Exclusive: Olivier Assayas Says 'Carlos' Was "Hell," Is Planning New "Small Scale" Film With Juliette Binoche

This week, the Sundance Channel will be airing Oliver Assayas' brilliant, three-part biographical thriller "Carlos." The true-life story of Carlos the Jackal, an international terrorist played with much flair by Edgar Ramirez, who reigned chaos on much of Europe in the '70s and '80s, Assayas' five-and-a-half-hour long film is the rare ultra-personal epic, one in which an inflamed testicle has as much narrative importance as a days-long hostage operation and the true measure of a man is not in his convictions or political leanings, but in his ability to hustle and maintain the momentum of his own mythology. Those that claim that "Carlos" doesn't divulge enough personal information seem to be missing the point, as he seems to be a self-stylized cipher, one whose violent convictions are sold to the highest bidder. We got to speak to the prolific French director about the making of the film, the difficulties that he encountered while creating such a knotty tale, and what's up next. Don't forget to check out our exhaustive retrospective on Oliver Assayas' films we posted yesterday.

The Playlist: The scale here was immense. What was it like going from such a small drama like "Summer Hours" to a huge epic like "Carlos?"
Olivier Assayas: It was hell! I don't think I would do it again. I got myself into this thing and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I think the process of making "Carlos" at some point was self-generating. When I initially started getting interested in the material, started taking notes, and seeing how I could center it, I had no idea it would take me into this madness. I had no idea it would be a film on that scale, that it would be a triptych, that it would be shot all over the world. I was just attracted to the material as a writer. I liked the idea of trying to do something with real life ideas, commenting on modern history, but it was very much from the point of view of a writer. And also because this was completely new to me, I started doing the kind of things you don't do when you write a French film — not being cautious about the number of locations, about the number of characters, about the logistic complexities, and just go for trying to capture the complexities of modern politics and the way they interact on the big stage of the whole world.

You just forged forward.
Once I had the outline of this extraordinarily complex story that it kind of dawned on me that it would be a very long, very complicated film. It looked impossible and un-doable and I was convinced at one point or another that I was going to jump out of the ship. But it never happened. I was convinced that somebody, at some stage, would tell me that I couldn't do it, that there would be a stop sign somewhere. But then, no! Everybody seemed to be excited by the thing! It was just self generating- the TV channel, the co-producers, were all excited by the material and everyone wanted to see the film. And I got dragged in. It was a crazy process, especially since we had to do the film on a much smaller budget than we actually needed. So it was a very complex process to get it right, because we didn't have, at our disposal, the kind of budget that such a subject would require. So I would never do it again.

In America, we're getting the picture in a couple of different versions, so what do you think is the best way to watch "Carlos?"
To me, it's pretty simple. It's a film. And it's a very long film. And that's it. I never imagined it as anything else. And then I knew that it was going to be shown in different formats, because that's the logic of the financing of the film, and also because you really can't get away, in the States or in France, with a five-and-a-half hour-long movie. But while we were shooting it, we were shooting a five-and-a-half hour movie. Period. That was kind of the framework, which was kind of bigger than even the framework of very long films. So we knew, in terms of distribution, that there would have to be a shorter cut. We knew we needed the money from the French TV to finance the film because we couldn't have found the budget for a five-and-a-half hour long film in French cinema so we knew it would have to be, at one stage or another, presented on TV and we knew we would have to make a shorter cut for the multiplexes, to reach a wider audience. But in the back of my mind, in the back of our mind (and I'm really talking for the whole crew), we were convinced that what we were doing was a big-scale, crazy feature.

It was a pleasant surprise, knowing that it aired on television, that there wasn't a cliff hanger at the end of each section that made sure you came back for the next installment.
The thing is that, to get it ok'd by Canal Plus, the French company that footed the bill... This was a completely new format for them. They don't do three-part miniseries, they don't do two- or three- or four-part series so it was kind of an issue for them to have believable cuts between part one and two and part two and three. In the case of the cut between part one and two, it was pretty obvious, because we cut it in the middle of the action, so they kind of accepted that (hopefully) the audience would come back for the following week to watch what was building up at the end of the first part. But the cut between part two and three was trickier, because it was like a new chapter of Carlos opening up.
The editorial work in "Carlos," stretches for so many years, with people's weight and age fluctuating and with the third part, the clipped editorial pace symbolizing the authorities closing in on Carlos.
The film is structured in big chapters, right? Like one chapter being the events leading to the shoot out, the third chapter being the OPEC operation and its aftermath. The fourth chapter being how Carlos was arrested in Sudan. The big problem was chapter three, which is how Carlos reinvents himself after being fired and how be becomes an entrepreneur of terrorism in the 1980s and somehow, at some point, the fall of the Berlin Wall comes as a wake-up call.

All of a sudden, he realizes, that he's a creature of the Cold War and after the Cold War there's no more relevance for him. But that we had to condense. Because the other chapters were pretty big chapters and were extremely documented, there's lots of material. These 15 years are the least documented in Carlos' life and they are extraordinarily complex, because it's a time he's dealing with six or seven different governments, he's going back and forth between secret services, terrorist organizations like the IRA, he's sub-contracting terror actions for the Romanians for the Yugoslavians. It's extraordinarily complex. Where we could get into the detail of the operations we were narrating in one, two, and four, in chapter three we really had to condense things - it was a different approach, it was a different pace. And of course, in terms of structuring the story and the narration, it was by far the most complex.
How did you make the decision of what to leave in and what to remove?
Well, the process was not that difficult, in the sense, that the film's perspective on Carlos is French-centered. For me, it was easier to use the specific operations that had to do with France and specifically the events surrounding the arrest of Magdalena Kopp [played in the film by Nora von Waldstatten], which of course, in terms of narration, are very strong. Because she's an important character and gets into major trouble in very cinematic ways. But ultimately, for the reasons I tried to describe, basic narrative reasons, I had to make really difficult choices, because there are many operations of Carlos at that time. And very specifically I chose not to use one of the most famous, which is the bomb at the Maison de France in Berlin which is the most documented case of that period because it was the one operation that has been on trial.

It was the one operation that people were indicted for, it was the one operation that the Stasi operations was indicted for, and even the Syrian ambassador in Germany. But, at that moment, in the narrative, it was too complicated, there was no space to go again into the most minute detail. At that stage it was more about time passing, the world changing, and Carlos being crushed by the wheels of history. And at that point I was more interested in getting to the last chapter, which was his decline and fall.
Can you talk about choosing Edgar? Was he always at the top of your list?
Edgar was always #1 in a list of one. I think it's the miracle that made this film possible. I ended up meeting for pretty obvious reasons, because I was looking for an actor from Venezuela who could act in three different languages (in English, French, and Spanish), who had the physicality of Carlos, who was the right age, because the story was between Carlos in his 20s and Carlos in his 40s, and Edgar happens to be 30, so he was right in the middle. He was pretty obvious, on the paper, without even meeting him. But upon meeting, I felt he had all the prerequisites, but way beyond. He had a very charismatic presence, he is a very smart man with a very solid knowledge of the politics of the '70s.

He also has a very broad range. I mean he has the physicality of Carlos but also he is someone who is a very quick thinker and who has a lot of subtlety in his handling of the emotions of his characters. In the end, his input in the film is way beyond embodying Carlos. I think he really brought to the film an energy, a generosity, a drive, that translated to the whole crew. I mean, we made this film in very difficult situations. We didn't have the kind of budget we needed, which means we had to win small battles every day to make the film. So the fact that we had Edgar, who has this type of conviction and generosity, constantly in a good mood, constantly ready to fight to get things right, was communicated to the whole crew.

So what's next? Obviously, anything after "Carlos" is going to be smaller than "Carlos." Are you going to do another small drama?
Yes, I have a project with Juliete Binoche that we should shoot sometime early next year and it's going to be small scale. I think I have to start again from scratch. Maybe after a while I will want to return to a big canvas. But right now I don't even want to hear about one.

"Carlos" hits theaters this week in both its original, king-sized version (which will be playing at places like New York's IFC Film Center) and in the shorter, truncated version. It will be available On Demand starting next Wednesday.