Stellan Skarsgård accepted a lower salary and became an executive producer on Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” — winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes this year — because he wanted to give the crew good lunches.
“I wasn’t supposed to be [an executive producer] at first, but I said: ‘I’d never film in Norway without having a special contract.’ After ‘Insomnia’ [Erik Skjoldbjærg’s 1997 thriller later remade by Christopher Nolan], I gathered the whole crew and said, ‘I’ll never film in this country again – unless we get a good lunch,’” he said during roundtable interview at Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where he received the Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema.
“I lost eight kilos on ‘Insomnia.’ We would usually get a loaf of bread, that’s pre-sliced, and a plastic salami. That’s it!” he says. “I’ve made other films in Norway since then, but it has always said in my contract that everybody should get lunches of the highest European standard. And that’s expensive. Norway, they’re the richest country, but they don’t want to spend money on food.”
Skarsgård adds: “I went down, I think, half a million kroner in my salary to pay for this, for the food for everybody. And the producer said, ‘You’ll get credit for that.’ Also, the food has to be served on real china – no plastic, paper bags or whatever. And you’re not standing in line, you sit down and eat. It makes everybody happier and makes the film much better. I haven’t made one bad film in Norway since.”
Variety reached out to the Norwegian producers of “Insomnia” and “Sentimental Value” for comment. When asked about the quality of food on “Insomnia,” Petter Borgli, one of the producers, responded by email: “No comment (it’s 29 years ago) ;)”.
Skarsgård has been getting raves for his performance in “Sentimental Value” as Gustav Borg, an aging director trying to reconnect with his daughters, including an actress played by Renate Reinsve.
“It’s playful, the way Renate’s running through Oslo was in ‘The Worst Person in the World.’ But [Joachim Trier] is very subtle, and I like that very much,” he says. “The problems he introduces in the film, he doesn’t solve them – and that’s good. But [this family] has gotten closer, and that’s fantastic.”
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He’s a different father from Gustav, who “doesn’t have the tools to untie those emotional knots,” he says.
“The good thing about my parenting was that I showed very clearly that I was full of flaws, that I was a human being, that I’m not on a pedestal and I don’t have any special rights because I’m a father,” he says.
“I didn’t make decisions for my children, didn’t censor them. They can say whatever they want as long as they have respect for other people. I got eight kids and they’re very nice. I don’t know how much I’ve destroyed them, but they’ve had the freedom to destroy themselves.”
Skarsgård never limits himself, especially when it comes to his taste in food and films.
“There’s a lot of people who limit what they eat. ‘I’m not eating meat,’ they say. I eat everything,” he laughs. “I have this appetite for life, but also, it’s not a genre that makes the film bad. It’s laziness. The American films I’ve made, they were made by really good directors. Like ‘Ronin’ with John Frankenheimer, ‘Dune’ with Denis Villeneuve or my first Marvel film. Unfortunately, I had to sign up for four of them. But the first one was directed by Kenneth Branagh!”
He adds: “They are valid projects, even if they are a part of the big system. What’s bad about the system is something that has to do with the neo-capitalistic society we live in, where everything is owned by investment firms. Like when AT&T, a fucking telephone company, took over Time Warner. A telephone company! And the head of AT&T, he said to the HBO people: ‘Now you quit this sort of arty-farty shit and start doing lighter fare so we can get our 15%.’ That’s horrible.”
Moving to the U.S. “wouldn’t make sense” to him, he says.
“I have like eight kids, for fuck’s sake – I’d be broke before getting off the boat. Schools for eight kids, universities, healthcare?! Not to mention the wives.”
But even though the mid-level films are “unfortunately gone” — “They had the best actors, the best writers, the best directors. I really miss them. I guess we all do” — he says indie films are “pretty much alive anyway.”
“I still get a lot out of it,” he says. “Being on set, that’s where my biggest joy is. And when I was younger, drinking all night was fun, too.”
From Variety US