Christoph Waltz talked to The Knockturnal on the red carpet of his new film ‘Georgetown’ at the film’s Tribeca Film Festival premiere.
Christoph Waltz is making his feature-film directorial debut this year with the film Georgetown, based on the true story of Ulrich Mott. Waltz played Mott, a man who forces himself into influencing Washington DC through his charisma and his marriage to a well-connected (and much older) journalist, played by Vanessa Redgrave. When Mott’s daughter-in-law, played by Annette Bening, finds out about what Waltz has been doing, she takes it upon herself to figure out who Ulrich Mott is and what exactly he wants out of this woman.
Georgetown makes the feature-length directorial debut of Waltz, who had previously only directed a TV film in his home country of Germany. With Georgetown, Waltz adapts the true story into a larger-than-life narrative. At the Tribeca Film Festival red carpet for the world premiere of the film, Waltz spoke with us about the film and what it is like to direct.
The Knockturnal: Who would you compare your character to, in terms of aspirations?
Christoph Waltz: This is the era of deceit. This is the era of fraud, and of mistaken identities and misplaced personalities. This is the era of something and the fact that all of that does not necessarily make for a very prosperous co-existence… so yeah.
The Knockturnal: You’re not an English speaker by birth. What is the effect of directing in a language that is not your first spoken?
Christoph Waltz: That is some good thinking. Well… if we were talking about Shakespeare, we would give that question a bit more charge. I don’t think what’s interesting in drama happens exclusively in the language. What’s interesting in poetry happens in language, but what’s interesting in drama, especially in movies, is in action. And I don’t mean action as… [he mashes his fists together] hardware destroying each other but in [the] interaction between humans.
So that is not necessarily, primarily tied to language. You could say cinema is a language, and that is the great thing about cinematic language, which is universal.
Georgetown premiered April 27th at the Tribeca Film Festival.
