You've said you make a film to find out why you wanted to make it. Was that the case with "Spider"?
Definitely. Ralph [Fiennes] was attached to the project and I'm really interested in him. After two pages I was thinking this was brilliant casting on his part. I was also loving Spider and identifying with him, but that's as far as it goes. You're intuiting things and you know you're not going to get bored making it, but you don't know all that it's going to reveal. I wouldn't have the energy to make听a movie if I听knew everything beforehand.
How did you identify with Spider?
It was the idea that you could become someone wandering in the streets very confused, mumbling to yourself about things that have meaning to you but not to anyone else. And that you would have everything you own in one small suitcase, although sometimes that's kind of appealing, I have to say.
Tell us about Spider's mental state...
I don't think of this movie as being about schizophrenia. In fact, that word is never mentioned in the movie. At a certain point, when Ralph was saying he wanted to meet schizophrenics and psychiatrists, I said: "Go ahead, I don't want to meet them but you can. But please keep in mind that we're not going to do a checklist of schizophrenic symptoms. We are creating a character who is the emblem of the human condition."
Speaking of schizophrenia, your films have a habit of splitting critics and audiences, don't they?
If you're being an entertainer, you tend to just want people to love you. But if you're interested in being an artist, then division of opinion and discussion and debate are things you want to provoke. That鈥檚 the purpose of what I'm doing.
