Indie Directors Roundtable: Andrew Haigh, Janus Metz, Rob Reiner, Lisa Langseth and Luca Guadagnino

Part of The Hollywood Reporter’s annual sit-downs with Hollywood players.

An excerpt from a THR roundtable with indie film directors Luca Guadagnino, Andrew Haigh, Lisa Langseth, Janus Metz, and Rob Reiner.

When did you fall in love with film?

ROB REINER I was born into this business. My father [Carl Reiner] was on television before we even had a TV. We got a television in order to see him on it. I was steeped in it, raised on it — from the beginning I was steeped in images.

ANDREW HAIGH Growing up, my parents weren’t into film, so I just saw E.T. and The Goonies and that was about it. Then I got a job working at a cinema at the British Film Institute and watched film after film after film. It was a [Michelangelo] Antonioni film in the morning, a [John] Cassavetes film in the afternoon and a [Ingmar] Bergman film at night. That’s when I started to appreciate the power of cinema.

LISA LANGSETH I started working in theater. I worked in theaters for 10 years as a writer and director, and I got a bit bored because there was only this one stage all the time. And then I did a short film and I fell in love with it. Because there are so many possibilities.

LUCA GUADAGNINO I’ve been in love with cinema as long as I can remember. My father is an avid cinephile like I am and he exposed me to films that weren’t right for my age. I saw Apocalypse Now at the age of 7. I think seeing it then helped develop in me a morbidity for the sense of the shocking image, which in fact led me to have a deep love of the horror genre as well.

JANUS METZ My first love of cinema was watching Kurosawa movies on television. Samurai movies. I was very obsessed with samurai and Japanese culture when I was a kid. We had this staircase and when I was sent to bed I could go out and lie down and watch the television through the staircase. I remember sneaking out to watch Seven Samurai and Rashomon. I think my first sexual experience was the sex scene in The Name of the Rose.

HAIGH Mine too!

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For all of you, what’s the passion project you want to do but haven’t been able to make yet?

REINER Working on it now, but I can’t say because someone might take it. I’ve been working on it for more than 50 years. It’s a big deal, I don’t know how easy it will be to put it together. We’ll see.

HAIGH Every film I’ve done has been my passion project. I can’t imagine doing a film that isn’t. My next will be a passion project. And so will the next. I don’t have hundreds of films I’m trying to make.

GUADAGNINO I’m trying to make films to fulfill my true passion project, which is to retire. [Laughter.]

HAIGH I’m with you. I’ll give it two more years and then be in the garden and sleep.

GUADAGNINO Now that I think about it, the film I am doing now, [the horror film] Suspiria, is my passion project because I’ve been wanting to make it since I saw the original, from Dario Argento, when I was 14.

HAIGH It can be very hard to stay true to what you want to do, especially as you start to elevate up a little bit — you have more agents telling you what to do, you get sent more scripts: “Jennifer Aniston is attached to this. Do you want to do it?” And you’re like: “Well I like her, but I don’t like the script, so …” There is a push to make you do something, and it is quite hard to battle that noise and stick to what you want to do.

GUADAGNINO I’d like to defend the agents because if you talk to them and really educate them with what you really want, they can be wonderful instruments to getting your film made.

REINER You are the first person to ever say anything nice about an agent!

METZ At the end of the day, agents want to make good work as well.

GUADAGNINO You have to make your ambitions become theirs. And it is interesting to see them play. It’s like lawyers, those people are made of a different piece of cloth. But they can be good.

METZ I need to meet your agent.

For the rest of the conversation, go here.