new air defense zone during remarks earlier today in Japan. Standing
with the Japanese prime minister, Biden said the zone, established over islands
claimed by both China and Japan, has increased the risk of accidents and raised
tensions. Biden is also due to meet with the Chinese president during his visit
to the region.
---
Investigators: Train Was Speeding Before
Crash in Bronx
In New York, investigators say a train
that derailed in the Bronx Sunday was traveling at nearly three times the
allowed speed when it headed into a curve before leaving the track. Four people
died, and dozens more were injured, marking New York City’s deadliest train
derailment in more than two decades. A National Transportation Safety Board
member said Monday it is still unclear if the crash stemmed from human error or
an equipment failure.
Earl Weener: "The preliminary
information, and let me emphasize this is preliminary information, from the
event recorders shows that the train was traveling at approximately 82 miles
per hour as it went into a 30-mile-an-hour curve. That speed again was 82 miles
an hour at the entrance to a 30-mile-an-hour curve."
---
Honduras: Election Tribunal to Review
Disputed Presidential Tallies
In Honduras, the tribunal overseeing
elections says it will review vote tallies from the disputed presidential race
after the runner-up denounced the results as fraudulent. The tribunal vowed to
recount the tallies from more than 16,000 voting booths after demands by
Xiomara Castro and her supporters, thousands of whom took to the streets on
Sunday. Castro’s opponent, right-wing candidate Juan Orlando Hernández, has
been declared the official winner.
---
Bahrain: Court Denies Early Release for
Activist Nabeel Rajab
In the Gulf nation of Bahrain, a court
has denied a bid for early release from leading human rights activist Nabeel
Rajab. Rajab was sentenced to three years in prison last summer as part of a
government crackdown on dissent. According to Amnesty International, he has
reported dire prison conditions, including being kept in solitary confinement
with a dead animal in his cell. Rajab’s lawyer said he is eligible for early
release under Bahraini law, but the request was rejected on Sunday. Bahrain is
a close ally of the United States.
---
Gaza Activists Stage "Reverse
Flotilla" Against Israeli Blockade
In Gaza, hundreds of activists set sail
Monday morning in a “reverse flotilla” to challenge an Israeli naval blockade
they say hurts the livelihoods of Palestinian fishermen. The blockade bans
Gazans from going more than six nautical miles from shore. Organizers said at
least some of the ships breached the boundary.
Shorouq Mahmoud: "Today, the
Palestinian Intifada Coalition and more than 200 young men, women and
foreigners decided to break the siege by sailing more than six miles into the
sea. It is a protest against the siege that is not allowing fishermen to enter
inside the sea of Gaza and to fish normally."
---
White House Claims 375,000 Visits to
Health Site Monday Before Noon
The White House says 375,000 people
visited the government’s healthcare website on Monday before noon. The reported
spike in traffic came after the Obama administration claimed it had met its
goal for improvements following the site’s disastrous rollout. But The
Washington Post reports roughly a third of people who have signed up for health
plans through the federal marketplace may not get the coverage they want due to
rampant, computer-generated errors. The mistakes include duplicate enrollments,
incorrect information and failure to notify insurers about new customers.
---
ACLU Sues U.S. Bishops over Catholic
Hospital Guidelines
The American Civil Liberties Union has
filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, saying its
guidelines for Catholic hospitals — including a ban on abortions — lead to
negligent care. The lawsuit centers on Tamesha Means, a Michigan woman who
endured a risky miscarriage after a Catholic hospital failed to inform her that
ending her pregnancy was an option. The hospital reportedly sent Means home
twice even though she was in excruciating pain and there was virtually no
chance her pregnancy would survive. Kary Moss, head of the Michigan ACLU, told
the Associated Press, "It’s not just about one woman. It’s about a
nationwide policy created by non-medical professionals putting patients in
harm’s way."
---
Same-Sex Weddings Begin in Hawaii
Same-sex couples in Hawaii began getting
married early Monday as a law allowing the unions went into effect at midnight.
The law followed a more than two-decade struggle for same-sex marriage in
Hawaii, which is seen as one of the earliest battlegrounds for marriage
equality.
---
Canada: Anti-Fracking Protests Held
Nationwide on Day of Action
In Canada, protests against the
gas-drilling technique of fracking took place nationwide on Monday during an
emergency day of action. The actions were called by members of the Mi’kmaq
First Nation and other protesters in New Brunswick who are waging a campaign to
stall gas exploration by the Texas-based firm Southwestern Energy.
---
Protesters in Oregon Delay Departure of
Tar Sands "Megaload"
In Oregon, a so-called megaload of oil
equipment departed for the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, Monday night, a day
after protesters successfully blocked it from leaving. On Sunday, two people
locked themselves to a truck at the Port of Umatilla, stalling departure of the
massive equipment, which they say will travel through sensitive areas and then
help fuel climate change in the oil fields.
---
Ukraine: Mass Protests Continue as
Parliament Rejects No-Confidence Motion
In breaking news, the political crisis in
Ukraine is continuing after the parliament rejected a no-confidence motion
against the government brought by the opposition. Protesters are continuing to
condemn the government’s decision not to sign an agreement to boost ties with
the European Union. Secretary of State John Kerry cancelled a planned trip to
Kiev this week amid the mass protests. More than a million people have been in
the streets.
---
The New Press Founder André Schiffrin
Dies at 78
André Schiffrin, the founder of The New
Press and a leader in the book publishing world for nearly half a century, has
died at the age of 78. Schiffrin served as editor-in-chief of Pantheon Books, where
he edited titles by Jean-Paul Sartre, Studs Terkel and Noam Chomsky. In 1990,
he made waves across the publishing world with his departure from Pantheon
following a dispute with Alberto Vitale, head of Pantheon’s parent company,
Random House. Schiffrin described that moment on Democracy Now! in 2007.
André Schiffrin: "And Vitale said to
us, 'Why can’t you publish more books on the right rather than those on the
left?' It was clear to us at that point that we were in a situation where there
was no compromise, no solution. So all of my colleagues and I resigned at the
same time, which is something that normally doesn’t happen in publishing. When
there’s a new owner, everybody says, 'Oh, well, let’s see. Maybe we can work it
out. We don’t want to leave our corner offices,' and so on. But we did leave
all together. And..."
Amy Goodman: "How many of you?"
André Schiffrin: "Well, there were
six who left altogether, the editorial staff. And there was a big picket line
outside of Random House. There was a lot of noise about it, protests from all
over Europe and so on. And it was clear that people saw that as a sea change, a
moment when the conglomerates would really try to alter, as they had been
doing, what was published."
After his departure from Pantheon, Schiffrin
went on to found The New Press, an independent, nonprofit company dedicated to
"publishing in the public interest." He died in Paris on Sunday of
pancreatic cancer. Click here to watch our full interview with him.
-------
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