KW: So I guess the first thing to talk about, since the movie is already out, would be what are your thoughts on how it’s doing?
HAR: Box office?
KW: Yeah, box office.
HAR: Pretty miserably. I know no one believes me that I don’t care, but I really don’t. The emotional high point for me was a long time ago. It was when we finished the film and showed it to the guys and they loved the movie. And the second high point was people loved it at Sundance. Everything after that it’s been a little bit anti-climactic, quite frankly. It would’ve been great to become a millionaire but, whatever. That’s not why you make movies.
KW: Certainly. Do you think the studio had expectations that the film would do a certain amount of money?
HAR: Definitely.
KW: Did they have conversations with you saying it’s next Capturing the Friedmans or…?
HAR: It was a guarded hope, always. I can’t impress this on you enough, of the three of us who made this movie, me, Dana and [producer] Jeff [Mandel], you’re talking to the guy who cares the least. Who was the least involved in with…I never check the box office. My agent will once in a while tell me how it’s doing. Honestly, I wish more people would go. But it’s hard to get people to go to a movie about cripples. I mean the bottom-line, I’ve said that in almost every interview is that we’ve always had two strikes against us. One, that we’re a documentary but that stigma is going away. You can bust out. But two, it’s a movie about disabled people. I don’t know. Speculating about why you’re movie is doing well is not interesting. It really isn’t, Karen. Let’s twist the knife around.
KW: Sorry, no the reason why I wanted to bring this up at all is because I saw it this weekend and I thought it was wonderful. And it surprises me that more people aren’t going to see it.
HAR: All I know is that the guys in the movie really love the movie, and that’s all that really matters to me. In fact let’s call Igoe [one of the people featured in the film] right now and see what he has to say about it. A statement from Chris Igoe. [Henry pulls out his cellphone and starts dialing.]
KW: So that was something that I was going to ask you. Are you now buddies with the guys from the film? Because it seems like you are from interviews and the film itself.
HAR: Definitely. Chris, Zupan especially. They’re some of my closest friends.
KW: When you set out to make a documentary, is there a part of you that feels like a journalist?
HAR: [speaking into his phone] Hey Christopher Igoe, how are you? I’m sitting at a table with a journalist who just asked me why more people aren’t going to see our movie? So I thought you might have some interesting thoughts on the subject, so call back. All right. Mademoiselle.
KW: So when you make a documentary, do you feel that you are more of a journalist or more of a filmmaker?
HAR: The great thing about this movie is, that Dana really is a journalist. He’s hardcore. He’s been writing stories for years and years. He helped start Icon magazine, he was features editor at Spin. So a lot of that investigative work, I left to him. It was great. He would bring different story lines and ideas. But no, it was liberating.
KW: So there wasn’t ever a moment for you while making that film that you thought, it shouldn’t be too personal?
HAR: No, quite the opposite. The more you become friends with the guys, the more access you got and the more emotionally available you are to what’s occurring. Inevitably the filming of the events becomes more moving to you. Everything becomes more touching because you love these guys. And then you end up wanting to translate that emotion that you’re having up on screen for other people to have. You want them to be experiencing what you’re experiencing. You want everyone else to love these guys.
KW: I definitely feel that’s a part of the film that comes across very strongly. There are scenes that it seems that if the person behind the camera wasn’t just another guy sitting around. There are quite a few scenes that are very intimate, very personal.
HAR: They forget you because they just think there’s a friend in the room. But I’m already on to the next project. That guy, Sean that you met [outside the bar, before the conversation began] is a captain in the army. Who has left the army and has become a writer. We’re working on a movie. It’s going to be about returning Iraq war veterans. I’m in a completely different mindset. You make a movie and it’s like you’ve sent a kid away to school. You don’t know it anymore. You don’t recognize the clothes it’s wearing. You’re shocked when you hear people talking about it. When it brings home girlfriends, you don’t recognize them. It has it’s own…it has nothing to do with me anymore. It’s a stranger.
KW: So let’s talk about movies.
HAR: Oh, that I can do.
KW: Let’s talk about movies in New York, what are you favorite places to go to movies in New York?
HAR: There are two places. One is in the theater over in 33rd and 2nd Avenue. The Kips Bay movie theater. Love it. Always empty, big screens. Empty. Love it. Also, 68th Street. I like to sneak into movies, once I see one, I like to see another and you can do that at these two places very easily.
KW: So you’re not a Film Forum person, you’re not a Sunshine person?
HAR: No, I like action movies. I like war movies, action movies, cop movies. I like genre. I think most of the movies that come out today are really bad but my favorite movies are from the ‘60s and are all action movies. Like The Great Escape or Bullitt or Dirty Dozen, Badlands. These are my favorite movies. Deerhunter is probably one of my top favorite movies of all time. Top three.
KW: You also have that Blow-Up poster.
HAR: When did you see my Blow-Up poster? Oh right when you were in my room. [Ed note: This may sound sketchy, but CC innocently set up the tape recorder for an interview for our Day Job in Henry’s apartment a few months prior, which is when we saw his poster.] That movie really filled me with the mystery of moviemaking. It was so mysterious. You grew up trying to figure that movie out. I saw that when I lived in France. I lived in France—I’m half-French—and I grew up in Paris for a number of years. That’s where I saw a lot of movies, at La Gobelins, it’s right on the edge of the 13th arrondissement. It’s a row of theaters and there’s a bunch of them playing revivals. And I would go there, when I was 15, 16, 17 years old. I remember seeing Blow-Up and loving it and not knowing why and being very frustrated by it. As frustrated as David Hemmings. I love good movies. It’s not like I love the French. I hate the French. I am French, so I can hate them. I love their movies. They make the best gangster movies and the best thrillers. People like Clouzot and Melville. These movies are fucking great because they’re genre movies, so there’s a plot and there’s gunfights, which keeps me interested and they’re incredibly human. They’re all about people and relationship, whereas the genre movies here in the US are not about people. I love very, very real movies. Blow-Up is not one of my favorite movies. It’s been with me so long, that it’s gotten under my skin for at least 15 years now. It’s become a part of my identity.
Unfortunately, their uplifting, smart, hilarious little docu about quadriplegic rugby players is being trounced in the box office by a few migrating penguins. We’ve got nothin’ against penguins, but this is a crying shame because Murderball is one of the most deftly crafted movies we’ve seen so far this year. Please rush out to see it, then talk loudly about it at as many cocktail parties as you can. Well, read the following conversation first, but then head out to the movie.