Behind the Valentino Mythology: Director Matt Tyrnauer
Source: By CHRIS JANCELEWICZ
Posted: 07/08/09 3:02PM
Filed Under: Film
As regular folk, we only get a glimpse into the lives of international icons, often through the lens of celebrity journalists. We can't even conceive of what their existences are actually like, except in the confines of our imaginations. Former Vanity Fair correspondent Matt Tyrnauer helps us enter the world of legendary Italian fashion designer Valentino in Valentino: The Last Emperor.
Tyrnauer explores the intimate, 40-year romantic relationship between Valentino and his partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, and shows the struggles the two men face as they confront the final act of a nearly 50-year career at the top of the world's most glamorous and competitive game. The struggle of art against commerce is at the centre of the film, but in the end, the story proves to be not one about money or expensive clothes, but about love.
AOL sat down to talk with Tyrnauer about what it was like to live and breathe in the direct spotlight of fashion fame.
What was your inspiration for the film?
I had met Valentino in my capacity as a correspondent for Vanity Fair. I write about these characters - like him - and I call them the 'Third Act' people. Huge careers, lives of such lavish absurdity, it only seems normal to them. For years, I wanted to make a movie about one of these people. The printed page is not sufficient to contain their fabulousness, so I asked him, and he said yes. That's how it all began, and I think he regretted it every day for two years.
It was interesting how he jumped between loving and loathing the camera attention.
That's very Valentino.
Do you think most fashion journalism is too 'cushy', for lack of a better term?
Yeah, I'm not a fashion journalist, and not to slam fashion journalists, but it's...the joke is that even the designers and the journalists all say...all these crises and drama that surround that world, and at the end of the day it's all about a dress. Fashion journalism is the same thing - it's an interesting, heady world, but it's ultimately about merchandise. Even the most thoughtful, analytical fashion journalism only reaches a certain level of seriousness and gravity. I wasn't making a movie about fashion, really; I wanted to make a human story about two people (Valentino and Giammetti).
At any point, did you feel too invasive of their privacy?
You can't enter someone's life with a camera without feeling you're invading. I'm actually very conscious of not intruding...always, in every situation. That's my default character. I had to struggle within myself. All my journalism is observation; I don't like to stick a microphone in someone's face. It was very painful for me to make this film. I felt uncomfortable a lot, but I had said to myself at the beginning that I'd signed up for this, and I am going to be like a bull in a china shop. If you're overly polite, you're not going to get what you need.
That must have been hard.
There are some times, as you saw in the film, where things got a bit hairy. He quits the film on several occasions in the course of the movie, so you can imagine how many times the two of them tried to quit in real life. They pretty much quit every day, I have to tell you. Valentino re-hired himself the next morning, and I was scared that they would say 'Don't come back.' We were locked in a kind of fatal attraction to one another, I think.
Did Giammetti want to leave the film as much as Valentino?
It was a weird, complicated dynamic. They play off of each other, and they try to torture each other. Giancarlo, I think, was using us to torture Valentino sometimes. I think that's when you got Valentino saying, 'This camera can't follow you around. It needs to follow me.' We were very frequently buffeted against dangerous rocks between those two.
Valentino's also pretty tough, in terms of getting answers out of him.
Giancarlo really becomes the window into Valentino, because it's like getting blood from a stone. Valentino is the least giving interview ever. He's like all icons - he's created a myth. He's a self-mythologizer. He believes his own myth. Think of celebrities like Michael Jackson, people who are so famous for so long. You can't fault them for it, because they would collapse if they questioned it. Valentino's totally confident in the myth, and anything that questions it is very frightening to him.
When you first started filming, could you believe his attention to detail and precision?
No, all of this was completely unknown to me. I became obsessed with the process of couture, and that it's happening in Rome, in the Piazza di Spagna, the most expensive real estate in Rome. They have room after room of these old women working, some of them for 45 years. Some of them have their daughters working there with them. They're making $100, 000 or more dresses...by hand. I didn't understand. I thought there were sewing machines, or that factories did it, at least in part. How touching and moving it is that the art form is passed down from generation to generation...the art of it is just...I have such respect for it.
What were Giammetti's and Valentino's reactions to the finished film?
Disgust. Hate. When I showed them the movie, they were very displeased with it. They asked that I change it, I refused. I asked them to make a list of the things they didn't like so I could understand - and they gave me a list that included every scene in the film. Finally they showed up at the Venice Film Festival for the world premiere. The movie got a standing ovation, and Valentino burst into tears. The next day, we were on the cover of every single newspaper in Italy.
Then, our North American premiere was at the Toronto Film Festival last year [2008], and he came. It got an even bigger, longer standing ovation that time. He was in the balcony, he lost it. That's what convinced him. In Italy, he wasn't totally convinced, because the Italians love him. When he saw people in this city react that way, he was really overwhelmed.
Valentino: The Last Emperor opens in theatres in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal on July 10.
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