Quentin Dupieux (1974) is considered almost like a God at the Sitges Festival with the most crazy comedies that make the staff laugh. Ten years ago he landed in the contest with Rubber, a film in which a tire with telepathic powers becomes obsessed with a mysterious woman. In 2020, he managed to turn two unsuspecting friends and Mandíbulas' giant fly into a phenomenon and popularize the "Bull!" cry.
This year brings no more and no less than two films to the competition: Smoking causes coughing, about a vigilante patrol known as the tobacco patrol, and Incredible but true, with characters seeking eternal youth. Incidentally, Dupieux was awarded a Time Machine for being "one of the best filmmakers in Europe", in the words of Ángel Sala, director of the Festival.
Were you aware of the enthusiasm your films aroused in Sitges?
No, I found out today, because everyone talks about this and journalists ask me. It's a good question, I knew that my films have been seen here for ten years, but I have the impression that the public expects them as a Christmas present. It has been a pleasant surprise, from now on I will come every year.
Write only your scripts. Do you set limits or write freely?
I write very freely. The limit is that I don't let myself go anywhere, there are many ideas that I throw in the bin. I have an idea that I think is great, I develop it, I realize that it is not going anywhere and I throw it away. With my writing I look for a very precise tone, but I don't write just anything and I don't try to satisfy just anyone.
Where does that absurd humor come from that all your films give off?
It's hard to say, it's a combination of things I liked when I was young: Monty Python, Zucker and Abrahams movies, like Land Anywhere You Can, but also comics, Muppets, horror movies, gore, B movies or stories fantastic stories from popular culture.... I think my humor is made up of a mixture of everything that made me laugh in my youth.
And that crazy humor is a way of expressing yourself cinematographically or is that the way you are?
No, I like to laugh. I prefer a dinner where they laugh and talk nonsense to a serious dinner. And as a child he also preferred to laugh than study mathematics. On the other hand, I am more concrete than my films. The absurdities of my films are a way of dispelling the anguish of our society. It's like a psychoanalysis that channels all the things that distress me around us on this planet and I do comedy to free myself. It is a way of expressing myself and emptying my anxieties.
Where does the idea of Smoking causes cough come from?
The title wants to express the idea that an action has consequences. In fact, I minimize the consequences, I only say that smoking makes you cough, but in reality it is more serious. The film talks about a current issue but it is also less serious than reality.
I don't know if he follows the news much. Don't you think that sometimes reality is more absurd than his movies?
Totally! That is why when it is said that my films are absurd I find it nonsense, it is life that is absurd. That I am talking to you now and you are recording me is absurd. I don't watch the news, for some time now the world has become little by little distressed. I try to make all the people who suffer from news hell have fun with my films, and for the moment it works. I have a function in society that is to entertain people, and it's great, I like it a lot. I know it's not much, it's less important than firefighting or humanitarian missions, but I have this little role, and to do it, I have to hide the news and the real world. If not, I would be unable to make funny movies.
Can smoking cause a cough be seen as a tribute to those who tell stories?
Yes, it could be said that it is a celebration of the illusion of storytelling. Making a film is telling a story, and my film poses a game to the viewer, like when you were little and they told you stories, it seeks complicity with the viewer around the stories.
Did you intend in Unbelievable but true to laugh at one of the great obsessions of men, virility, and of women, growing old?
I don't like putting everyone in the same group. I know 50-year-old women who are sick of getting older, young men who are afraid of losing their virility... We are all different, you can't generalize so easily and say that women or men are like that. I myself prefer the way I am now than ten years ago and in no way would I want to rejuvenate. But I have colleagues worried about their hair falling out. Everyone lives in their own way and it cannot be said that men are one way and women another.
Are your shoots as fun as your movies?
In a movie like Smoking Makes You Cough there are so many fun things to create that it's bound to be fun. However, during filming you have to be very rigorous, because if you start laughing you don't work anymore. Then there's a lot of work on things like blowing up a giant turtle, because you have to do it in one take and I have to be very strict. But preparing it is really a lot of fun.
