Pulp, Jarvis Cocker & Florian Habicht (Interview)

New Zealand-raised film maker Florian Habicht is due to return to Auckland when the New Zealand International Film Festival opens later this week. The German-born Habicht has directed a clutch of quirky films including Love Story, Land Of The Long White Cloud and the unforgettable Woodenhead. Florian’s latest film, Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets, documents the Britpop band’s farewell concert in their hometown of Sheffield at the close of their reunion tour in 2012. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda recently spoke to Florian Habicht about the making of the Pulp film and, particularly, working with front man Jarvis Cocker.

Read a transcription of the interview with Florian Habicht here:

MD: Explain your relationship with the music of Pulp. Before you even made the film,  I assume you were a fan, so how important were they to you?

FH: Definitely one of my favourite bands and I really like British music and I like them I guess because… one reason why I like them is just that most of the songs are like stories and almost kind of films when I hear them. So I’ve had my own kind vision of the stories and images of the songs.

MD: Right.

FH: Like classic ones like Babies.

MD: When you finally got to meet up with Jarvis, how did you present the idea of making this…or what the film was gonna be like to him or did the two of you kind of cook it up together?

FH: We both had, before we met, like when we met up we told each other our film ideas and they were, they were really similar.

MD: Well that’s handy.

FH: Yeah so that was quite crazy. Yeah they were both ideas where the film was more focused on the people of Sheffield or as much as the band,  I guess because Pulp are for the common people.

MD: That’s true.

FH: Yeah, cause they’re that kind of group. That’s why I felt kind of quite appropriate for me.

MD: And how familiar were you with Sheffield itself? Hadou been there before?

FH: Nah, not at all. Actually I had, when Woodenhead played in Manchester I passed through on the train.

MD: Yeah.

FH: And yeah and I just saw a few  industrial buildings and it was a black, almost a black grey day and I remember thinking ‘oh this is where Pulp are from, how interesting’. Yeah.

MD: So what were your first impressions of the city when you actually got in there properly?

FH: I arrived in the inner city. That’s where I stayed and for me the inner city is quite modern, the buildings and things. So it’s, my first impression, it wasn’t what I would consider beautiful like the modern buildings and things and it was winter and it was cold and rainy and I actually got a bit homesick I think in my first few days…yeah until I started discovering the corners.  Its kind of a place where you have to discover the corners, the sort of hidden corners and discover the beauty, well for me. When I asked people on the streets before we actually filmed they said oh you have to go, you should check out the botanical gardens or the, I don’t know just kind of the main places.

MD: Yeah the kind of touristy places.

FH: The touristy places yeah. But I guess that didn’t really do it for me.

MD: Right. Yeah.

FH: I was more fascinated by the river, it’s like a river that flows through Sheffield or the Castle Market, which was like going back in time or some of the, going out of the inner city the more, I guess the bit more rougher areas.

MD: Right and did you find that the people definitely had a connection with Pulp? Was the band, you know, uppermost is people’s minds, were they kind of possessive about the band?

FH: The ones that knew them, definitely.

MD: Yeah.

FH: Yeah, totally. They all had stories or knew them when they were young, all that kind of thing. But then there were also people that, I guess younger, some younger people they had never heard of Pulp ever before. Like one guy, I went into an electronic store and I asked someone about Pulp and this guy, this young guy was like ‘what’s that, what’s that, what’s Pulp, a software, is it a software?’.

MD: And what they think about a guy who’s from Germany and New Zealand coming into Sheffield, you know, doing a film about a local band up there. Did they think that was strange at all?

FH: Yeah, I honestly don’t know.

MD: Oh okay.

FH: No one, I mean when the film premiered in Sheffield, one person did ask the band, why did they not consider a Sheffield person making the film.

MD: Yeah.

FH: Because there’s a lot of talented film makers from Sheffield and Jarvis said he kind of liked the idea that I was like, I was sort of dropped in by a helicopter wearing camo gear and kind of, you know, with my camera in this place I’ve never been to before on a an assignment.

MD: I would imagine you kinda came across as kind of an alien presence there anyway.

FH: Yeah, well in my first few days I was wearing my pink pants and then I realised they stood out even more because the weather was so dark and grey and bleak and then yeah, then I realised if I wanna make a film here I better dress a bit more normally.

MD: Yeah people are not gonna wanna talk to a guy with pink pants in Sheffield in the winter time.

FH: Yeah not as much.

MD: So from what I understand you really only had a really short time to get ready to shoot this film before, you know, that the last show came up. So what were some of your biggest challenges as far as getting the whole thing together?

FH: Funding the film, which we were doing while we were shooting.

MD: Right.

FH: Which was not the most pleasant time to be doing that but there was no choice.

MD: Right.

FH: And just orchestrating the whole concert which Maria Ines Manchego, my D.O.P, who also shot Love Story, she’s a Kiwi living in New York, and she orchestrated most of that. I have to congratulate her on that. It was getting, you know, a camera team of 12 people together.

MD: Right.

FH: People whose work we like. So it was kind of auditioning people and using people that we had worked with before, that kind of thing and then also directing them because when the actual concert, I mean instructing them right because when the concert actually began, we weren’t directing them. It wasn’t like there was… we did have walkie-talkies but it wasn’t like we had monitors to watch.

MD: Right so you don’t want all 12 cameras pointing at Jarvis obviously, you need to be able to talk about that beforehand.

FH: Exactly. Yeah. I mean there’s some funny stories like we had one cinematographer who was really super talented and he bought these beautiful old film lenses to shoot on and, you know, had the most great kit too and he was instructed to film, you know, a certain part of the stage and I think 90% of his the footage was of the violin player.

MD: Right.

FH: Who was, actually not part of Pulp.

MD: Right.

FH: Playing for the concert and I think there might be two shots of that used in the film.

MD: Oh no.

FH: Yeah, but I mean that was all, I mean we pulled it off and we got really great footage.

MD: Yeah, definitely. Footage looks fantastic yeah.

FH: Oh cool and our main objective…what the band wanted and they also mastered the concert audio…they wanted it to feel quite, audio wise, quite visceral and kind of like you’re there and that’s something you’ll hear if you see the film in the cinema. It doesn’t feel like it’s studio recording, it kind of feels like you’re right at the front of the concert and the way we filmed it, we wanted to shoot it to make it feel like you’re at the concert. So we didn’t want cameras too close to the band’s face.

MD: Right.

FH: Or doing flash camera moves on cranes. We just kinda want it to feel like you’re actually at the gig.

MD: Gotcha. Yeah and how much of the input did the rest of the band have other than Jarvis, cause you kinda think Pulp, you think Jarvis, he’s the main guy. Did the other band members care much about the film, were there involved?

FH: Steve Mackey, who’s the bass player, he cared quite a lot about the film and he gave us quite a lot of feedback as well on the edits.

MD: Oh great. I think that’s great. Is that good?

FH: It was good but I, yeah. I think Jarvis’s feedback was, for myself was the most, kinda, the most spot on.

MD: Right.

FH: Yeah, but definitely good.

MD: And I’m curious because, you know, you having been a fan before,what was your impression coming away of Jarvis? Was he the kind of guy you thought he was going to be or did you kind of gain some insights into him and realise that, you know, what he, who he was on screen or on record was possibly different than he was behind the scenes?

FH: Well he’s definitely the guy you see on the screen and the guy I’ve heard, I got to meet and got to know but then I also got to know other sides of his personality and of his friends and his family and all that, that, you know, he’s quite private. So I think he’s a private person and I got to know a lot more of him that you don’t, I guess that you don’t, that I didn’t know before.

MD: Okay.

FH: So like that was really interesting and also just his creative process. I didn’t really have a clue how he worked before and so that was really educational for me. Yeah and in lots of ways, the band are quite similar now to how I work but they like making decisions quite spontaneously and usually at the last moment and they just sort of go with their gut.

MD: Gotcha. Yeah well that’s definitely…

FH: It’s a little bit like me, I like auditioning or casting people on the spot if it feels right or how the band got me to make the film. They didn’t, you know, interview six other film makers and chose the best, you know, they just kind of had a good feeling and they went with it.  Oh and I was also impressed that they stick to their vision. They’re really hard-core like yeah, like what they believe in they don’t compromise on or and I guess that was quite inspiring.

MD: Yeah. Now you yourself are present in the film quite a bit which is fairly consistent with the way you make your films. Was there any kind of discussion with Jarvis and the band about the fact that you’re gonna be heard quite a bit, you know, asking these questions and, you know, making yourself part of the film?

FH: Well I do remember when Jarvis saw Love Story, I got a bit paranoid like later on in the day thinking ‘oh does he that I wanna be in this film like that’.

MD: Right.

FH: So I kind of made that clear to him that I’m not expecting to be in this film.

MD: Alright.

FH: Yeah so. I guess I don’t really know what they’re expecting but they saw a rough cut of the film quite early on so they knew what I was up to.

MD: Did you have a, kind of style of I guess, asking questions of people that seem somewhat out of context. For instance, you know, you ask someone I think ‘do you believe in an afterlife’ while they’re in the middle of a Pulp concert or ‘what did you dream about last night’. Is that your way of kind of disarming them and getting an honest reaction out of them?

FH: Yeah that’s what Jarvis thought, he thought that was a good way, he was quite, he quite liked that. He thought it was funny that I was asking while the concert was on I was in the, outside the toilets or in the toilets asking people the meaning of life and he does think, yeah it’s a way of getting to, you can cut through a lot of small talk

MD: Right.

FH: Yeah you can get to the essence of things quite fast.

MD: And there’s just a couple of scenes I wanted to discuss, one is one that kind of shows the beginning and ending of the film with Jarvis changing his tyre on his car.

FH: Yeah.

MD: Where did that come from?

FH: Well my first interview with Jarvis was directly…he didn’t wanna film too much before the concert…but my first kind of long interview was pretty much when he walked off and the band walked off the stage in Sheffield and I think he put a towel around him to wipe off the sweat and we found a quiet room and I was just oh my god what am I gonna ask cause I hadn’t really prepared anything and it was just after the concert and my question I think was about do you remember what you dreamt in themorning, last night.

MD: Right.

FH: And that’s when he was like ‘oh I dreamt about changing car tyres’. And afterwards I thought that it is actually quite a symbolic dream because their coming back to Sheffield to do this big farewell concert, which they once tried doing and it was a bit of a disaster…

MD: Yeah.

FH: …but anyway, it’s him trying to make like I guess changing a car tyre is like trying to fix things or trying to make things right or I don’t know.

MD: Right, right.

FH: But then I just like liked the idea as well.

MD: Yeah, it was pretty good.

FH: Making Jarvis, making him change the tyre.

MD: Watching him pound away on the jack and whatever. It’s great.

FH: I was actually really impressed.

MD: So was I actually. And the other bit was the, you found a single mum from Atlanta, Georgia who travelled to Sheffield and…did you just happened to kind of come across her or how did that come about that she ended up in the film?

FH: Yeah, definitely, just happened to come across her.

MD: Yeah.

FH: And she actually came to the film’s world premiere in Texas, Austin, Texas. She got to meet Jarvis and yeah so for her the dream kind of came true.

MD: Well see that, hopefully you’ve filmed that and you could put that in the extras on the DVD.

FH: Yeah, nice idea. I don’t think we did lots of photos yeah.

MD: Okay. I got one more question for you.  A lot of the film is about Sheffield and the kind of effects of fame on the band…there’s a lot of discussion about that…rather than about the band itself and their music, and I was wondering if you were worried about disappointing some fans who may be wanting to see this film as a film about Pulp and them learning, you know, kind of their history. It’s not your traditional music documentary. Was there any concern about that when you were putting the film together?

FH: Yeah It’s definitely a concern and a few people that watched the rough cut, you know, were kind of expecting it to be more that kind of film and I guess Jarvis and I didn’t want to make that kind of film and I thought , and Maria, the DOP, said this as well, we thought that if people want more of like the band history and more of that kind of info and story, than they could go on Wikipedia or they could go on YouTube.

MD: Right.

FH: So we were quite clear that we wanted not to make that kind of film but actually just make a film that gets you a portrait of Sheffield and gets you the kind of experience something that you can’t experience by going on Wikipedia or whatever.

MD: Gotcha. Yeah.

FH: And Jarvis said he finds most rockumentaries quite boring because of that kind of, that traditional way of how they are.

MD: Well it does seem like that a lot of directors are rethinking the music documentaries, Have you seen the Nick Cave documentary?

FH: No I haven’t but I really, really want to.

MD: Yeah, it’s really good. It’s very different from the typical and it’s very different from yours which is very interesting so. Well It will be showing at the Film Festival and I assume you’re gonna be doing some…

FH: I’m gonna see it.

MD: Yeah, and so will people get a chance to do Q&A’s with you at the festival? Is that the plan?

FH: Yes, definitely, yeah.

MD: Oh good okay.

FH: Yeah and they’ll be a few surprises as well.

MD: Oh okay, we love surprises.

FH: Yeah.

MD: That sounds good. Alrighty. Well I’ll let you go.

FH: You know the Michael Jackson, the famous Michael Jackson story?

MD: Which one is that?

FH: How Jarvis?…

MD: Oh yes, yes.

FH: Like so many people were expecting that to be in the film as well.

MD: Yeah.

FH: I mean, but it was quite cool because like Jarvis was just kind of really bored of that and it’s the last thing he wanted to have in the film.

MD: I can imagine.

FH: I think he was pretty much over that and I interviewed some clowns, I bumped into some clowns and I interviewed them about it and got a great piece of him telling the story of what happened and we put it in one of the cuts but I was like well the film doesn’t need it.

MD: Yeah.

FH: It just seemed like yeah, I don’t know.

MD: Well what you can do is bring Jarvis with you to New Zealand and recreate that scene of Jarvis and Michael on stage for folks after the screening of the film I think would be wise.

FH: I said to Jarvis, I said after the concert in Sheffield, I said that I was thinking about getting a Michael Jackson impersonator to jump on stage and he was like nodding his head but shaking his head, ‘that’s not a good idea Florian’.
 
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDNz941vRXU]